Monthly Archives: May 2009

Blizzard has released some new sceens and a video of the Fallen Ones on the official Diablo III website .

There is also a Bestiary featuring notes on all five types of theses demonic denizens.

Hit the link for more.

According to a recent Twitter post from BioWare, fans of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 should expect something utterly fantastic at E3 next month.

Here’s the tweet:

“Just saw the E3 videos for ME2 and DAO. Man, our fans are going to have their minds blown. – Evil Chris”

Hopefully it’s not so mind blowing it causes a riot.

Hit the link for yourself.

Harmonix and MTV announced today that three tracks from the metal band Ministry will be added to Rock Band next week along with The Cranberries and The Zombies.

The three-pack from Ministry includes “Cuz U R Next”, “LiesLiesLies”, “The Great Satan” and it will run you 440 MS Points ($5.49) or each one individually for 160 Ms Points ($1.99).

“She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No” are the offerings from The Zombies while Dolores O’Riordan and the rest of The Cranberries make their debut with “Linger”.

All are to be made available for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

WiiWare has turned one, and to celebrate the milestone, two titles were been added to the service.

Crystal Defenders R2, a game where you use Fencers and Black Mages to stop waves of encroaching monsters from escaping the area with your party’s crystals, will run you 800 Wii Points.

Penguin & Friends, which also costs 800 Wii Points, allows you to become the fishing king by feeding hungry penguins.

DSiWare also got a update by way of Art Style: PiCOPiCT (500 points) and Pop Superstar: Road to Celebrity (800 points).

For more information on the above referenced games, hit the jump.

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Simon Turner, 2K’s UK marketing manager, has told MCV that the BioShock 2 marketing campaign will be “the biggest in 2K’s history”.

“Expect something spectacular”, he said. “2K expects BioShock 2 to be one of the top five games of the year.”

Just how big and how much, Turner didn’t say, but if sales and critical acclaim for the last one are any indication, he may just be spot on.

Thanks, CVG.

Stardock has started sending out 50 percent-off coupons to folks who have purchased Demigod as a way to make up for multiplayer networking issues.

Players who receive one can download the game from Impulse for half off its normal $39.99 price or give the coupon to a friend.

The offer is only valid till next week, but another one is on the way. This one gives you 20 percent off any game offered through Impulse.

More through BigDownload.

Creative Assembly has announced that Empire: Total War will be getting some nice updates in upcoming patch.

Existing units that are currently only available to certain troops, will be made available to others along with changes to uniform and attributes.

Basically, as Kotaku pointed out, Dutch and Swedish troops can now access Hussar units and individualize versions of standard units like changing the reload times and morale.

The Russian Grenadier will be the newest introduction to the game, and along with ten unique replacement units and four existing units ‘unlocked’ for other factions – this brings the total amount of new content to 15 units across factions.

These units are free and will be released via Steam. Extra details and a release date are expected soon.

Via VoodooExtreme.

Other than predicting PS3 and Wii price cuts, Gamestop CEO Dan DeMatteo has stated we can expect Assassin’s Creed 2 to land on shelves during November.

Speaking during the same earnings call, he stated that BioShock 2 and Tekken 6 would arrive in October, while Assassin’s Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2 are expected in November along with “a couple of Nintendo titles coming that have not been announced.”

“So, it looks like actually a very, very strong fall and holiday season,” he said.

Here’s hoping he’s right.

More over at Eurogamer.

The ESA’s Michael Gallagher has said that E3 has “never been a consumer show” and that to offer public days during the event would be a “pretty significant change”.

“E3 has never been a consumer show, so that would be a pretty significant change,” Gallagher told IGN. “Obviously, from this year’s format we look at a lot of different things, right now we’re focused on executing this year’s show very well and making sure it’s a success.

“We’ll start planning next year’s show on June 5th.”

As far as bringing back the “old E3,” Gallagher is content that this year, the hardcore crowd be pleased just as well as the ever-expanding demographic.

“Clearly this industry’s demographics have dramatically changed over the last 2 to 3 years. Now you have one quarter of all gamers are over 50, and 38 percent of gamers are women. You just have a terrific growth dynamic because of the breadth of entertainment and the excitement level of the entertainment we’re offering.

“The more we can bring in mainstream media to carry that, it becomes a self-fulfilling, self reinforcing marketplace for us. And we’re already seeing some very positive signs on the media interest.”

Still, it’s going to be business as usual so that the show remains “efficient and manageable” for the press and industry attendees.

More through the link.

A new Battlefield: Bad Company 2 video is posted after the break.

Shows off the destructible environments and a bit of the multiplayer, where players can engage in 12-on-12 battles.

The game’s out later this year.

Thanks, Joystiq.
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Criterion just released a trailer for Burnout Paradise DLC Big Surf Island – get it here.

It’s out on June 11, so it says, and includes the game’s biggest ever jumps.

As with everything else Burnout Paradise, it looks pretty much awesome. See for yourself.

Professor Bob Stone, research director at Birmingham University’s Human Factors Integration Defense Technology Center, says that “smelling” technology will not be integrated into consoles anytime soon.

“With current levels of technology and, bearing in mind the complexity of how smell is linked to memory, spacial awareness and even emotion, I can’t see how it’s going to be used,” he told IncGamers.

“We’re looking at 20 to 30 years before this technology works.

Good thing. No one wants to smell a war trench, or rabid zombie breath anyway.

Stone added that technology such as this would also have “delivery problems” because it would not only be “noisy and clunky”, it would be hard to remove the smells from the area.

Currently, the UK’s Ministry of Defense funds a project that allows soldiers to detect “foul smells” during training so they can sniff out trouble.

MailOnline, previously reported that this sort of technology “is expected to be taken up by manufacturers of top-selling consoles – such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3″.

Via Kotaku.

Ruffian Games has announced the hiring of 15 team members, increasing the size to 40 .

Formed in January, the studio is comprised of former Climax and Realtime Worlds members and is “itching” to dish about the project currently in development.

“We’ve come a long way in the last six months and have been overwhelmed by the number of developers keen to join our merry band,” studio head Gaz Liddon told GI.biz. “Now we’re in full production we’re itching to share the fantastic work these guys have been producing.

“Hopefully that won’t be too far away.”

This unannounced project already has “one of the world’s biggest and most successful publishers” attached to it, and is rumored to be an online game.

More through the links.

Former US president Bill Clinton was offered a role in Fallout 3, but turned it down.

According to an interview with Lev Chapelsky, the general manager of Hollywood-based Blindlight, the firm tried to get Clinton for voice work in Fallout 3 as – what else – the president.

“Celebrity acquisition applies not just to celebrity actors but to sports figures, politicians – we’ve made offers to Bill Clinton for videogames and gotten great responses with attorneys who have said, ‘The former president will not participate in one of your videogame products, thank you very much’,” Chapelsky told Edge.

When asked specifically which game he tried to get the man himself to participate in, he replied that it was Bethesda’s Fallout 3.

“I think that might have been to play the president in Fallout 3. Wouldn’t that have been brilliant? You get to that point in game and you hear that voice in the ether coming from off-camera and you’re like, ‘I know that guy!’”

Chapelsky also talks about the ever changing attitude among Hollywood actors regarding videogames, and you can read up on all of it through the link.

Thanks, GamePolitics.

What appears to be the codename for The Beatles: Rock Band has received a rating in Australia by the Office of Film and Literature Classification .

Called Rock Band Project 9, the title popped up on the OFLC’s site April 29 and while this may seem odd it would not be the first time a Rock Band game was given a pseudonym. Rock Band: Unplugged is listed as Rock Band PSP on the site.

Because Harmonix is currently working on other projects and just had a boon in the hiring sector, Joystiq decided to get to the bottom of it.

After contacting a representative for the game, the site was told: “We can confirm that The Beatles: Rock Band will be coming to Australia and New Zealand on September 9, 2009.”

While that is a strange answer to the question, it’s nothing more than The Beatles: Rock Band. Honestly.

The PS3 version of Tomb Raider: Underworld is finally getting its Trophy patch, Eidos confirmed today.

The rewards update will be added on May 28.

“Sorry for the delay and thank you very much to those who were able to wait patiently,” said a rep.

“It’s really appreciated and I hope you get some great Raiding out of it.”

Cool beans. Thanks, Aimless.

Warner’s officially announced the multi-format disc versions of the Watchmen games, confirming the PS3 version as a “retail Blu-Ray Hi-Def game and film hybrid”.

It’s out in July alongside the film’s director’s cut.

Both parts of the game will also release for 360 on DVD.

Full press release through the link.

When will Wii 2 happen? When it’s “interesting” enough, apparently.

“We do not think that Nintendo DS and Wii will last forever. Our internal hardware teams are always researching and working on new hardware so that we can launch them whenever we find a very interesting idea,” said Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, speaking in a recent investor call.

“You may not be able to believe this, but even when Nintendo has completed a hardware, it does not mean that we will surely launch it,” he added.

“[New] hardware is not needed until the time our software developers see the end in making new software with the existing hardware, or unless we have no more new market to explore and all the potential consumers have purchased our hardware,” Iwata said.

Thanks, EG.

Update: Or it might be about Burnout Paradise Big Surf Island DLC. Thanks, jonarob.

Criterion’s confirmed that a “big” announcement regarding the studio is to be made at 4.00pm BST today.

What is it? We couldn’t possibly guess. But if we were to, we’d say there’s a fair chance we might be about to find out the studio’s working on a Need for Speed game.

Watch the mountains.

Gamestop CEO Dan DeMatteo has said his 33.5 million hardware unit sales estimate for this year factors in Q3 price cuts for both Wii and PS3.

“That assumes that there will be price cuts on the PS3 and potentially one on the Wii,” he said, speaking in an earnings call, adding, “It’s hard to tell if we actually need a price cut on the Wii to get to our numbers. There are some price cuts built into that assumption, but not until the third quarter.”

Current pricing levels for the machines are too high, said the exec.

“The hardware price points, given this economic environment are potentially too high, and if the platform holders are going to make the numbers that they forecasted for the year, those prices would have to change,” he said.

“Also, if you think about it, these hardware prices have stayed up longer in this cycle than in any other time before, and in a very dire economic environment, those two things seem to be mutually exclusive.

“Put all those things together, I think that there will have to be price cuts in order to get the hardware moving to where it needs to be.”

More on GI.