Oskari Häkkinen, head of franchise development for Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment, told Joystiq last month that, in fact, a new Alan Wake project was under development. Admittedly, we were getting a little ahead of ourselves when we arrived at E3 this year in full Alan Wake cosplay so the absence of the latest A. Wake project - rumored to be an XBLA title called Alan Wake's Night Springs - hit us pretty hard.

So we tracked down Microsoft Studios chief Phil Spencer to grill him about Remedy's reveal and the dearth of Alan Wake games in Microsoft's E3 lineup. "I read that," Spencer said, laughing about the news. "I don't know that they've signed it with anybody." While Spencer told us that Wake "didn't sell as well as we would have liked," he was clear that it wouldn't affect their working relationship. "I'd love to work with Remedy again," he told us. "We have ongoing conversations with them."

So if Microsoft isn't privy to what Remedy's working on, who is? "I think the stuff they're doing now they wanted to incubate, Mattias and the team," Spencer said. "They wanted to incubate internally. Like I said, I don't think they've signed it with anybody." Well, as long as that's the case, we'll have our Joystiq Publishing representatives get in touch with Remedy and work something out. Our backrub-heavy royalty system is an industry first.