Mike Fegan, CEO of Australian developer IR Gurus, explained the rationale behind the merger between IR Gurus and United States company Red Mile Entertainment in a recent interview. As a result of the merger, Red Mile Entertainment will soon acquire IR Gurus' outstanding shares, effectively making IR Gurus a subsidiary of the same US-based company that brought us the game version of Frank Miller's Sin City.

Mike Fegan admitted that IR Gurus plans to establish itself as a global Top 20 game development studio within the next two years. The developers realized, however, that they needed consistent production flow on a major scale in order to reach their target. This, in turn, required access to big capital currently unavailable in their home country. Thus, the IR Gurus team felt that a merger with a publicly-listed company in the US - Red Mile Entertainment - would provide exactly what they lacked.

Mr. Fegan also mentioned he doesn't expect to see major changes in IR Gurus' infrastructure after the merger. According to him, the people at Red Mile Entertainment basically told them to "keep doing what they're doing." The developers, however, will reap the rewards of the merger in the form of a much larger research and development budget for their internal systems group, greater capital disbursement for hardware and software in PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 development, and a greater working environment for IR Gurus' personnel.

Interestingly, Mike Fegan acknowledged that IR Gurus is only really starting to build its international reputation, in spite of the fact that the company has been around for eleven years. With a solid background in action games, notably Heatseeker (PSP, Wii) and Heroes of the Pacific, and the financial muscle of Red Mile Entertainment to back it up, it seems that IR Gurus may very well be on its way to realizing its dream of becoming one of the Top 20 game development studios in the world.

The game Heatseeker for the Wii, published by Codemasters and developed in conjunction with IR Gurus Interactive, is looking pretty hot. The game features 30 planes and will allow you to pilot favorites like the F-22 Raptor, F-15 Eagle, F35 Lightening II, and Russian SU-47 Berkut. In addition, 40 different weapons will be in the game hopefully giving you an edge over the waves of opponents you will be facing.

The video captures the tension that the game brings as you're forced to fight off 4 bandits (enemy planes) during a routine training mission. You and your wingman will have to do this quickly though, because the base where you're stationed is under heavy assault.

Heatseeker is set to be released in Europe on March 30 this year and in the US this May, this game is looking promising. Check out the video and see what's in store for you if you decide to pick up the game.

The work for the title being jointly developed by Codemasters and IR Gurus Heatseeker (PSP, Wii), is about to wrap up. With that said, IR Gurus is geared towards focusing on some new projects and executive producer Ben Palmer was happy to divulge what's cooking inside the IR Gurus lab.

He mentions that they're finishing up with their work on Heatseeker. He then continued by saying that "we're pleased to be getting something out of the Wii because there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of games out there, so hopefully that will do quite well - it's getting very good reviews, which we're very pleased with." 

They also have some PS2 games and three next-gen titles coming out. One of the next-gen titles is quite advanced in its development, but the other two are right at the start.

He also shares that the Wii is quite an easy platform to develop for. Why? Because of its single core nature. He said that if a developer has a firm grasp of single core systems (like the PS2), working on the Wii would be a breeze. The controller is quite interesting to work with and would require devs to really get creative and think out of the box.

When asked to talk more about their next-gen titles, this is what Palmer said:

One of them is scarily huge. It's going to be great, and it's an interesting project. I can't tell you about the others as there have been no formal releases...

No platform was mentioned, but there might be a possibility that it could be for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Why is that? Well, this is what he said when asked about which consoles they'll focus on:

Potentially there might be the odd title, but we're moving away from the PS2 and will be more focused on 360 and PS3. We are working on some PSP at the moment, but in the future that might make more sense to outsource it as there may people better set up to work on the PSP than we are. It's better for us to focus on a smaller number of platforms.

  

The game Heatseeker, being jointly developed by IR Gurus and Codemasters, is a jet fighter game for the Wii, PlayStation 2, and PSP. The game puts you into the shoes of a peace-keeper in the International Council. The game starts with a terrorist attack captured live on a rolling-news TV station. From there the situation just escalates as the International Council attempts to thwart a dangerous dictator with an advanced nuclear cache. You will be forced to engage different kind of opponents including a smuggling boss and a Rogue Federation Admiral.

Features:

• Over 30 jets to fly each with 35 different control parameters
• 40 different weapons
• Missions will take place over a variety of areas (The US, Caribbean, and the Antarctica are among the places you will get a chance to fly over)
• ImpactCam (Basically a missile camera that allows you to view the launched missile from different angles)
• Destructible environments
• The Wii version allows players to use physical movements to control the plane.
• The PSP version features network play and different play modes such as dog fights, ground assaults and race modes.

Heatseeker is slated to be released late this March.  Till we get more news check out these screenshots from the Wii version of the game.

  

For more screenshots, check the full article.

There will be no snakes on this plane, sadly, but there will be a ton of heroes. At least, that's the plan of IR Gurus and Red Mile Entertainment as they release a sequel to their combat flight sim Heroes of the Pacific.

Titled Heroes Over Europe (working title), the game has already been under pre-production for six months and is planned for release on the newest generation of consoles. IR Gurus is hoping that to get the spirit of the original and add a lot more into each and every dogfight to up the ante from its predecessor. They should be able to do it easily enough, especially since they got Kevin Buckner, formerly of Lionhead Studios, to produce the game.

As it's tentative release will be in 2008, there's no need to rush for a pre-order. Something to note is that they intend to release it for the Xbox, PS3, PSP and the Wii, so we should be seeing a relatively intuitive control scheme to work with all the consoles. The most important thing that ought to get into this game though, would be using the Wiimote like a joystick and shouting "pew-pew-pew" at the TV screen, because that's what makes shooting flying things down so much fun!

Stay alert and watch the skies over QJ for more on this dogfight extravaganza.