Souvent plus bavards que les autres, ou en tout cas toujours un peu en avance, les sites australiens des éditeurs lorsqu'il s'agit de révéler une information qu'on ne trouve pas encore ailleurs. Pour preuve, la fiche de Mass Effect s'orne désormais sur le site officiel australien d'une date de sortie fort précise, le 18 mai 2007, là où trônait il y a quelques jours un plus flou "2007". Bien entendu, il faudra attendre confirmation des instances européennes du constructeur pour s'enthousiasmer de notre côté du monde, mais la date d'arrivée du RPG spatial de BioWare n'a jamais semblé aussi précise.

Everyone owning a 360 was disappointed by the news that Forza 2 was delayed from its original release date of November 2006. Yet it was for all the right reasons, and now there is a new date pencilled in, as well as all the tracks available, multiplayer news, and details of DLC that will be coming.
 
The Community Manager for Forza Motorsport 2 (Che Chou) has a weekly Pitpass Report, where he updates loyal readers about what has happened, and reveals any new details that he is allowed to. There was a lot for last Friday, but we will start with the release date.
 
Chou says that having met with the PR team, marketing is beginning to kick off. The game has now been pencilled in to a May 2007 release date for North America (there is no mention of a European release). He hopes that by mid-April, the game will enter the final certification process, and go gold pretty soon after. If everything goes to plan, we should see the game on store shelves in the first half of May, but as he cannot be sure just yet, an exact release date couldn’t be specified. But it’s always nice to know we have stuff to look forward to in May other than the Bank Holidays.
 
That’s great news, but we are going to need some cars in which to race with. Unfortunately, there are no car listings this week, but Chou does promise in the forums that as the release draws closer, more details about the cars will be revealed. So you will have to sit tight and keep your seatbelt on for the time being.
 
Assuming we have cars then, we will need something to race them on, like a track. Or maybe twelve tracks would be better? Good, because that is exactly how many there are, all listed below.
 
Mugello Autodromo Internazionale
Suzuka Circuit
Sebring International Raceway
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
Tsukuba Circuit
Road Atlanta
Silverstone Circuit
Nürburgring Nordschleife
Maple Valley Raceway
Sunset Peninsula Infield
New York Circuit
Test Track
Yes, they have removed a couple of tracks from the original that will disappoint many, but there are still great tracks included which should please everyone. Chou also refers to the tracks as “Environments”, suggesting that some might be slightly bigger than you may be expecting, which would explain the cut back of tracks available. Chou confirms that this is indeed correct. Some tracks have different “Ribbons”, which means the track is divided up differently depending on how you are racing. For example, the Suzuka Circuit has three ribbons. The full Grand Prix course, the West course (used for MotoGP events), and the East course. Therefore all three of the ribbons provide a completely different challenge. There are 47 ribbons over 12 environments, so you will be busy.
 
Chou asked some of the developers about their favourite tracks, which provides an interesting insight for fans:
 
Chris “Master of Cars” Vanover on Mugello: “After watching the wealth of F1 Mugello footage available and then finally getting some seat time in-game with our cars, I’ve found myself thinking about taking a trip to Italy for the real thing. Combined with an elevation that varies 135 feet from top to bottom, the track has a great flow to it, and with 15 corners, every completed lap dares you to find even one place to go just a little faster. Like anywhere else, however, consistency is key — miss a brake zone or start checking out the amazing vista from the top of the hill and you’ll wind up far off track in one of the numerous, wide gravel traps. Mugello will definitely take time to master.”
Rhett “Career Overlord” Mathis on Suzuka: “Suzuka is my favorite new track. It has a lot of personality, plenty of variety, and is great for racing because it features numerous passing opportunities. I like the way it dares you to go deeply into turn 1 before getting on the brakes to control the car for turn 2. The entire east section is a blast in any car — the esses being fairly easy to drive, but tricky to really perfect. In some way, Suzuka feels to me like it has two personalities due to the high-speed nature of the west section. You can reach some crazy speeds on the back stretch, and there’s a real test of the kinds of stones you have coming through the 130R before crushing the brakes to safely navigate the triangle.”
Dan “Forza Visionary” Greenawalt on Sebring: “I’m really excited about Sebring International Raceway. I’ve been following the world famous 12 Hours of Sebring event for years. Its one of the most physically punishing courses in the world — the attrition list at the end of the annual endurance race is pure madness. Sebring features several grades of sun baked asphalt as well as lots of ill-fitting concrete slabs loosely sealed together. It’s built on an old airstrip and nothing really matches up, so cars are always skipping and jumping all over the place. All those different seams and surface types really let us show off our physics engine, which is something I’m really excited about. The final corner, a long sweeper over several concrete slabs, is pure evil. Though Sebring doesn’t have a lot of elevation change, its one of the roughest, craziest, nastiest tracks out there. Its truly one of the premier sportscar race courses in the United States.”
Chou also states that the team collected a hell of a lot of data for all the tracks, so that the tracks will be more true to the real tracks, and make for a much better overall experience for race fans. So much data in fact that they wouldn’t be able to squeeze it all onto one disc.

This leads us on to DLC content. Yes, tracks will be made available after the release of Forza 2, the ones they couldn’t fit on the disc initially. So although the 12 environments may sound a little disappointing in terms of volume of content, that will increase. Whether you will have to pay hasn’t been decided yet, and whether you want to pay or not is entirely your decision. Cars too are also planned to be released as DLC, again pricing hasn’t been decided. If the new achievement guidelines are anything to go by, buying new tracks may just net you an extra 250 Gamerpoints for you to unlock.
 
Moving on to multiplayer, there is a lot of information he reveals this week, as can be said for last week. For those that are not regular readers of the blog, details from last week about the multiplayer have been included for your reading pleasure.
 
From the outset, FM2’s multiplayer is divided into three self-explanatory areas: Xbox Live, System Link, and Split Screen. Then under Xbox Live you’ve got two primary playable modes — Exhibition Race and Career Race — although in the menu I’m looking at here, there are 4 more Xbox Live options that we’re not talking about at this point. Two of them are really going to benefit the Forza community and we think you’ll be pretty thrilled when we reveal them in the weeks and months to come.
 
Exhibition Mode Setup Option Highlights:
 
“Exhibition is the standard online competition mode. Exhibition games are non-ranked races, meaning that the results won’t affect your overall Forza Rank, and there’s also no money involved. Basically your typical Xbox Live multiplayer race.”
 
Select a Game Type (Circuit Race or Series Race)
 
“Series Race is new to Forza 2 and it allows you select up to 7 tracks and players are scored over the entire series. The player with the most points at the end of the series is the winner. You can also do a Team Series race if you wanted to.”
 
Car Class
 
“Not only can you restrict the car class for your exhibition room, you can limit the room by the performance index number of the car. For instance, you can setup a room which allows only A class cars with a level of 610 or lower. And as you narrow the field, a notice will pop up below telling you how many cars you have in either your Arcade or Career garages available to race in this room.”
 
Track Type
 
“We filter our various tracks into all sorts of categories, like All, Real World, Original, Reverse, American, European, Easy, etc. Selecting a category filters the list of tracks available to you for hosting.”
 
Max # of AI Players
 
“New to Forza 2 is the ability to race against AI cars in multiplayer races. One of the things I know I specifically wanted to do from v1 was when you’ve created a room and you’re waiting for people to get on, you just want to race and mess around. And then when you see them join your room, you can quit out and start the race proper. The inclusion of the AI wasn’t really to create a strict competitive landscape. It’s meant to be filler for a multiplayer race, to provide for passing opportunities, that sort of thing. Although we have 3 levels of difficulty for AI in multiplayer, the tuning for these AI cars were handled differently than what we did for single-player career AI.”
 
Spectators’ Voices (on or off)
 
“This allows spectators to chat with those who are currently racing in-game. By default this option is off. It helps when people are watching and they can pull up the telemetry HUD and tell the players how their cars are performing, and what they need to do to drive better.”

Specifically, when asked by an analyst to list out the six major THQ-owned brands that the company would be concentrating on in the next year, Farrell commented: "As you mentioned, Saints Row, Stuntman, which will be released this year, Juiced, which is a sequel to the product we launched a couple years ago, Destroy All Humans, MX, and my favorite, Red Faction." No timeline or target platform for the franchise's continuation was revealed.