Monthly Archives: April 2009

A GoNintendo reader has seen an upcoming game release list at an Amsterdam retailer and took it upon himself to snap a picture of it.

According to the shot, Wii Sports Resort, Wii MotionPlus bundle and all, will hit stores on July 10.

Same goes for the the standalone WMP, apparently.

There’s something called Wii Fit Plus on there, slated for a November 19 release. What is it? No idea.

Goes without saying, but this may not exactly be the most solid information in the world.

Microsoft has settled the gay harassment lawsuit brought against it by ex-Lionhead developer Jamie Durrant, reports Pinknews.

That didn’t take too long did it?

Although actual settlement details are being kept under wraps, a Microsoft spokesperson said one of the stipulations of the deal was that Durrant would forfeit his position at Lionhead.

“We are pleased to have reached an amicable resolution to this matter with Mr Durrant. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but we can confirm that Mr. Durrant will not continue his employment at Lionhead as part of the agreement,” said the spokesperson.

“Microsoft has a longstanding commitment to diversity. We attract, recruit and respect diverse talent and we have included sexual orientation in our anti-discrimination policies for 20 years.

“Our efforts have been recognized by a wide range of groups, including the Human Rights Campaign Foundation in its 2009 Corporate Equality Index. We do not tolerate breaches of our code of business conduct and take any complaints extremely seriously.

“Throughout this process, those to whom Mr Durrant brought his concerns have taken them seriously and concrete actions have been taken to address them.

“Neither Mr Durrant’s sexual orientation nor the nature of his complaint had any bearing on the way it was handled.”

So there ya go.

NintendoEverything’s posted a video of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata playing WarioWare: Snapped! on DSi.

He may not look as silly doing it as this guy, but that’s not saying much.

Best part is at the end really.

Watch below.

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Thanks to the Vivendi demise that accompanied the formation of Activision-Blizzard, the new giant has secured the rights to hillbilly-shooter Redneck Rampage.

The game was originally developed by Xatrix Entertainment in 1997. Rights for all three titles in the series were sold to Vivendi in 2004.

Thanks, IncGamers.

Aaron Greenberg has said that American Xbox 360 users have unlocked 2.5 billion Achievements, earning an accumulated Gamerscore of 52 billion.

Averaged out, that means each 360 owner should have something like 150 Acheivements.

Wow. Baffles the brain a bit don’t it?

The numbers were revealed in a four page expose over on Gamasutra.

Thanks, OXM.

Star Fox creator Dylan Cuthbert has told G4 what he thinks about Wii and Miyamoto, and has said he’s not interesting in making another Star Fox game, especially for Wii – which he called a toy.

Even went so far as to say Miyamoto doesn’t care how core gamers feel about changes to Star Fox and just does as he pleases.

Youch.

First off, Cuthbert said a Wii version of Star Fox wouldn’t work because of the controls.

“The Wii controller would be a bit too hard to use. I don’t know… maybe the new one [MotionPlus]. Maybe that’d be more fun to play with. I don’t know. The Wii is a bit more of a toy, I think.”

Then went on to say that changes from aerial combat to tank combat were not his idea, but Miyamoto’s.

“That’s all Miyamoto. Whenever I speak to Miyamoto about Star Fox, he says it’s not meant to be just a flying, sci-fi shooting game. It’s meant to be anything we want to think up,” said Cuthbert.

“But the core fans don’t want that, but Miyamoto doesn’t really care about that. He wants to make what he wants to make, so he just goes ahead and gets it done.”

More over on G4.

During a hands on session with Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games for DS and Wii, Eurogamer learned that multiplayer will be available from the beginning. A good thing, it seems.

There’s stuff there on Balance Board support, as well.

The peripheral can be used for skiing, bob-sleighing and more.

Drown in words through the link.

There’s not much out there, OK? There’s three new shots of the upcomng GI Joe game on GameInfoWire, should you care.

It’s out later this year for all formats. Looks GI Joey, innit?

According to this Gamespot story, Yu Suzuki has been be ousted as Sega’s R&D creative officer, and “will stay with company in diminished capacity.”

Suzuki was the “name” behind the likes of Virtua Fighter and frankly insane RPG and bus stop sim, Shenmue.

There’s his full work history through the link.

THQ said this week that its plans to cut $220 million in spending for the just-started financial year are now in action.

The shutting down five internal studios, laying off a quarter of THQ’s workforce, trying to sell off Big Huge Games, and making Heavy Iron and Incinerator Studios defunct are all known measures.

The firm is also counting on Darksiders, Red Faction, and UFC to help line the company wallet; while changing its overall focus from quantity to quality.

To cement this new motto, THQ has halved the number of games it would normally release fro this year, says this Gamespot report.

“We have executed on our previously announced business realignment actions,” said president and CEO Brian Farrell.

“Our goal is to return to profitability and generate positive cash flow in fiscal 2010, and to position THQ for long-term sustainable and profitable growth.”

It was revealed earlier in the week that THQ tentatively plans to release Red Faction 4, Saint’s Row 3, and Warhammer 40K MMO in 2010.

Radical’s released the next Prototype dev diary, this time focusing on plot. Watch it after the break.

The superly heroic open-world action affair looks fantastic, we reckon. Very palatable.

Want to see a mad mutant throw a car at a helicopter? Happy Saturday.

It’s out for PC, 360 and PS3 this summer.

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Ubi Montreal’s readying a “massive update” to Far Cry 2, as you can see on the game’s official boards.

“During the upcoming days our team will be preparing the arrival of our new patches with a massive update on our data server,” said a dev rep.

“The first change you’ll be able to notice will be on the leaderboards. In fact we will change the magic formula we are using in order to provide more accurate results.”

More detail through the link, Africa-based shooter fans.

EA Grand Slam Tennis producer Thomas Singleton has told TechRadar that Wii’s MotionPlus can be “overly responsive.”

“It truly is giving you that one-to-one control movement of your arm motion and then mapping it directly to that one-to-one movement of your character on screen,” said Singleton.

“At times it’s overly responsive. It had so much fidelity that at times we have limited that fidelity to make it a compelling experience and giving you full total control.”

Grand Slam Tennis has no confirmed release date as yet.

Thanks, CVG.

This NeoGaf post shows what looks like a PS3 demo-pod running a taster of Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum.

The picture (above) was taken in Gamestop in Niles, Ohio, apparently.

The demo is said to feature four levels of the game and there’s some detail as to the controls.

If you need reminding why this news is “hot,” then have a gander at last month’s Challenge Room video, released at GDC 09.

Anyway, hopefully this means the demo on its way to XBLA/PSN. We’ll ask Eidos about it on Monday.

Killzone 2 developer Guerilla Games has told GameDaily that PS3 is not as hard to develop for as rumored. In fact, it’s easier to work with than PS2.

“Like us, if you are native to PlayStation, our tech director doesn’t say it’s particularly difficult,” said MD Hermen Hulst.

“It’s specific, but it’s not difficult like PS2 was difficult – PS2 was a difficult [machine] to crack, but PS3 didn’t take us a long time to get up and running.”

Hulst said that multi-platform developers may have more issues with it “because it is very different” from other consoles.

Development director Arjan Brussee went as far as to say it’s easier to develop for than the Xbox 360.

“I actually think PS3 is a simpler architecture than some of the other consoles; you just have to have a certain mindset on how to address it,” he said.

“I think the Cell-based processor with the SPUs and the super high speed DSPs that you can throw all your calculation tasks at gives us a model that’s way easier to program for, even for junior programmers, than the general purpose multi-core type of architecture, which the PC and Xbox 360 have.”

More through the link.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Capcom’s Unity blog has a post linking to an unreleased Resident Evil 5 trailer. Which has now been released.

It’s on the official RE5 site. Go through the age gate to watch it.

It’s probably one of the best yet, if we’re being honest.

Curve Studios has announced Explodemon for PC, PSN and WiiWare.

Described as a “2.5D platform action game influenced by classic Japanese games from the golden era of the SNES,” the game revolves around an exploding hero. Sounds painful.

You’ll use these explosive abilities against enemies and solve puzzles in an environment that looks like a “loving parody of badly translated action games and everything that they embody”.

Expect it to land sometime during Q4 this year.

Read on for the press release.

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Polyphony Digital launched the Gran Turismo Café at Twin Ring Motegi circuit in Japan last week.

Apparently, the “exterior, interior, and even the staff uniforms have been decorated in the image of Gran Turismo, and there are additional items added to the already popular menu lineup as well.”

The restaurant even has booths where you can play GT5 Prologue.

Japan always seems to get the cool stuff.

PAX East takes place in Boston next year: early registration has already started.

You can book yourself in now, providing you are free between March 26-28, 2010.

The schedule of events and list of exhibitors is empty at the moment. Doubt it’ll stay that way for long.

Thanks, Blue.

John Carmack had Wolfenstein 3D all ready for the iPhone a week before anyone knew a thing about it, id bossman Todd Hollenshead has told VentureBeat.

The public found when word hit that an unlocked iPhone could visit the company website and take a look at the game.

“I got off the plane and all hell was breaking loose because someone wrote about how you could take a jail-broken iPhone and go to a secret web site to get Wolfenstein 3D Classic for free,” he said.

“It was a secret page on ID’s web site. It was really source code that John Carmack had staged to put the game up on the Apple App Store.

“One programmer speculated that search programs will do random searches on web sites until they find something. They found it, it got linked to.

“Then everybody wanted to download the game for free. But you couldn’t do that. It was staged to go up on the Apple App Store.

“We got it up, and we’re selling it for $4.99.”

Apparently an ID Classics label will soon be up on the App Store, along with the original Doom.