Fatal Inertia EX

Oh, we've definitely tweaked the behaviour of the weapons to make them easier to use, more effective, and to account for the game's much higher speeds. The Force Blasts and Rockets, two weapons that can be used for boosting, have been dramatically improved to give the player a lot more oomph when they use them. The Smoke Bomb is now much more effective (and much cheaper to render) and the Force Shield now causes damage when it touches an opponent. We've also made changes under the hood to the weapons to improve performance and generally smooth out behaviour.

We've implemented online play for up to eight players (even in the demo!) with voice chat and a skill ranking leaderboard. In FI EX, players can do single races or series races (like a mini tournament) where the original only had single races. In addition, if a player is connected to PSN while playing any mode in the game, their lap times will be uploaded to a global leaderboard. Of course, we've made sure to separate Time Trial records from other game modes to make sure that players can display their unassisted times as well.

Yeah, the 360 demo didn't run well and we really regret releasing it when we did. The final game performed substantially better but still often dropped frames. In FI EX, we've dramatically improved the frame-rate again and I think players will be pleasantly surprised. This combined with a significantly higher game speed makes for a much, much nicer experience.

We feel that one of Fatal Inertia's greatest strengths is its online feature-set. Having watched the growth of the PlayStation Network's user base, we felt that it was an excellent fit for a game like Fatal Inertia EX. In fact, when we release the demo on PlayStation Network it will include a significant online multiplayer component.

PlayStation Network also allows us to make Fatal Inertia EX highly visible and easily accessible to a large audience for a fraction of the cost of what a retail version would be. Gamers will be able to try the demo for free and then instantly unlock the full game from the menu. The result, we hope, is that many more people will try the game and, once they play it, will be more than willing to click the purchase button.

This hasn't been set in stone yet but I can assure you that there certainly won't be another title that has a comparable amount of content for a similar price.

No plans have yet been made for providing downloadable content. FI EX already contains much more content than other games (59 tracks in seven huge environments!) at the same price point so we think players will be entertained for a very long time. However, if gamers really demand additional environments or tracks, I wouldn't entirely rule it out as a possibility.