Isomniac Games Are Going To Make Games For The XBOX 360 Too Now.

It's been on the cards for, well, basically forever. Insomniac Games has finally announced that they're ready to try out multiplatform development. Insomniac's announced today that they are jumping into bed with the EA Partners programme (essentially a publishing deal that allows Insomniac to keep the rights to whatever games they create) and are developing a "brand new universe and franchise".

Insomniac Games' president Ted Price was keen to assure fans on a blog that the company are still in a "very strong relationship" with Sony — the situation sharing similarities with Bungie who are working on the XBOX-exclusive Halo: Reach and a new multiplatform project for Activision.

Interestingly, Insomniac's announced that the company are to switch their trademark annual development cycle to a bi-annual one. Ted notes, "All future Insomniac titles will benefit from longer development cycles, which will directly benefit you, our fans."

The situation's pretty interesting. Insomniac are presumably working hard on Resistance 3 as we type, a franchise Sony holds the key to (alongside Ratchet & Clank). We're just speculating among the office how this announcement affects Insomniac's placement among the SCE elite. Sony's long treated Insomniac as though they were an owned subsidiary of SCE Worldwide Studios — but how can Sony justify code-sharing among their best first-party teams when that information might be going directly into XBOX 360 development?

Obviously, we're not developers nor privy to inside-knowledge so we can't comment. But the situation between Insomniac and Sony is going to be very interesting over the coming years.

Still, props to Insomniac. This announcement has been coming for years, and we wish them the best. They make excellent games. At least they did when Sony had a hand in them...

... And we're sure they will alongside EA too.