Announced today during the Microsoft E3 2013 media briefing, “Sunset Overdrive” is an always changing, open-world shooter set in the not-so-distant future. A catastrophic event has left your city overrun by mutants. While the majority perish or transform, you flourish. It turns out your calling isn't picking up trash or serving food, it's mutant destruction.  With an arsenal of kick-ass, overpowered weapons and a knack for traversing the city with hyper agility, it’s not the end of days for you.

Ted Price, CEO and President of Insomniac Games, sat down with Xbox Wire to talk what it has been like developing “Sunset Overdrive” only on Xbox One, the benefits of working with the cloud and much more.

What has it been like working exclusively on an Xbox platform for the first time?

Ted Price: Microsoft has been fully engaged as a partner on “Sunset Overdrive.” They definitely share our vision for where we’re taking this world. In particular it’s been fantastic to have a partner who enthusiastically supports a super stylized aesthetic, humor and rockinf--kingroll attitude.

You said that “Sunset Overdrive” is a living world, facilitated by the cloud. Can you tell us more about that?

Imagine a game where the experience can constantly change, and is influenced by its community of players. With “Sunset Overdrive” we aspire to redefine “agility” as we listen to feedback players give us while playing the game and then respond with meaningful content - fast. In particular our goal is to maintain an ongoing 2-way dialogue with our community.

Don’t like something? Tell us. Got an idea for something cool in the game? Speak up! We’re building systems to support rapid content updates.  I'm talking about pop culturally relevant content like memes and social commentary, new weapons, new characters, and more. And because “Sunset Overdrive” is a stylized, satirical game we’re not limited by some strict idea of what’s “appropriate”.

What new technologies are you most excited about with Xbox One? What do you think the next generation of gaming will look like?

I don’t think it’s a surprise that we, along with other developers on Xbox One, will take advantage of its graphics hardware. We’re building an open world with a unique aesthetic. That takes horsepower. But a key element of the game itself is the idea of regular and rapid change.

During the last generation of consoles, getting feedback from players and updating content rapidly was almost unheard of. There were far too many technical hoops to jump through to make it practical or even doable for just about everyone. However Xbox One is now making that dream practical for a number of reasons – both technically and philosophically.

“Sunsest Overdrive” has a very unique art style, what was the inspiration for the visuals?

We’re focusing on fun and style over realism. The visuals represent what Insomniac does best – over-the-top, exaggerated, colorful style. And that style is driven by the game’s story theme of freedom and self-expression. This is us truly enjoying the chance to shoot expectations in the head, to be different, to deliver on the brash and irreverent tone that’s on display in our reveal trailer.

Anything else you’d like to add?

We love building new worlds. “Sunset Overdrive” in particular has been a blast in that with this universe, anything goes.

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/e3-interview-with-insomniac

I can only imagine the type of hate this guy is getting. If it weren't for the DRM schemes MS is using, all Sony hate would be focused on this guy. Or maybe It's because FUSE sucked pretty damn bad, sales and quality wise, that most people just don't care.

Either way I'm looking forward to the title, but I'm going hold off on buying it till the reviews start to pour in.

Overstrike (Fuse at the time) shown in trailer, compared to the retail release that bombed terribly.

Yeah, not really excited about anything they have to show until reviews come out.

The trailer looked pretty cool can't wait to see some gameplay. Insomniac are talented and I don't expect them to make perfect games all the time so I won't bash them over fuse, but this sounds like it has potential.

to me this was the ms exclusive at the show that hooked me the most

liked the aesthetic and how wacky it looked

Trailer looked awesome, this and Halo were my personal top picks for MS's E3.

dat vinyl gun

The vinyl gun looks pretty cool and just made me think of how flat out fun the game could be. 

Being a big fan of some of Insomniac's previous works, I have to say this game looks extremely terrible. Quite possibly their worst yet (even worse than the abomination R&C:A4O). It basically just looks like you're a generic little hipster fighting ripoffs of Grims from Resistance, with weapons that were ripped off from Resistance. Mabye the actual game will different, but based off what they've shown, I'm hoping Insomniac gets bought by M$ and they end up like Rare. Such a once great developer turned into utter garbage. I'm disappointed as hell...

Resistance had Vinyl guns and a shot gun that could run off soda as nuclear ammo? 

"it’s been fantastic to have a partner who enthusiastically supports a super stylized aesthetic, humor and rockinf--kingroll attitude."

Rippin' EA a new one. Love it. They were fools for partnering with EA in the first place. But better fools who've opened their eyes than fools to are too stubborn to accept the error of their ways. I now have the strong feeling that Insomniac deliberately pooped in EA's nest so that EA would invoke the no-compensation exit clause in their agreement.

But my, how the worm has turned. Good luck to them. In general they have a pretty loyal fanbase on Sony even if their last 2 Ratchet and Clank games were poorly received. A proper new R&C game would sell well. In the MS crowd they have no history so they are virtually starting from scratch. I get the feeling the end of the Sony/Insomniac relationship was less amicable than their PR teams made out.

Only on Xbone huh? How's that? There's no such thing as the cloud on PC? Sony have come out and said cloud processing is totally available on PS4, it's just not central to the platform. Publishers might need their own servers, or engage 3rd party server farms for PS4 cloud processing, So MS has done publishers a good turn by putting the processing servers in house. But that doesn't make it only possible on Xbone. It makes it easier to do, and less costly to maintain for publishers, which is a good reason to go with Xbone exclusivity, but let's not overstate things.

Insomniac: openly burning bridges since 2013.