Avalanche Studios will attend GDC 2010 with no less than three speakers within the areas of production and programming. Fredrik Sjöö, John Fuller and Mathias Westerdahl will be speaking on yet to be announced topics. Game Developer's Conference 2010 takes place between the 9-13th of March, about a week before the release of Just Cause 2.

Previously... on March 23rd:

• 1903 - The Wright Brothers apply for a patent on their invention of one of the first successful airplanes.
• 1919 - In Italy, Benito Mussolini founds his Fascist political movement.
• 1965 - NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States' first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young).
• 1978 - Perez Hilton born.

And now?

• 2010 – Just Cause 2 Released!

That's right, Just Cause 2 will release in-stores on March 23rd, 2010 in North America and March 26th in Europe, Middle East, and Australasia!

Hi All,

 We're terribly sorry for the delay in launching our new website and share some new info on Just Cause 2 and what we're up to in general. However, I'll try to share some info with you here and we'll get our shit together and get the website up.

2008 and the first eight months of 2009 has been the toughest phase in Avalanche Studios relatively short history. The games business (especially on the publishing side) in general suffered from a big panic attack and all the bullshit about the games industry not being sensitive to business cycles and recessions proved to hit many publishers harder than expected. What happens then is that developers will find it harder to get projects started, simple as that and there's nothing strange about it. Read our the whole sob story about what happen to us just by Google "Avalanche Studios" and you'll know all about it.

The good part about this tough phase is that we've proven our strenghts by walking through hell basically. We survived losing projects valued way over +$35M and the PR effect of having to let roughly around 90 excellent game developers go and we're still standing. We have a great game coming out in february 2010 (at least that's what we're aiming for) and things are starting to shape up. I am quite confident that very, very few developers would survive what we've been through in one year.

New projects are in discussion with a bunch of different publishers. We've been focusing less on original IP recently due to the risks involved spending money on creating a pitch for those types of games. A pitch costs between 500 - 750k SEK to create and that's a little too risky for us these days as pitching a new IP takes longer time. However, we've got one really interesting new IP that spawned from our hunting game (theHunter) and a couple of really cool licenses that we are super excited about. A few IP's are really attractive to Avalanche as a studio and these are some of the ones that we've discussed recently are the ones that has inspired us in creating original IP's for over a decade.

Provided that things go as planned and that we can keep up momentum, we will finally be able to focus on creating games again and not just saving the business.

Thanks for your support and stay tuned for more news!

- Christofer Sundberg, Creative Director

We're proud to show this new footage of Just Cause 2. The video is captured straight from gameplay. Enjoy!

http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/play/58576/PC/Just-Cause-2/Gameplay/GamesCom-09-Ten-Minute-Gameplay-Movie/Flash-Video

The video has slipped out somehow so please let us know if the link is broken.

We've just launched the official Just Cause 2 website. The website is focused (this is all taken from the press-release) on the community and designed to offer the fans a place to have their voices heard. Fans will be able to comment on the current news postings or media downloads, discuss the latest happenings in the extensive user forums or download a custom-made fansite starter kit to create their own Just Cause 2 website. For the ultimate Just Cause junkie, the site has launched with a community competition to offer five registered users the chance to have their names star in the game as colonels in the island’s military regime.

“In creating the official Just Cause 2 website, we wanted to create an editorially-driven site packed with entertaining and informative content which both fans and those new to the series could really become part of,” said Lee Singleton, General Manager of Eidos Game Studios. “What we are launching with today is the tip of the iceberg, with plans already underway for numerous community rewards for registered users; more competitions and great prizes; and community days nearer launch where registered users can be amongst the first to play the game.”

So without hesitation, go straight ahead and visit www.justcause.com.

The final box artwork for Just Cause 2 is now official. We hope you like it! 

The latest trailer "Welcome to Panau" is also available now. You find it here: http://xboxmovies.teamxbox.com/xbox-360-hires/10019/Just-Cause-2-Trailer-HD/.

 Enjoy!

Hitman movie producer Adrian Askarieh has secured the rights to Just Cause to to adapt it to a feature film.

Read more at Variety: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007076.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562 

After an exceptionally good E3 which created a lot of buzz around JC2 we released the demo walkthrough video which caused even more excitement. We've now returned from a nice summer break and just in time for GamesCom we're releasing a new in-game trailer focusing on the island of Panau and what it has to offer.

In case you missed the E3 demo walkthrough trailer, here it is.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/100/1007623p2.html

Right after Uncharted: Among Thieves and before Scribblenauts, Modern Warfare 2 and Red Dead Redembtion! This is fucking amazing and we're extremely happy.

 Thanks IGN!