October 2009
Lorne blogs about PSN
To promote the release of Abe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus on the PlayStation Store this week, Lorne Lanning has written a blog entry in which he shares his excitement over Abe being brought home to Sony. The Abe games will be available U.S. $9·99 each from this Thursday, 22 October (not 21 October).
Lorne also replies to a number of the comments made, not only confirming that Munch’s Oddysee and Stranger’s Wrath will be made available on PC in 2010, but claiming they are investigating bringing them to the PSN as well! Lorne also hints that the next Oddworld title may just use the Stranger engine.
Sources: SparkErosion
New Oddworld trademarks
Seven patents filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Monday 5 October hint towards the future projects of Lorne Lanning. The patents, all under the name of OddMobb, cover a variety of media including video games, action figures, card games, board games, novels, online social networking service, and online 3D virtual environment featuring user generated content.
The patents are owned by the Berkeley company OddMobb, Inc., which shares its address with Oddworld Inhabitants. Furthermore, the list of attendees of the Social Gaming Summit 2009 identifies Lorne Lanning of the company OddMobb.
Sources: James Cottee of Games On Net and supererogatory of superannuation
The Oddbox announced
Lorne Lanning was recently interviewed by Toby Davis of Bitmob. In this interview Lorne reconfirms that the Abe games are coming to the PSN:
TD: Will the gaming community ever see a re-release of the first two Oddworld games on the PSN store for PS3?
LL: Funny you should ask, because they are already on their way. We just signed the contract this week and the original Abe games will officially be coming to PSN very soon.
But he also announces The Oddbox!
TD: How big is the Oddworld universe in the grand scheme of things? Any chance of seeing another Oddworld game in the next five years?
LL: Oddworld is a creation that we'll likely never sell or part with. It wasn't created for that purpose. It was created with the intent of creating modern myths in pop culture mediums. Nurturing these myths and their casts [of characters] to actually mean something in an increasingly meaningless landscape of blatant consumerism.
So yes, we will be seeing more from Oddworld. Regarding the library, we are in the process of converting Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath to the PC, so that all four of the major Oddworld games will be re-releasing this winter in a package called "The Oddbox." This will be the Abe games, Munch, and Stranger as one package for Steam's digital distribution network, as well as a few other digital distribution outlets.
Regarding new material, we hope to have an announcement soon, but I've been saying that for awhile now so I'll just shut up and hope for the best.
Sources: Bitmob
Abe is coming to the PSN
Here's an excellent news for all of you that have been waiting to play Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exodus on their PS3 or PSP: the Abe games are coming to the PSN.
For those who don't trust ESRB leaks as a reliable source, we have have received confirmation from Oddworld Inhabitants themselves that this is indeed happening.
Players Only
The second season of Players Only with Scott Steinberg is finished now after eight episodes being released. Lorne Lanning is featured in several episodes where he shares his opinions and covers various aspects of the gaming culture. If you are a bit curious about what's going on in the game industry you definitely have to check out this show.
Sources: Players Only with Scott Steinberg
Summer Catchup
Here’s a little catch up of all the old news that are lickely to interest you but didn’t end up being posted on Oddblog because of our busy schedules.
Lorne Lanning was a panellist along with Brian Schmidt, Tommy Tallarico and Paul Lipson during the "Sound and Story" panel at the Siggraph 2009 in New Orleans.
Lorne is regularly juror for Ballistic Publishing’s EXPOSEs, and this year's edition is no exception. But this year he also conducted an interview with this year's Grand Master Award winner: Ralph McQuarrie.
A very interesting interview has been posted by 4 Player Podcast where Lorne explains the story behind Clakkers and various other aspects of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath.
Lorne has also recently given his opinion on the topic of Physical Video Gaming and has reacted towards Bioware's statement about ingame violence.
Finally it has been announced that he's an Advisory Board member of GameX , a video game expo scheduled October 23-25, 2009 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center.