Microsoft's Shane Kim Talks Crackdown 2, Deers of Lore

Confirmed! Deers of Lore, Xbox 360, 2008! Over on the Left Coast, during the goings on at D.I.C.E., Game|Life's own Chris Kohler grabbed the always affable Shane Kim (if you're furiously scrambling through your Videogame Industry Executives Playing Card Set to find him, he's under "Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Game Studios") for a thorough interview regarding Microsoft's platform in 2008 - - and revealed some interesting nuggets along the way. Kim had this to say about what became of (or will be) Crackdown 2:

"I really have to ask -- we did our Top Ten games for the year, and we put Crackdown at number ten. But then what I heard was, they're not working on Crackdown 2, that team moved somewhere else and Microsoft didn't option it. Is that true? And if so, why?

We own the Crackdown intellectual property. We have a great partnership with Real TIme Worlds, and they're pursuing a different path from a company perspective. So I wouldn't say that it's Microsoft not picking up the option there. I don't really want to talk about that discussion, but it wasn't the case where -- we still love Crackdown. We consider that a pretty successful title for us, high-quality, I think that customers would like to see more in that space. So that's an option for us. But I think for Real Time Worlds, they made a company decision.

So it's on the table that some day in the future you could take Crackdown and bring it somewhere else.

And any intellectual property that we own can always be on the table. And the good news is that we happen to own the Crackdown IP."

Kim was less revealing when speaking about the future of the Mass Effect trilogy:

"We have publishing rights for Mass Effect. We are going to continue to work to make Mass Effect really successful, it's been a very important exclusive title for us. EA just completed its acquisition transaction. EA's been a great partner for us in general. So we will talk to EA about what their plans are for the IP and what they want to do, and we'll go from there."

In other words, they're almost as clueless as we are. And though Chris tries to pry some info about the seriously about to happen any frackin' second announcement of Gears of War 2, it's all for not:

"Well, I don't want to go too much longer, but I'm just going to say the title of a fictional game and you can tell me if something that rhymes with it is going to be announced. Beers of Gore 2.

Well, you have... you've trapped me.

Now you're in a corner.

We are working on Deers of Lore.

That, I want to play.

I'm breaking the news with you."

You heard it here first folks - - those who were alive in the 60's remember exactly where they were when they heard JFK was shot, just as you will always remember this very moment. Deers of Lore - - 2008. BELIEVE.