Every week we do a quick wrap-up of some news items that may have slipped through the cracks. The wrap-ups will be shorter versions of our articles, lumped together to give you an idea of things you may have missed.

Canadian Studio Possibly Working on Dead Rising

From the ‘Unconfirmed’ department of news, word has started to trickle out that Dead Rising‘s sequel is already in development, but not by the original team that started off the series. Vancouver-based developer Blue Castle Games is the supposed chosen one to take on Capcom’s fairly successful franchise that kicked off the latest generation of consoles, letting you mow down waves and waves of the undead. Considering this game was always a driving factor in me owning or recommending the Xbox 360 as a platform for fun, exclusive titles, the prospect of a sequel is certainly something worth getting excited over.

Of course, this is absolutely not confirmed at this point. Considering the success of Dead Rising, Capcom has been nothing if reluctant to discuss the possibility of a sequel and just who may work on it. The original was developed by their big team in Japan, but rumours of a North American developer getting their hands on the sequel had been swirling for quite some time. It’s a bit odd, however, that the developer in question only has strong experience with the game The Bigs, a baseball game which fell across most platforms. Right now, file this one away as a maybe, but expect news regarding the game to come up officially somewhere after the release of Dead Rising: Chop ‘Til You Drop for the Wii.

No Sequel Potential? No Publishing.

With EA’s stock dropping over the last quarter, despite making a serious creative comeback in terms of the original IP that they are releasing, the idea of what exactly makes you money in games is something that seems to boggle the minds of many people. Activision seems to have a winning formula in the bag, though, as they continue to show growth amid recession fears and economic slumps. That formula is to ensure they publish products that have the potential to be 100 million dollar, annual franchises. This was brought up by CEO Bobby Kotick in regards to Activision dropping some Vivendi properties on their merger that many people thought looked interesting and original, such as Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend. Kotick explained in a conference call that if a game didn’t have potential to be “exploited” every year and be a huge franchise for the company, they would usually steer clear of it.

On first glace, Kotick seems to just be waving meat in front of a pack of angry gaming dogs by using words like “exploit” when it comes to video games. The company is certainly known for releasing games from their popular franchises quite often and across a lot of platforms, many of which seem to see as a way of turning once vibrant IPs into the living dead, forced to wander the Earth without aim. We do see this evidenced in their release schedule for the Guitar Hero series, but Activision has continued to make deliver pretty good games despite of the language used to describe their release decisions. Call of Duty continues to impress, and although there is still debate on the effectiveness of Guitar Hero: World Tour versus its main competitor Rock Band, it is a demonstration of evolution for the series and an effort has been displayed to remain competitive. And as long as Activision continues to make money hand-over-fist, I doubt we’ll see any change no matter how many angry blog posts appear.

Left 4 Dead Demo Hacked, Possibly By Zombies?

Okay, the latter part of that sentence may be a lie, but we’re established a trend here. Valve’s big release for this fall, the frenetic FPS Left 4 Dead in which you work cooperatively to stave off a zombie invasion, has dropped the demo to pre-order customers on their Steam service, and it appears to have already been compromised to allow more than intended functionality. The demo is meant to be played from the perspective of the survivors, avoiding the undead and attempting not to become infected. It seems as if, through some PC voodoo, players have the opportunity to play as the Infected in a limited capacity and get a chance at seeing the world through the eyes of the walking dead.

Although the full capabilities of the game remain locked away from players, seeing the way that people continue to manipulate code and commands to get a chance to try things out for themselves continues to be impressive, and it’s a lot of harmless fun for fans of the game who already have money put down on their purchase. Although it seems as if this could be evidenced as security breaches by some companies, Valve seems to be fine with the whole idea, and with the methods for performing the work-around widely available and not being taken down, you get an opportunity to saunter around as the enemy for a little while, getting a “taste” of what its like before the launch date. Those looking forward to the full product appreciate that, I’m sure.