Monthly Archives: March 2009

GameStop has said it finally has enough Wii hardware in stock to meet consumer demand, following three year’s worth of shortages.

“You know, three years later, we finally have enough inventory on the shelf, and we’ve got a couple of weeks in supply of this”, said boss Bob McKenzie.

“That’s good, because we can finally determine and gauge it before we get into the fourth holiday season”.

Buy some more, quick. Before they sell out again.

A new Age of Booty demo has been released on the Euro PSN.

Apparently the old one had issues.

It’s a casual real-time strategy game where players team up online to raid villages, sink merchant ships, seize towns and steal gold. Best of all, you can customize your pirate ship.

The full version of Age of Booty for PS3 features proper Trophy support.

2K is now taking pre-orders for the developer’s edition of BioShock: Breaking the Mold.

Previously a free online book, this will run you $24.99 in physical form. It’s full of commentary regarding the game’s development and includes some new bits over the ‘net edition.

It is 174 pages, soft covered and sold exclusively through 2K’s online store. If you pre-order it you get free shipping anywhere around the globe.

Nintendo is currently working on it’s own application strategy similar to iPod, iPhone and other mobile games.
That’s according to Develop sources.

During the Nintendo Developer Conference in London this week, the site heard that the gaming giant has a plan to push developers towards “producing short-form content for its new DSi handheld”.

The device will allow access to both the DS Shop and DSi Ware, which will contain shorter applications for games and non-gaming related apps.

“Our team sees this as an exciting and major app strategy for the DSi,” said one of the sources.

“Nintendo is keen to have developers offering all kinds of software once the DSi store fully launches for access in Europe and America,” added another.

“Given the advanced functions in the DSi, such as the microphone and camera, the company told us that there are a variety of opportunities for a variety of apps, both in a games sense and a non-games sense, that we could offer.”

It is speculated that Satoru Iwata’s keynote at GDC next week will touch on this. We will let you know for sure: we’ll be there.

If you were wondering where the “Sea of Dreams” bit from BioShock 2′s name had got to in the recent GI reveal, the answer’s pretty simple: it isn’t there any more.

“You won’t be seeing ‘Sea of Dreams’ moving forward, just ‘BioShock 2′,” 2K Games community manager Elizabeth Tobey told Primotech.

The games was originally titled BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams when shown in its first trailer.

Never more. We should probably care. But we don’t.

Thanks, Blue.

WoW Gold Facts has said that 30 percent of MMO players buy virtual goods and services.

Eurogamer spoke to the anonymous owner of the site, who said that because of the huge size of the market MMO companies should license purchased transactions.

“In my opinion, the industry would be better served if publishers would recognise that lots of gamers – I’ve heard it’s 30 percent of the player base – like the benefits of RMT, and work with credible companies and allow it to happen,” he said.

“I don’t see why this is not possible. They could make a condition of involvement in RMT that players give them a complete release of all forms of liability.”

Currently, the online “black market” of gold buying has an estimated worth of $2 billion. Most MMO companies take a strong stance against this, and have phishing software in place to try to combat companies from messaging players in-game to hawk their wares.

Unity Technologies has announced the availability of Unity 2.5 for Windows, allowing devs to now do their 3D shizzle in Vista, XP and 2000, with “100% feature parity and interoperability” with Mac OSX.

You can tell GDC’s around the corner.

“Now Windows users can finally get their hands on the tool that is generating an incredible amount of excitement on other platforms and has already been used to create a series of hit games”, said Unity’s David Helgason.

This is the same platform being used by EA, Cartoon Network, and Funcom in the 3D space.

Expect to see a bunch more from these guys in San Francisco next week.

Rockstar’s released the Midnight Club LA South Central DLC pack.

The first bit’s is free and contains a new area of the city that is one-third the size of the original map. The second part will run you 800 MS Points (£7.99 PSN), and is filled with new missions, races and vehicles.

There’s a video of it below.

More »

For the past eight years, the annual Dataspelsgalan awards ceremony has been held in Sweden, honoring the Swedish Game of the Year for Swedish developers. Especially Swedish ones.

This year’s winner was DICE’s Mirror’s Edge as the “graphics on level three were really tight”.

Previous Swedish GOTY winners:

• 2000 Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter
• 2001 Ground Control
• 2002 Headhunter
• 2003 Battlefield 1942
• 2004 -
• 2005 Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
• 2006 Battlefield 2
• 2007 GTR 2: FIA GT Racing Game
• 2008 World in Conflict

Thanks, Joystiq.

Gamerbyte’s posted up a leaked shot of the control inputs for the XBLA version of Virtual On: Oratoria Tangram.

Left and right turboing for the win. The game’s out this “spring”.

The image has come from Partnernet, apparently. Naughty rabbits.

Thanks, Blerk.

Famitu’s posted up the first proper shots of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Get them here. Looks sehr purdy, as you’d expect.

The PS3 game’s going to be shown for the first time in San Francisco next week.

Tecmo’s said it’ll be out in the US and Japan this year, but Europeans will have to wait for an unspecified date.

A Nintendo fan has decided to render The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening in 3D.

MithosKuu – it’s what he calls himself, don’t judge him – is beta testing the environment for something called zChicken Hunter Extreme. Nope, we don’t know either.

You can help. Get the beta here.

The OXM Awards went down last night, with GTA IV winning Best Action Adventure and Gears of War 2 got best shooter.

No surprises there.

Fallout 3 took home two gongs, one for Best RPG and the other for Game of the Year.

The awards were chosen by readers.

More over at the OXM website.

Halo Wars has hit one million sales worldwide, making it the best selling strategy title for Xbox 360.

Released last month, the game has attracted over 2.6 million multiplayer matches via XBL – 118 years of combined time, apparently – with an average of 200,000 users logging in to play daily.

Press release after the jump.

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A sales surge in UK game sales has followed last week’s BAFTA Awards, according to Play.com and GAME.

Play.com saw a 14 percent increase over targeted projections in new customers, and GAME said that games sporting BAFTA stickers have been flying off the shelves.

“The reaction in GAME stores and online to the BAFTAs has been fantastic,” said GAME Group’s Terry Scicluna

“In all GAME stores the nominated games were stickered as official BAFTA nominees, and in the last week the winning games have been re-stickered to highlight their Award success. It was brilliant that over 60,000 people voted for the GAME Award on our specially created site, which then linked through to game.co.uk so that customers could buy the games straight away.”

More on MCV.

ESA said today that 90 percent of E3 2009′s floorspace has sold through.

More than 100 companies are attending the LA Convention Center show this year, which takes place from June 2-4.

“If you have a career in games or just love to play them, get out your calendar and circle the first week of June,” said EA comms boss Jeff Brown.

“The E3 Expo is bigger and better this year and for EA, the expanded format means we’ll have more demos, announcements, promotions and blockbuster games than ever before.”

More on GI.

On the official site. The cel-shaded MMO’s looking very cool, so much so, in fact, that we can get vaguely excited about a picture of a virtual bus shelter.

The game, Cryptic’s first since being bought by Atari, releases for PC this “spring”.

Nelson’s confirmed that the first Call of Duty: World at War map pack’s now up on Live.

Blurb:

The Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 expands the addictive COD multiplayer experience with four new maps. Players fight through the burning streets of Berlin in “Nightfire” and take up battle positions in fortified Japanese bunkers in “Knee Deep.” “Station” offers a bombed out underground train station, and the Nazi Zombies return in “Verrückt” (Zombie Asylum) featuring more weapons, new Perks-a-Cola machines and electroshock defenses

It’s 800 MS Points.

Update: It’s out today for PS3 as well. Get details here. There’s a new zombie trailer after the break.

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EG.pt’s put up some new Dragon Quest IX shots.

The RPG’s looking very cute, and contains large hats, which is pretty much all you can ask for.

Square delayed the game recently, pushing it back from March 28 to July 11.

You may see it in the West before you die.

Given the fact there are over 30 million iPhone OS-based devises in the world, you’d think Sony might be worried about Apple unstoppable march into gaming would worry a company that makes something like PSP. SCEA’s Peter Dille doesn’t give a fig, apparently.

“I think it’s a separate business,” the PSN marketing boss told GameDaily.

“The iPhone is a phone and the PSP is a dedicated gaming device that does a lot more than play games. Consumers that want to carry a PSP are primarily gamers and I think there’s a big difference in the types of games you can play on a PSP versus an iPhone.”

Dille went on to say there was a fundamental difference between iPhone software and PSP games.

“The iPhone games and apps are largely diversionary, whereas we’re a gaming company and we make games for people who want to carry a gaming device and play a game that offers a satisfying 20+ hours of gameplay,” he said.

“So it’s really coming at the market with different perspectives… A phone versus a gaming machine.”

More through there.