Monthly Archives: February 2009

Microsoft should get on and announce this. There’ll be nothing left before too long.

A UK publishing source has reliably informed VG247 that the unannounced Crackdown game in development at Ruffian is a multiplayer-only effort.

“Crackdown 1.5? That’s generous,” our man added. “It’s more like 1.25.”

When pushed on whether or not the project was definitely underway at Ruffian, the chatterer was unequivocal: “Oh yes, it is true.”

We’ve verified the lack of single-player with two other dev sources, who described the information as “good”.

The game is supposedly being scheduled for “late 2009″.

Ruffian, the newly-formed Scottish developer, announced this week that it’s taken on another two Crackdown veterans, and was mainly formed initially from Realtime Worlds staffers.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

It looks as though Nelson’s Live play charts are only going to happen once a month now, and for obvious reasons: they don’t really change.

Data below’s for the week beginning February 16. Here‘s the last lot.

1 Call of Duty: WaW
2 Halo 3
3 Call of Duty 4
4 Gears of War 2
5 GTA IV
6 Left 4 Dead
7 Halo Wars Demo
8 FIFA 09
9 Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X: Rio Demo
10 Guitar Hero World Tour

Janco’s Mike Hickey has speculated that Sony may be on the verge of announcing a hefty PS3 price cut.

“Recent channel checks indicate increased speculation for a PS3 price cut announcement from Sony in the next couple of days,” said the analyst.

“We think the company needs to reduce the current price by USD 100 to effectively restart unit velocity at retail. We believe the market is expecting a PS3 price cut in April or by June at the latest.”

Fingers crossed. We’re checking with Sony now.

Red Steel, Wii MotionPlus and all, is to be revealed in the next issue of UK mag NGamer, N-Europe reports.

The May issue, number 34, promises a look at the game and its “MotionPlus swordsmanship”.

It goes on sale March 25.

The Ubi game’s due for a Q4 release.

Nintendo’s shown off three new DSi colours for Japan.

The pink, green and blue machines release on March 20 for ¥18,900.

See pretty pictures on Famitsu and GameWatch.

This is pretty funny. According to this Gamespot story, E3′s decline forced a huge surge in the cost of being an ESA member. Like, a 1,700 percent surge. From the piece:

When the ESA first announced the plans for a smaller E3, it said the resulting revenue shortfall would be made up for partly by a hike in the organization’s membership fees. Those fees were clearly reflected in the ESA’s filing, as membership dues for the year of the Santa Monica E3 (April 1, 2007 – March 31, 2008) were $17.41 million, up nearly 400 percent from the prior year’s total of $4.47 million. The year before that, the ESA’s total income from membership dues was just over $1 million, making for a two-year, 1,700 percent surge in fees.

A flurry of companies left ESA last year, including Activision, LucasArts, id, Crave, and NCsoft.

Now you know why. More through there.

id hero John Carmack’s told Joystiq that an XBLA version of Quake III Arena is almost done, although he’s failed to provide a specific release date. From the site:

Despite being first spotted on the ESRB’s leak-prone website nearly two years ago, and officially confirmed at QuakeCon over 18 months ago, id’s John Carmack assures us that Pi Studios – developers behind the Xbox Live Arcade release of classic multiplayer shooter Quake 3 Arena – is “actually very close to finishing that up.” He didn’t identify any specific reasons for the delay, but said that the developer had “different things come up at different times” like having to “shift people onto different projects.”

The news comes as Quake Live opens up its beta to all.

More through there.

The Quake Live beta is now open, meaning anyone can play completely gratis. Hit this to get involved.

The free-to-play shooter includes 40 arenas, five play modes and tons of other stuff. It’d be very rude to not give it a go.

So do.

Good Lord. Mech fighter Virtual On Oratorio Tangram will indeed release for XBLA, Famitsu’s confirmed, following news yesterday of the game being rated in Australia.

The 360 release will be Cyber Troopers Virtual On Oratorio Tangram v5.66, the final version for Sega’s NAOMI board, released in 2000.

It’s out in April for 1,200 Microsoft Points, according to the mag.

Thanks, Kotaku.

We’re assuming this all comes from yesterday’s Destination PlaySation event in the US, but according to this VentureBeat report, Sony’s announced a 20 million registered figure for PSN.

In addition, Home has hit 4 million users since it launched at the end of last year.

The PSN figure compares to the 17 million claimed by Microsoft for Live, although it’s worth noting that Sony quotes a number for all accounts ever registered, whereas Microsoft’s 17 million is based on users that logged into Live in the previous month.

The PS Store offers more than 14,500 items, Sony said yesterday, including 5,900 movies and TV shows.

So far, more than 380 million pieces of digital content have been downloaded, with the value exceeding $180 million.

Those attending WonderCon 2009 in San Francisco will get a chance at a Meet and Greet with Cryptic this Saturday, February 28.

Developers for both Champions Online and Star Trek Online will be on hand for you to shake hands with, stare at in utter wonder, or just watch from a darkened corner.

Cryptic has also answered fan-submitted questions regarding Champions Online over on the official site, should you want some prep on the upcoming MMO.

Hit the links for more.

Thanks, Blue.

Warhawk fans will get to move around and plan strategies in the Warhawk Command Center in Home this week.

Sony confirmed the addition at Destination PlayStation this morning.

Update should go through on Thursday.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix was released for DS and PC today.

Kotaku says it’s on XBL and PSN tomorrow as well.

Looks like we missed that memo.

Launch trailer posted below.

More »

Dawn of War II has an update available for Steam users, and will be applied next time you log on.

The patch fixes a bug that causes missions to stop populating.

Saved games will not be affected and  previous ‘stalled’ saves should now progress normally.

More through the link.

The Dark Eye: Drakensang has shipped to US retail outlets nationwide.

Players will start out in the medieval city of Ferdok, embarking on a quest to solve some ritualistic murders.

Players can threaten, persuade or charm their way through the game.

A prequel – titled Drakensang: The River Of Time – is expected in 2010.

Press release below.

More »

Brit Zak Bennett broke his own record and earned a place in the Guinness World Records last Friday for most consecutive wins in Street Fighter IV.

The world record event was hosted by Capcom at the HMV store on Oxford Street in London, and all Bennett needed to achieve the win was to beat his previous 28 rounds.

This time around, he went 108.

Good job, Zak.

Street Fighter IV shipped last week.

Valve’s unveiled the second Scout weapon in today’s Team Fortress 2 update: it’s a double-barrelled shotgun.

Aptly titled Force-a-Nature, it promises to even things against the Heavies, and when fired at the ground gives the Scout a lead-based rocket-jump.

A poll is also over on the official site asking players to pick which Scout update will arrive first: the bat, the gun or the energy drink.

Better hurry on over before it goes live.

According to this PS3Attitude report, online servers for Killzone 2 will be up and running by Wednesday, two days before the UK and US release.

This should give the devs plenty of time to make sure the servers are prepared for the mass of folks just itching for some multiplayer action.

Meanwhile, the game’s official website has been revamped and new goodies have been added to it, so check it out.

In an interview with MTV Multiplayer, id Software mega-brain John Carmack admitted that he might’ve been a tad hasty in declaring Nintendo’s rascally white waggle-muffin to be an underpowered miscreant.

“Interestingly, I actually spend far more time playing Wii with my four year-old boy than I do with any other game console. So I’m definitely sympathetic to the platform,” he said.

“We’ve been pitched and talked about a project to do a title that would fit well on the Wii, and it’s actually related to an iPhone title that we’re doing. But that’s still kind of up in the air as to what other developer we would partner with on there.”

At the very least, however, Carmack is sure that his company’s first date with the Wii won’t be a crummy rehash of a previous id product.

“Yeah, it would have to be a completely different game. We would use one of our existing IPs where we have a little bit of leverage. It’s not something that really any of our titles, that are under development currently would be appropriate for,” he noted.

Tons more through the link.

Sorry. We couldn’t think of a headline “pun” involving the word “fuck”.

Capcom’s sheep-herding arcade alien thing, Flock!, will release on PC on April 7, Xbox Live April 8, and PSN on April 9, according to IGN.

The title puts you in a flying saucer equipped with an ovine-repelling beam of light, and puzzles are your crazy, freaking, moon-man business.

Don’t like the sound of it? Flock off, then.