Monthly Archives: June 2009

Good gravy. Aion’s first proper dev diary lies after the break, showing an MMO like no other. Whether or not it p;lays like a bag of shit is yet to be determined, but on the visual front it looks astonishing.

There’s a bunch of stuff in there, including the game’s flight ability and a good explanation of the world and races.

It’s out in the West later this year. Thanks, Massively.

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Namco’s put out a bunch of new Tekken 6 pics reealing just how Alisa Bosconovich, Lars Alexandersson, Marshall Law, Yoshimitsu, and Eddy Gordo will look come release date.

PS3/360 this autumn, people. Write it down.

There’s nothing else to do but look at them, really. So go.

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has said that although he loves teh Halo and Modern Warfare, he wants Bungie and Infinity Ward to tread new paths in terms of genre.

“I keep waiting to hear what Bungie is going to do that’s not Halo,” he told VideoGamer at E3.

“Those guys are amazing, right? They walk on water! And the same with Infinity Ward. It’s like, dude I’m totally psyched to get my Call of Duty fix every year, but you guys are amazing! What else have you got? Can you give me something I haven’t seen before?”

However, Pitchford says he understands the nature of the business and that in the current climate, wearing unfamiliar shoes could prove too risky.

“The folks that are innovating need to be rewarded so that the folks that are making big bets can take that risk,” he said.

“It’s too big of a risk for Infinity Ward to do anything but what they’re doing, because there’s too much value and there’s really big scope for it.”

EA Sports boss Peter Moore has said the company sees Microsoft’s Project Natal and Sony’s motion control as a “huge opportunity” for the development house.

“I think they are going to impact us very positively,” he told Gama. “Anything that uses motion and movement – obviously sports is incredibly a part of that.

“We have seen both Natal and the motion controller from Sony several months ago, so we’re already, in both instances, looking at opportunities to bring our licensed product [and] our fitness product, to these new controller mechanisms.

“I can’t think about anybody better positioned than us to do that.”

Moore believes that physical interaction with games like Fight Night Round 4 would be giving consumers what they want: “If you think about everything everybody’s always wanted to do with a sports video game, so much of the feedback you get is, ‘I just wish I could’ – as we’re starting to do – ‘punch and something reacts,’” he said.

“So you think of Fight Night: Round 4, for example, if it were in a first-person mode it would be very very cool. So those are the things we’re starting to look at. Huge opportunity for us.”

Full five-page Moore interview through the link. It’s a good read.

Nintendo’s just announced that Hudson Entertainment’s SimEarth: The Living Planet will be available from its European Wii Virtual Console service this week.

SimEarth will set you back 800 Wii Points (approx. €8) and was originally released on PC Engine (TurboGrafx16) back in 1990.

The basic challenge of the game is to maintain a comfortable environment for the life forms by adjusting atmospheric and geological parameters. Small organisms called Prokaryote and Trichordate will grow and evolve into a multitude of life forms. Making a drastic change is a recipe for disaster. The key to success is making small adjustments and watching how the life forms react.

WiiWare will get Family Mini Golf amongst others (listed below) and DSi owners can download Art Style Boxlife.

Full run-down after the break.

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The rules and regulations that are sent out to developers who wish to use Avatars in their games has emerged via the XNA Creators Club website revealing that no sex, maiming or indeed talking is allowed.

The lengthy list (after the break) stipulates that Xbox Live Indie Game that uses Avatars must be reviewed to make sure it “doesn’t let the Avatar commit the following acts, have the act occur to them, or is a spectator to them”.

So we won’t see headless zombie Avatars running around, noiselessly copulating then? Shame.

Full thing below. Thanks, CVG.

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Rockstar Games has announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is heading to PSP as both a downloadable title and in UMD format.

“We’re proud to extend this truly unique handheld Grand Theft Auto experience to PSP and offer a downloadable version of Chinatown Wars for PSP Go!,” said Rockstar founder Sam Houser.

“Rockstar Leeds has shown incredible talent in creating games that raise the bar in terms of depth and innovation on portables, and with Chinatown Wars we have a rich, fast-paced, and incredibly addictive entry into the series.”

SCEA CEO Jack Tretton was equally delighted with news: “Rockstar’s work with the GTA series has been an enormous part of the success of PlayStation platforms,” he said.

“We’re excited to welcome the critically acclaimed Chinatown Wars to the outstanding line-up of great games headed to the PSP platform this fall.”

Press release after the break.

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Telltale CEO Dan Connors said the idea of being able to act in an adventure game could be made possible by Project Natal and that the full body motion sensor is a “huge thing” for what the company is doing.

“Obviously with the type of games that we make, the idea of making a person an actor inside of one of our adventures is an idea that’s been theoretical for a long time, ” he said to Videogamer. “It’s nice to see things happening that can get it closer.”

“It’s a huge opportunity to give the user more ways to interact with the world than just the traditional cursor-based and dialogue-based way in which the games work,” said Connors.

“Our focus is about creating really entertaining scenarios and characters, so removing barriers to experiencing that and making it easier and more natural to interact with, is a huge thing for what we’re doing.

“The number of ideas and types of designs that you could do around it are… it’s just the kind of thing that gets your creative teams going. For us, having the user be able to be a character in one of the worlds and solve mysteries and puzzles is a huge deal, a huge leap forward.”

More through the link.

GamesAid, a UK games industry charity for children and young people, announced its first company partners, including Codemasters, Eurogamer and Nintendo amongst others.

“GamesAid is all about inclusiveness and raising awareness, whilst at the same time keeping our running costs as low as possible,” said GamesAid chairman, Andy Payne.

“This partnership scheme recognises those companies who have committed to help GamesAid by raising awareness and funds and also contributing services on a pro bono basis.”

Want to get involved? There’s a charity poker tournament at the Grosvenor Casino, Brighton during the Develop Conference & Expo in Brighton in July. So get saving. Players can register here.

Full thing after the break.

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Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter has issued a note stipulating the company has increased it’s market valuations of Activision, THQ and Ubisoft with Acti shares rising to $16 from $13.75, THQ to $9 from $5.50 and Ubi to €21 from €16.50.

Why the price hike? “Since the end of March overall stock market valuations have increased significantly and valuations for entertainment companies have increased even further,” says the note.

“We were initially skeptical about whether the market rally was sustainable, but now feel that overall market valuations have stabilized and, as such, are raising the price targets for three of our covered entertainment software companies – Activision, THQ, and Ubisoft.”

That’s why.

The Major’s updated his blog to announce that Capcom’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is Deal of the Week.

What does this mean? It means it’s now down 400 MS Points from 1200 to 800.

So if you still haven’t got it, maybe now’s the time to dive in.

If you search for Max Payne 3 on online retailer Play.com’s site, you’ll find that it says the release date is Friday, October 30 2009.

However, retailers are often known to put tentative dates on games whose release dates are way in the future but according to Play.com themselves, this time, it’s different.

“Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding the release date of Max Payne 3,” the company wrote to Live PlayStation when quizzed about the date’s validity.

“Please be advised that the release date for this item, currently scheduled for 30/10/09, has been given to us by the developers of the game.”

Well, well. We’re still marking this one down as rumour until Rockstar gives the word.

Update: According to this Joystiq piece, Rockstar says it hasn’t announced a date yet and is standing by the “Winter” time frame in the official press release.

Robomodo president Joshua Tsui says that the skateboard peripheral for Tony Hawk’s Ride isn’t, it’s a platform in it’s own right.

“It’s really important to us that when people buy this package that they understand that, right now we’re concentrating on Tony Hawk Ride, but we want to make sure that people have a good return on their investment so there are many games that are planned for this peripheral,” said Tsui to Videogamer at E3.

“We look at it less as a peripheral, as more of a platform. The obvious ones are snowboarding and surfing and such, but there are a lot of games that can be used with this board, and we’re really excited to start working on those.”

RIDE is out for PS3 and 360 later this year.

1UP got its hands on an “early playable review build” of Wii Sports Resort and put out a couple of videos of gameplay that you can see below.

It actually looks rather good, if we’re being honest. But then again, the excellent Wii Sports still remains our most played game on the system.

Have a look.

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Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has apologised for his comments at the The Executive’s Club of Chicago last week claiming that a new 360 SKU would be release in 2010.

“I confused the issue with my poorly chosen words,” he said in a statement to IGN. “There is no news in my comments. Things are as reported after E3. Sorry.”

It has been rumoured that a more powerful and perhaps Natal-integrated Xbox 360 was on the way. We can now hopefully lay those finally to rest.

Radical Entertainment’s action open-worlder Prototype has knocked Sim 3 off top spot in the latest UK Charts from GfK Chart-Track.

Sim 3 is still sitting pretty at number two closely followed by the evergreen Wii Fit in third.

Ghostbusters PS3 débuted in fourth.

Full thing below:

BioWare has hinted that we may get details of the next instalment of Mass Effect DLC at some point this week.

“Getting the feeling some news about the next ME1 DLC may be coming this week. Keep your eyes peeled,” the company said via its Twitter feed.

Over the weekend, it was rumoured that the content would launch alongside the game when it becomes available for download on Microsoft’s Games On Demand service.

Bring it on, BioWare.

A couple of pieces of what looks to be concept are for Codemaster’s F1 series have eeked out courtesy of Famistu, reports CVG.

This is the first piece of media released since exec producer Gavin Raeburn said that F1 2010 “the best F1 game ever” and “literally nothing less will do.

“F1 games haven’t set the world alight over the last decade and we think that the sport deserves a game which really captures its excitement and glamour.”

F1 2010 will be out of PS3 and Xbox 360 next year with F1 2009 ready to hit Wii and PSP in autumn.

Click the link for more.

Eidos has sent word that the next instalment of the Championship Manager franchise will get up and running in September.

The game promises “a host of unique, cutting-edge technology including a bespoke 3D match engine with over 500 individual player animations, a Set-piece creator giving users the chance to create their own unique free kicks and corners, Scouting Networks allowing users to set-up local networks in countries around the world and grow local player knowledge and Practice matches helping users select their perfect team or trial new players.”

So if you like sleepless nights, no relationship and very little in the way of nourishment, place your pre-order now.

Full thing after the break.

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Speaking in this week’s podcast, freshly back from Iraq, Xbox Live’s Major Nelson has said the next system update will make the dashboard “faster.”

“We are making the guide faster,” he said whilst also confirming that he’s “intimately involved” in its development.

“The team has done some really good stuff around making performance enhancements,” he added.

“[However,] ‘Performance enhancements’ doesn’t sound right because it sounds like we’re going to give the guide a little blue pill, and we’re not doing that.

“Whatever we call it (and it’s not going to be called the NNXE), but whatever the next version of the dashboard is called, it’s better with a lot of very cool new features. That update will be out later this year,” he said.

Full thing through the link.