Criterion's Alex Ward chats up DS and Wii

by David Hinkle { Dec 14th 2006 at 11:55AM }

Alex Ward, director of design for Criterion Games (Burnout), recently talked about the DS and Wii during an interview with N'Gai Croal. Alex talks, rather favorably, in regards to the Wii and DS, but mainly focuses on Burnout stuff outside the realm of Nintendo. While we could definitely care less about that Sony and Microsoft stuff, Alex makes a few interesting comments regarding their approach to their first attempt at making a game for the Wii or DS, should the developers pursue such a project:

What about Wii? You've got Nintendo fans--what can you offer them?

At the moment, we're only working on Playstation 3 and 360. We're into the Wii. It's not like we're not. We used to get all the hate mail from people saying, "Why aren't you doing this?" I'd love to do something on that system. We'd like to think about exactly about what it would be. And we'd have to build something bespoke. I've met with the Nintendo guys. They've shown me their stuff. It's cool. I think we'd have to look at very bespoke experiences.

So you don't want to just do a port.

No way. We just don't do ports at Criterion. We never have. When we did Burnout 1 on Xbox, it was like, "What else can we do?" We were the first game on Xbox to do Live scoreboards. Burnout Revenge on 360, it was a three-month job, but we were big on Save and Share. We were big on Live Revenge. We knew that Live was going to be where it was at, so we put all our time into Live features. When we get a look at the hardware, we just think, "What's the best game we can do on that?"

If we were to do a DS game--and we haven't done a DS game yet; the last Burnout for DS wasn't done by us--we've got some ideas we think that would be very bespoke. Using the stylus. Using the microphone. Using everything you can to make that system fun. And hypothetically, Burnout on Wii--maybe you wouldn't do any driving in it at all. Let's do something totally different with it. The Burnout team, we want to do it, but at the moment. we're just focused on doing the PS3 and Xbox 360 Burnout 5. Who knows what we'll do after that. We'll probably be dead.

Tags: burnout, criterion, ds, dslite, lite, nintendo, nintendods, nintendodslite

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dead_Prophet @ Dec 14th 2006 8:33PM

I get the feeling that he doesn't exactly know what "bespoke" means.

Sean @ Dec 14th 2006 12:53PM

What was he trying to say when he kept repeating 'bespoke'? I don't think he knows what it means.

20XX @ Dec 14th 2006 1:28PM

I want to be N'Gai Croal when I grow up. That guy has been popping up everywhere in the last few weeks.

KilgoreTrout XL @ Dec 14th 2006 4:53PM

@ Sean- Bespoke = "custom-made"

And I'll prefeace this statement by saying that I am a huge fan of the Burnout Series and can't wait for the fifth installment.

But the line:
"No way. We just don't do ports at Criterion. We never have. "

Um..... ok.

Sean @ Dec 14th 2006 5:04PM

In what country does "bespoke" mean custom-made?

Sean @ Dec 14th 2006 5:21PM

omg, I'm an idiot.
From Wikipedia:
"Bespoke is a usually British English term for tailored clothing made at a customer's behest, and exactly to the customer's specification. Bespoke clothing is created without use of a pre-existing pattern, differentiating it from made to measure, which alters a standard-sized pattern to fit the customer."
That makes way more sense now. I only knew the American definition.