Heavy Rain Falling in 2010

Heavy Rain has been one of the PS3's most anticipated titles since developer Quantic Dream first showed its next-gen technology with The Casting demo at E3 2006. Though it's been a few years since that time, Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere indicates that the project is still humming along nicely.

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"We delivered the alpha of the game on April 15 - on time, on budget - so we're pretty happy," said de Fondaumiere to GI.biz. "It's a great moment, because we now have the whole game in our hands and we can play from beginning to end. So we're now entering the most interesting part of the development, I think, which is perfecting it - making sure that all the scenes are as we expect them to be, at the same level of quality. It's a great moment to be at."

de Fondaumiere was also highly complimentary of Sony's support in helping to realize Heavy Rain. "I must say that we've enjoyed a great relationship with Sony," said de Fondaumiere. "The Worldwide Studios group in Liverpool has been really dynamic, it's been a great working relationship. This is also very important - when you don't have to worry about whether the publisher is going to pay you, whether they're going to accept this and this, whether they're going to ask you to do the same thing two, three or four times, and so on. Unfortunately we've all experienced that in the past, and you're using up a lot of time and resources - but thankfully we've had a great relationship with SCE and I think, from what I hear from other developers, not only are developers becoming more mature, but also publishers."

Unfortunately, the co-CEO confirmed that gamers will have to wait just a little bit longer to get the game: 2010 to be exact. "We've always known that we had a window to release the game, and it's important for us to finish it the right way. We've got some margin either way, to some degree, but again I think there's a responsibility, and we don't want to deceive - so it's important for the game to be polished up until the last minute," explained de Fondaumiere. "Also, purely from my perspective, most publishers today realise that it's not ideal to release a new IP or a new genre just before Christmas. It's a very crowded place to be, and certain games need more space to live their life. Everybody at working on the project, both at Quantic and Sony, believe this is the right time."

When asked if Quantic Dream had learned a lesson from LittleBigPlanet's release during the busy holiday period, de Fondaumiere responded, "I think it's a game that will probably have a longer lifespan than other games, simply because - a bit like LittleBigPlanet - we're in our own area. So one shooter could shoot another shooter out of the charts to a certain degree, and that's probably why you're seeing the high number of sales for a short period in other game categories."

"For innovative titles that stand out, that are different and almost have no direct competition to a certain degree, then you can see a longer lifespan," he continued. "That's what makes publishing those titles very interesting - I think LBP has been hugely successful. You may not have seen it in the charts at number one everywhere during one particular week, but when it adds up you see that they've sold, I don't know the exact numbers, but around 2.5 million units worldwide. That's quite an achievement for a first game, definitely."

Heavy Rain is one of the more intriguing titles in development, but we can wait a little longer.  Side-stepping the Christmas season with a new IP is generally a very good idea.