Monthly Archives: March 2008

The Byron Report – a study commissioned by the UK Government to investigate games and internet use among the young in the UK – was delivered last week, saying almost exactly what everyone thought it was going to say and showing its author, Doctor Tanya Byron, in a highly professional light.

Probably the best thing about the publication, however, is that fact it’s now been and gone and we can (almost) stop writing about it.

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According to this, it seems as though GTA IV will be released on the DS on June 15 this year.

This isn’t as unlikely as it sounds: remember, both the Game Boy Advance and the Game Boy Color both saw GTA conversions.

There’s been no confirmation from Nintendo as yet.

By Mike Bowden

According to this, Realtime Worlds has raised $50 million to finish off APB and buy Ferraris. Maybe just the former.

Montgomery & Co – the firm that previously assisted on the $700 million Club Penguin sale to Disney – organised the cash, apparently.

Capcom’s acquired the full rights to the MotoGP license, a deal spanning five years.

The publisher previously owned rights to only publish games based on the IP on PS2, with only THQ able to release MotoGP games on other platforms.

Capcom will release MotoGP titles for 360, PS3, Wii, PS2 and mobile platforms this year, according to the press release you can find after the link.

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The chaps over at Neogaf have posted some rather interesting stats comparing Japanese sales to date of Wii and PS3.

Did you know that after 71 weeks at retail, PS3 is where PS2 was at 16.6 weeks, or that if Wii stopped selling altogether and PS3 continued selling at its current rate, it would take it five years to catch the Nintendo machine up? We didn’t.

Follow the link below for more armchair ammunition.

By Mike Bowden

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A new video has been released showing one of the upcoming Call of Duty 4 Variety Pack multiplayer maps.

Infinity Wards’ Rob Bowling said the DLC had been sent to MS for approval last week, meaning we’re looking at a potential release of April 3 or 4. A PS3 version announce is forthcoming.

Watch the movie after the link.

By Mike Bowden

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According to this, Hollywood producer Peter Safran is to make shows for exclusive distribution via Xbox Live.

Safran said that he expected the shows to be around ten minutes long, to be scripted as opposed to reality TV, and to focus on genre that appealed to 14-34 year-old males, such as comedy and horror.

Americans are the get the content this autumn, and there’s no news on a global release, but Microsoft is apparently expecting the announcement to be the start of a trend.

“We definitely look at this as the first of many,” said Xbox Live US marketing boss Scott Nocas.

Says to here. Producer Matt Turner’s confirmed new maps for the co-op shooter aren’t too far away.

“There is one new multiplayer map arriving as well as two new campaign maps in the not too distant future,” he said.

We still haven’t played the game itself, so we’ll be reminding ourselves that the demo’s released on Live tomorrow. We can’t wait.

After the link. Iron Man’s releasing in May, the Hulk in June, both for every platform imaginable, both to coincide with movie releases. We’re saying nothing, apart from “hmm”.

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Here. Listed for the upcoming MMO’s competitive side are the following mini-games:

• Capture the Skull
  You will join one of two teams with the goal of capturing the opposing side’s skull as many times as possible. They will, of course, not take kindly to this and will try to stop you.

• Team Annihilation
  You will join one of two teams, with the goal being to kill as many players on the opposing team as you possibly can. Of course, they’ll be trying to do the same to you.

Apparently players are also going to get to try out “drunken brawling” in which, “You will proceed to one of the designated taverns, get drunk out of your mind, and take wild, drunken swings at friends and foes alike.” It’s the innovation online gaming’s been waiting for.

Age of Conan releases in May.

This has to be seen to be believed. Someone’s put an entire NES game collection up for sale on eBay, and currently has a bid of $6,100. The 739-game lot includes a complete set of Nintendo World Championships, of which only 116 were ever made. We have no idea if this is true, but the seller has used enough exclamation marks to make it sound convincing, so we’re sold. Well, sort of. Take a look.

Figures for the week ending March 23. We don’t know how Microsoft has the strength to carry on, frankly.

• DS Lite: 65,055
• Wii: 62,404
• PSP: 59,833
• PS3: 12,874
• PS2: 9,930
• Xbox 360: 1,744

Capcom has announced that its wholly acquired K2 Studios via a simple exchange of stock which is expected to be completed on May 1.

“K2 has a proven record as a reliable provider of game development services for Capcom. By making this company a wholly owned subsidiary, Capcom plans to make its game development activities more efficient and speedy,” Capcom said in a statement. “Capcom also believes that pursuing a business strategy based on closer ties with K2 will help increase the value of the entire Capcom Group.”

K2 is most famous for its Tenchu and Valhalla Knights IPs.

By Mike Bowden

This is what you can do when you’re not reliant on games publisher ad revenue. Sega America, having successfully removed last week’s leaked Sonic Unleashed media from Destructoid and Exophase with legal “requests”, met its match when it ran into Kotaku’s Brian Crecente. Quite rightly, Crecente refused to pull the media after taking legal advice and deeming the shots and movie newsworthy, and therefore viable for publication.

Further, Crecente published the email he received from Sega’s legal department, which has now been viewed over 5,000 times on the world’s busiest games blog by core consumers the world over.

Great branding exercise there, Sega. Well played.

According to this, the Portable Copy feature rumoured for the last PS3 firmware update will arrive “later this year”, the quote coming from an SCEA rep.

Portable Copy is the ability to transfer a copy of a movie from a Blu-ray disc to your PSP. Quite how it works hasn’t been detailed as yet.

PCWorld said it was to be included in firmware 2.20, but SCEA immediately debunked the talk. Hopefully the feature will happen sooner rather than later, however.

Says so here. According to the film’s producer Wyck Godfrey, “We’ve got our script on and a director we’re about to attach. We’ll hopefully make that early next year for the summer of 2010.”

The NewLine movie’s being produced by Temple Hill Entertainment, according to that piece, and was announced in March 2007.

Here. Will Wright’s latest releases on September 7. We’re still not feeling it, to be honest. But we have to play it. Because it’s Spore.

It had to happen. You can see all of GTA IV’s Xbox 360 Achievements here, should you feel the need. The list isn’t confirmed (obviously) but looks reasonable. It’s not as if we care, anyway.

According to this, Nintendo has made a legal effort to make US fansite Friendcodes.com drop its logo and domain. According to the site:

Basically Nintendo is “asking” us to remove the site files that are infringing the copyright (such as the logo, which contains the word “friendcodes”), and to drop the domain name for the same reason. [The site's owner,] Corey just responded to the emails tonight, and is going to talk to a NOA rep. (hopefully) Monday over the phone. But honestly, it looks bad. They’ve been sending the emails for almost a month now with no response, so they’re very serious about it right now. We’re still talking about what to do, but it looks like we will have to shut down the site temporarily, until it all gets worked out. Of course, if it works out Nintendo’s way, we’ll be closed down permanently. Naturally, we’re going to try and keep that from happening, but like I said, it doesn’t look good.

Nice. You crush those kids, Nintendo. Crush them good.

Here. The UK mag speculates that GTA IV will “heavily support” Home with a sponsored space and DLC in the form of character clothes and the like. We’d be fairly astonished if this wasn’t true in some shape or form, to be honest. Only a month to go.