No, no, we’re not going to tell you that Sony does indeed play Nintendo games (breaking news: so does everyone else). But this AusGamers interview with Game Director Omar Kendall of the upcoming crossover fighting/party game for Playstation 3 – also called Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale – proved quite interesting on one count. For all the comparisons and blatant accusations of copying, well, Kendall knew it would be impractical to even talk about such a concept without people drawing comparisons eventually.
“I think when we first knew we were going to start talking about the game, I think there was maybe some ‘oh, well find a way to act like, while that game exists – Smash Bros. – never mention it by name’, and that just proved impractical, because it’s an unavoidable thing that we’re always going to want to talk about, and people are always going to want to draw comparisons.”
Then again, as Kendall states, “From the SuperBot perspective, we’re just fans of these kinds of games. I think the reason why a four-player, 2D-style brawler sounded like a good idea to us, was because we’ve had such great experiences in games like Smash Bros. Even the idea to make a fighting game is because we like fighting games.”
So to reiterate once more: The crossover idea isn’t new, nor is making a fighting game between popular franchise characters. Hopefully, when Playstation All-Stars Battle Royal releases, we’ll see just how well Sony’s execution of the idea is.