Monthly Archives: March 2009

Remember Gazillion Entertainment and Marvel signing a 10-year contract for Marvel MMOs? They’re going to have Marvel writers and artists working on them, apparently.

Marvel’s Ira Rubenstein said so at the GamesBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco.

Seems like the world cannot get enough of super heroes.

More through the link.

Bungie has said there are “no plans” for it to produce Halo 3 content beyond Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.

This is in response to Allen Murray’s comment this week that the studio would be working on Halo 3 content for two more years.

“We’ll never say never, but currently Bungie has no plans to make new Halo 3 content beyond the release of ODST,” Bungie told Eurogamer.

“We will, however, continue to support the Halo 3 online experience with regular updates to matchmaking playlists and wield the Banhammer as needed.

“With Forge and the Mythic map Sandbox we’re already seeing the community stepping up to create some great new maps and gametypes that will offer more variety and longevity to the game down the road.

The future of Halo 3 online will become more and more defined by the people who play it,” added the developer.

Halo 3: ODST is expected sometime this fall.

Eidos shareholders have accepted a takeover bid made by Square Enix with an overwhelming majority.

Once Eidos’s shares have been delisted, Square will gain control sometime in late April.

With Square now owning 85 percent of Eidos shares, the company has control over Hitman, Championship Manager, Tomb Raider and all other IP’s owned by Eidos.

More through the link.

Rockstar just sent out an email letting us know that the Xbox 360 version of Midnight Club: Los Angeles South Central has officially launched onto XBL.

Players can now download the first bit of content for MCLA chock full of brand new cars, vinyls, upgradeable parts, fresh beats, hydraulics, plus the included map expansion that adds four new neighborhoods.

Go see for yourself. The PS3 version’s already out.

GameStop had such a great fiscal 12 months, ending January, that the firm plans on opening another 400 stores worldwide this year.

Total sales for the full year increased 24.1 percent to $8.8 billion. This is compared to $7.1 billion last year, which results in an average store sales increase of +12.3 percent for the entire year.

“Looking at 2009, we are confident in our ability to increase sales and earnings, generate significant cash, advance market share, and maintain a financially sound balance sheet,” said GameStop CEO Daniel DeMatteo.

“We have positioned GameStop to offer video game consumers worldwide the best values for gaming.

“During the year, we expect to generate free cash flow (a non-GAAP measure of operating cash flow less capital expenditures) of over $500 million, after having invested $170 million in capital improvements, including the opening of more than 400 new stores worldwide.”

Last year, the company opened or acquired over 1,002 stores worldwide, including the purchase of French game retailer Micromania.

Press release below.

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“Blitz has created the first console software solution for rendering games for 3D TVs,” Blitz‘s Philip Oliver told us at GDC yesterday.

It’s another gimmick, right? Oliver is convinced not. So is the British journalist that sent us frantic MSN messages past midnight last week after seeing the tech demoed at the developer’s UK offices.

“Pat, no shit,” he said. “This is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in games for years. I can’t believe it.”

Word for word. He’d been shown a game running at 1080p and 120 frames a second, 60 frames for each eye. Steph saw it in San Francisco yesterday, and all you can hear on the recording in response is a stunned, “Wow.”

When Steph mailed last night, she said, “That 3D game was VERY impressive, by the way.”

And before you start, yes, we’re aware that Blitz is sponsoring the site for GDC. And no, that doesn’t mean we’re lying. Hit the link for the transcript of the demo.

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Dylan Cuthbert’s just upped a ton of information on PixelJunk Eden Encore on the PS Blog, including shots of the game’s new stages.

“We have added five whole new stages, each one choc-a-bloc full of ideas and gimmicks,” said the developer.

“We also designed five brand new backgrounds for them (each background for a garden is programmed uniquely just for that garden’s style – just in case you hadn’t noticed that in the original), and Baiyon went away and created five brilliant new tracks of music to match it all up.”

Full thing through there. There’s no set date for the pack as yet.

Here we go. Sony’s finally confirmed the timing for its E3 press conference.

The briefing will take place of June 2 at 11.00am PST. The Nintendo conference will precede it at 9.00am.

The Microsoft conference will come the day before. It’s taking place on June 1 at 9.00am PST.

It’s going to be megaton central. We’ll all be mayors.

The expo itself runs from June 2-4. Guess the first morning’s not going to be too busy, then.

CVG’s put up some direct-feed Bionic Commando videos from a near-final version. And here they are.

The game’s out in May. We would tell you what’s in the movies, but CVG’s videos always crash Firefox for us. So we can’t.

Shame.

Good grief. There’s a video after the break of WarioWare Snap being demoed in the Iwata keynote at GDC on Wednesday. It’s preposterous.

Seriously. Look.

Thanks, Destructoid.

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Valve’s said at GDC yesterday that Left 4 Dead has now sold more than 2.5 million copies at retail.

The score includes both the game’s PC and 360 releases, but not Steam sales.

More on Shacknews.

Blizzard’s confirmed it’s working on a fifth, unannounced project, as you can see here.

“This brand-new game is not a World of Warcraft expansion, and it is not related to the Next-Gen MMO,” said a rep.

“In the present, the brand-new game is using the World of Warcraft engine merely for testing purposes.”

This new game is extra to World of Warcraft, Diablo III, StarCraft II and the company’s unnamed MMO.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Codemasters has posted up a DiRT2 teaser trailer on the game’s site: hit this.

You can’t see it if you’re in the US, apparently, probably because there’s video of a woman in a shower in it and America has a problem with the fact people have skin.

There’s no much by way of gameplay in there, but you will see some cars. It’s all you can hope for.

Take a look. The game’s out in September.

Having confirmed that The Sims 3 will have no online protection yesterday, the company’s now said the policy will only extend to that single game for now.

“We are just looking at this solution for The Sims 3 at the moment,” a rep told Eurogamer.

Maxis boss Rod Humble said on his blog this week that online DRM would skip Sims 3.

After the break. It’s direct-feed gameplay footage taken from the Spanish version of the forthcoming demo, apparently.

It looks great. This has been grabbed from PartnerNet, supposedly. Naughty rabbits.

The game’s out on June 19 for all formats.

Thanks, Blerk.

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Spore-creator Will Wright has told VG247 that he believes Cloud will work if supported properly by developers and publishers, and that the concept represents a “great opportunity” for the industry.

“In the future, if people are really browsing these things, it’s a great opportunity,” he said, talking of Cloud-based systems like OnLive, which was announced this week at GDC.

If Cloud gaming’s successful, however, Wright said it wouldn’t affect the way he develops games.

“No, not really,” he said when asked if a surge in Cloud popularity would change his content.

“With hardware I really don’t care if it’s Xbox, PC or Cloud.”

OnLive caused quite a stir earlier this week with its remote-play concept, a theory apparently debunked yesterday by tech specialist Richard Leadbetter.

DSi punched its way back to the top of the Japanese hardware sales charts this week, overtaking both PSP and PS3. Normality is restored.

Last week’s chart here. Data below from March 16-22.

• DSi – 71,233
• PSP – 65,765
• PS3 – 25,435
• Wii – 18,095
• DS Lite – 8,948
• Xbox 360 – 5,441
• PS2 – 5,067

LittleBigPlanet’s about to be upgraded to v1.12, as you can see on the PS Blog, an update SCEA’s dubbed the “Cornish Yarg” edition.

We don’t know why.

The patch will include several features – such as being able to play your own music in the game off the XMB – and a few fixes.

Hit the link for full details. There’s no specific date on it yet.

Why do M-rated games lack success on Nintendo platforms? Because Nintendo’s “broader than that,” apparently. Sega and Rockstar must be thrilled.

“I’m not going to make an argument for why certain M-rated games, as you say, don’t achieve a certain amount of momentum on the Nintendo platform,” NoA corporate affairs VP Denise Kaigler told IGN at GDC yesterday.

“We’re broader than that. And that’s what our contribution to this industry is. We are making sure that we make games for a broad consumer platform from age five to 95, and that really has worked well for us.”

GTA: Chinatown Wars charted at six in the UK rankings on release, while Sega’s MadWorld only managed to place at 34. Why? Ask Sega.

“We’re not saying that certain games can’t succeed on Wii,” Kaigler added.

“We want those games. We want people to bring those opportunities to us. So I opened up my answer to your question by saying talk to Sega, talk to those guys.”

Sure it’s not because Nintendo hardware’s explosive growth this generation has been a result of selling in to non-gamers? We think it might be.

That interview’s well worth a read.

Keita Takahashi confirmed that Noby Noby Boy’s on its way to iPhone in his GDC session yesterday.

He showed it running. It features a multi-touch control scheme, with the player manipulating each end of the stretchy BOY character – represented in 2D – with a different finger.

Apparently he started it “a week ago”.

More on Eurogamer.