Monthly Archives: April 2009

Ubisoft said in a conference call last night that Shaun White Snowboarding has now sold more than 3 million units, Gamespot reports.

On the strength of the numbers, Shaun’s going to make a comeback, boss Yves Guillemot said.

“You can expect more Shaun White in the future,” said the exec.

Ubi showed a Q4 sales increase of 14 percent to $1.4 billion last night.

Valve’s giving you Left 4 Dead for free this week, allowing you to play the shooter for 24 hours for nothing.

Starting Friday at midday GMT, you’ll be able to download and waste some zombies without parting with cash.

After 24 hours, the game will lock. You get back in with your wallet.

Details here.

Tekken 6 executive producer Katsuhiro Harada told US journalists this week that Tekken 6 is to have “console-specific content.”

There’s no detail on what the extra stuff is as yet. Call us mental, but we’re going to go for new characters and new stages.

It’s out this autumn for PS3 and 360. Thanks, Siliconera.

Tasty. Atari just confirmed Magna Carta 2 for a PAL release this autumn.

The SoftMax RPG is a 360 exclusive, and promises 40 hours of play.

Trailer here. Press release after the break.

More »

Comedy action adventure thing Brutal Legend was always going to be published, Double Boss Tim Schafer said in London last week, despite the fact Activision dropped the heavily hyped title when it merged with Blizzard.

“Well, no,” he said when asked if he was afraid it would never come out.

“It’s always got a lot of support, and even when we were with one publisher we got a lot of interest from other publishers. In that period when we were changing publishers, we got so much attention for it.

“We had this game that we could show in a very finished state. So we always had someone who wanted to publish the game.”

Schafer said he bore Activision no resentment.

“No, it’s a different company,” he added. “They went through a big merger. As soon as we heard the word ‘merger,” we were like, ‘OK. Shenanigans.’

“It’s just business. We’ve had such a great time with EA. They’ve been very supportive of the game, and they’ve exposed us to a lot more people, bringing me here, talking to you guys, and just in general giving us a lot of support.”

Schafer was speaking after a 40-minute Brutal Legend demo, which ably showed it as the funniest videogame ever made. Seriously: we laughed.

It’s out later this year.

Look! There’s two 360 games there. It’s like the world’s ended, or something.

Nice debut for Killzone 2.

Last week’s data here. Thanks, NeoGAF.

01./00. [WII] Monster Hunter G (Capcom) – 132,000 / NEW
02./01. [NDS] Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky (Pokemon Co.) – 54,000 / 196,000 (-62%)
03./00. [PS3] Killzone 2 (SCEI) – 41,000 / NEW
04./00. [PSP] Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 3: The Collapsing City and the Girl’s Song (Disaster Report 3) (Irem) – 31,000 / NEW
05./04. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2 G (BEST) (Capcom) – 23,000 / 613,000 (+28%)
06./00. [360] Death Smiles (Cave) – 20,000 / NEW
07./02. [PSP] Sengoku Basara: Battle Heroes (Capcom) – 17,000 / 130,000 (-39%)
08./03. [NDS] Mario & Luigi RPG 3!!! (Nintendo) – 17,000 / 558,000 (-10%)
09./11. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) – 11,000 / 3,369,000
10./00. [360] H.A.W.X. (Ubisoft) – 10,000 / NEW26

A bunch of media on the upcoming PS3 version of Katamari Forever popped up over night, showing the Namco puzzle thing in all its 1080p glory.

A bunch of previews and screens (Kotaku, IGN, Giant Bomb) popped up overnight, and there’s an IGN movie after the break.

It looks super-awesome. And it’s got sunflowers in it. It’s out this autumn.

More »

The average American games developer earned $79,000 in 2008, a 7 percent increase from 2007’s figure of nearly $74,000, according to a Game Developer magazine report.

The publication’s eighth annual Game Developer Salary Survey found that programmers averaged $85,024, artists averaged $69,532 and designers generally brought in $67,379.

More detail on Gama.

PlayStation 3 will be the dominant console within five years, soon to be ex-SCEE president David Reeves has told GI.

“I don’t think it will be next year, but in three to five years it will become dominant on the market,” he said.

“The legacy will be that people will see a tortoise and hare situation. In a way, in the end it will be a dead heat. People will say PS3 took a while to get going but it really caught up very quickly and confounded many of the critics from the first year,” he said of the consoles position on the market.

“When I see the line-up ahead, when I see what’s lined up on the new product side, I’m very, very optimistic for what I see for PlayStation’s future in the PAL territories,” he added.

More through there.

BioWare’s released a new bit of Mass Effect 2 concept art, just to keep you up to date. Get it from Kotaku. It’s the one of the left.

The sci-fi shooter-RPG’s out early next year.

After the break. The Namco RPG’s looking very swish, as you’d expect.

It’s out in Japan for 360 on August 6.

More »

Peter Moore, now president of EA Sports, gives the best interview in games. No question. We were lucky, then, to find him in blustery form in the penthouse of London’s Ark last week, where we discussed the following:

• EA layoffs
• How everything went “pear-shaped” in 2008
• The effect of the macro-economy on gaming’s sports sector
• How EA Sports Active allows the company to speak to “her”
• Why he’ll continue putting out yearly updates to sports games
• How DLC keeps sports games “fresh”
• Why EA Sports Active is “bigger than a game, bigger than a franchise, bigger than a product”
• That EA Sports Active is a “true platform that we can sell expansion packs, sell more peripherals, ultimately get some download on there”
• Why he wants to get your heartbeat on a TV screen
• Why he’d love to bring EA Sports Active to 360 and PS3 but can’t
• How he’s going to make announcements on EA Sports PC SKUs in the coming months
• That EA Sports is “abandoning the old model of physical media” in relation to PC
• Why the “future is online and connected” for EA Sports on PC
• How EA Sports games on PC are to follow Asian business models
• That GTA was the driving force behind EA’s desire for a Take-Two buyout

This is the first half of our conversation. Tomorrow’s portion contains the exec’s views on the console race, the current hardware cycle and plenty more.

More »

Grand Theft Auto IV turned one year old today, and to celebrate, Microsoft will release a Xbox 360 Elite bundle, reports Kotaku.

The Limited Anniversary Edition contains a copy of GTA IV, and two limited edition stickers featuring the GTA IV and Liberty City Swingers team logos.

A code for The Lost and Damned content is not included. You will still have to buy it kids.

No word on pricing or availability yet, but expect an announcement soon.

The Dawn of War 2 soundtrack is now available for free on Steam and Relic’s community site.

You will get the 20 tracks composed by Doyle W. Donahoo:

• There Is Only War (opening title)
• Angels Of Death (Space Marine Theme)
• Primarch’s Honour
• No Mercy No Respite
• March Of The Waaagh!
• Purge The Xeno Scum
• Forged In Battle
• Ancient Rites (Eldar Theme)
• The Green Horde Rises
• Khaine’s Wrath
• Attack Of The Heretics
• Xeno Presence (Tyranid Theme)
• For The Craftworld
• They Come In Waves And We Push Them Back
• The Great Devourer
• To Battle Brothers
• Hunting The Hive Tyrant
• The Emperor’s Victory
• Show Me What Passes For Music Among Your Misbegotten Kind (credits roll)
• Meridian Nights (Noobie’s Grim Dark Future Remix)

Thanks, 1UP.

Bethesda has released a patch for Fallout 3 on PC and Xbox 360.

Version 1.5 is being released to prepare for next week’s release of Broken Steel DLC .

New Features

• New achievements for Broken Steel

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with VATS calculations not appearing properly for perks (PC)
• Fixed crash related to altered references between master files
• LOD objects render properly when loaded from DLC worldspaces
• Fixed issue with companion NPCs not loading into cells immediately after player

More can be found over on Bethesda’s blog.

Via 1UP.

Sega’s Wacky World of Sports brings some of the worlds strangest sports to the videogame world for the first time, and will hit stores late 2009 for Wii.

Try your hand at Tuna Tossing, Extreme Ironing or even Furniture Racing and other strange things that are not normally sports.

See how strange it is for yourself after the break.

More »

Three new downloadable track packs are coming to Guitar Hero: World Tour from Ferret Music, Metal Blade Records, P!nk, Angels & Airwaves and OneRepublic.

On May 7, three free tracks are coming with the  Ferret/Metal Blade Track Pack which includes the Devil Wears Prada’s “Dez Moines”,  Chimaira’s  “On Broken Glass,” and Unearth’s “Grave of Opportunity”.

The Pop Rock Track Pack hits on May 14, and features P!nk’s “So What,” OneRepublic’s “Stop and Stare” and “Everything’s Magic” from Angels & Airwaves for 440 Microsoft Points ($5.49).

European Track Pack number five arrives on May 21 with Swedish Metal band In Flames’ “Disconnected”, French rock band Housse de Racket with “Oh Yeah!” and Cody ChesnuTT’s “Look Good in Leather” all for 440 Microsoft Points ($5.49).

Each song from the track packs will also run you 160 MS Points ($1.99) should you not want the entire pack, and 200 Wii points for Nintendo users.

Killzone 2 has reached one million players online after two months on the market.

Broken down, that’s approximately two-thirds of purchasers playing online matches.

Look for those numbers to rise after Guerilla releases the Steel and Titanium DLC later this week.

Via PS3center.

A new Batman: Arkham Asylum video is posted after the break.

It shows Batman tossing baddies about, punching them, doing some nice air kicks, and some nifty cape fluttering.

Oh, and Bane is in it too. Dunno how well our hero fares in that bout, because that’s where it ends.

See for yourself.

More »

Xbox’s head of European marketing, David Gosen, has told MCV that, in his opinion, the public perception of the games trade isn’t exactly the best.

“I still get the sense we’re sandwiched somewhere between corporate bankers and taxmen in terms of society’s general perception. Ask people about what the industry provides, and they’d probably say: ‘I don’t really know.’ Or they’ll think we just stand for shooter boxes,” he said.

“There’s been improvement, but not the quantum leap there should have been. We should be as loved as Hollywood is or the music industry is. Yet we are not. That’s not because people aren’t trying. But there seems to be a barrier of acceptance.”

Gosen said he was pleased with the growth of the industry in Europe, and said that currently it boasts a revenue of about $15 billion, “depending on whose research you believe”.

“In ’08 the market grew about 30 per cent year on year. That’s truly fantastic. And that growth has been driven by broadening, which is even more outstanding.”

More through the link.