Round-Up: Madden Next-Gen, Kay Deal, VIS Assets

Today's round-up includes information on Madden NFL's next-generation sneak peek, a Capcom publishing deal for the European-developed Legend Of Kay, and a possible rescue deal for VIS' State Of Emergency 2, as well as a featured review for Chris Crawford's latest book on game creation. - EA Sports, now the sole official licensors in the video game football arena, will show off the next generation of the popular Madden NFL series in a 60-second commercial during ESPN's coverage of the NFL Draft on April 23. The commercial, which will only air once during the broadcast sometime in the first hour, will highlight the high-quality graphics that series fans can expect from the next-generation Madden games. Though the TV spot will show graphics from the next-generation machines, EA Sports so far has not revealed whether the images and clips will be taken from the next-generation Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or Nintendo's "Revolution" machine. - Legend of Kay, a 'furry' martial-arts action game developed by German firm Neon Studios and published by Austrian publisher JoWooD, has been picked up for Japanese and American release by Capcom. The game stars Kay, a young cat trying to defend his village from the invading forces of the gorilla emperor Shun. Legend of Kay is a PlayStation 2-only game, and Capcom has not yet revealed a planned release date for either Japan or the U.S. According to JoWooD, however, the deal does represent the first step in a more wide-reaching partnership between the two companies. - Following the shutdown of Scottish development studio VIS Studios, the company's assets have been placed in the hands of UK company Tenon Recovery to administrate. Tenon revealed that one of VIS's final projects, State of Emergency 2, has attracted a bidder whose identity has not yet been disclosed. Tenon director Tom Maclennan expressed hope that the firm would be able to finalize a publisher for State of Emergency 2 "within the next week." - Also updated on Gamasutra today (free reg. req.): our major feature is Brad Kane's review of Chris Crawford's latest book, the aptly titled "Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling." In addition, there is also product news discussing the latest products from Wondertouch in the visual effects software arena, and there are newly advertised jobs from Blue Fang Games, Headgate Studios, Rockstar San Diego, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Ubisoft Shanghai.