Monthly Archives: April 2009

Gears of War 2 executive producer Rod Fergusson has told VG247 that match-making issues with the title’s multiplayer – which initially saw game-breaking waits to access games on Live – were the result of “growing pains” and treading new ground in terms of scale.

“The match-making problems we had at the beginning of Gears 2 were really just growing pains,” he said.

“It was the first time we’d ever done non-server-browser match-making… We could test to a certain scale up to 1,000 players or so, but when [we went] up to a million players, with hundreds of thousands of players match-making all at the same time, certain things didn’t work in the way they were expected to.”

Fergusson told us that problems with match-making at this level are not unusual.

“Bungie, with Halo 2, had a similar thing,” he said. “Going into that kind of match-making system just has inherent problems that you have to go through yourself and experience before you can fix it and get it right.”

A first title update became a priority when problems arose. Once the match-making service stabilized, the game’s team went on to fix multiplayer exploits.

A third update introduced a new levelling system and new additions for online play, as opposed to fixes.

Siliconera‘s picked up on a Sega blog post that apparently hints at a twin stick peripheral for VOOT’s upcoming XBLA version.

It’s going to be quite expensive, the firm said, so it may not come out.

Go on, Sega. We’ll buy one.

The game itself is out this “spring”.

Konami’s announced PES 2010, promising “major gameplay additions” and “the most realistic football simulation available”.

New gameplay, graphics, “atmosphere,” animations, moves and loads more are to be included, said the firm.

“We have been monitoring feedback and comments on the progression of the PES series for some time now, and PES 2010 will see us implementing a great deal of the ideas players have been requesting,” said producer Naoya Hatsumi.

“We aim to make PES 2010 a more user-friendly, immediate experience that places the emphasis on getting straight into the gameplay for which the series is famed. PES 2010 will look better, will play better, and will recreate real football as closely as the current hardware will allow.”

All the details after the link. It’s out for PS3, 360, PC, PSP and PS2 this autumn. Nothing has been mentioned of a Wii version.

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Go to the Assassin’s Creed 2 teaser site. Watch the video. Click on the big symbol at the end. Print off the PDF. Click on the red “Animus” symbol to the left of the screen next to the original symbol. Click on the top box on the left. Hold up the printed symbol in front of your webcam.

What happens is honestly pretty cool. Do it.

SCEE announced last night that WipEout HD is to be bumped to v1.30 today, an update to add rankings, badges and podium placements. Check out shots of the new stuff after the break.

Press release here. We’ll let you know when the patch goes live.

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Nintendo of America has decided not to publish Fatal Frame for Wii in the US. The “core” isn’t happy.

“Nintendo holds the publishing rights to Fatal Frame Wii, which was developed by Tecmo LTD. and Grasshopper Manufacture and released in Japan on July 31, 2008,” Tecmo said in a statement to IGN.

“Nintendo of America has since then decided not to publish the title in North America – consequently, the title will not be released in this territory.

“As the owner of the IP, Tecmo feels very unfortunate that the fans of the series in North America will not have a chance to play the game, but respects the final decision made by Nintendo of America.”

Whoops. Guess you’ll just have to learn Japanese and import, American people.

More shocks from the world of Wii today, as a Nielsen report has shown that Wii is the least used of the three current generation consoles.

Wii had an average usage of five days in December last year, compared to 6.8 for the PlayStation 3 and 7.1 days for the Xbox 360, according to the Nielsen’s State of the Video Gamer paper.

The average usage session was 58 minutes for Wii, while PS3 was played for 64 minutes on average. Xbox 360 was most-played, at a general 78 minutes stretch.

Edge showed last night that Wii has by far the worst games of any of the home consoles, judged by review score.

More on GI.

Cheyenne Mountain marketing boss Kevin Balentine has dismissed claims that the firm’s Stargate MMO’s been flushed down the swanny, saying everything’s carrying on as planned.

One of the IPs TV producers said on Monday that the game was likely dead.

“Our official response is that the lights here are still on and the development team is working hard every day to get this game built,” Balentine told Big Download.

“Team members are in the office seven days a week to deliver Stargate Worlds. Brad Wright is the Stargate expert and a creative consultant on Stargate Worlds who advises us on the story; unfortunately we had not recently updated him on our progress or the impact from the current global economic crisis, and he was not fully aware of the continuing progress on our game.”

Phew. There’s still no date, however.

According to this FirstShowing story, a Shadow of the Colossus movie is to be developed by producer Kevin Misher (Fighting, Public Enemies, Case 39) at Columbia Pictures.

There’s no date through there, or any other detail at all for that matter. Reports of the film containing an awful lot of horse-riding are unconfirmed at this time.

E3 needs more smiles. Luckily, then, Nintendo of America marketing lady Cammie Dunaway – by far the greatest smiler in games – has confirmed she’s going to be up on stage in the company’s press conference. Doing some smiling.

“I’m going to be up on stage presenting, something that your fans ought to love,” the exec told IGN.

“But I’m not gonna snowboard, I’m not gonna show my mother’s day card. I’m just going to talk about the games.”

“The games”? Say it ain’t so. Watch the video after the break. Thanks, NintendoEverything.

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Tri-Ace’s first multi-platform RPG has been revealed as End of Eternity in the latest Famitsu. Get tons of scans on Wii@Everyday.

The game, to release for PS3 and 360 this winter, is currently an arbitrary 65 percent complete, and features 17 year-old mercenary Zefa, 26 year-old ex-solider Vashron and 19 year-old woman Test Subject No. 20.

So there you go. Thanks, Kotaku.

Satoru Iwata’s told the Wall Street Journal that Nintendo’s working in on-demand video options for Wii, with DSi be used as a remote player.

“If the Wii and the DS are connected, it should be possible to download video through the Wii and take it with you on the DS,” he said.

“When the service begins, you’ll see how we’re going to do it differently in a Nintendo-like way. There are a lot of on-demand video services, so there’s no reason to do the same thing, so we’re going to do something different.”

Iwata added: “We’ll start the service in Japan, and if it does well, we’d like to take it overseas.”

Blimey. All sounds a bit definite, doesn’t it? Looks like 32Gb SD cards are going to be popular.

Thanks, NintendoEverything and Joystiq.

Sony’s launched MAG’s official site. Unfortunately it includes nothing but a map and some kind of radio interference over western Russia and a few other regions.

Beggars can’t be choosers, however. At least you know it’s 99 percent certain the 256-player shooter will make it out this year.

Look for yourself, PS3 owners.

Namco Bandai has told VG247 it has “no information” on a US launch of the PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia.

Namco confirmed the new SKU in Japan just last week.

It’s unknown if Europe will get the PS3 version.

Atari said in March that it’s to release the game in all PAL territories this June on Xbox 360.

The RPG was released in Japan last August for 360, helping the console achieve 25,000 sales in its launch week.

We’ll keep you up to date should things change, PS3 fans.

Nintendo has announced a ton of new games for DSiWare and WiiWare between now and July.

Cave Story, Robocalypse: Beaver Defense, and Swords & Soldiers are there, to name three, and most games start at 200 points.

Get everything after the link.

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A new Xbox 360 ad showing Avatars how to deal with their “Reals” has popped up on Xbox.com. Watch it below.

It also explains how to find movie downloads and other stuff, all from the perspective of New Xbox Experience being the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Go watch.

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Lazard analyst Colin Sebastian expects more retailers to start selling used games now Amazon has entered into the market, says a Gamsutra report.

“According to our industry checks, one large consumer electronics retail chain is rekindling efforts to sell used video games, while another general merchandise ‘big box’ store is in trials to buy back games in exchange for store credit,” he said.

Sebastian said that the market sector is worth $2 billion annually in North America, and will further increase competition for the likes of eBay, GameCrazy and GameStop. Add in a 50 percent gross margin and it becomes even more attractive to retailers.

However, as lucrative as that sounds, Sebastian isn’t expecting any newcomers to challenge GameStop’s reign at the top any time soon.

More through the link.

This Saturday, April 11, World of Warcraft players may notice some in-game activists over in Northrend due to PETA staging a protest over clubbing baby fur seals in the Howling Fjord zone.

The group’s taken umbrage to bashing fake critters over the head, and the protesters plan on PvP-ing anyone that stands in between them and the virtual cuties.

There’s more after the break, but just so you know, originally PETA tried to get this part of the game banned.

Thanks, Kotaku.

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There’s a dev diary for X-Men Origins: Wolverine after the break, which makes the claim that this is “the movie game that finally does not suck”.

Plenty of in-game action there, and much detail on combat, regeneration, and so on.

It’s out for all formats on May 1.

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A California law inducted in 2008 titled “Assembly Bill 10″ apparently says that game workers in the state are not entitled to overtime compensation from “crunch time” towards the end of development.

The new law applies only to those making upwards of $75,000 per year ($36 an hour).

According to Mark Methenitis, Joystiq’s Law of the Game author: “Practically speaking, that means if you’re a dev with a salary of $75K, you can’t claim overtime during crunch, which means the developer is more likely to use crunch cycles.”

In 2004, a spouse of an EA employee published a report on “abuse of game development team members in the name of meeting publishing deadlines,” which resulted in compensation reform throughout the industry.

Those opposed to the bill are afraid it will reverse that trend.

More through GamePolitics.