Monthly Archives: March 2009

Blizzard’s Rob Pardo has said that the company has been in talks with Microsoft about Xbox 360′s successor, Eurogamer writes.

Although no quote is given, Pardo reportedly said that Blizzard is actively in discussions with the Redmond giant whilst at the Luminaries Lunch at GDC yesterday.

The piece goes on to say that other developers attending the session have not had any such discussions with Microsoft.

Bombshell. More through the link.

The official The Beatles Rock Band site is slowly instruments, presumably those you’ll get plastic replicas of when the game is released on September 9.

There’s Ringo’s Ludwig drum kit and the band’s classic Epiphone Casino guitar with a vintage Vox stack beside it.

Take a look through here.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Bungie producer Allen Murray, in a talk about the studio’s production process, told GDC attendees yesterday that Halo will be a fixture of the company’s work for some time yet.

“Halo 3 took two and a half years to make, and we’re still working on it,” Murray said, as reported by IGN.

“We’ll probably be working on it for two more years.”

ODST, releasing at the end of this year, has already been confirmed as the last Bungie Halo game.

Murray refused to be drawn on any specifics, however: “We’re working on multiple projects right now,” he said.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Just in case there was any ambiguity about the Kojima comment IGN posted up last night about the developer preparing to announce a game at E3, 1UP’s dispelled it: there will be no Kojima game reveal in his keynote at GDC today.

“I’m not going to be talking about new titles or anything,” he said in an interview yesterday.

“I’ll leave that for sometime later.”

Don’t worry, though. His speech is going to be a riot.

“Since it’s a keynote and since we’re in the entertainment business, I try to make my presentations as entertaining as possible,” he said.

So. How much are flights to LA again?

Fallout 3 took the DCA for Game of the Year at GDC last night, with LittleBigPlanet the other, rather obvious big winner on the night.

Full list of results below, courtesy of Tawkn.

Best New Debut: LittleBigPlanet
Runners up: Braid, Sins of a Solar Empire, World of Goo and Soul Bubbles

Best Audio: Dead Space
Runners up: L4D, MGS4, Gears of War 2

Best Game Design: LittleBigPlanet
Runners up: Fallout 3, L4D, Braid and Far Cry 2

Best Downloadable Game: World of Goo
Runners up: Braid, N+, PixelJunk Eden, Castle Crashers

Best Handheld Game: God of War: Chains of Olympus
Runners up: Patapon, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, echochrome, The World Ends With You

Ambassador Award: Tommy Tallarico

Best Writing Award: Fallout 3
Runners up: Braid, MGS4, GTAIV and Far Cry 2

Best Technology Award: LittleBigPlanet
Runners up: Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, GTAIV and Spore

Best Visual Art Award: Prince of Persia
Runners up: LittleBigPlanet, Gears of War 2, MGS4 and Fallout 3

Pioneer Award: Harmonix’s Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy

Innovation Award: LittleBigPlanet
Runners up: Spore, World of Goo, Boom Blox, Braid

Lifetime Acheivement Award: Hideo Kojima

Game of the Year Award: Fallout 3
Runners up: Fable 2, LittleBigPlanet, Left 4 Dead, GTAIV

Infinity Ward’s shown the first teaser trailer of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, as you can see on the game’s now-official site.

The game’s dated at the end of the movie: it’s out on “11/10/09,” which in America-speak is November 10.

There’s little to see in the trailer. Chopper blades, a few explosions and the like, but everything’s green. It is a teaser, after all.

Is this Keighley’s GDC reveal? It probably is.

Eurogamer.pt has the first few screens of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King sequel, My Life as a Darklord.

The main character looks like the result of an embarrassing one-nighter between Tidus from Final Fantasy X and KOS-MOS from Xenosaga, we think. But otherwise, the game looks like an angel given the form of a small, circular disc that can be crammed inside a box.

Square Enix hasn’t really elaborated on the game much yet, but from what we can tell, it looks like something along the lines of Trapt on the PS2 — what with all the allusions to adventurer-thwarting.

Check out the screens through the link.

After the break. It shows Metallica being motion captured for the Guitar Hero special edition. And that’s it.

How can these people still hear anything? It’s out this spring.

More »

Ziff Davis’ FileFront download service has been handed its walking papers. According to a farewell post on the site, users have until March 30 to snap up their favorite demos, movies, and patches before the site becomes home to a roving herd of domain squatters.

“We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009,” reads the post.

“If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended.”

“Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere ‘thank you’ for your support over the years and wish you all the very best. ”

Best of luck to all affected by this unfortunate turn of events.

Edge Online boss Colin Campbell has left the site to work for MCV-owner Intent.

Campbell will be based in San Francisco, taking a role as “head of US content and business development”.

“When managerial responsibility of Edge Online was moved from Future’s US office to its UK office, I felt that it was the right time for me to move on,” said Campbell.

Best of luck, Colin.

More here.

Hideo Kojima told IGN today that he’s to announce a new project at E3.

The developer, speaking in a GDC keynote tomorrow, wouldn’t be drawn on the title’s content, saying only that, “An official game announcement will be made at E3.”

Which probably means you’re not going to see anything especially mind-blowing from him in the morning.

Or does it?

DSi, you definitely got your great, great grandpappy‘s genes.

Speaking during his “Inspiration Behind Nintendo DSi Development” GDC talk, project leader of the Nintendo DSi Hardware group Masato Kuwahara said that Nintendo plans to release “Nintendo DSi-enhanced game cards,” which will hold more features than your obsolete, back-of-the-closet-bound DS Lite can handle.

“For example,” Kuwahara said, “you will use these features if you want to create textures from photographs taken with the DSi camera.”

The game carts are still in development.

Thanks, Kotaku.

GTTV’s Geoff Keighley’s updated his Twitter to assure that the major reveal he mentioned for GDC this weekwasn’t the new Zelda game shown in Iwata’s keynote tonight.

“Big surprise is multi-platform,” he said. “And it goes down in about 6 or 7 hours.”

At which point we’ll be in bed. What is it?

OXM (via CVG) has a few new details on Capcom’s slightly thawed shooter sequel, and — at least to us — it sounds a bit like Sony’s Shadow of the Colossus with some Monster Hunter thrown in for good measure.

“Lost Planet 2 will put a huge emphasis on your responsibility to your team,” said OXM. “Besides having you mind your own T-ENG reserves when the fighting gets rough, Capcom also plans to incorporate something called a ‘Team Military Power Bar.’ If you happen to die during a mission, you’ll be able to immediately respawn at a data post – but your team’s overall Military Power Bar will take a hit.”

Taking on the game’s “skyscraper-sized” bosses, then, requires players to stand on each others’ shoulders, metaphorically (and, we hope, sometimes literally) speaking.

“My three comrades have scattered to the winds,” said OXM of it first battle with a “three-story high” boss monster. ”

“A buddy has somehow grapple-hooked onto the back of the monster and is now riding it like a giant, living surfboard,” the Xbox-centric magazine added.

And then they pour cold steel into the unfortunate beast’s various glowing “hotspots” until it keels over. Sound familiar?

We’re pretty excited about this one — at least, so long as it lives up to OXM’s description.

More through the link.

Earlier today, Sony’s director of PlayStation Home in the US, Jack Buser, announced that Home’s beautiful, wide-open frontier will soon be paved over with tens, hundreds — maybe even thousands — of themed spaces.

“You’ll see about three new spaces launched a month – I’ll be shocked if we ever go under that number, we have so much in the pipeline,” Buser said during a talk at GDC.

Among other things, he also encouraged developers to implement microtransactions in Home with the following rationale:

“What else can you buy for 49 cents? You can’t even get a cup of coffee. It’s great value for the gamers.”

Yeah.

Tons more through the link.

The simple answer is “not much”. Fumito Ueda just appeared in a panel at GDC and would only say the following about his next, hugely anticipated project:

“Well, probably it will be similar to the past… we are struggling. The essence of the game is rather close to ICO.”

That was it. This nugget came from a conversation between Ueda and Grasshopper star SUDA51.

Get the rest of it from Shacknews.

OhGizmo! snagged a few new details on the portable Duke Nukem trilogy, which appeared at GDC in a more or less corporeal form.

Apparently, the trilogy will not only exist, but exist in two different forms: three games on the DS and three on the PSP.

However, the DS versions will see Duke spewing a few less bricks from his potty mouth en route to a T rating. The PSP version, meanwhile, won’t replace Duke’s fiery tongue with the joyful laughter of children, instead of opting for an M-rating.

More through the link.

The first video of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Track is after the break. The game was announced this morning in Nintendo’s Iwata keynote at GDC.

It’s very cute. There’s a fair amount of gameplay in there, so enjoy yourself.

The game’s out this year. More detail here.

More »

We’re about to go live with coverage from David Perry’s Luminaries Lunch, this year featuring Will Wright, Warren Spector, Nolan Bushnell, Rob Pardo and, the man himself “Big” Dave Perry.

The session is the biggest of the big guns waxing lyrical on dev issues. You may well be in for some surprises, so keep those peepers peeled.

It’s scheduled to start at 1.00pm PST, or 8.00pm GMT. Get all the updates after the break.

More »

Nelson’s confirmed that Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt is now back up on Live.

The content was pulled yesterday after a corrupted file caused all sorts of nastiness.

Nelson’s added some notes:

The Pitt is has returned to the service! If you purchased and downloaded The Pitt yesterday, you’ll need to delete that version from your storage device before you download the new version. Here is an official support document that outlines what you’ll need to do to to delete the old version, but the basic steps are as follows:

* Sign in to Xbox LIVE then press the guide button
* Go to Settings->System Settings->Memory.
* From here, scroll down to Fall Out 3 and press A.
* Select Fallout 3: The Pitt (Marketplace Content) press A then choose Delete, then Yes to Delete.

Now, you can go and re-download the new version for no charge and begin your adventure. Remember, any content you purchased (like The Pitt) can be re-downloaded at no charge.

Also, don’t delete anything that says ‘Autosave.’ That would be bad

So off you go.