Banjo-Kazooie 3 website goes online
Still in construction, the site hides some unclear information
After some weeks without any Banjo-Kazooie 3 news at all, today we literally woke up and the official game site had unexpectedly gone online. Time to rejoice already?
Well, the site features a teaser animation of a jiggy spinning over a blueprint background with some nice cogs drawings; from time to time, we can even spot Banjo in a reflection of the well-known golden item. But… that’s pretty much all the real stuff they have leaked. There is no final title for the game anywhere to be seen yet. In fact, Rare’s George Kelion told MundoRare that the site is “still under construction,” while he promises that they’ll have some nice stuff ready for the ‘real’ unveiling date.
Maybe, more interesting than what the site shows, is what the site… hides. Snooping into the HTML code we can find some unclear data:
s.prop8=”Xbox” //Game Type (Windows, Xbox)
s.prop9=”en-us” //Region Code
s.prop10=”Main” //Feature Section (Main, Forums, Blogs, Leaderboards, PhotoMode
Update: It seems that all those lines of code are used in many Microsoft Game Studios sites for statistical purposes, including that confusing part that says “Game Type (Windows, Xbox)”; for example, you can find it both in the Gears of War or Fable 2 websites as well.
The general mumbling over the Internet indicates that the game could be released both in X360 and PC, though. But Rare already explained themselves about this very same issue some months ago in the Xmas edition of Scribes, when a member of the BK3 team stated that “although there are no plans for a PC version at this time, I don’t think that Banjo would be a particularly good fit anyway. Control schemes for these kinds of games are difficult to recreate on a PC, due to it primarily using a keyboard and a mouse. In my opinion, PC games seem to fall into a small number of categories and generally lack innovation whereas console games offer more choice and are willing to try something new. As Banjo falls into the latter category its natural home is on a console.” So, maybe, releasing a Windows version after that comments would be a bit contradictory, wouldn’t it?
In any way, one thing is crystal clear at the moment: will “soon” be able to find out why BK3 “won’t be a traditional platformer.” The final countdown has started…
Somehow related news
- Banjo-Kazooie 3 was shown to selected media last week ()
- Banjo and Kazooie confirmed for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing ()
- Rare premieres new website design ()
- Banjo will meet Gears of War 2 in Late 2008 battle ()
- Achievements for Trouble in Paradise Revealed ()
2 Comments
Oh, interesting =) Thanks for the explanation!
Also, it seems that they are using the BK3 site to increase the number of Silverlight users; mostly everybody has needed to install it just to see this site.
On the other hand, they have just updated the site with a hi-res version of the animation, and changed the Banjo image for a shadow of both Banjo and Kazooie.
Comment by Xmooth — 21.Mar.08 @ 1:00 am
The code that shows Windows and the PhotoMode are comments that explain possible variables for the Javascript code that tracks page views on some of Microsoft’s game sites (Omniture). I think people, especially those who own news sites, are digging a bit too deep into it all, and those who don’t know about HTML, Javascript, and site statistic services are getting their hopes up for nothing.
Comment by Jason — 20.Mar.08 @ 9:17 pm