SCEA VP of Product Marketing, Scott Steinberg, is a firm believer that Killzone 2 will be that factor strong enough to have the Xbox 360 gamers try out the PlayStation 3 system. In an interview with GameDaily, Steinberg talked about the golden boy of the PS3, the many more great things to expect from the PS3, and why 2009 is really THE YEAR of the said console.

As co-founder of Sniper Studios, Jeff Hasson has had a lot of experience in outsourcing game development resources and being outsourced for game development, despite the general outlook of the industry as a "dirty" word in the business.

 

The studio itself has already had a number of games under its belt - Halo, SOCOM and Star Wars Battlefront being those that stand out of the list. But after a team up with SEGA and its illustrious arcade franchise Crazy Taxi, Sniper Studios was able to take a step forward into next-gen development.

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars for the PSP is currently under their skilled development hands and the game is slated to be set off as a blend between Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 with multiplayer features. Although much of the ideas won't be coming from Kenji Kanno, SEGA of America has been on-hand to lead the project the way its supposed to.

PSP development hasn't been all that smooth however. According to an interview by Gamasutra with Hasson, certain technical issues such as UMD loading times and access times have been a difficult hurdle. Of course, they were impressed with the platform's power as a handheld PS2, and even more so with Sony's developers tools for the platform.

In fact, he mentioned that for a game that originated in a 4:3 aspect format, shifting to a small screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio was "straightforward." Added to that, they've developed the multiplayer code from scratch while the engine for the PSP were ported from the original engines from Japan.

Not bad for a studio taking baby steps into PSP development. Big news is that they've also been tagged by Microsoft as an officially licensed Xbox 360 developer, but they are hoping to enter the Wii and PlayStation 3 also. Hasson said:

Sniper has experience developing across all major platforms and the team looks forward to making announcements about new development projects in the future. Every platform is of significant interest to Sniper. This includes potential projects on PS3 or the Wii.

RossWilson (RR Rossi) has been very generous in using his clan to carry the QJ name. We have been attempting to establish clans on our forums, and at first it was just our Socom US Navy Seals: FTB (PSP), but we have been trying very hard for the past week in establishing more clans. The moment we advertised our clans, we received a great number of requests, on the forums and on the front pages. RossWilson then contacted us and asked if we were interested in his clan (Recon Renegades).

 

I jumped at this opportunity, seeing how a G.R.A.W clan was going to be in high demand, and maintaining it would prove to be difficult. RossWilson’s clan is on the top 10 list for best clans in Europe, something of which is very impressive. There is already a forum thread about the clan, and you can find application details there. If you are from the US, feel free to apply, one of our moderators Abe_Froeman has taken it upon himself to setup the US clan. Our thanks goes to Abe and Ross for the clan management. The official clan battles will be held through this site, and hopefully all will be won by our wonderful players!

 

Feel free to visit the clan’s site at the banner on the article, or through this link. We will continue to form new clans under our guidelines, and feel free to join them. I started up the Halo 2 clan, and you can join it simply by contacting me on the forums (FrozenIpaq) and I will send a clan invite to you. I will be gone this week into next, but I will reply to all my messages when I can! In the meantime, we have several upcoming clans as well, so stay tuned!

Our forums grow everyday, in the amount of users and changes. With the recent additions made by Mysticales on the forums (many more to come as well), we have decided to start up an organize tournament section. Along with this section will come our very own clan section! So, I'm proud to announce that our forums will be the breeding grounds for our clans (QJ).

As of today, we have only organized one clan. We have many more planned clans to be formed for several different games and platforms. We will be creating clans for almost every online multiplayer game. Even though clan match is taken away in Halo 2, we will still form a clan, as well as other popular games hopefully (UT2K) and other games. If the game doesn't support a clan system and you would like a clan in that game, we will do our best to organize one. For example, Mario Kart does not support clans, but does support custom logos. This will be our way of identifying ourselves (custom logo for the clan).

So, if you would like to help start a QJ clan, please stop by our forums. We will be doing our best to organize clan areas on the forums for us to discuss and suggest clans this week. Over the next few days we will be modifying the forums to help us organize these clans and will set guidelines as well.

Recently, our first "official" clan had its first "clan match". This game was none other than Socom: U.S. Navy SEALs FTB. This game has been one of the most sought-after online games for the PSP, and our clan will, hopefully, destroy everyone we face. Read about the QJ Socom clan formed by Serideth, a dedicated forum moderator, after the jump!