Duke on HD-DVD

If you're reading this website, then you're aware that we released a teaser video for Duke Nukem Forever back in December. At the time we told you that it was originally done as an internal gag for the company Christmas party. That part of the story is true, but what we didn't tell you at the time is that the video was only half of it. There was a second half of the video which we didn't announce, nor release.

As part of the "present to the company", we got Jon St. John to participate as well by recording an audio track as Duke which runs about 4 minutes or so where he "talks" to the development team about Duke Nukem Forever. This was audio only, there was no "video" with it. For the majority of the team, it was the first time they had heard the clip; it was quite funny. At the time we didn't consider releasing it, since we wanted the teaser video to stand on its own. Furthermore, it was made up of an awful lot of inside jokes and remarks about the staff; things we never expected most people to “get”.

So why are we telling you about this now? Well, when Toshiba announced earlier this week that they were dropping support for the HD-DVD format, we remembered that Duke was prophetic about this in the unreleased clip. In it Duke Nukem says that Blu-Ray was the future of high definition, before everyone else except maybe Sony realized it. This was a joke about one of our programmers here who was a seriously hard core internal advocate of HD-DVD, but Duke predicted Blu-Ray would win. "The King is never wrong." :)

So as Duke’s little going away present to the HD-DVD format, we decided to toss the small audio clip out there. You can download it here.

No, we’re not prepared at this time to release the entire audio clip, but as we said back in December, "Stay tuned" - one never knows what the future might bring,.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:08 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Duke Nukem Forever

Here is a message from George Broussard, the president of 3D Realms as posted in our forums this afternoon..

I'd like to address the article the Dallas Business Journal put up today.

In what appears to be an unfortunate turn of events, there seems to have been some confusion between what was 'off the record' and what was not. I suppose we're used to dealing with gaming press and not mainstream press. Lesson learned.

While we have internal targets, dates and goals, like every developer, we are not ready to share them. What's amazing about this is that the DBJ must have assumed that we'd actually announce a date to them, and not gaming press, and that even in the light of Scott's quote of "We can't make an official announcement.", the DBJ effectively did that. Lesson learned.

The release date is still 'when it's done', and will be until the appropriate moment. Platforms have not been finalized or announced. You can rest assured that we are moving toward a goal and that the recently released teaser trailer is the start of that process and seeing more of the game, sooner than later.

We apologize to gamers and websites everywhere for this series of events. Sometimes, you can be too trusting of people and assume things that come back to bite you. Lesson learned.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:35 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Max Payne Movie News

This week brings some news on the long delayed Max Payne movie. According to multiple reports, the movie is supposed to start filming on March 2nd in Toronto. Max will be played by actor Mark Wahlberg (Invincible, Rock Star, Perfect Storm, Taking of Pelham 1-2-3), and Natasha Alam (rumored to be Mona Sax). The movie will be directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Omen). You can get some more details about the production over at productioncharts.com.

Administrative note: We'd like to point out that we don't have anything to do with the production of the movie. We're as eager to see what is done with the movie as the rest of you.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:51 PM | Discuss this story on our forums