Tui Studios, an art studio in Sydney, was contracted by Team Bondi to produce some storyboard art for L.A. Noire. Recently, Tui published some of the work they did via their website.

Source: Tui Studios

Thanks to superannuation for the heads up!

TeamBondi has posted a jop opening on Gamasutra's JobSeeker website. The opening is for an Lead Animator. The interesting thing is though, the Xbox 360 is listed under platforms.

Couple this with the fact that almost any reference to the PS3 on TeamBoni's site has been changed to "Next-Gen Platforms", it seems extremely likely that L.A. Noire will be coming to the Xbox 360. Oh and TeamBondi has just posted nine new job openings with-in the company on it's jobs page. Hopefully, we'll see something about the title this year or early next year. We would be happy even with just a teaser trailer!

Source: JobSeeker

Its been a while since we have heard any news on L.A.Noire, the action game from Team Bondi. But now IGN have been told that L.A.Nore could be:

"...the biggest budget videogame in development anywhere in the world. It would certainly... in terms of console titles, be in the top ten... LA Noire is a massive massive project."

With such a huge amount of money going into the project it then became obvious what the next question would be, is it coming to the Xbox 360? Tom Crago, the CEO of Tantalus and the president of the Game Developers' Association of Australia had to say that the game is coming to the PS3 and 360. Since this man is not connected to Rockstar or Team Bondi, we have to place this in the rumor pile for now. He also mentioned that the game has got "another year or so to go".

An interesting comment has been made on PlayStation Lifestyle on the article we talked about only yesterday. According to "Aus artist" the company recently lost all of it's lead programmers and are also having financial problems. To make matters worse, they haven't been able to fill the programmer spots. Certainly something you don't want to go though with a game nearing the final production phase. To confirm this comment, I headed over to the jobs page for Team Bondi and to my surprise there were seven positions for programmers. Certainly seems to confirm the Aus artist's comment.

Perhaps the comment is a lie and the openings on the the jobs page are just a coincidence, but something does smell fishy. What will happen to L.A. Noire if this is indeed true? Well, perhaps a Rockstar studio could take over and finish the game, just like what happened to Manhunt 2 or perhaps Rockstar could buy the studio. Rockstar Sydney anyone? I'm sure with Rockstar backing the studio it could get more people on board.

Again, all of this is just speculation until confirmed officially.

Sources: PlayStation Lifestyle and Team Bondi

Not much has been heard about L.A. Noire out side of the trailer that was released all the way back in 2005 (Not the only Rockstar game we are waiting on from 2005. Some of you may remember the trailer for a "Old West Project".) The only news that was really released was the fact that Sony had dropped funding for the project due to Phil Harrison not getting along with Team Bondi. When Sony dropped funding, Rockstar assumed the task of funding. Well recently, Team Bondi updated the jobs with an opening for a animation team. According to the job posts, L.A. Noire is in the final production phase.

We’re looking to expand our Animation Team to cope with the final production phase of L.A. Noire. This includes the in-game cut-scenes, story cut-scenes, reviewing and cleaning up the animations for the in-game mechanics and supervising capture for the new facial animation technology which has been developed in conjunction with this project.

What does this mean? It means that we should be seeing more information released about L.A. Noire very soon.

Source: Team Bondi
Thanks to PlayStation LifeStyle for the heads up!

Surfer Girl has just posted some very interesting news on her blog. Apparently, Sony has dropped all funding for L.A. Noire due to Phil Harrison (Former SCE Worldwide Studios President) and Brendan McNamara (Team Bondi head) not getting along and Team Bondi's lack of meeting deadlines. Also, apparently Team Bondi had another project before L.A. Noire that was going to be funded by Sony and published by Rockstar, but was canceled when Sony dropped funding. That project was called Ikon. So what does this all mean for L.A. Noire? Well it seems Rockstar is now also the funder of L.A. Noire and that the project is not canned. According to Surfer Girl, Brendan is quite amiable with the Housers. With Sony out of the way, will the game finally make it to the 360 along with the PS3? No one knows for sure. Hopefully, we'll hear something more from Rockstar soon. In other L.A. Noire news, Surfer Girl has also posted some details about the game.

• Team Bondi's goal is to have every NPC in the city feature a distinct personality and different knowledge sets
• The amount of music in the primarily jazz soundtrack is "comparable to GTA."
• The detecting mechanics are described as "an analysisfest" to which reaction has been polarizing, one calling the detective elements "fatally boring" and another remarking that the mechanics are "absolutely innovative." The former dubs the game "Assassin's Creed: Noir Edition" and the latter went on about "investigating the social structure of 1947 Los Angeles."

As always, this is not official news in any way but Surfer Girl has been known to get things right most of the time.

Blog: Surfer Girl

When GTA IV was delayed, L.A. Noire was also pushed back until 2009, and was only listed for a PlayStation 3 release suggesting it would be a PS3 exclusive game. But a job listing for Team Bondi [the people developing it alongside Rockstar] over at GameSutra says otherwise.

Team Bondi is looking for a talented Lead Animator to manage the Animation pipeline, team and motion capture for the project and at the bottom of the listing says that the project is on both the PS3 and Xbox 360. So could it be coming to the 360 after all? Or will it stay exclusive? Below are the job details:

Categories:	Art / Animation
Studio Name:	2008-01-04 00:59:37
Experience Required:	5 yrs
Platforms:	Playstation 3,Xbox 360

Blogger softrockhallelujah recently posted an interesting article on "Exclusive L.A. Noire Information" which as received much attention, however we some way managed to overlook it entirely. Our apologies for the lateness of this news item, we assure it is worth it though. The exclusive information is as follows:

• The game will be a free-roaming title with a historically-accurate recreation of Los Angeles in 1947.

• Team Bondi has even hired a costume designer to research the clothing of the era so the game's attire can be accurate.

• Aside from main story, side missions will be based on actual cases pulled straight of the newspapers of 1947.

• A US Marine plays a big role in the story.

• Not so exclusive...but LA Noire definitely ain't coming to Xbox 360, the size of the game is an obstacle to this.

Now this information isn't official information, so it may or may not be one-hundred percent reliable. However many major gaming networks have acknowledged it, and Team Bondi have not comments on it, which is usually a sign of it being true. Softrockhallelujah is well known for having contacts in Rockstar Games, and as you may have noticed lately through the media and news posted here, she knows a fair bit of inside information. Lets just hope it's all true.

You won't be seeing the anticipated L.A. Noire or Beaterator within the next year, at closer look at today's financial report from Take-Two's offices, the two games have slipped the lists and as far as we can tell so far appear to have been moved to a 2009 release date. As you can see on the second table-of-data in the report, nor L.A. Noire or Beaterator are anywhere too be seen. I may be blunt to say I feel the Manhunt 2 banning and modification may have be the cause of some of this, however that is blunt and may/may not be entirely true.

Apparently the Sony Conference at E3 today revealed nothing about Grand Theft Auto IV, which is a shame. But don't fret, tomorrow is Take-Two's conference, which will hopefully hold some new information, maybe a demo or some new media even on Grand Theft Auto IV. Rumored is the possible showing of Manhunt 2, Red Dead Revolver 2, L.A. Noire and Midnight Club: Los Angeles. Be sure to stay tuned for any updates here.