Monthly Archives: May 2008

While GTA IV’s hanging on to the top spot in the UK, the Rockstar monster-game hasn’t been so evergreen in the rest of Europe.

Charts today show that MMO Age of Conan has now overtaken the game in Sweden and Germany, while Wii Fit has put Niko’s adventure in its place in Spain.

Full details on Next-Gen.

Ubisoft’s announced a private beta for the 360 version of Tom Clancy’s EndWar, the voice-controlled World War III strategy game. You need to have a Gold Live account to get in on the action. Taken from the official site:

The Private Beta will take place for 3 weeks in June and July, and will be available in English only. The Beta will feature 3 maps and be playable exclusively online in 1v1 and 2v2 matches. The Beta will be available for Xbox 360, and you will need to be an Xbox Live Gold Member, with a broadband internet connection, and 3 GB of free space on your Xbox 360 Hard Drive.

The version will be in a Test state and you will likely encounter some bugs and crashes. Your contribution will be very important and will help us to produce a better and more polished final product. Your participation in this Beta will be strictly confidential, and you will not be allowed to share your experiences playing EndWar anywhere outside of this website.

Sign-up here. Thanks, Gaming Today.

But there’s still no date for the rest of the world. The info popped up on Major Nelson’s blog this afternoon.

“A demo for all other Xbox Live regions is planned,” he said. “I don’t have any additional information at this time (like when it will release) but the moment I do, I will let you know.”

You’ll need a Japanese Gold Live account if you’re thinking of grabbing it.

According to this EG piece, wingmen in rugged flight sim Tom Clancy’s HAWX can be controlled by voice. Other than that nugget, the story’s short on detail. The site was told the info at Ubidays in Paris yesterday.

Don’t forget that units from HAWX can apparently cross over into EndWar, so potentially there’s going to be voice in the air, voice on the ground, voice everywhere. Pretending to be some kind of macho, fatigue-wearing bullyboy will never be so much fun.

Tom Clancy’s HAWX releases later this year.

A blue glow that could be seen from space today as millions of Wiis in European and Australian homes clammered to try out the now-launched Nintendo Channel.

We updated ours and we can tell you it works. That’s all good then.

For more info on what your Nintendo Channel can do for you, hit this.

By Mike Bowden

Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes reckons Atari head Phil Harrison’s got it wrong when he says unconnected, single-player games are on the way out. Well he would, wouldn’t he.

“I read that, and I don’t totally agree,” Mattes told Eurogamer. “I know where he’s coming from – I certainly see a lot of the industry moving in the direction of more community, more multiplayer, that sort of stuff.

“But in my opinion, there are things you can do in a carefully crafted single-player game – experiences you can create, emotions you can elicit and magnitudes of engaging the player – that you’re not going to reproduce in the uncontrolled environment of multiplayer.

“For some time yet, there’s going to be a market of people who say, ‘You know what, pander to me. Suck me into your world and just make me believe. I don’t want to be distracted by griefers and high scores, and dealing with the stuff not everybody loves about multiplayer games.’ I do think there is still a significant market there.”

Good interview there, from Ubidays yesterday. Have a read.

Phil Harrison refused to talk about the PS3 version of Alone in the Dark in London last week, but that didn’t stop producer Nour Polloni explaining why the SKU was arriving well after the 360 game. In a nutshell, the frame-rate’s borked.

“There’s no firm date yet but what we can say is that it’s coming out this year,” Polloni told Videogamer.com. “In terms of why it’s coming out later, we have the full game running on PS3 and all the features, no problem. The thing is it’s not performing as well on PS3 as we hope it is in terms of frame-rate and all that. We didn’t want it to come out and have less of an experience for the PS3 gamer. We wanted to tweak that up and make sure they get the best experience on PS3 as much as possible.”

Polloni also said that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Alone in the Dark will contain the same content, but added that PS3 owners won’t be disappointed when they finally get the horror game.

“It will be really worth it,” she said. “It’s something that we didn’t want to deceive the players. That’s why we preferred waiting. And I know it’s tough but we want them to wait to be able to get that same experience.”

There’s a full interview with Polloni here.

The Develop Conference – to run from July 29-31 in Brighton, UK – confirmed four Japanese development speakers this morning, including Sony Japan’s Atsushi Ii and Junichi Yoshizawa, who’ll be in town to talk about Patapon development.

Also in attendance will be Jun Fujiki and Tatsuya Suzuki, talking about Echochrome.

Press release after the link.

More »

PSU’s running a quote from an unnamed source saying that PS3 Firmware 2.40 – the software update rumoured to hold in-game XMB and user-soundtrack functionality – will release in June.

“The SDK 2.40 will be available to dev. late in June. The actual Firmware 2.40 might see the light of day a lot sooner (my personal guess would be launch aligned or slightly before MGS4),” said the mole.

We’re waiting for comment from SCEE on a release date, but don’t be holding any breath.

Microsoft’s just confirmed that the next instalment of the Too Human dev diary’s now on Live. This one covers aspects of co-op play development, and apparently shows a new section of the game entitled, “The Goblin Man of Norway”.

We’re saying nothing. Too Human releases in Europe on August 29.

Jesus. There’s no need for this. Spanish site Meristation’s rumouring that the game Sega recently signed an Unreal Engine license extension for is Shenmue III, and that the game will be on show in some form at E3.

We’ve left Sega a voicemail. We expect to get laughed at later on today.

Thanks, Manuel!

MGS developer Hideo Kojima thrives on pressure, he’s told Reuters, but only if it’s the positive sort.

“Indeed, there is pressure,” he said, talking of Metal Gear development. “There is always pressure. But I’m not talking pressure in a negative way. I can use it to push up the bar for what I’m creating. In that sense there’s a positive pressure.”

The Japanese games supremo also gave the inevitable comment about the Metal Gear series continuing.

“MGS will always be around,” he said. “I feel a responsibility to continue this series as long as users demand it. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to sit in completely.

“I’ll probably take a different role in the next game. Maybe I’ll sit in as producer and let the young staff take control of the new series. I really want to go on to new things.”

Full thing through the link.

The CVG piece claims that PS3 sales are ahead of 360 numbers by 10 percent in the first 21 weeks of 2008.

The news comes from Chart-Track’s Dorian Bloch who also added that “360 has caught up thanks to the GTA IV effect,” since prior to the game’s release the PS3 was 20 percent ahead this calendar year.

More through the link.

According to this IGN story, a Wii and DS Star Wars: Clone Wars game is in the works, to ship later this year.

The info’s taken from the back of a leaflet contained in Lego Indiana Jones, and looks pretty convincing.

We’ll have a go at Warner Bros and see what we get.

Oh Lord. It’s internet-snapping time. Eurogamer’s given Metal Gear Solid 4 8/10, which has a rather Halo-esque ring to it. The score’s in contrast to almost blanket top scores from other publications – including this 9.9/10 from IGN – and is already being twitched over in the review’s comments thread.

Leave now. Save yourself.

Videogaming247 has learnt that the upcoming in-game XMB – heavily rumoured to be included in PS3′s Firmware 2.40 – may not work with all PS3 titles, and that user-music and Trophies functionality is only being included as an option for Sony developers from this point on.

By point:

• Sony’s currently going through PS3′s library to check whether or not in-game XMB’s full compatible. While it’s expected that the the new menu system, in-game messaging, and so forth, will work with virtually all games, for a minority of titles the current black menu screen will be retained. It’s not known yet which games, if any, won’t be able to use in-game XMB.
• The user-music functionality is only included in the new development tools, which have now gone out to coders. This means that existing games won’t support it unless they’re patched. That’s right: you won’t be able to play GTA IV with your own music unless Rockstar updates the game, if what we’ve been told this morning is true.
• Same for Trophies. They tools required to add these are only just in the hands of developers, which means it’s going to be some time before you see the feature appear in a major game.
• Some aspects of the XMB, such as the photo viewer, won’t be available in-game after the 2.40 Firmware update. If you select these features in-game, you’ll be asked if you want to drop out of your game to access them.

There’s still no release date for Firmware 2.40 as yet, with Sony sticking to “summer” for now. We’ll have more soon, hopefully.

According to this IGN piece, Capcom is planning new characters for the home versions of Street Fighter IV, confirmed this week for PC, 360 and PS3 later this year.

The story also confirms that online play will be included.

The info comes from Famitsu, will lists the home ports as “20% complete”, apparently.

More through the link.

Blimey. According to Cubed3, Wii Fit was a bigger selling game than Grand Theft Auto IV in Australia last week, a first hint that Rockstar’s supreme reign at the top of western charts may be starting to crumble.

GTA IV, of course, is riding high in the UK, and has been ever since it launched. Age of Conan had a go at it this week, but didn’t manage to get up top. We should start running a book on how long it can hang on.

According to this LiveWii report, Englishified by Cubed3, Ubisoft told the site during Ubidays 2008 yesterday that a dedicated Prince of Persia game was being created for Wii.

The Prince of Persia title showcased at the event is in the works for PC, PS3 and 360.

There’s no confirmation on this at the moment, and a Wii SKU certainly hasn’t been announced. Hope it’s true.

It’s on GamersHell. The first one was awesome, so this is definitely something to lighten up your Friday morning. Watch it.

Update: Oh. They bleeped out the swearing. Watch it anyway, though.