Monthly Archives: June 2009

The E3 Game Critics Awards have been announced, with Uncharted 2 winning Best of Show and Warner’s Scribblenauts winning Best Original Game.

Get the full thing after the break. Thanks, Kotaku.

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John Madden’s on borrowed time. His great, football-shaped clock is ticking unstoppably in heaven’s endzone. Will EA’s gargantuan sports IP continue with his name once the alarm’s gone off? Probably.

“If you said to me that once I’m gone there’s a video game that lives on with my name, there’s certainly achievements with my name on already, so it might be a fitting legacy,” EA Sports boss Peter Moore told Gama.

“I don’t think anymore that people would think it would be weird if when ultimately he’s no longer with us that the game carries on. Madden 40 or Madden 50 or whatever that would be. I don’t think so.”

Madden’s retired now, a fact Moore insists will make the game “better”. Only time will tell. Tick. Tock.

NPD won’t release any more PC charts, the research firm’s told Shacknews.

It will still issue monthly PC sales charts to the public, with full data, obviously, going to paying clients.

It’s the end of an era. Never more will we be able to write “Sims tops US PC charts” 40 billion fucking times in a row.

Full details through there. The Steam and Direct2Drive charts will still happen weekly. Get them after the link.

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White Stripes’ Jack White has told NME that bands being forced to use music games to get in front of “kids” is all a bit crushing.

“It’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that ['Guitar Hero'] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music,” said the musician.

He added that he doesn’t care “which format people should get their music in… if you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that’s a little sad.”

Hey, Jack. Your music’s all over Guitar Hero. Just saying.

Thanks, IGN.

An online survey has detailed potential Command & Conquer 4 traits, such as:

Command & Conquer 4 allows C&C fans to finally experience the epic conclusion to the 15-year Tiberium saga with innovative RPG-like player progression, persistent in both single player and Multiplayer modes, co-op play, and new stylized, live-action cinematics.

There’s tons more on Shacknews. EA, obviously, has “nothing to confirm regarding the C&C franchise at this time.”

The next episode of UK radio show One Life Left’s available now, the second part of “series five”.

Ste, Simon and Ann are pretty much hitting their stride with the new stuff. It’s genuinely great. Do them – and conversely, yourself – a favour.

The pirated version of The Sims 3 acted as a demo to some, EA boss John Riccitiello has joked. He’s a funny guy.

“You identified our secret marketing campaign!” Riccitiello told IndustryGamers. “That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program.

“In the game that was pirated there’s [only] one city [out of two]… and Sims 3 has a massive amount of content, and a lot of it is downloaded once you register with EA… and join the online community” he elaborates. “So you get that content in addition to the second city [which is downloadable for people who register], and that’s a major component… A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community, where you are sampling assets created by other people”.

Sims 3 has beaten Spore as the most pirated game of all time, having been downloaded more than 200,000 times before it came out. There’s more through there.

Thanks, Kotaku.

IGN’s given The Conduit 8.6/10, which is likely to come as relief to the Wii “hardcore”. Snip:

It’s not revolutionary, but the Conduit is a great first-person shooter designed just for Wii owners. While the game does not turn the genre upside-down, it is innovative in certain areas — for example, it features the most customizable, precise and enjoyable controls of any console shooter created, hands down.

The campaign’s five-to-eight hours long, apparently. Sounds like it could be a lot worse. Hit the link for the full thing.

Midway Newcastle’s put up a ton of concept art for promising action title Necessary Force, as you can see here.

Chances of the studio surviving long enough for this to ever be a reality? Remote. Still, we can but dream.

Take a look. Thanks, Joystiq.

Did you know there was an inFamous comic? We didn’t. The last part of it’s been released, and you can now read the entire thing on Joystiq.

The story chronicles events leading up to the start of the game itself. Off you go, then.

Eurogamer’s posted its re-review of EA’s Grand Slam Tennis, bumping the score from 5/10 to 8/10.

The site said last week it was to reassess the game after it found the Wii MotionPlus-enabled sports title to be sluggish on its Wii debug unit.

Reviews, eh? Millions of words through the link.

THQ’s grabbed a 33,000 sqft office in Austin, Texas, according to Kotaku.

Gama reckons the facility’s for Vigil Games, the developer currently putting together THQ’s 40K MMO.

Still no date on the game, however.

It’s Tekken Monday, clearly. The US PS Blog just put up an interview with director Katsuhiro Harada, showing off the game’s new Campaign mode in unforgiving detail. Watch it after the break.

We’re saying nothing. Other than “this doesn’t look very good”.

The rest of it will be, though. It’s out October 27 in the US.

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The Behemoth just announced that more than 1 million players are now listed on the Castle Crashers leaderboards.

Someone very excitedly just posted on the developer’s blog: “This is really big news! Thanks to you guys Castle Crashers has become the fastest growing XBLA game in history!”

We saw some revenue figures for castle Crasher recently. Put it this way: it’s their round.

Hit the link.

Namco’s dated Tekken 6 as an October 27 release in North America, according to this Gamespot story.

Versions for Europe, Japan, and the rest of Asia are to follow in “close proximity”.

The fighter’s also to have pre-order incentives, for the US at least.

A Tekken 6 Wireless Fight Stick Bundle is to be available for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 at participating retailers for $150.

The bundle includes a Hori wireless fight stick, as well as a Tekken 6-themed art book.

More detail through there.

Tekken 6 is to feature Penny Arcade’s Cardboard Tube Samurai, according to this MTV story.

He’s got the Pac-Man on his robes, and everything.

It’s out for 360 and PS3 this autumn.

A previously unknown Duke Nukem title, Duke Begins, has been unearthed in a lawsuit response from 3DRealms to Take-Two.

The game was apparently in the works at a “well-known videogame developer” and was supposed to release by mid-2010.

Development began within two months of an October 2007 funding agreement between 3DRealms and Take-Two, with the developer retaining rights to to approve “any changes to that [development] schedule.”

There’s plenty more on Shacknews. Poor old Duke. All he wants to do is spend his golden years sitting on the porch.

Capcom’s released another Dark Void dev diary, as you can see after the break, this time detailing flight and vertical combat.

It really is vertical. As in, straight up. And the flight sequence tech really does look good. Fingers crossed.

PC, 360 and PS3. No date on it yet.

Thanks, BigDownload.

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Remember all that talk of Epic poster boy Cliff Bleszinski working on a survival horror project? Well, he isn’t.

“There was a rumor about me doing a survival-horror game,” he told OXM. “I have absolutely no idea how that hit.”

The Gears of War darling added: “It’s a tough sell when you start making something psychological, single-player–oriented, and very nuance-based.

“And that [would] be a challenge, because in case you haven’t noticed, at Epic, we’re not always that good at nuance. We tend to paint with large brushstrokes.

“So no, I’m not making a horror game next. Gears is very much near and dear to me.”

Fin. Next.

Got Game Entertainment is to release a boxed SKU of Bohemia’s ArmA II in the US on July 7.

A Steam version is due for release this week.

The game has already shipped in Europe.