Many thought the game wouldn’t receive dedicated support for Microsoft’s upcoming console, so that’s great news to hear. However, there are no details on when the upgrade will be available yet or what exactly it will entail.

Stay tuned on Wccftech and we’ll be sure to provide you with all the info.

Puha: Everyone makes up their own mind when you announce something. When you talk about your game the first couple of times on that high level, because you can’t reveal the details, people build something in their mind—but that happens with lots of games. People imagine that it’s going to be one thing, and it probably won’t be.

In the case of Quantum Break, people didn’t know what to expect. We thought we were pretty clear that it was going to be a story-driven action game. That’s what Remedy does. But the live action was definitely confusing. I don’t think everybody got the fact that you get to influence the story. Yes, the ending is always the same, but the way you get there is relatively different. I don’t think everyone understood that.

GamesBeat: How did you guys decide on the live action? Was it obvious that that would be better or easier than just doing the cinematics yourself?

Puha: That’s one thing I read when the game came out. “Why didn’t they just make the usual cutscenes?” First of all, if we made a 20-minute cutscene, I think people wouldn’t be as interested in watching that. The other thing, making a 20-minute animated cutscene is very difficult.

We shipped the game with very few animators. It’s difficult to find animators in Finland. If you’re in California, you have that history going back to Disney. You have all these schools teaching animation. We don’t have the same kind of access. Lots of things come into play. People might think making cutscenes is easy, and it’s not. If we were to make the same amount of cutscenes, a little over two hours, we would have had to have resources we didn’t have. In some ways live action can be simpler.

Beyond the issues with production, the reality was that as the game focuses on the heroes, when you look at it from the other side, the game can also be presented in another medium. It was something new. Some people liked it. Some people didn’t.

We got to work with an awesome cast. We chose them because they’re great actors, first and foremost, and we can bring their performances alive in the game as well. But of course there’s the benefit that they’re known. They bring believability and hopefully help with marketing as well.

On its face, Quantum Break is a standard Remedy third-person shooter. Jack Joyce, played by Shawn “Iceman” Ashmore, gets caught up in a time-travel experiment gone wrong, and on the behest of his brother (Dominic Monaghan), sets out to fix the damage this catastrophic event has done before it destroys time itself. Opposing him is Paul Serene (Aidan “Littlefinger, if you’re nasty” Gillen), Jack’s former friend who built the time machine, caused the coming time apocalypse, fled into the future, and returned to the present as the leader of the mysterious and murderous Monarch Solutions corporation to avert the end of time—by any means necessary.

Here’s where things get weird: At the end of the each of the game’s chapters, you take control of Paul Serene and are forced to choose between two options for how the story will play out. After that, you’re treated to 20 minutes of Syfy-caliber live-action television. They’re essentially episodes of a Quantum Break TV show that depict the stories of the game’s villains and secondary characters. They’re meant to humanize them, fleshing out the narrative in ways that, according to the game’s director, Sam Lake, couldn’t be done without the live-action episodes.

“Having the show in there allows you to tell a story that fits into a TV series because medium does affect the content, quite a bit,” Lake said. “And that in itself gave us an opportunity of having this kind of story content in there… It forced us to think, ‘Both of these media need to serve a purpose. They need to somehow click together but be separate at the same time.’ That led to the idea of: Wouldn’t it be cool if the game is a hero’s journey and the show is giving you point of view into the same story but from the perspective of the villains? I don’t think we could have ever come up with the idea if we didn’t have the show.”

With what would be our last question, we asked what it would take to see Alan Wake 2 on Xbox One and Windows PC.

Spencer furrowed his brow and looked up to the ceiling.

“How do I put this?” he asked, pausing for a long moment.

“Well, the developer… the developer has to want to make the game,” he eventually finished as a PR minder stepped in to end the interview. “Well, the developer… the developer has to want to make the game,” he eventually finished as a PR minder stepped in to end the interview.

Alan Wake 2’s release, or lack thereof, seems to boil down to bad timing. While Spencer seems quite receptive to talk Alan Wake 2 now, that didn’t seem to be the case a couple of years back.

“We showed [Alan Wake 2] to Microsoft and I guess at the time Microsoft was looking for something slightly different for their portfolio,” Remedy’s Sam Lake said, reflecting on the project back in 2015.

Those talks with Microsoft led to Quantum Break, a Xbox One and Windows PC title that leveraged the publisher’s now-defunct television department.

Today, Remedy is expanding into multiplayer, building up their proprietary engine, Northlight.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom.

“[Microsoft] have been really supportive about Alan Wake and [now head of Xbox] Phil Spencer has been awesomely supportive when it comes to Remedy and Alan Wake along the way,” Lake said in 2015.

With Lake seeming encouraged by Spencer’s openness to the Alan Wake franchise back in 2015 — and Spencer reaffirming that again — maybe Alan Wake 2 is closer than we think.

As the site reports, there’s approximately 51,790 owners of Quantum Break on Steam, with a margin of error around 5,496. In the past two weeks, the average playtime rested around four hours and 52 minutes, meaning most players are clocking out within five hours of play. Approximately 31,554 people played Quantum Break in the last two weeks, with a margin of error for 4,545 players. For a major new IP title from Microsoft, those are incredibly low numbers for a launch on Steam.

This, of course, falls in line with earlier reports on Quantum Break‘s sales across PC and Xbox. As Daniel Ahmad pointed out on Twitter in May, the game “didn’t bomb” but still demonstrated “very poor performance” when it hit as a new IP. In June, the game failed to sell over 200,000 units at US retail stores, and the Japanese market hardly batted an eye at the game itself, only moving an additional 5 units between one week.

For over a decade I’ve used SGO’s Mistika to work on both 2D and 3D blockbusters across broadcast and cinema, including titles such as Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Beneath, The Amazing Spider-Man and Prometheus as well as TV shows such as Chosen and the upcoming StartUp. Working on Quantum Break appealed to me straight away because of its technical challenges. I have three Mistikas at LightBender and we use them for a variety of projects, but this was the first time I’ve worked on such a unique gaming project that’s so different from any other. They started shooting in February last year (2015) and it took approximately eight months to deliver the final cut, using Mistika to review VFX and serve as a hub for conforming and versioning.

So, today we're announcing a charity auction on ebay, with sponsorship from Remedy, where 100% of money raised will go directly to Cancer Research UK.

Items for Charity: We've got two awesome items lined up for this auction, one of which will be announced a little later in the week as we're still smoothing out some of the details. The item that we're starting with has an Alan Wake theme and looks fantastic.

The first is an Alan Wake collection. This contains Alan Wake Limited Edition for PC and Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Both games are signed by the developers. For American Nightmare the signatures are on the game cover. For Alan Wake, the signatures are on a fold out Alan Wake A3 poster inside the game box. [Beginning Price: £50]

We also teamed up with the lovely gentlemen at Poets of the Fall for the auction. With the release of their latest album, Clearview, and their follow up tour, schedules have been a tricky thing to work out. As a result, to make things a little more relaxed, we're planning a "part two" of the auction later this year with their contributions. So stay tuned for more information of that auction coming later this year!

Quantum Break is not a difficult game; it's a goofy playground for messing up soldiers with your absurd time-travel powers. Then, out of nowhere, with the end credits in sight, the game decides it's time to become something that pushes your skills to the edge. Actually, that's giving the game too much credit; if it really was about testing your skills, it might have been fun. It's just a bad, poorly designed boss battle, where the enemy's capable of wiping you out with a single hit, often out of nowhere and without giving you a chance to save yourself.

And it'd be one thing if the final boss was merely difficult, but each time you die, the game forces you to skip a cutscene and sit through a loading screen before the fight can begin again.

Sigh.

Quantum Break: Timeless Collector's Edition https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Break-Timeless-Collectors-PC/dp/B01K7SG0EY/

From Remedy Entertainment, the masters of cinematic action games, comes Quantum Break, a time-amplified suspenseful blockbuster. The Quantum Break experience is part game, part live action show—where decisions in one dramatically affect the other.

"Due to additional time required for mastering and manufacturing the Quantum Break - Timeless Collector's Edition for retail, the decision has been made to move the release to September 29," reads a press release. "This concerns both the Steam version as well as the retail edition."

As previously detailed, these versions of Quantum Break will include "all of the latest updates" and will sell for $40/£40. The Timeless Collector's Edition will feature premium packaging, a making-of Blu-ray, an artbook, a soundtrack CD, an A3 poster, and a quick-start guide.

"Quantum Break sold really well; it exceeded what we expected it to do," he said when discussing what Remedy might make next with Windows Central. "We were really pleased with how Quantum Break did. But just like every movie, not every game needs a sequel, sometimes it's okay."

Greenberg doesn't ever quantify Quantum Break's success with a specific figure, either for sales or Microsoft's expectations.

As the interviewer pointed out, Quantum Break's ending leaves open the possibility for a sequel. Whether or not Remedy makes this game remains to be seen.

Remedy Entertainment is also known for using songs of Poets of the Fall in its game. Same was to be the case with Quantum Break, however, devs decided not to include it. According to a recent tweet from Sam Lake, Remedy Entertainment had a Poets of the Fall song lined up for Quantum Break. Maybe Remedy'll use their song in the next Alan Wake.

On a related note, Quantum Break is now coming to Steam and one wonders if there is still time to add this song to the main game? Well, song or no song the priority must be to release an ironed out version of the game.

Currently available for purchase in the Windows Store and Xbox Store, Quantum Break will be made available to more gamers across a number of operating systems when it hits Steam next month. This digital download will include all of the latest updates, a list of which can be found on the game’s official site. Starting today, both the Quantum Break: Timeless Collector’s Edition and Windows Store version are available for $39.99. This is the perfect time to grab a digital copy of Quantum Break for PC.

For those Quantum fans that want something to hold close as time unravels around them, we’re excited to unveil a special edition of the game coming to retail channels thanks to a partnership with our friends at Nordic Games. This showcase-worthy collection will be released as the Quantum Break: Timeless Collector’s Edition and will retail for EUR/USD 39.99. As with the Steam version of the game, this will include all of the latest updates to ensure you get the ideal Quantum Break experience right out of the box.

“After having worked with Remedy on the PC version of Alan Wake in 2012, and with Microsoft Studios on Ori and The Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (2016), and State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition (2016), we are proud to announce a new triangle-collaboration with two of our trusted partners”, said Reinhard Pollice, Business and Product Development Director for Nordic Games. “Apart from being a new IP (which is always a brave step), Quantum Break turned out to be a sophisticated, visually stunning shooter with a top-notch cast of actors.”

The retail version of the Quantum Break: Timeless Collector’s Edition will cost EUR/USD 39.99 and includes:

Premium packaging

• 5 Game Discs (one-time Steam key redemption required)
• Making of Blu-Ray
• Making of Book
• 1 Soundtrack CD (Audio-CD)
• 2 Posters
• Quickstart Guide

Whether you missed out on Quantum Break when it came out for Xbox One and Windows 10 earlier this year or love the game so much that you want some sweet collectibles to show off your fandom, there will be something for everyone on September 14, 2016.