Matt Martin 15:19 (BST)
19/03/2008

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UK developer Ninja Theory has told GamesIndustry.biz that its next title is original intellectual property for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the project already signed to a publishing partner.

Despite rumours, the studio is not working on a sequel to Heavenly Sword — a PlayStation 3 exclusive and IP which Sony owns, not the developer.

The studio intends to continue to build on the success of combining games development with film production techniques and Nina Kristensen, co-founder and chief developer at Ninja Theory, has even revealed that the team is seriously considering working on a CGI movie to accompany the new game.

"We're certainly targeting a triple-A blockbuster, with two and a half years in production — a big game that builds on our core strengths of story-telling, cinematics and combat. But we're actually looking at something in addition to that — we're considering opportunities in creating a CGI movie using the game engine alongside the game itself," she offered.

"The game's certainly the most important thing, and we haven't decided for sure to do this, but it's something we're looking at. It's an interesting idea," she added.

The development team worked closely with renowned movie experts for Heavenly Sword — Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis was involved in motion capture and was also director of cinematics, while Mission Impossible 3 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon audio specialists Play It By Ear provided the foley sound work.

"If you want to make something that's really high-end, really engaging, if you get the best talent from the movie industry and you're able to integrate effectively into the game you're going to end up with the best possible results," said Kristensen.

"There's a lot of these relationships that we intend to maintain going forward into our new game."

The full interview with Kristensen, where she discusses Ninja Theory's new projects in further detail, will be published later this month.

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