Monthly Archives: June 2009

There isn’t a second God of War title in development for PSP. God of War III director Stig Asmussen told 1UP at E3 yesterday.

“I don’t know where that rumor came from,” he said.

“I will deny that there’s a new PSP game, but I will say I really hope that something like that will be done, because we saw how well that worked out before.”

That’s that, then.

Microsoft’s Shane Kim and Aaron Greenberg has said that Project Natal and the company’s recent acquisition of 3DV tech have nothing to do with each other.

Project Natal has been in development “for a long time.”

“No, we built this in house,” echoed Greenberg.

“None of those rumours did justice to what we were actually doing with Project Natal. People expected a controller you put in your hands,” Kim told VentureBeat.

“We have done a lot of work in natural user interfaces. Voice recognition is one of them. That’s why we have been able to deliver development kits for it this week.”

More through the link.

Below you can watch some previously un-seen (by us) footage of God of War III showing how Kratos can now use QTE’s to not only defeat the larger of his foes, but actually mount, ride and control them as well.

Excitement level just rose up a notch.

See for yourself.

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Sony PS3 exclusive, 256 player multiplayer, men in army clothing, and lots and lots of firepower: that’s what MAG (Massive Action Game) promises to deliver, and judging by the footage below, it might just do that.

We should all be playing this sometime next year.

Check it out.

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Rockstar founder Sam Houser has said that he is more than excited by PS3 exclusive Agent, announced at Sony’s E3 press conference last night, and he feels it will be the “ultimate action game.”

“We have always enjoyed making action games, and with Agent we are making what we believe will be the ultimate action game,” said Houser.

“Agent is a game we have wanted to make for a long time. The team in Edinburgh is doing an amazing job combining intense action, atmosphere and story in a great period setting to create something that feels quite unique.

“We cannot wait for people to experience this game.”

Full press release after the break.

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Natal was amazing, right? Not everyone thinks so. It wasn’t enough for Tony Hawk: Ride, the Birdman said himself at E3 yesterday.

“We actually tried to get [Tony Hawk: Ride] running with a camera, but it wasn’t accurate enough,” Hawk told MTV.

“Plus you can’t really do ollies, grabs and flips when you’re just standing on nothing.”

A kid was shown playing a skateboard game using Natal in the reveal videos.

Thanks, EG.

Entertainment Software Association (ESA) president Michael Gallagher has said during his E3 keynote speech that the gaming industry’s “best, brightest, and boldest days lie ahead.”

Gallagher recognised the recent decline in sales in the US, but insisted that compared with other media industries, gaming is performing admirably.

He went on to say that families offered the greatest potential for industry growth, with games offering better value for money than other forms of media.

Gallagher pointed out that social gaming as equally important and companies are in an “arms race” to improve in this area.

In short: “Our best, brightest, and boldest days lie ahead,” he said.

Thanks, GI.

Shacknews is hosting some rather nice looking Left 4 Dead 2 in-game action from the E3 show floor.

It’s off-screen, so there’s lots of hubbub in the background, but it’s sharp enough to give you an idea of how it looks/plays.

Left 4 Dead is coming to PC and Xbox 360.

Kotaku and Gamespot have both posted up impressions of Q Games’ Pixeljunk shooter. It’s awesome, apparently.

It’s “amazingly addicting,” says Kotaku. Fair enough.

It’s out for PSN later this year.

Nintendo UK general manager David Yarntonhas said the company doesn’t feel threatened by Sony and Microsoft’s recent ventures into the motion control market.

“We’ve got our product out there and we’ve had that out for a while. We haven’t seen anything current from those guys to comment on it,” he told GI.

“We’re looking at innovation all the time, as you saw with the Vitality Sensor that was shown briefly today. There are always things coming through that enable us to keep two steps ahead. On top of that we’ve got one or two other areas to compete with in other forms of entertainment.

“One of the reasons why we have a lot of different products and offerings for different people is because we’re competing for free time and entertainment time,” he went on. “Not just with videogames but movies and other entertainment. That’s more what we’re concerned with.

“We’ve got lots of exclusive content and obviously we have our own franchises and IP – you’re not going to see Mario on any other console. Even on third party there’s a lot of exclusive content so we’re not worried about that.”

More through the link.

Bethesda will release the next bit of Fallout 3 DLC, Fallout 3: Point Lookout, will release on June 23, the company said at E3 yesterday.

This is the swampy episode. IGN’s got impressions of it here. Screens there, too.

Get the Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker reveal movie after the break. PSP’s looking a damn sight brighter after this week.

It was announced yesterday for a 2010 release.

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Shigeru Miyamoto said he was “sorry” yesterday for the fact we’re still waiting for a Pikmin 3 reveal.

“I’m sorry,” the developer said, talking at a post-conference event at E3.

“Unfortunately we haven’t been able to expand the team size very much, because we’ve been working on so many different games that we’ve shown off at the show. So the team is working very hard, but it’s a bit of a small team.”

Two Wii Mario titles and a Team Ninja Wii Metroid game clearly aren’t enough for some.

Thanks, Kotaku.

It emerged yesterday the Ubisoft and Tetsuya Mizuguchi were collaborating on a new IP only know as “codename Eden.” However, it appears of though the project will indeed be called as as Ubisoft has filed a a patent for the name.

Hopefully we’ll hear more about Eden soon.

Thanks, Superannuation.

Microsoft has filed a patent for Peter Molyneux’s Project Natal project, Milo and Kate.

The amazing E3 demonstration was believed to be a tech demo only, but Superannuation speculates this patent could mean Milo and Kate will indeed be a commercial product.

Time will tell.

In between the PSP Go announcement in the and motion-control demos at its E3 press conference yesterday, Sony also revealed new content for the PSN video service. See a grab of all the companies sticking their oar in Engadget.

Users are to have the ability to download video directly to PSP, no PS3 or PC intermediary needed.

Bonzer. All details through the link.

The official Crackdown 2 info on Xbox.com details just how important a role multiplayer will play in Realtime World’s Crackdown sequel.

“[Crackdown 2 will] take multiplayer gaming to unprecedented levels… providing you and your friends with the complete freedom to explore, destroy and play as you return to restore justice and peace to Pacific City,” says the blurb.

Also detailed are the number of players: 16 in multiplay and co-op for up to four.

However, there’s no mention of the single player campaign. This lends itself to nicely what we told you back in February: that the Crackdown follow-up could be a multiplayer only effort.

More soon, hopefully.

Thanks, EG.

As per headline, the Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta is now live, so all you inFamous owners out there can user your code and get downloading.

Our copy of inFamous is in the post so hopefully we shoot each other in the head in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks, Kotaku.

IGN got some face time with LittleBigPlanet PSP and the first impressions of the game are resoundingly positive ones.

The game runs well at this point, the controls are nicely responsive, and it looks like the collectible stickers and such are here in full effect. The main hub had the moons for user-generated content, though the build was locked down to just playing the demo level.

So far it looks cool, and given that it seems like it’ll have entirely unique content, it should wind up being a worthy pickup for fans of the franchise and newcomers alike.

Whet your appetite? Here are some screenshots.

See below as Tony Hawk talk about how he approached Activision with the plastic skateboard peripheral idea for TH Ride and how the end result was better than he could have imagined.

“I went to Activision, I brought the idea there,” he said. “The board design was honestly way better than I envisioned.”

“I had the idea but I didn’t know how it would all work,” he went on.

“This thing is amazing.”

Tony Hawk’s Ride is out for PS3 and 360 later this year.

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