You heard it here last... Yep, Namco has announced a new character for Soul Calibur IV and it's yet another Star Wars refugee. Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice from Force Unleashed is the incoming pugilist, joining Vader himself as well as pint-sized sentence-mangler, Yoda. "The Secret Apprentice is a great fit for Soulcalibur," said someone from the Force Unleashed camp, whose originality chip was clearly malfunctioning. How did the phrase 'great fit' become obligatory when describing any kind of 'franchise crossover'?
In a related story, rumours started hitting US games sites on Friday evening that LucasArts was laying off development staff, perhaps as many as 100. There was speculation that the company had plans to close its internal studio altogether, but this has been refuted by spokesperson, Margaret Grohne. Kotaku suggested 80% of staff in Production Services, "which includes QA and Compliance", were made redundant, with those positions allegedly set to be outsourced.
What's the story then? Grohne has claimed that the lay-offs, "had to do with where we are in our product life cycles." But most studios go through peaks and troughs of development without cutting swathes through the workforce. There are suggestons that LucasArts makes more money out of licensing its brands to third-party devs than creating the games themselves, prompting the 'internal review'.
Alternatively, with outsourcing becoming a mainstay of the Western industry, it wouldn't be a surprise if this proved the stimulus behind the move. Indeed, LucasFilm has a digital animation studio in Singapore which could well be drafted in to provide videogame art - although it sounds like the majority of cuts may have been in non-development roles.
Indeed, responding to a Shacknews story on the job losses, someone claiming to be a coder at LucasArts, suggests the company is, in fact, still hiring and that several games are in the pipeline.
The mystery deepens.
