Monthly Archives: January 2008

Haze, the Free Radical shooter, will release on May 20 in America and May 22 in Europe, according to a bunch of retailers to be found here. Publisher Ubisoft currently has this down as a second fiscal quarter game, meaning it’ll ship between April and June this year, although there’s been no specific confirmation of date as yet.

Koch is to publish S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the company’s announced, which begs a rather large question about what happened to THQ’s involvement. Koch will handle the game worldwide.

“Publishing the game Heroes of Annihilated Empires worldwide together with Koch Media distribution, we were happy of the cooperation and are glad to continue it with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky project,” said Sergiy Grygorovych, CEO of developer GSC World Publishing.

Happy enough, obviously, to not work with THQ any more.

The game is a prequel to well-received PC survival FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, set a year before the original’s events. Full press release after the link.

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Publisher Majesco’s just confirmed Major Minor’s Majestic March for Wii. The rhythm action game’s being developed by PaRappa the Rapper outfit NanaOn-Sha.

From the press release:

“Major Minor’s Majestic March turns the Wii Remote(TM) into a “special” baton that the bandleader, Major Minor, uses to keep tempo, recruit new band members and pick up valuable items. While marching through eight whimsical locations that contain various hair-raising events, Major Minor strives to create the most impressive parade ever. Players can add up to 15 different instruments to their dynamic procession — including brass, woodwinds, and percussion — to alter its composition and resulting performance. Players are scored on how well their band maintains its rhythm and manages obstacles that could otherwise throw the procession into disarray. The band keeps tempo to more than 25 popular marching band songs from around the world, composed into original medleys for each stage.”

The game ships at the end of the 2008 in the US and early 2009 in Europe. More here.

Devil May Cry 4 for free’s probably pretty good. And Theme Hospital! It’ll never get better than that.

• Devil May Cry 4 demo (free)
• MX Vs ATV Untamed demo (free)
• Fade to Black PSone game (£3.49)
• Motorhead PSone game (£3.49)
• Theme Hospital PSone game (£3.49)
• PixelJunk Monsters trailer (free)

EA is shutting down the online part of the Xbox 360 version of the Burnout Paradise demo to free up server activity for paying cutsomers.

“In order to enable the best possible experience for gamers who have purchased Burnout Paradise, we will be switching multiplayer off this Friday 1st February,” confirmed the publisher. “We hope you enjoyed it.”

So you get top of the charts, you force people to buy hard drives, and still you can’t afford to buy some new bandwidth? Skinflints.

Japanese dev legends Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya have set up a home for new studio Platinum Games on Facebook, blogs and all. Platinum has been formed of former Clover staffers, after the Capcom studio was closed last year. Mikami announced a few days ago that he’s started his next project at the company.

Go and be friends with the man that made Resident Evil. Then send him a fruity zombie, or something.

A care home in Pontardawe, Wales has taken delivery of a “Nintendo computer games console”, presumably a Wii, after evidence from the Alzheimer Society that solving computer-based puzzles can slow the on-set of the disease.

Leader of Neath Port Talbot Council, Derek Vaughan, said, “The council provides itself on the standard of care provided in our residential care homes. As well as caring for their physical needs, we encourage residents to join in activities designed to help them keep mobile, mentally alert, self confident and socially interactive.

“Purchasing these games consoles for Dan y Bryn is an excellent example of how the council is constantly looking to new technology to improve the lives of some of our most vulnerable residents.”

It’s true. Look.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi has shocked precisely no one while delighting precisely everyone by confirming there are more Portal-based games on the way

“There’ll be more Portal, for sure. But the details of that, to be honest, we’re still working out,” he told EG. “The only smart thing we did for Portal was to hire those seven kids and give them the support they needed to make the game.”

Hit the link for more about Episode 3, and news that details of Freeman’s latest shooting adventures are “months, not weeks” away.

Microsoft is currently fixing a mistake made with the Beautiful katamari demo announced yesterday, which was accidentally made only available to Silver Live members.

“There’s a Beautiful Katamari demo available on marketplace now, but there’s been a wee mistake somewhere along the line and at the moment it’s only available for Silver members. It’ll be fixed soon though, at which point it’ll only be available to Gold members for the next week – and then open for everyone,” said Microsoft Europe’s community manager Graeme Boyd in a blog post. “Hold tight Gold members, and if you’re a Silver member and you fancy rolling around in one of the funniest and most surreal gaming experiences ever, get your skates on.”

The full game releases for Xbox 360 in Europe in March.

Despite the fact there’s a GAME on every British street corner, US retailer Play N Trade “likes competition” and is planning on moving to the UK wholesale.

“GAME has a very strong presence in the UK and beyond, but I like competition,” Play N Trade CEO Roger Lloyd said here. “GAME will have to adapt to Play N Trade and we will push them to new heights. Ultimately, the consumer will win out. There’s no reason why, if we go in with a strong business plan and get the right people, right relationships and right distribution model, we can’t come in and have the same growth as we have seen in the US.”

Play N Trade is the fastest growing US high street retailer, the company claims, with over 100 stores. The first UK Play N Trade is planned to open in the second quarter of 2009.

Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens has revealed vaulting ambitions for Codemasters growth in this interview, saying the way for the company is as a global, top 10 power.

“In terms of publishing I would like to see Codemasters as a flag barer in the coming year for the British contingent,” he said. “I think today in any walk of life you have to compete in the global marketplace. As a global publisher I would like to believe that we’re hovering in the top twenty, with ambitions to be a top ten publisher within the next three years, but we recognize that this is a company with Eurocentric roots and we’ve got work to do in key territories in the world.”

America is Codemasters’ main focus for 2008, Cousens said.

“In the coming year at least the focus will remain on the North American market. It’s the largest market in the world and so our product development strategy is geared towards the North American market. We believe that forthcoming products such as Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and Grid will find great appeal in the United States.”

Click through for loads more.

According to this, Sony’s dropped it’s 07/08 PS3 hardware sales target from 11 million to 9.5 million, citing a slow start to the machine’s life-cycle as a reason. The news comes as part of the freshly released Q3 financial report.

“On the other hand, Sony said it was raising its PlayStation Portable sales target for the current business year to 13 million units from 10 million,” said the Reuters story.

Look here. Here’s what’s new, Mii fans:

• In the Posting Plaza, you can now easily find all the Miis you’ve posted.
• When viewing a Mii Artisan’s profile, you can now select to see all Miis posted by that Artisan.
• If you cancel out of judging a contest a return later, any Miis you’ve selected previously for the contest will be retained.
• Parental Controls are now supported in the channel. If a user chooses to block “exchange of user generated content” from the Parental Controls menu in Wii Settings, users will be prompted to enter the Parental Controls PIN in order to enter the channel.
• When viewing Miis in the Posting Plaza under the “Popular” category, you can now view 500 of the most popular Miis over the past two weeks instead of 50.
• When using the Mii search feature, the Miss Entry Number is retained on the Entry Number screen. If the Mii you’re searching for is not fond, re-entry of the number is no necessary, making it easier to modify your search.

Right here. It’s exhaustive stuff. This is the important slide, saying PS3 hardware and software sales for the quarter ending December 31 were up 195 percent and 391 percent respectively over the same period in 2006. It’s worth noting that PS3 hadn’t launched in the PAL regions in the earlier period. There’s a note at the bottom of the chart that says, “Beginning with Q1 FY07, the method of reporting hardware and software unit sales has been changed from production shipments to recorded sales.” This seems to suggest those figures would be even higher had Sony’re recording criteria remained the same.

According to this, David Gardner, formally an EA mega-boss, is now the CEO of Infogrames, Atari’s parent company. Gardner left EA last year after 25 years with the company to move to Europe and live with his family, according to that report.

EA’s signed a deal with GigaMedia to handle Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. According to this press release, a date for the game is to be announced in “the months ahead”. The MMO, being developed by Mythic, is based on the Games Workshop pen and paper RPG universe and signals EA’s first big leap into MMO-dom.

PlayStation 3 profitability has driven record revenues for Sony in its quarter ending December 31, with net income rising 25 percent to 200.2 billion yen over the same period in the previous year. The company has now raised its full-year forecast 3 percent to 340 billion yen.

The news will delight PS3-loving industry-watchers, as the machine now appears to be solidly placed and advancing into a period that will see price cuts and major releases for 2008 in the form of GTA IV, GT5, FFXIII (maybe), Killzone 2 (maybe) and MGS4.

No, we don’t know what it is. Internet people are suggesting it could be something along the lines of the orchestra conducting Miyamoto did at E3 a few years ago, but then it could be some kind of MP3 filing system for your fridge: WE’RE JUST NOT SURE. Whatever, Wii Music has been listed as a 2008 release for the machine in Japan. And that’s pretty much that.

Rockstar’s started billing “wanted” posters for GTA IV’s lead character Niko Bellic in New York. The poster advises the public that he’s wanted for assault with a deadly weapon and should be shot on sight. The bit saying, “We’re going to take all your money and launch one of the biggest games in history so you’d better get used to seeing this face” was probably written in invisible ink.

It is what it is. Go here for pictures of people queuing up to get their hands on Super Smash Bros. Brawl in Japan. Marvel at the way they’re all buying GameCube controllers to play it because that’s the best thing to do, apparently. Try not to shit yourself with excitement about a cartoon fighting game.