Entertainment Electronics Blog

Microsoft’s presence at E3 is huge. They’ve got a massive press conference stage (pictured above), an equally enormous booth, and enough free swag on offer to fill up a Camry. The company’s presence at the Tokyo Game Show, on the other hand? Not quite as much. MS’s booth at TGS was maybe half the size it usually is, getting dwarfed by the presentations put on by Sony, Capcom, and even Japanese social-game giant Gree.

“We would like to have as large a space as possible in order to have lots of people play our products,” said Takashi Sensui, head of Xbox operations in Asia, in an interview with Famitsu magazine published this week. “To be honest, though, given the scope of our Japan business, it’s just difficult to produce such a huge booth. Our intention here was to use the space we had as best we could to get the most gamers trying out the best titles we had. We didn’t have as many titles as usual, but I believe we had an extremely nice lineup, something I think anyone who was there could see. We’ll be trying to have a bigger presence than ever next year — I feel it’s our mission, something we have to do.”

At the Electronic Arts Vegas Game Show today, a sequel to Shank was announced — and it won’t be long before it’s in our hands.

Shank 2 is being built from the ground-up and features online co-op support in what’s described as an arcade-style survivor mode. Judging by the screens and the first, short trailer, it looks to be just as gorgeous as the first game.

“Creatively, Shank still has a lot to give,” said developer Klei Entertainment’s founder, Jamie Cheng. “We took the feedback from the community and ran with it, putting our own flavor on every change. For Shank 2, we literally took apart the game and put it back together to push the envelope in combat mechanics, visuals, and 2D animation in games.”