Remedy in "no hurry" for next-gen consoles

Alan Wake developer Remedy has told GI that developers are in "no hurry" for a generation transition.

"I think all the developers out there - or most of us at least - we're absolutely in no hurry to move onto a new console cycle," said managing director of the studio, Matias Myllyrine. "There are still things that we can do with the current generation of hardware for the 360 and PlayStation 3.

"We have a healthy installed base, and gamers have gotten a lot of the services that they wanted from stuff like Live and so forth. I don't think a leap is called for - especially with Natal and the other devices coming out, hopefully that will extend the life cycle."

There hasn't been much talk of next-gen hardware since the seventh cycle began, although id boss Todd Hollenshed told VG247 at Quakecon last year Microsoft would be the first out of the gate with a new box.

Myllyrine also said Alan Wake finished development in June last year, although it was held back to do post-production polishing.

"We had the whole game fully playable around E3 last year, and we've just been balancing, tuning, polishing and iterating in post-production since," he said. "Games are fairly expensive, and if you put down €60, the Remedy brand has to stand for something - otherwise people aren't going to come back."

Five years after its announcement at E3 2005, Alan Wake will finally launch on May 18 in the US and May 21 in the UK for 360.

A PC version was initially planned, but that's since been canned.