Monthly Archives: July 2008

EA’s confirmed that demos for Madden 09 and Facebreaker are now up on both Live and PSN, so get them if you’re bored.

Madden’s out on August 15, says Gamespress, with Facebreaker shipping on September 5.

The 60Gb Xbox 360 announced at E3 is starting to pop up all over the place, but Microsoft has dashed talk of bombshell street date-breaking by confirming that the machine will just release gradually.

“They’ll just appear in the retail channels,” Major Nelson told X3F.

The consoles were rumoured to be on sale earlier this week, but it seems as though it’s fact now. Incredible.

Both Funcom and Blizzard have announced Russian release dates for their spearhead MMOs today, with Age of Conan hitting the country in “late 2008″ and WoW getting all vodkarish in August.

The new WoW release is the fifth European-language version, complementing the existing English, French, German, and Spanish versions. More here.

Age of Conan is to be distributed in Russia by 1C. More on GameDaily.

On Gamekyo. We’re excited. The Guerilla shooter has to be one of the best looking projects currently in the works on PS3, as this new set of images testifies. It’s out in February.

Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix has reported Q1 profits of $26.6 million, compared to $25.3 million in the corresponding previous period.

Despite the rise in profits, sales were down for the period over 9 per cent to $275.3 million.

Thanks, GI.

Speaking to PCGH, Intel’s Michael Vollmer has predicted that the first ray-traced games could appear in the next two to three years.

“I dare say that in two to three years time we will see something,” he said. “There already are some individual approaches, especially in the science sector, which show that ray-tracing algorithms are scaling very well with the numbers of cores.

“But the migration to a new programming technology takes years; ray-tracing is still in an early stage.”

Ray-tracing is an upcoming graphical technology that accurately maps digital light to provide realistic visual effects.

Read more on it here.

Speaking to VG247 at Develop today, Bizarre Creations head Sarah Chudley said that Activision, and not Microsoft, bought the Gotham developer as Microsoft’s “internal structure probably wasn’t in the right place to buy things at the time.”

“Obviously as the publisher they had to know what was going on, but their internal structure probably wasn’t in the right place to buy things at the time,” she said.

“And they’re a single format. OK, Xbox is doing fantastically, but who knows what’s going to happen in the future?

“Multi-platform is the only way.”

Chudley said that the approach from Activision came as a surprise but forced the developer to take a reality check.

“We weren’t up for sale. We absolutely weren’t up for sale. It wasn’t a case of, ‘Let’s go and pitch and sell ourselves,’” said the exec.

“We just got to the point where we were looking forward. The Club took us about a year to sign up. A year is a long time when you’ve got 50 staff sitting there twiddling their thumbs in early development stages, because obviously the publisher has quite an influence into what type of game is made.

“We’ve got a lot of money in the bank, but that used to be five years’ worth of money, and then three year’s worth of money. And then you think, ‘Well, there are a lot of people resting on this.’”

Chudley told us that selling the firm had allowed her and husband – Martin Chudley – to get back to what they enjoyed about the games industry in the first place.

“We’re not big business people,” she said. “We didn’t get into the games industry to be all-powerful, all expanding. It got to the point where we weren’t enjoying it.”

Develop concludes today.

Speaking to VG247 at Develop in Brighton today, Bizarre Creations boss Sarah Chudley has revealed that the Activision-owned developer co-owns Project Gotham Racing’s Kudos dynamic.

Although the firm can still use the series’ trademark idea, however, the notion of a Bizzare-developed fifth game in the much-loved racing series – being considered after the release of Gotham 4 under Microsoft – died when the firm sold to Kotick’s publisher.

“Gotham’s owned by Microsoft,” said Chudley. “They will be doing with Gotham whatever they want. So no, we’ve said goodbye to the Gotham series.

“We still own the Kudos element,” she added. “We have a joint patent with Microsoft, so that’s something we could use in the future if we wanted to.”

Gotham 5 was being mooted at Bizarre when Activision moved on the developer.

“We were thinking about what to do in the future,” said Chudley. “Do we do Gotham 5? Do we stay with Microsoft, do we look for another publisher? Obviously we have a great relationship with Sega, so do we go down that route?

“And it was at that point that Activision came along and said, ‘Look guys, we need a really good racing game.’”

As well as deciding future direction, selling to Activision has given the company air to breathe away from Microsoft’s Forza Motorsport, said the exec.

“Obviously, Microsoft’s very protective of its Forza brand, and Gotham had to fit into that. So, going forward, we were obviously going to be restricted about what we could do, and now we’re not.

“I mean literally, Activision has said, ‘Just go and do the game you want to do,’ which has been absolutely amazing. It seems to have gone down very well.”

Chudley told us that the firm is working on two projects under Activision, one of which is, unsurprisingly, petrol-related.

“I think they obviously said that since they haven’t got any racing in their portfolio, I think it’s pretty obvious that there is a racing game coming up,” she said.

This US PS Blog post has confirmed SCEJ’s The Last Guy the western release, saying the top-down rescue title will be hitting PSN “very soon.”

There’s loads of detail through there on the game’s back-story – zombies, lasers, monsters – and a trailer. Go see.

Ubisoft’s announced that it will publish the next Armored Core game, Armored Core for Answer.

The From Software mech title has been confirmed for release in the US today, but there’s no would on a European launch.

Game’s out for PS3 and 360 in September. Press release after the link.

More »

Speaking in the latest issue of Edge, Microsoft Europe boss Chris Lewis has said that Europe makes up “less than a quarter” of Xbox Live’s total membership, mostly down to language differences.

“We don’t normally break out the European element of our Live membership,” said Lewis. “I mean, I know what it is, but I don’t want to get rapped on the knuckles by being too explicit with you. I will say to you as a percentage of that overall total, it’s just less than a quarter.”

America has “the lion’s share” of Xbox Live users, he said.

Thanks, CVG.

Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter has predicted that slowing sales of DS in Japan could see a hardware revision from Nintendo before the end of the year.

“We think that the timing of a new product introduction will depend upon the sales profile for the DS, and believe that lower than expected DS hardware sales could trigger an earlier launch for the new device.

“DS sales are solid worldwide, but are weak in Japan, leading us to expect an introduction of a new device in Japan before the end of the calendar year.”

Thanks, MCV.

Here you go. PixelJunk Eden for a fiver. Don’t dare complain. Thanks, Wonderwallweb.

PS3 demos

• PixelJunk Eden Demo – free
• echochrome micro Demo – free

PS3 games

• PixelJunk Eden – £4.99

Trailers

• Prince of Persia E3 Gameplay Trailer – free
• The Last Guy Trailer – free
• Movement – free

Wallpaper/themes

• Bionic Command Rearmed Wallpapers

Bungie told Eurogamer at Develop today that Ensemble 360 RTS Halo Wars is coming on well, thank you very much.

“Everything we’ve seen has been very, very encouraging – we’re very excited about it. And of course, [Halo Wars is] also getting right the basics, the general roles – even fictionally,” said Bungie AI man Damian Isla.

“What role do grunts play in the Covenant fighting forces, what role do the Elites play, what role do Warthogs play, what role do Spartans play… All this kind of thing. I think they really nailed that. It’s encouraging.”

More through the link.

According to this SixthAxis report, Home beta selection is not ongoing in Japan. From the site:

Don’t get your knickers in a twist, but it appears that there’s a big banner on the Japanese PSN Store, Home related, and it’s apparent that if you download the theme that’s in there (it’s only 277KB) you’ll have registered your interest in the Home Beta. You’ll need to do this before the 11th of August, though.

So there we are. No date on a European equivalent.

On CVG. The new screens from the BioWare RPG are lovely and hi-res, showing tons of detail. It’s releasing early next year, PC-only.

Speaking to VG247 at Develop yesterday, 2K Boston’s Ken Levine said that he didn’t understand why gamers had leveled criticism and the scope of innovation in BioShock’s gameplay compared to the steps forward the game made in terms of narrative.

“Honestly, I’ve been very open to criticisms in terms of narrative, etcetera – you’ve probably seen me talk about that, and I’ve tried to acknowledge things about it – but I’m not exactly sure I understand the complaint,” he said.

“If you think about the Big Daddies, if you think about the plasmids, if you think about the hacking, if you think about the security system, if you think about being able to upgrade your powers, compared to the Call of Duties, the Half-Lifes and Medal of Honor, I don’t understand [the complaint].”

He added: “Look at BioShock compared to Portal and other first-person shooters that came out last year. Portal, outside of the narrative, the gameplay’s innovative but on a fairly narrow axis, right? They do their one thing and they exploit it very well. I don’t mean ‘one thing’ in a derogatory sense: it’s a great thing.”

BioShock lead designer Bill Gardner, however, did concede that gameplay innovations may have lagged behind those made in the game’s storytelling, but that the stance was intentional.

“I think there’s an element of not wanting to throw too many curve balls at the player, and I think we knew early what the advancements were that we were going to make in the narrative, and we didn’t want to alienate people,” he said.

“That’s not to say we weren’t trying to do anything different… Certainly emergent gameplay’s been done in other games, but I like to think that things like the one-two punch and the way the plasmids work with the powers with the weapons, the environmental stuff [meant] we brought a lot of new things to the table.”

Develop concludes today.

Facebook app Scrabulous is fighting the law: the law’s winning. As a result of ongoing litigations with Scrabble IP-owner Hasbro, the Scrabble clone is no longer sitting pretty on the social networking site.

Users who attempt to log into Scrabulous, instead of engaging in a rousing session of time-wasting fun, now receive a succinct message prompting them to sign up for a mailing list that will send out updates about Scrabulous’ status.

We can’t help but wonder why Hasbro didn’t simply purchase Scrabulous and feed off the app’s existing user base, but it looks like they instead chose to roll the dice.

You do that in Scrabble, right?

By Nathan Grayson

Bourne, we hardly knew ye. After only a single game, it seems the high-octane espionage hero is being put out to pasture as a result of the galaxy-like collision between Activision and Blizzard. Luckily, according to Variety, the license is back in the hands of its original owner: the Ludlum estate.

“The Bourne franchise is more valuable today than it was three years ago when we made the original deal with Vivendi,” said Jeffrey Weiner, CEO of Ludlum Entertainment. “This is certainly a great opportunity for us to go back out into the interactive market.”

So, anyone want a re-gifted license whose time in cinema’s spotlight has already long passed? Anyone?

By Nathan Grayson

Speaking at Develop in Brighton yesterday, Frontier boss David Braben has decried the practice of selling used games in the UK, saying it’s “not tolerated by other industries.”

“More than half their floor area is dedicated to pre-owned and that is something as an industry we don’t see,” Braben said of UK retail chain Gamestation.

“Those same retailers are only carrying new copies of games from the past few months – if it’s a game that’s been out for two months and you want to buy one from a shop not Amazon and you don’t want pre-owned, it’s very hard.

“This is essentially rental, and it’s not tolerated by other industries… Why can we not introduce special ‘for rental’ copies?”

Thanks, Destructoid.

We had a one-on-one chat with David yesterday, the first fruit of which was this piece about The Outsider. We’ll have more from the interview soon.