Monthly Archives: April 2009

Square Enix launched the official teaser site for Wii’s upcoming Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers.

Been dying for that, haven’t you?

Not much is up there yet except for the trailer included with FFCC: Echoes of Time, and wallpaper of the game emblem. If there were more, it wouldn’t be called a teaser site.

The game is expected sometime before the end of the year.

Find more information in the press release posted below.

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Sony seems unconvinced that OnLive will be a successful venture.

SCEA’s Patrick Seybold has admitted to Edge that he’s concerned over “the final cost to the consumer”.

Powerful servers are needed to support the gaming service and Seyold feels that the consumer will eventually have to eat that cost with high subscription fees.

The corporate communications bossman is also concerned over the logistics of the system, due to the required broadband connection speed of 2Mb per second for normal use and 5Mb per second for hi-def.

“What will be sacrificed when you [put OnLive] into a real world environment where multiple devices are plugged into one broadband connection?” he asked.

Continuing, Seabold went on to describe Sony’s legacy in the sector, saying that PS3 has been doing the exact same thing for years with the added bonus of disc-based content.

“PlayStation’s been bringing HD gaming and entertainment into consumers’ homes for many years now,” he said.

“With both digitally distributed and disc-based content, we have a competitive offering for consumers, whether they are tethered to the Internet or not. Only on PlayStation 3 can you get HD gaming, watch BD and downloaded movies, have ample hard drive space for music, movies and photos, built-in Wi-Fi, and free access to PlayStation Network – right out of the box.”

OnLive is set to launch this Winter.

Layoffs are happening over at Big Huge Games.

The Baltimore, MD, studio was informed by THQ a few weeks ago that if a buyer wasn’t found, the Catan and Rise of Nations developer would be shut down.

“These actions were unfortunate but were necessitated by the difficult economic environment,” said THQ.

It is not known at this time how many staff have been made redundant, nor what will become of the firm’s current project – an RPG by Elder Scrolls creator Ken Rolston.

Thanks, Develop.

EA’s confirmed details and prices for four premium DLC packs for Godfather II, all to release on Live and PSN on April 23.

Here’s what’s on offer:

• The Pentangeli Map Pack: Download for the all-new Cuba multiplayer map and the Junkyard multiplayer map ($6.75 / 540 points).
• Level 4 Weapons Bundle: Download this collection to receive the Modern Dillinger, the .700 Magnum Impact, the Herzstopper, the MG-S1 Sniper Wolfe, and the Street Sweeper ($4.00 / 320 points).
• Jack of All Trades: Download Jimmy Lira – the Jack of All Trades to have this character in your family. Jimmy Lira starts out with the arsonist, engineer, medic, and safecracker specialties and comes equipped with a level 2 machine gun – the MP38 ($4.00 / 320 points).
• The Corleone Bundle (All of the above): Download the multiplayer map pack, the level 4 Weapons Bundle, and the Jack of All Trades (Jimmy Lira) crew member ($10.00 / 800 points).

Get all the details after the link.

More »

Warhammer Online’s Taiwanese beta’s to go live on April 14, according to this press release.

“Since day one, it’s been our goal to make the Age of Reckoning a global phenomenon,” said Mythic boss Mark Jacobs.

“The closed beta in Taiwan brings more players around the world the chance to answer one very simple question: who do you fight for – Order or Destruction?”

Should bump the game’s figures up a bit. We hope.

Full thing through the link.

Jesus Christ. Just make it stop. After the break.

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OnLive boss Steve Perlman has told Joystiq that people had “damn well better be skeptical” about the Cloud-gaming service, but has insisted in a lengthy interview that the concept works.

“They damn well better be skeptical. When I set out to build this thing, we looked at it and said, ‘Look, in theory it’s possible to do, but in practice we just didn’t know if it could actually be done,’” he said.

Perlman went on to talk about the process behind OnLive’s development, claiming he knew people would question the service when it was announced.

“We knew people were going to be skeptical,” he said. “And they should be, you know? But they would go and say, hmm, we’ve got nine of the top publishers behind this thing; do we really think these guys are gonna take their top titles, commit them for release the same retail window as you know, the titles when they come out for the consoles, and they’re gonna let us show games on the floor here, which are actually just being released the day that the OnLive booth opens, you know?

“The only reason they’re going to do that is, obviously, they’ve gone through tons and tons of testing as well.”

Hit the link. Well worth it.

EA’s confirmed Madden NFL for an August 14 release. That’s the US date. There’s no announcement on a Euro version as yet.

Hit the link for a metric truckload of American football-related information. It’s easier that way.

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Despite being pulled, fixed and put back up onto Live, Fallout 3 DLC is still broken, Bethesda’s admitted.

From the BethBlog:

Since The Pitt went back up on Xbox LIVE last Wednesday, we’ve received feedback that some folks were experiencing freezing issues while trying to access The Pitt. We’re working with Microsoft to get a version of The Pitt up that corrects the aforementioned freezing issue. Once the content is up and available, we’ll let you know.

We’d like to thank all our fans who generously and methodically reported what they were seeing on our official forums, via email and on this blog. This data was immensely helpful in tracking down these issues.

Thanks again to everyone for their support, patience and feedback.

Not so great. But at least it’ll be resolved. Eventually.

A new movie of open-world racer FUEL released today, showing off the Codemasters game’s 70-strong vehicle line-up and the first footage of the title’s UI.

Watch it after the break.

It’s still looking very cool. There’s a huge variety of wheel-based paraphernalia in there, as well as day and night racing and loads of other stuff.

It’s out next month for PC, 360 and PS3.

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AOL and Kikizo have launched a casual gaming site, FlyTrapGames.com.

The site covers the entire casual spectrum, including free-to-play, browser-based and mobile titles.

“We saw a gap in the market for an unbiased, editorially-led site about casual gaming,” said AOL games chap, Sean O’Connell.

More on GI.

Defcon developer Introversion’s posted up what looks to be a highly-detailed run through of how Microsoft greenlights XBLA games.

Darwinia+ is the subject, obviously, a title that apparently had “unprecedented approval” from the platform holder.

From Offworld, via Kotaku.

Joystiq’s got a few new Star Trek DAC shots. They’re not amazing. This would probably be fine if it wasn’t a Star Trek game, because you kind of expect Star Trek games to be a massive deal. And this – a PSN and Live movie tie-in – clearly… isn’t.

Still. Maybe it’s fun. Maybe we should play it before we judge. Yeah, right.

It’s out next month.

We hate April Fool’s Day. Hate it. But this Konami Metal Gear trailer – featuring the now infamous Wall of Impossibility from Kojima’s GDC keynote – is pretty damn cool.

It is, seriously.

Just Add Water has confirmed to VG247 that its upcoming first-party PSN title – Project V, a working title, slyly announced last week – is a cross-platform pew-pewer, old skool stylee.

“It’s first-party for Sony, so we can’t talk about it too much, but it’s a retro shooting game,” said company boss Stewart Gilray.

“It’s for PS3 and PSP,” he added.

Gilray said the title’s been JAW’s focus for some time.

“We’ve been working on it for about a year now,” he said. “We showed it to Sony last year and they snapped it up straight away.”

The game is to be fully announced at E3. A JAW Christmas card from last year may well give a hint as to what to expect.

The latest EverQuest II update, Elements of Corruption, has gone live.

Players will witness the invasion of Lavastorm, as the island is invaded by Void creatures, so we’re told.

New armor will be available for purchase along with new solo content, weapon slots, robe appearances, and new character appearances and stats.

Good to hear.

More features are listed in the press release after the break.

More »

Gears of War 2′s Rod Fergusson has told VG247 that specifics on upcoming DLC for the game will depend on the community’s reaction to the Snowblind map pack, released yesterday.

“The big focus is on Snowblind, which is out Tuesday, and we’ll see how that’s received, along with the title update,” said the title’s executive producer, speaking at GDC.

“I’ve been checking in on the forums late at night to see how people are responding at it seems to be pretty positive.”

Snowblind, the second premium DLC pack for Gears of War 2, added four new maps to the game yesterday for 800 MS Points.

It was rumoured before GDC that a third pack, supposedly titled Dark Corners, would launch in April.

Doesn’t look like it.

According to a post over on NintendoPad, a magazine page in a French magazine advertising Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse says it’s coming to Europe in April. Or May.

Translated, the ad states: “They will haunt your Wii next month”. Scary.

Tecmo’s announced nothing as yet, so don’t get too excited.

Official Nintendo Magazine previously reported that Fatal Frame IV would be released in Europe sometime in February, but nothing else has been said until now.

The game was released exclusively in Japan last July, and as of December 2008 has sold 63,489 copies.

Koei Tecmo’s released its new-look, post-merger logo, as you can see above.

April 1′s the start of the new financial year in Japan, hence the bold new firm getting its bold new tits out.

That’s it. Pretty, isn’t it? Thanks, Kotaku.

Greenpeace has, yet again, placed Nintendo at the bottom of its eco-rankings. Like, bottom out of all companies in consumer electronics.

And yes, yet again, this is because Nintendo refuses to cooperate with Greenpeace on the matter. Which probably definitely doesn’t mean there’s something really horrible in the Wii-making process.

Probably definitely not. You’re guilty until proven innocent as far as we’re concerned Nintendo, you tree-murdering bastard.