Monthly Archives: June 2009

Creative Assembly has announced that Patch 1.3 will arrive for Empire: Total War on June 22.

You can get the update through Steam.

Players can expect the addition of 14 new units, improvements to multi-threading for PCs with multi-core processors and performance improvements for single-core PCs.

Loads more is listed over on the official forums.

Thanks, BigDownload.

The US PSN update this week is slightly better than the European one, in that it has Metal Gear Solid and a football demo.

Playable Content for PSP gets Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 full game and MGS.

Here’s the list courtesy of Joystiq. The usual Rock Band and Guitar Hero stuff is in there too after the break.

Playable Content:

• Metal Gear Solid PS1 game ($9.99)
• Qore yearly subscription ($24.99)
• Qore episode 13 ($2.99)
• NCAA Football 10 demo (free)

Add-on Content

• MotorStorm Pacific Rift Jester Signature Livery pack (free)
• 3x Cross Edge packs (free)
• Guitar Hero World Tour DLC (continued)
• Rock Band DLC (continued)

More »

Former EA COO John Pleasants has joined social games developer Playdom as its new CEO.

Co-founder and current CEO Dan Yue will take the position of chief product officer, and says Pleasants’ experience overseeing Pogo, Rupture, mobile games, and EA’s social gaming made him a good choice.

“Online gaming is the fastest-growing sector of the gaming industry, and social gaming, in particular, is transforming the way people play and experience games,” said Pleasants.

Playdom is responsible for social network games such as Mobsters, a popular online game on Facebook and MySpace.

The company claims there are more than 20 million monthly users playings its games.

More through Gamasutra.

Relic has announced that There is Only War, the next Dawn of War II update, will go into open beta in July.

It will include balancing, eight multiplayer maps, the ability to “spectate custom multiplayer matches” and some basic improvements.

The beta will be open to all Dawn of War II users and an exact date, along with more announcements, is expected soon.

More through Shack.

Bionic Commando Rearmed will be getting a patch and Trophies.

According to Capcom Unity, Grin has reworked Easy and Normal difficulties, and fixed a bug with Super Joe Machine Gun and allowing a larger clip and more damage.

The patch will be made available on Xbox Live and PSN soon, with the later getting the addition of Trophies.

More patch notes are through the link.

John Schappert has left Microsoft to return to EA as its new COO, beginning July 14.

Replacing John Pleasants, who left EA to pursue other interests, Schappert began his stint at the company as a software engineer in 1991 before moving on to Microsoft, where he is credited with the launch of Xbox 360′s online services division.

Eventually, he became VP of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, overseeing the launches of Halo, Gears of War and the New Xbox Live Experience.

“We are thrilled to welcome John Schappert back to EA,” said EA’s John Riccitiello. “He has a great track record as a leader and innovator in our industry. His years of experience with EA and in Microsoft’s Xbox business provide him great insight into recognizing what consumers want.”

Schappert has stated that he is looking forward to “helping [EA] grow the business on new platforms and in new markets.”

“After nearly two decades working in or around this company, I’ve got EA in my blood,” he said.

More through the press release below.
More »

Project lead for The Beatles: Rock Band, Josh Randall, has said that Harmonix was set on three-part harmonies for the game, and worked diligently to make it happen properly.

“Originally, with [Rock Band] and with all of our games, we wanted to just create the ultimate party in your living room. And whenever we play Rock Band together, there are always extra people in the room. So we thought, “What if we just have an extra mic?”, Randall told Gamautra.

“But then, we thought about it more, and we realized that a big signature part of The Beatles’ music is the beautiful harmonies that they do, so let’s actually turn that into a real game element.

“We went through a really heavy prototyping phrase, figuring out, “Alright, how do we get multiple arrow pointers? How do you know what you’re singing? How do we do the scoring?” and all of that. We did really tight iteration, where like every morning we would meet and try out the latest version and tweak it to see how it works.”

Game’s out September 9.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

Capcom announced today that Monumental Games is currently developing  MotoGP 09/10 and it’s expected to be released in March 2010.

Slated for PS3 and Xbox 360, the game promises to be “the most comprehensive MotoGP game to date”, and includes all the bikes, riders and tracks from the 2009 championship.

Career and new gameplay gives riders rewards for style, winning, and the ability to update with content from the 2010 championship.

More through the press release below.

More »

GameTap will be adding Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year edition to the service today.

The free game of the week is Total Overdose and the regular free library has had BloodRayne, Colin Mcrae Rally, Commandos 3, and Operation Flashpoint added to it.

Fantastic.

More over on the GameTap Blog.

Via BigDownload.

Tonight, G4TV will air the God of War III demo shown at E3 around 6:30pm EST/PST and again at 8:30pm EST/PST on X-Play.

Just in case none of you have seen it already.

Game Director Stig Asmussen will provide the walk-through and add a bit of commentary.

Don’t get G4TV? Then just log into the official website after after X-Play has started, and voila!

US PS Blog has more on this if you are interested.

The European PSN update this week is sparse at best. Guess folks are getting paid back for the awesomeness that was last week.

‘Bout the only downloadables this week are Guitar Hero and Rock Band tracks along with the Jester Signature Livery Pack for MotorStorm: Pacific Rift.

Here’s the full thing courtesy of Joystiq:

Ad-on Content:

• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift – Jester Signature Livery Pack (free)
• Guitar Hero World Tour DLC (continued)
• Rock Band DLC (continued)

Videos

• inFAMOUS – Behind The Scenes Technology Trailer
• Assassin’s Creed 2 – Commented Gameplay Trailer
• Mini Ninjas – Hiro Vignette
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift – Speed Trailer
• Inferno Pool – Trailer

Guitar Hero World Tour DLC

Ben Harper Track Pack (£4.39/€5.99)

• “Fly One Time” (£1.59/€1.99)
• “Number with No Name” (£1.59/€1.99)
• “Shimmer and Shine” (£1.59/€1.99)

Rock Band DLC

Evanescence Pack 01 (£2.49/€3.99)

• “Bring Me Back to Life” (£0.99/€1.49)
• “Call Me When You’re Sober” (£0.99/€1.49)
• “Weight of the World” (£0.99/€1.49)

Spinal Tap Pack 01 (£4.99/€7.99)

• “Back from the Dead” (£0.99/€1.49)
• “Rock ‘N’ Roll Nightmare” (£0.99/€1.49)
• “Saucy Jack” (£0.99/€1.49)
• “Warmer than Hell” (£0.99/€1.49)

In just the first weekend of availability, Map Pack 2 for Call of Duty: World at War has exceeded one million downloads.

The pack contains maps Bonsai, Corrosion, Shi No Numa and Sub Pens.

It’s available through PSN and Xbox Live for $13.00 (£7.99) and 800 MS Points, respectively.

Press release is below.

More »

Cliff Bleszinski has said that he is not burned out on the Gears of War franchise and never wants to work on a licensed IP. As a matter of fact, he feels there are still loads left to accomplish and create with the series.

“There have only been two Gears games,” Bleszinski told OXM. “There are still plenty of opportunities for things you can do in a cover-based shooter and there are still a lot of stories to tell in the Gears universe.

“I’m not burned out with the franchise at all, but there are tradeoffs. With an established IP, you’re not saying, ‘are we going to do cover?’ and ‘who is this Cole Train guy?’ It’s all there – the writer writes and it’s a known entity. But with a new IP, it’s raw and wide open. It’s like solving a giant puzzle in your head, and it’s great.

“Whenever I talk to people in the business, I ask them what they’re working on. When they say, ‘I’m working on a new IP,’ I say, ‘Good for you!’ because if tomorrow someone came to Epic and forced me to do a licensed IP – ‘You have to make the new videogame for the new Mummy movie’- I would go out back and put a shotgun in my mouth.

“Original IPs are the best-selling and the strongest titles in the industry because they generally don’t have to adhere to rules or limitations.”

Fair enough.

Thanks, CVG.

Namco Bandai says that the rehires from Bottle Rocket are hard at work alongside Surge -  the Afro Samurai team – and are “committed to bringing Splatterhouse to the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2010.”

“This will give us time to polish and incorporate all the content to deliver a top notch game worthy of this classic video game franchise,” a Namco representative told Joystiq.

Splatterhouse was absent from E3, according to Siliconera, because Namco wanted the team to focus on the game not a demo.

More through the links.

Codemasters has included a Colin McRae Memorial Cup rally race in DiRT 2.

In the game, players will work towards qualifying for the race, and his name will pop up in other places as well.

“You’ll hear other drivers talking about him,” Codemasters’ Mark Turosz told MTV. “He’s the central figure in the narrative.”

According to the report, this is one of the first times that an actual “real-world death” has been implemented in a game.

It’s expected to arrive at retail in September.

More through the link.

Sega has announced that Naoya Tsurumi will assume worldwide responsibility for Sega’s Consumer Business, which includes Sega of America, Europe and Japan.

In addition, Mike Hayes, the president of European operations, has been promoted to the newly created position of President & COO of both Sega of America and Sega of Europe, reporting directly to Tsurumi.

This new role aligns the two Western markets and “ensures more aggressive collaboration across these growing territories in operations and product development.”

Sega’s announcement comes on the heels of president Simon Jeffery, hanging up his hat to “pursue other interests” with iPhone publisher ngmoco.

More job descriptions and the like are posted in the press release below.

More »

AMD and Nvidia both plan to release new graphics chips by the end of the year.

Great. We just updated ours.

According to a report from VentureBeat, this next-gen batch will be so fantastic it’s “bound to drive the stock prices of the rivals involved either up or down through the rest of the year”.

Both will incorporate 40nm chips on the cards, and are expected to support DirectX 11 within a year.

AMD plans to release its new tech to coincide with the launch of Windows 7, while Nvidia are keeping mum on when its lovely chip will be released.

Via Kotaku, VentureBeat.

Toby Gard has been named lead designer of Crystal Dynamics’ unannounced title.

The Tomb Raider creator announced it via his LinkedIn profile.

Sounds like the AAA title mentioned Tuesday might be the revamping of Lara after all.

We’ll find out soon enough, we reckon.

Thanks, D’toid.

inXile Entertainment has filed a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office for “Choplifter” in the “downloadable electronic games via the Internet and wireless devices” category.

With such a listing, the air-battle, rescue mission title will likely be remade for iPhone or digitally distributed for consoles.

Fun news for those that recall the original 1982 classic that was ported to beat the band.

Raise your hand if you are old enough to remember this game on Atari 5200.

More over on Gamespot.

Koei and Tecmo are planning to merge two popular titles together in order to appeal to “fans of both.”

No word on what the game is or what the two titles in question are, but it’s a sure thing according to the summer edition of Nikkei Corporate Information.

“Tecmo and Koei are combining titles to launch a new game”, reads the publication. “The aim is to bring in fans of both.”

The most popular franchises in the group are Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden and hack-and-slash Dynasty Warriors for Tecmo and Koei, respectively.

Via Kotaku.