Monthly Archives: January 2009

Say what you mean, Forbes. Don’t hold back. In a spotlight piece on Activision supremo Bobby Kotick, the US mag’s accused EA of ripping off Guitar Hero with Rock Band.

“EA… teamed with MTV to sell Rock Band, a shameless knockoff of Guitar Hero that added drums, bass and a microphone to the world of make-believe rock stars,” says the article.

“EA says it is returning to an ‘auteur model’ of designing games, taking bigger chances on fewer ideas.”

Bet Mr Riccitiello’ll be pleased about that. Go get yourself some of your own ideas, John. Leave Bobby alone.

The game pirate is not a thief, Valve’s Jason Holtman told the Game Business Law summit at SMU’s law school today: he’s just eager to keep up with the Joneses.

“There’s a big business feeling that there’s piracy,” said the developer, adding that the truth is, “Pirates are under-served customers.”

Publishers are missing a trick by trying to combat piracy with traditional methods, said Holtman.

“When you think about it that way, you think, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.’

“We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia,” he added “The reason people pirated things in Russia is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television – they say ‘Man, I want to play that game so bad,’ but the publishers respond, ‘You can play that game in six months… maybe.’

“We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly.”

There’s more on GameDaily.

This official-looking CCP financial document claims the EVE firm’s next MMO – vampire effort World of Darkness – is to launch next year.

“CCP is currently working on new projects, the largest of which is World of Darkness, a MMOG that is scheduled to launch 2010,” says the PDF, which mainly outlines CCP’s financial outlook.

World of Darkness is being worked on by what used to be White Wolf in Atlanta. The Icelandic CCP acquired White Wolf in 2006.

The online horror has been closely guarded since its announcement, but was confirmed to be in production this March, when EVE Online creator Reynir Harðarson said he was moving to the US to work on the game.

Harðarson told us in February that the game will be “as real as it can be,” an example of rhetoric that’s put the game high on the “interested” list of MMO aficionados.

We’ll check with CCP in the morning. Thanks WODOnlineNews and Blue.

EA Redwood’s Hunter Smith has told CVG that the combat in its open-world game, Godfather II, is “the best in the genre.”

“I think our combat experience is the best in the genre,” said the Godfather II executive producer.

“It’s a very intuitive experience. To go hand-to-hand we moved from having to lock on to everybody just to interact with them and then stick mashing to right and left controls so you really feel that you’re tied into your avatar in terms of your right and left hands.

“We also added combos because we have the right and left experience,” he went on.

“Our shooting experience is completely free aim all the time. You can then lock on and move within the lock on window for headshots or knee shots or to shoot a weapon out of a guy’s hand.

“So we leveraged what we thought was best last time and then took it to the next level to tie you closer to the avatar, so you can still grab guys and swing them from side to side or throw them over a balcony,” concluded Smith.

Godfather II is released on February 27 for PC, 360 and PS3.

By Mike Bowden

Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed to IGN that family-friendly MMO, Free Realms, is yet to be dated for PS3.

The confirmation came after an ESRB listing revealed a Q2 release date for PC, but nothing for PS3.

SOE said that a PlayStation 3 version is still planned, but could no offer nothing more specific than that.

By Mike Bowden

CCP is to drop the “Classic” graphics support from its MMO EVE Online leaving just the “Premium” graphics mode which launched in 2007, Massively writes.

CCP Zulupark explains the situation the team finds itself in on the EVE Insider Dev Blog:

One of EVE’s unique features (along with being an awesome game on a single server) is that it can run on pretty much any computer built after 1998. The minimum spec for graphics card and CPU has always been very reasonable to say the least, so the barrier for entry into EVE has been relatively low compared to other games. Developing the client in this manner hasn’t always been a given. It requires us to downtune our graphics engine quite a bit, for one, as well as maintain the “Classic” client version of EVE along with the Premium one. That means creating two versions of each art asset we want to put into the game. It complicates build and patching processes considerably and, for the most part, it simply doesn’t allow us to make EVE look as beautiful as we want. The core issues we deal with are:

• Spending too much time and resources maintaining 2 clients

• Due to a dual pipeline we have less time implementing performance enhancements

So what next? Well, a “Premium Lite” version that will need ShaderModel 2.0 hardware to run and far less texture memory than the current Premium. This will ensure solid framerates on older hardware.

Through the link for a fully detailed explanation.

CCP recently boasted that EVE Online had over 45,000 concurrent users which was a milestone in the MMO’s four and a half year history.

By Mike Bowden

According to Canadian news site CBC, December’s NPD figures showed Canadians spent a record $2.09 billion on consoles last year.

Nintendo Wii dominated 44.1 percent of the market compared with Xbox 360′s 25.5 percent and PlayStation 3′s 21.7 percent.

“We believe the Wii has really hit a great price point in the market,” said Matthew Tattle, account manager at NPD, to CBC News.

“It’s really expanded the user base. It’s gone beyond the traditional gamer market.”

The top selling game was EAs Rockband which saw off the challenge of Rockstar’s GTA IV. Mariokart Wii and Wii Fit came in third and fourth respectively.

More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

A new multiplayer mode called Nazokaimei Mission – Mystery Unfolded Mission – for Sony PSP co-op RPG, Phantasy Star Portable, is now available.

Nazokaimei requires players to solve the mysterious virus that has seemingly infected a virtual reality training program for the Guardian.

Interested? Grab it here. It’s all in Japanese though, remember.

Phantasy Star Portable is out in the US on March 24 and Sega has confirmed a Spring release for Europe.

Thanks, PSPhyper.

By Mike Bowden

Basically, you if you don’t want the game spoiled, don’t watch the video as there’s a lot of plot reveal in there. The images show a brand new level which is set at night and is infested with huge, insect-like beasties.

Prepare for more of this as March 13 looms even closer.

Everything after the break.

By Mike Bowden

More »

Sega has released a new trailer and some images from Sonic and the Black Knight.

The video shows an impressive cutscene interspersed with some gameplay of Sonic bombing about, holding a sword, hacking and slashing his way through a castle town.

See all the new media after the break.

Sonic and the Black Knight is released for Nintendo Wii worldwide in March.

By Mike Bowden

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US retailer Gamestop is advertising a new Mass Effect Two-Disc Edition SKU to be released on February 10.

Aside from the game disc you’ll be getting a documentary, game trailers, music, design galleries and the Bring Down the Sky downloadable content. All for a paltry $19.99.

We’ll check next week to see if this will be coming to Europe.

By Mike Bowden

Namco Bandai has released a new promotional bit for the excellent looking Wii RPG Fragile.

It’s five minutes long and you can see a high res version of it here, or if you need to save bandwidth its embedded after the break.

Fragile recently received (31/40) in the latest Famitsu.

By Mike Bowden

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French site Xboxygen claims Square Enix has announced that RPG Star Ocean: The Last Hope will release in Europe on April 24.

There are also some new screenshots and some brand new footage for you to look at after the break.

We’ll check with Square Enix on Monday.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope releases for Xbox 360 in Japan and the US next month.

By Mike Bowden

More »

Xbox 360 group PR manager David Dennis told Edge yesterday that despite Sony’s claims that Microsoft is “peddling add-ons“, you only need to look at the figures to see who has the right strategy.

“The strategy of having a console that is $200 more expensive that has features that people don’t potentially need or want but have to pay for – looking at [Sony's] sales numbers – I’d say it’s probably not the winning strategy at this point, especially given the current economic situation,” said Dennis in the wake of Microsoft announcing the biggest month in 360 history.

“Our strategy from the beginning was to have multiple SKUs with a very flexible offering so the customer can choose the experience that they want.

“If you don’t need a hard drive, you’re not forced to have one. If you don’t need Wi-Fi, you’re not forced to pay for one,” he added.

NPD results for December show that Xbox 360 is currently outselling PS3 by a ratio of 2:1.

By Mike Bowden

Warner has announced that Monolith’s F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin demo will be available for download for PC, 360 and PS3.

Subscribers of US PSN’s Quore, got the shooter taster a couple of weeks ago.

The demo will drag you through bloodstain corridors and narrow hallways whilst showing off the game’s many locations, promises Warner.

F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin is released on February 13.

By Mike Bowden

As per headline. Capcom has announced the Resident Evil 5 limited edition package for the US and it makes Europe’s look a little thin on extras.

On top of everything in the Europe ltd. ed., North America gets a Chris Redfield figure, a Kijuju necklace, a dufflebag and a RSSA patch – all for a measly $90.

Gutted.

Resident Evil 5 is released 13th March.

Read ‘em and weep after the break.

By Mike Bowden

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SCEA has said that if you pre-order Resistance Retribution with either Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, or Game Crazy you’ll be given a voucher to code to download the demo as early as today.

The demo will feature single and multiplayer modes, as well as the new Infected gametype. You will also have a chance to try out the game on your PS3 thanks to Resistance: Retribution Plus.

We’ll check if Europe will get the same treatment on Monday.

Thanks, Shacknews.

By Mike Bowden

THQ has lifted the covers on a whole host of new screenshots from Wii insect game: Deadly Creatures.

Last year we were told the Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton were doing the voice and that we’d be curling our toes playing it in February.

The insect/arachnid models look very detailed and a if we’re being honest a little bit creepy.

Not for the squeamish this one.

After the break.

By Mike Bowden

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Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity – which sees gamers of all walks of life and stations of play donate cash to sick children in hospitals – recently wrapped up its 08/09 campaign. The final tally? Excuse us for a moment as we shove aside a few words to make space for this gargantuan number.

$1,434,377.

This, of course, smashes Child’s Play’s 2007 record of $1.3 million. All to purchase games and toys for sick children. And people say gamers are a despicable lot.

Great job to everyone who donated, and here’s to an incredibly child-friendly 2009/2010 season.

Thanks, Kotaku.

By Nathan Grayson

After two years of dedicated service to gamers, Microsoft, and the blogosphere, the Gamerscore blog has officially quit the Internet.

Apparently, Microsoft abruptly yanked the blog off stage because it had become obsolete. Or at least, its final, feeble musings certainly seem to suggest as much, requesting that gamers visit Xbox.com’s Voices section, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb’s blog or other portions of Xbox.com for all of the news Gamerscore once provided.

So basically, Gamerscore passed out early, but the party’s only just heating up.

Thanks, 1up.

By Nathan Grayson