Monthly Archives: March 2009

According to the Entertainment Retailers Association, the UK videogame market shot up 21.1 percent last year leaving an industry worth two billion pounds in its wake.

“If we look at the first three months of 2009, the pattern of games sales growing and video remaining static is continuing,” said ERA director general Kim Bayley amid reports that 2009 won’t be able to repeat the feat.

“One would expect games to grow and video to remain broadly flat – meaning games will overtake or knock at video’s door by the end of 2009.”

More over at Edge.

Looks like PS3 users may get their hands on Mass Effect 2 yet.

Speaking with Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk during a demo of Dragon Age: Origins at GDC yesterday, we asked point blank if the was headed to the console or not.

“We have announced Mass Effect 2 for PC and Xbox 360,” said Ray.

“We have no comment beyond that.”

EA refused to comment on a PS3 version of the game back in February, when John Riccitiello saying it would be a multi-platform affair.

When the game was officially announced in a press release earlier this month, again a PS3 version was not mentioned.

Game is expected to arrive sometime in early 2010.

According to the NPD Group, the Rock Band franchise has made $1 billion in revenue in North America.

The report also reveals that Rock Band was the number one title of 2008 by revenue across all game genres.

Rock Band now boasts 614 songs by 269 different artists with 40 million paid downloads since 2007.

Go, go team Rock Band.

Full thing after the break.

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According to MCV, Satoru Iwata announced at his GDC 09 keynote yesterday that the Balance Board has almost outsold the PS3 on a global level.

No direct quote was forthcoming but Iwata apparently went on to say that the Balance Board was a platform in its own right and offered developers great opportunities.

More through the link.

Update: Looks like Wolfenstein 3D is on its way to XBLA too. Thanks again, Blerk.

A listing on the PEGI ratings site reveals that Call of Duty is heading to XBLA, PSN and mobile devices.

Whether this is a remake of the 2003 shooter, or something new entirely, remains to be seen.

Thanks, Blerk.

It’s that time of week again when the PlayStation Store has new things for you to look at and buy.

This week you can grab Double Six’s PSN shooter, Burn Zombie Burn. There’s also a few Sackboy skins, some Pain downloads and an Unreal Tournament Titan Mutator Pack. Rargh!

The God of War III announcement trailer is also there so go get downloading.

Full list over at TheSixthAxis.

This BingeGamer article has taken last night’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 teaser trailer apart piece by excruciating piece. It’s worth looking at for the pure spectacle.

The movie included perks hints, a picture of a teddy bear and some Russian. And yes, the Russian’s already been translated. Told you: mental.

Our favourite bit’s the “farm” label. Or the sentence about “the sweetness and comfort from the IW logo”.

The game’s out in the fourth quarter.

In an interview with Norwegian site, Gamer.no, Remedy Games’ head of franchise development Oskari Häkkinen has revealed to he can’t say anything about Alan Wake. Not a smidgeon.

“I can not tell you anything about Alan Wake right now, not even progress on Alan Wake,” he said.

What he did say however, was that a comparison to Silent Hill was justified, meaning that the game will be heavy on atmosphere, story and puzzle-solving. Although he was quick to add there will be no zombies in Alan Wake. Shame.

Alan Wake was announced in 2005 for PC and Xbox 360.

Read the dodgy Google translation through the link.

Below is some brand new footage of Indiana Jones & The Staff of Kings gameplay for Nintendo Wii deatiling how the Wii mote will work.

If we’re being honest, we think it looks pretty ace; especially the bit where you pull a bookcase on top of some bad guys with your whip.

Have a look.

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A recent ERSB update has revealed that Batman will not be killing any goons in Rock Steady’s stealth/action title, Arkham Asylum.

This is an action game featuring characters from the Batman franchise. Players assume the role of Batman as he fights (never kills) his way through a psychiatric hospital populated by psychopathic criminals and humans infected with a toxic virus.

So there you have it. We want this now please, Eidos.

Thanks, DarkZero.

BioWare has upped a new Mass Effect 2 desktop wallpaper on the official site.

There are now four pieces to decorate your PC with.

We’re still champing at the bit for more details on this. Hopefully will have something for you soon.

More details have emerged about the XBLA/PSN top down shooter entitled Star Trek: DAC.

Although no-one will us what DAC means, they will tell us that the game will be developed by Roboblitz developer, Naked Sky and will feature “pure arcade action” with you flying around blowing up Romulan ships.

There will be some strategy however, as you’ll have to protect and harvest resources and complete goals within set time limits.

There’s some multiplayer action too.

Sounds like the best game in the whole world to us.

Thanks, EG.

Destructoid is reporting that Capcom’s Bionic Commando will “hit retail” on May 19.

Yesterday, Capcom also gave us a Japanese date of June 25. This goes alongside a Euro date of May 22.

The triumvirate is complete.

Wii owners should have noticed by now that their machines have updated to version 4.0 as the upgrade became available last night.

The biggest feature of the new firmware is SDHC support, meaning that Nintendo Wii now offers a suitable storage solution: SDHC cards go up to 32Gb. In fact, you can store up to 240 games on them.

Full details on Nintendo.com.

Kotaku has an extended CryENGINE 3 trailer and a whole host of new, high res images for you to look at.

We’ve blagged the trailer for you: it’s after the break. You’ll have to click through the link for the images, however.

Looks impressive, we reckon.

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After the break. It is, without doubt, God of War III being played – albeit in trailer form – apparently at GDC.

Quick. It’s bound to get pulled. Thanks, DarkZero.

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Square Enix has revealed that Dissidia: Final Fantasy will be released in Europe and other PAL territories this Autumn.

John Yamamoto, president and chief executive officer of Square Enix Ltd. comments, “With so many favourite heroes and villains contained in one game, DISSIDIA -FINAL FANTASY- is certainly going to appeal to fans of FINAL FANTASY. We also hope that players unfamiliar with the series are also attracted by an action-packed experience that really showcases the PSP and is set to become an instant classic on the system.

Full release after the break.

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Talking at GDC 09 in San Francisco, Braid creator Jonathan Blow has revealed that the rather superb puzzler cost around $200,000 to make.

However, he reckons if he lived in squalor whilst creating it, he could have cut costs even further:

“Also, a lot of that 200k was spent because I didn’t want to live in a shack somewhere… It doesn’t require $200,000 to make a game,” he said.

“It requires a PC, a dev kit and enough money to live on for the time it takes to develop, plus extra time because it will always slip. If you can live for three years at your Mom’s house, you can make a game for free.”

More over at EG.

Eurogamer’s tech expert Richard Leadbetter has written an article on just why he thinks the newly-announced Cloud gaming service OnLive “can’t possibly work.”

The first reason is because:

To give the kind of performance OnLive is promising (720p at 60 frames-per-second) realistically its datacenters are going to require the processing equivalent of a high-end dual core PC running a very fast GPU – a 9800GT minimum, and maybe something a bit meatier depending on whether the 60fps gameplay claim works out, and which games will actually be running. That’s for every single connection OnLive is going to be handling.

Then there’s:

First of all, bear in mind that YouTube’s encoding farms take a long, long time to produce their current, offline 2MBps 30fps HD video. OnLive is going to be doing it all in real-time via a PC plug-in card, at 5MBps, and with surround sound too.

It sounds brilliant, but there’s one rather annoying fact to consider: the nature of video compression is such that the longer the CPU has to encode the video, the better the job it will do. Conversely, it’s a matter of fact that the lower the latency, the less efficient it can be.

OnLive overlord Steve Perlmen has said that the latency introduced by the encoder is 1ms. Think about that; he’s saying that the OnLive encoder runs at 1000fps. It’s one of the most astonishing claims I’ve ever heard. It’s like Ford saying that the new Fiesta’s cruising speed is in excess of the speed of sound.

There’s plenty more to get your teeth into through this link.

Whether it will or won’t work, only time will tell.

After the break you can see SCEA Santa Monica’s Todd Papy talking about tanks and helicopters in God of War III.

Yes you heard us; tanks and helicopters.

Todd also talks about pacing and some other stuff. But you know, tanks and helicopters?

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