Monthly Archives: February 2009

Atlus Online has announced new free-to-play MMO Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent, a steampunk title.

Fantasy meets 19th Century steam tech in the game, in which two nations fight over resources and protect their land from invasion.

Pets are included, and can be used as battle assistants, guides, healers or thieves. You get around the game using steam-powered mounts.

Beta will be launching shortly, and you can sign up for it on the official website.

Neo Steam will be made available everywhere but Europe.  Sorry ’bout that.

Read on for the full press release and more info.

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Newly-formed Ruffian Games – working on the as yet unannounced “Crackdown 1.5″ – has added Steve Iannetta and Ed Campbell as lead designer and senior designer respectively.

Iannetta previously worked at VIS, Red Lemon Studios, Realtime Worlds and Midway Newcastle. Campbell’s CV includes titles such as NARC, State of Emergency 2 and Crackdown.

“Given the abundance of talent, the chance to work with old friends on a ground breaking project and to be back in my beloved home town of Dundee, being a part of the Ruffian team is easily the most exciting opportunity I have ever been presented with,” said Iannetta.

Campbell added: “I’m delighted to be joining the excellent team at Ruffian. There’s a lot of talented, experienced guys here and that, coupled with a real knowledge and love of games, is what makes this an exciting team to be a part of.”

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Will Heavy Rain have DLC? Yes, it will. Glad we cleared that up.

“Honestly, my focus is on putting as much content as possible on the Blu-ray,” Quantic Dream boss David Cage told D-Pad.

“We have many plans for DLC, but I won’t work on them until the game is finished and fully satisfying. Games are expensive; my focus is to give as much as I can to gamers for their money.”

Heavy Rain, a story-heavy thriller, has been described by SCEE boss David Reeves as the most important PS3 title this year.

The Sony-exclusive was shown for the first time at Games Convention last August, and is planned for a late 2009 release.

After the break. The video shows of various character possibilities in SOE’s upcoming DC Universe Online in a series of stills.

The game allows you to create heroes or villains and play alongside the DC pantheon, and looks to have all your bases covered. Unless you want to “be” Batman.

It’s out for PC and PS3 this year.

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Both Ubisoft and Midway have told VG247 today that overnight talk of Ubi scooping up more Midway licenses is far-fetched.

Ubisoft confirmed last week that it’s to publish Midway’s Wheelman in America, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Austria, Ireland and the UK.

“Our agreement with Midway is simply to publish Wheelman,” said a Ubi rep this morning.

“That means we handle sales, distribution and marketing of the title. We have not announced any other agreement with Midway.

“Also I would like to underline that Midway retains the Wheelman IP.”

Word reached us last night that Ubisoft had moved on all Midway rights, including those for Mortal Kombat.

A Midway rep told us today that he’d heard nothing to suggest the talk was true, and that European operations remained unaffected by the firm’s recent filing for Chapter 11 in the US.

“We’re still working hard on internal plans,” he said. “There’s no plans for us to stop delivering high-end products.”

Privately, a separate Midway source described the rumour as both “absolute crap” and “complete bollocks”. Just in case you weren’t sure.

Wheelman releases on March 24.

According to Famitsu, Star Ocean 4 sold 166,027 units in its first four days on sale in Japan.

This apparently makes it the third fastest selling Japanese 360 game of all time, next to:

1. Blue Dragon – 203,740 copies
2. Tales of Vesperia – 170, 024 copies
3. Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope – 166,027 copies

Spot the RPG theme? The Square game’s out in Europe this “spring”.

Thanks, Kotaku and Blerk.

Update – It’s been pointed out that these are actually lifetime sales figures, meaning The Last Hope will almost certainly go on to be the biggest-selling 360 game in Japan so far.

Hot shit. Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram’s been rated as a multi-format title in Australia, news likely to cause a mixture of joyed shock and eye-rolling among the old school.

The twin-stick arcade mech fighter made its last console appearance on PS2, and was beloved as the day is long at the time. The game was – is? – a staple of Japanese arcades.

Sega was unavailable at the time of writing. Thanks, DarkZero.

Halo: Recon was renamed to Halo: ODST because the original title didn’t relay the game’s “experience,” Bungie group product manager Ryan Crosby has told Gameplayer.

“We’ve changed the name because we feel that it is a more accurate reflection of the game experience,” said the exec.

“The ODSTs play a pivotal role in the human-Covenant struggle, and we want to make sure that everyone understands that you play as a member of this elite unit. While Halo 3: ODST is an extension of Halo 3, playing as an ODST makes this experience quite different from others within the Halo universe.”

Recon was announced at TGS last year, but had a swift change in title.

There’s a full interview through there.

We’re trying to get Capcom on the phone now, but it does look as though the limited edition red Resident Evil 5 360 Elite announced this morning is to launch in Europe.

Eurogamer.de’s reporting that 2,000 units will release in Germany on March 13, priced €300.

If you’re in the UK, it looks as though you’re in luck as well. Game’s listing the bundle at £230.

Thanks, Lupine.

The latest Empire: Total War vid, to be found after the break, shows off show “superior tactics” in the historic RTS, involving men with guns and lots of horses.

There’s some gameplay in there which pretty ably shows why Creative Assembly games are pretty much the full stop for this type of thing.

One of the game’s designer wins a battle, in what looks reminiscent of the scene when we try to play one of these things: a big old warry mess.

Take a look. It’s out next Month.

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Sony, Nintendo and Nokia are being sued for allegedly infringing on patents related to the connectivity of handheld gaming devices.

According to this Edge report, a filing on February 13 shows that Texan firm Wall Wireless LLC is suing Sony, Nintendo, Nokia stepping on the toes of US patent 6,640,086, named “Method and Apparatus for Creating and Distributing Real-Time Interactive Media Content Through Wireless Communication Networks and the Internet.”

The patent explains that the invention “pertains … to methods and systems that allow an operator to distribute messages having aural or visual content that is generated by the operator using handheld apparatuses such as mobile telephones.”

Good luck with that. More through the link.

Nelson just announced the long-rumoured red Resident Evil 360 Elite bundle.

It’s out on March 13, the same day as the game, and includes a limited edition red controller, black Xbox 360 Headset, a 120Gb HD and an exclusive premium Resident Evil 5 theme from Live for $399.

Stock’s described as “very limited” (honest). No word on whether or not this is going to be released in Europe.

On Shacknews. The shots look really lovely, to be fair, showing some new space vistas, a planet surface and an internal location.

The MMO’s out next year, God willing.

Speaking to MTV, Capcom’s confirmed that the Resident Evil 5 demo has now been downloaded more than 4 million times.

The figure’s a combination of 360 and PS3 downloads.

The demo was released at the end of January, the 360 version hitting 1.8 million downloads in less than a week.

Both 360 and PS3 versions ship on March 13.

The Seattle PI, quoting figures apparently taken from an internal Microsoft spreadsheet, is reporting that 56 percent of all Live users were Gold members in 2008.

The piece adds that 60 percent of US users paid for Gold last year.

Microsoft said in the last NPD release that more than 17 million people had signed up for Live, meaning that if the SPI figures are true, the company took approximately $50 from 8.5 million people for Live subs last year.

That’s $425 million.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Producer Jun Takeuchi has told 1UP that Resident Evil it to get a proper reboot with its sixth game.

In what is destined to be the first genuinely epic game of 2009, Resident Evil 5 is practically guaranteed to be the last of its kind, with the game’s producer, Jun Takeuchi, assuring us that a reboot is in order for the inevitable Resident Evil 6. That’s not to suggest that there’s anything wrong with the evil at hand. Quite the opposite; it’s awesome fun, and we’ve beaten the game from beginning to end, and have a week’s worth of detailed, insider info for you to enjoy.

The news is likely to go down well with the many RE5 demo-players that felt the game was somewhat stuck in the past.

No date, details, or anything else for that matter. Obviously.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Someone called King Diamond’s included in Guitar Hero Metallica, it was announced today, which means virtually nothing to us as we don’t know who he is.

Luckily, the press release informs us that Mr Diamond heads a band called Mercyful Fate.

Greek to us. Read more about it through the link.

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FEAR 2 made a solid debut in the US PC charts for the week ending February 8, holding off both the Sims and Spore.

Nothing beats WoW, though. Previous week here. Thanks, Shack.

1. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King / Blizzard / $37
2. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin / Monolith / $49
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis / $19
4. Spore / EA Maxis / $42
5. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest / Blizzard / $35
6. The Sims 2 Deluxe / EA Maxis / $3
7. World Of Warcraft / Blizzard / $17
8. Call Of Duty: World At War / Treyarch / $43
9. Fallout 3 / Bethesda / $45
10. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Exp. Pack / EA Maxis / $19

Raven’s put out the first proper trailer of upcoming FPS Singularity, and, and you’d hope, it’s looking hot.

The plot’s based on a Soviet experiment gone wrong. There’s a special suit and time-warping.

It’s very pretty, no doubt. Out in the fourth quarter. Watch it after the break.

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More than 100 million Blu-ray discs will be sold across the US, Western Europe and Japan this year, research group Futuresource Consulting said today.

The group’s predicted HD TVs and reductions in Blu-ray player prices will spike interest in the format despite the global recession.

“In the USA, Blu-ray has moved from early adopter phase through to early majority, with the format gaining real traction in the marketplace,” said Mai Hoang, senior market analyst at Futuresource.

“Last year in the US alone, Blu-ray video retail sales increased by a whopping 320 per cent to 24 million units; and we’re going to see momentum continuing in 2009, with over 80 million disc sales forecast.”

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