Monthly Archives: March 2009

Seriously, it’s dead. Therefore, look at this first video of Space Invaders Extreme XBLA.

Looks all shooty and shit.

It came out on DS and PSP last year, There’s no specific date on the XBLA version as yet.

Thanks, Blerk.

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A Codemasters Online rep’s just confirmed that a bunch of events are being planned for Lord of the Rings Online’s second birthday in April.

Quite what’s going to happen is unknown as yet, but there are meetings to discuss it all today, so you should know very soon.

The Turbine MMO launch on April 24, 2007, and is currently winding up to the release of its Volume 2: Book 7 expansion. Get patch notes on that here.

Mines of Moria was the last disc product associated with the game, which released at the end of last year.

VG247 and Sega have teamed up to give you a once in a lifetime opportunity to win a super-exclusive limited edition blue vinyl EP and fuck-busting Sega games music.

When we say “teamed up,” we mean Sega sent us one automatically. Just for the sake of clarity.

The record’s been made to celebrate the launch of Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for PS3 and 360. The disc you’re playing for, user, is number 3,232. Get some pictures of it after the break.

How to win it? Simple. Tell us why you deserve to be part of Sega history in the comments below. Best one wins the record and a retail copy of the game on the format of your choice.

We’ll tell you who’s got it next Monday.

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Activision’s named Thibaud de Saint-Quentin as its new senior vice president and managing director of European publishing.

“The European market is critical to our continued profitable growth plans and we’re delighted to have a talent of Thibaud’s calibre on board to guide the organisation to even higher levels of success,” said Brian Hodous, chief customer officer.

“His leadership will be instrumental in the success of the company in Europe and I very much look forward to working with him in the coming years to further enhance our commercial agenda.”

More thrills on GI.

EA put out what looks to be a sizeable update to the PC version of FIFA 09 this morning, including over 900 player pictures and all winter transfer from 42 countries.

There’s a Live Ticker thing in it, as well.

You can download it now. All the patch notes are here.

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A lengthy video of Outrun Online Arcade has popped up on GamerBytes, and has “no brainer” stamped all over it, to be honest.

This and VOOT have already been factored into monthly Live expenditure allowances.

After the break. No release date as yet. Thanks, Blerk.

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Tabula Rasa is officially dead. We checked, and now, so can you.

After the break, you’ll find a video of the explosively decompressed MMO’s last hurrah. It has lasers, explosions, and some guy break-dancing – everything you could want from one of these things, really.

Oh, it’s also set to Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” which we assume is the sole reason humanity’s ragtag bouncer squad was able to boot the aliens back to their crummy planet.

Watch it. This is literally the last you’ll ever hear of this game. Probably.

Thanks, WarCry Network.

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Massive’s latest set of mountains and molehills for its possibly prophetic RTS is almost here, according to a report over at Gamershell.

World in Conflict: Soviet Assault will give the game a few new environments for you to wreck with tank tracks, along with Endwar-style vocal controls, and will launch on March 13. At this point, a responsibility-neglecting excess of excitement will no longer prove fatal.

So, who’s buying?

Xbox live policy chief Stephen Toulouse has admitted that the service’s current stance of the expression of sexual orientation is flawed, and that a solution to the issue of people being banned for including such information in their profile data hinges on users not being able to abuse the facility.

“It’s not an elegant policy,” Toulouse told the Major in his latest podcast. “It’s an objective policy, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to experience it in the same way.”

He added: “We’re taking a look at a way in which we can provide the ability for people to express themselves in a way that can’t be misused,” but said he had “nothing to announce” yet.

Toulouse said that the Live team has been working on the issue since last summer. It was thrown into the limelight last week when a woman was apparently banned for saying she was a lesbian in her Live profile.

“When we came across this last summer, we took a look at what we can do about it, and one of the proposals [was] ‘Why don’t you just stop banning those words? Why don’t you let “gay” be expressed?’

“And so we thought, ‘OK, that’s a reasonable request. Let’s go and take a look at the data.’ And we found that somewhere between 95 and 98 percent of the time, depending on the month, the use of the word – I’ll use the word ‘gay’ as just the predominant example – the use of that word was an an insult.

“You know, ‘That’s gay,’ or ‘You’re gay,’ or ‘Joe is gay,’ something that was definitely against our terms of use.”

Toulouse added that the current Live stance has led to him being personally abused.

“I tell you, the amount of mail I get that calls me horrible variations on ‘homophobe’… but once I explain, people go, ‘Oh, this isn’t an easy problem to solve.’”

Get the audio file through the link. Well worth a listen.

Midway is seeking an “execution of an asset purchase agreement for the sale of Midway’s Mortal Kombat franchise assets,” according to court documents posted on NetDockets.

$3,755,000 in bonuses has been set aside by the struggling firm for those that manage to offload rights, one of which was for Wheelman, recently picked up by Ubisoft.

And where do you get nearly $4 million when you’re bankrupt? You withhold previously promised PTO payment to employees. Genius.

We may not have the keenest business minds in the universe, but selling the things that make you money in return for small amounts of money probably only leads one way.

Thanks, Kotaku.

PSP RPG Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 was the bestselling game in Japan last month, according to Famitsu data.

The game sold 288,860 units between January 26 and February 22, beating out Mario & Luigi RPG3 (278,664 units) and PES 09 (177,399 units) to second and third respectively.

Full top ten below, courtesy of Kotaku.

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Infinity Ward’s set up a Twitter feed for suggestions about what to include in Modern Warfare 2, due for release at the end of this year.

All you need to do is add #mw2 to the beginning of your message and get involved. There’s a constant flow of posts on that page, and it’s quite fun to watch if you’ve been up half the night feeding babies and you’re a bit boss-eyed.

Take a look.

SCEA’s made it a little easier to get a community crown in LittleBigPlanet, as seen on the PS Blog.

Up till now, the only way of getting one was to win a prize in a LittleBigChallenge, but the firm wanted to open things up a little now the game’s community is “becoming more and more active”.

You’ll need a US PSN account to have a chance with any of this lot.

#1 – A “Gold Star” on the LittleBigWorkshop
Frequently, when we’re on LittleBigWorkshop.com, every so often, we come across a submission, whether it is an inspiration, workshop or forum post that makes us smile. As a small token of our appreciation, we like to put a smile on your face too by giving you a Community Prize Crown.

#2 – Raising our Eyebrows
Every once in awhile, LBP fans do something that immediately grabs the attention of a few people, spreads on the web, and eventually is talking about it. We love it when this happens, and as a sign of thanks, you may just get a Community Prize Crown in your mail box.

#3 – LittleBigChallenges
We’re in the process of coming up with more LittleBigChallenges, so get your creative thoughts together and stay tuned next week for LittleBigChallenge2.

Janco’s Mike Hickey has told the LA Business Journal that THQ has a 50-50 chance of going bankrupt, based on “mediocre product”.

THQ recently announced 600 lay-offs in an effort to trim costs after dropping nearly $200 million in ’08′s final quarter.

CEO Brian Farrell has shrugged off Hickey’s opinion. From the piece:

“You have mediocre product and you’re running out of cash,” said Michael Hickey, an analyst with Janco Partners Inc. in Denver, who put the odds of THQ going bankrupt at 50-50. “Not the situation they want to be in right now.”

THQ executives are scrambling. Chief Executive Brian Farrell last month launched an aggressive turnaround plan, slashing costs for next year by $220 million and laying off almost 600 employees.

Farrell dismissed talk of takeovers and bankruptcy as gossip.

“I know that makes for good print and sells newspapers, but those aren’t the kind of things we focus on right now,” Farrell told the Business Journal. “When the stock price is depressed, the naysayers can have their day in the sunshine. But we have a plan that we’re very confident will give us cash and return the company to profitability.”

Plenty more through there.

The official Need for Speed site‘s got the first image of Need for Speed World Online’s UI, and very MMO it looks too.

There’s a chat pane down the bottom, it’s sporting an EVE-like auto-drive feature and the entire thing’s customizable.

“Key to the concept of NFS World Online is the user interface which has been built from the ground up to take advantage of the PC architecture,” said producer Scott Henshaw.

“Instead of a traditional console view of a game, we’re using a user-selectable gadget interface designed specifically for the PC.

“The system allows the gamer to choose which components of the interface they want to add to their game. The gadgets are really flexible and offer a wide range of display options: docked/undocked, floating in the game window or just sitting outside of the game space.”

There’s more through there. The game’s out later this year.

There are many updates, announcements, and other goings on in MMO-land during the week, and it can be hard to keep up. Luckily, you have us.

Get the last seven days’ worth of significant MMO news after the break.

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According to ESA IRS records, CEO Mike Gallagher was paid $789,929 for the 12 months ending March 31, 2008, GamePolitics reports.

By way of comparison, Gallagher’s predecessor, Doug Lowenstein, earned $744,344 for the prior year, plus a benefits package valued at $96,616.

We got Mike on the phone about this, but he couldn’t hear us over the sound of his private helicopter winding up. Maybe next time.

A teaser video for upcoming WoW raid Uldar has been released by Blizzard.

Players will get to test themselves against the epic dungeon when patch 3.1 goes live.

Looks like fun. Watch it below.

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PC users interested in playing as a teenage girl turned into a monster by a meteorite are in luck.

The Monster Vs Aliens demo from Activsion is being hosted on FileFront, WorthPlaying and StrategyInformer.

Featuring three playable levels, the taster shows what happens when monsters held at a secret government compound fight off an alien invasion.

Based on the movie, the game’s for everything but PSP on March 24.

Let us know how your kids liked it.

This year’s Game Connection, taking place at GDC, has 220 exhibitors confirmed for the March 24-26 event, says Gamasutra.

Self-described as “a unique speed dating event for business-focused game makers,” GC will see over 30 nations represented, 40 percent of which are North American, with 15 percent from Asian countries.

Half of the 220 exhibitors are PC developers, 75 are for Wii, and 35 are companies who focus on PSN, XBLA and WiiWare titles.

Loads of stuff to see and do, apparently.