Worry Not: Ratchet & Clank Aren't Going Anywhere.

It’s never more than a few months before the Insomniac Games rumours jump to the forefront of the industry. The independently owned company have long maintained a strong partnership with Sony, but once again industry bumblings and anonymity are hinting that Insomniac will go multiplatform.

Sony own both the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance franchises, so if you’re expecting those on XBOX 360, well, think again. In all likelihood, if Insomniac do release something on XBOX 360 it’s likely to be a smaller XBLA title. It’s also extremely unlikely that any future Insomniac game will not hit the Playstation 3 in the future – given the long history between the company and Sony.

Good news you should assume from this: Insomniac are making games.

Come On, You Know You Want Them. All Of Them.

Need an excuse to spend money? Dude, yes. A fan of Insomniac Games? Duhhhhhhh. Then you’re going to want the newly launched Ratchet & Clank and Resistance action figures from DC Unlimited.

The figure packs are detailed by DC Direct:

» RATCHET AND CLANK: SERIES 1: ARMORED RATCHET AND MR. ZURKON Action Figures
» RATCHET AND CLANK: SERIES 1: CAPTAIN QWARK AND SCRUNCH Action Figures
» RATCHET AND CLANK: SERIES 1: DR. NEFARIOUS AND ZONI Action Figures
» RATCHET AND CLANK: SERIES 1: RATCHET AND CLANK Action Figures
» RESISTANCE: CHIMERA ADVANCED HYBRID Action Figure
» RESISTANCE: NATHAN HALE WITH SWARMER Action Figure
» RESISTANCE: RAVAGER Action Figure
» RESISTANCE: STEELHEAD Action Figure

If you want them, it’s probably worth calling your local comic store first, as we doubt they’ll be carried everywhere. Though, they are so awesome they should be available in every store, everywhere. It’d be a crime not to, right?

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time Is The Best Selling Game In The Franchise.

It may have failed to set the charts alight, but that’s not stopped Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time from becoming the fastest selling game in the franchise. In their latest Full Moon podcast, the Insomniac team herald the game as the fastest selling title in the franchise, impressive seeing as Ratchet games in general have seen over 25million sales.

It’s probably the best Ratchet game to date aswell. Check out our review here.

The Resistance 3 "Rumours" Continue To Gather Steam.

We assume we already know about Resistance 3 thanks to “that billboard,” but if you wanted further confirmation, you should have looked at artist Ben Mauro’s LinkedIn profile yesterday. Joystiq report that while the information has since been conveniently removed, Mauro listed work on “R3″ at Insomniac Games through the months of March until May 2009.

We kinda can’t wait for Resistance 3, because we just know Insomniac will be able to craft a game that blends all the best bits of the original Resistance and Resistance 2 this time around. Which will turn out awesome.

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time on Playstation 3 Review.

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time is throwback in almost every sense, but it succeeds because it builds upon all that has come before. Ratchet & Clank remain a shining beacon in a dying genre.

Click here to continue reading and tell us what you think

Insomniac Games Can Now Make The PS3 Jump Through Hoops.

There’s a learning curve involved with developing for the Playstation 3, no doubt, but Insomniac reckon they’re now making the Playstation 3 “perform tricks”.

Insomniac’s James Stevenson explained to VideoGamer.com:

“We had to rebuild Ratchet for PS3,” Stevenson said. “All that stuff we took for granted: the move set, the animations, the character, the crates, everything that works on PS2, had to be redone for PS3.

“As soon as that’s done and you have everything down and you have that codebase to work from, making the sequel is always a leap forward. This is the fun time in every console generation. Everyone gets excited about new game machines. The problem is game developers are so busy just getting their games up and running on the new machines at first. You don’t get the innovation, the interesting stuff and the astounding games early on in the generation because we’re just happy it runs.

“After we get it off and running and we have a game or two released, three, four years into the lifecycle of consoles is where it starts to get exciting. Now we know how to ride that bicycle and we can start performing tricks on it.”

Insomniac have more experience than most developers creating Playstation 3 games with five games already released on the system.

“It was going from old techniques where processing was single threading, to multiple parallel processors essentially – there are six, seven SPUs on the PS3,” Stevenson explained.

“That’s a complete paradigm shift. It makes it even harder. At least we have the benefit of being exclusive. We code everything for the PS3 engine. Trying to wrap your head around getting something that will work on an Xbox 360 processor and a PS3 processor – that makes it even harder. So we have the benefit of being able to not worry about having another console to develop for and focus our engine on running incredibly well on the PS3, and wringing all the power out of the SPUs.

“There was a learning curve,” he admitted. “Getting a launch title out the door is always a learning curve. Everyone can aim for that but it’s tough. Resistance 1 was a tough game to make. The hardest part about that is, you have to make the game on PCs, and you have to simulate the engine of the PS3 as best as possible until the dev kits start rolling out. And then it’s a rapid process of trying to get the game working on dev kits. It was a tough process.”

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time is the latest example of Insomniac’s work on Playstation 3. You can get a hold of that game on Friday in Europe.

A Crack In Time May Run Like Clockwork, But It's Likely To Be 30FPS From Hereon Out.

Insomniac Games’ Mike Acton has declared Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time as likely being the companies last 60FPS game, noting that it does little to drive sales or review scores.

Acton said that the company looked at the review of 47 top-notch games and “there was a clear correlation between graphics scores in reviews and the final scores,” there’s no correlation between framerate and the graphics scores. In other words, good graphics support good games, but a good framerate doesn’t necessarily support good graphics.

If you’re interested in what Mike Acton has to say, you can read the whole companies philosophy on framerate on his blog.