Monthly Archives: July 2009

Harvey Elliott, head of EA Bright Light studio, Guildford, said at Shrine Week in London that he wasn’t ruling out the idea of Boom Blox coming to other formats beside Wii.

“I wouldn’t rule anything out, never say never,” said Elliott to Videogamer.

“Why I think Boom Blox has really worked is that it captured the spirit of the Wii. It’s about the motion control, it’s about throwing a ball or throwing an object.

“I can’t imagine that on other devices at the moment. There’s something very physical about it. Right now I’m really proud that it’s stayed focused on the Wii and I think it’s the right thing. Who knows for the future.”

We’re thinking the success of Sony Motion control and Natal would be the deciding factor in this one.

The Battlefield 1943 Twitter account updated over the weekend to reveal that PS3 owners now have access to the Coral Sea Air Superiority map.

The map opened up after players collectively recorded 43 million kills in the game.

Xbox Live members reached that target last week.

Thanks, Joystiq.

See the new PSPgo in action – playing LittleBigPlanet PSP no less – after the break.

There’s a lot of background noise, but the whole thing looks smooth.

LittleBigPlanet PSP is set for release later this year.

Go watch.

More »

Capcom has slapped a September 25th date on Wii exclusive beat-’em-up, Spyborgs.

The action is interspersed with rhythm action and on-rails mini-games. There are puzzles and interactive cartoon cut-scenes too.

Not long to wait now.

Thanks, EG.

One of the most successful companies in Korea, NHN, is to open a European office and plans to release its MMO’s to a European audience, writes GI.

“Europe has tremendous growth potential that is too often overlooked by international MMO publishers,” said Dongmin Lee, head of overseas game business development.

“We understand the opportunities the European market presents, and by meeting the unique requirements of European gamers, we believe we can offer them an outstanding service.”

More through the link.

No doubt boosted by the the film’s release last week, EA’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood price has topped the UK charts, w/e July 18th, leaping three spaces from fourth to top spot.

Another game-of-the-movie, Activision’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen moves up one into second spot and last week’s number one, Tiger Woods 10, has to settle for third.

Full top ten below:

In a video interview with VG247 last week, Team 17 boss Martyn Brown said that Alien Breed Evolution will release on Xbox Live Arcade first due to the faith Microsoft showed in the developer from an early stage.

“I think XBLA still leads PS3 in terms of user base and probably the amount of people buying the thing,” he told us when we asked why Team 17 chose 360 as the lead platform for release.

“Plus we have a relationship with Microsoft that’s pretty close – a first party publishing relationship,” he said.

“They showed a lot of faith in us early doors and that’s kind of kept going really. I think they’ve got the same kind of games on there: it’s the same kind of audience really.

“I’m not suggesting the PS3 is any less than that, but we just feel that’s the market for the game.

“It will come to PS3 and it will come to PC as well, but intially it’ll be Live Arcade,” concluded Brown.

Watch the full video interview here.

Realtime Worlds boss Dave Jones told VG247 that he’d be disappointed if action MMO, APB didn’t shift over a million units.

“I’ll be disappointed if we can’t sell a million plus,” he told us at Develop in Brighton last week.

One million copices would certainly go some way to recoup the $30m dollars that APB cost to make. A figure that Jones also revealed to VG247 in our video interview with him last week.

“The next thing then is how long they [the million] remain a part of the APB community in an ongoing basis. That’s a hard one to put a number on,” he said.

“I expect a little bit of a drop off from that potentially but really I want to grow this game. As we start to look at what people want, what they’re screaming out for more of – as they start to speak to their friends and say these are the kinds of things we want in it – ideally we want to grow that userbase,” he explained.

“So it folds back a bit initially because a lot of people just want to to try it. They might say, ‘this has 70 per cent of the things that I want but these are the things that would really make it for me.’ Then we’d have to go back and address some of that and do those things and start to effectively grow the database.”

Watch the full interview through the link.

APB is out “early 2010.”

Valve has announced Family Games! for Steam, which is a new branch of the service dedicated to, well, families.

However, before you groan, some of the games aren’t all that bad. There’s Peggle, Plants vs. Zombies and erm…Peggle, oh and Plants vs. Zombies!

Only kidding. We’re sure there’s more. Check them all out here.

Thanks, Kotaku.

20 per cent of troubled company Midway’s staff have been given two month’s notice, reports Edge.

According to the Chicago Tribune, among those to be let go is chief executive Matt Booty.

Hard times indeed.

Warner recently paid $49m for the Mortal Kombat developer, as was reported last week.

EG reports that Ubisoft has launched UbiFriends, a new Facebook gaming portal.

“We’ve been a leader in the art of making games for many years, and we’re happy to bring the Ubisoft experience to Facebook, ” said NA president Laurent Detoc.

“Our first application, TickTock, is about leveraging user generated content to interact with your friends, and it’s the first of many applications that we’re building for our UbiFriends portal.”

TickTock is available now, so you can play that instead of working today. Great, huh?

Bizzare Creations associate producer Chris Pickford has revealed that the franchise has sold over seven million units to date.

“We were absolutely astounded at how well Gotham 1 sold,” said Bizarre Creations associate producer Chris Pickford at Develop last week. “I think we projected that the game would sell around 500,000 units, but we absolutely smashed it.”

As for hard numbers, Pickford had been restrained from giving out the specifics:

“I’ve been told not to mention specific sales figures by the powers that be but I can tell you that the franchise sold over seven million units since the last count.”

It has also emerged that Activision paid $67.4m when it secured Bizzare back in 2007. However, Develop-Online reveals an addition $40m is on offer if Bizarre’s Blur can hit sales targets by 2012/2013.

More through the link.

Thanks, Develop.

Nintendo has announced that selected UK retailers will allow you to be the first to play Wii Sports Resort and give you the chance of winning a watersports and beach holiday in Halkidiki, Greece.

All you have to is turn up at one of the following retailers on this Friday, 24th July:

Game, 100 Oxford Street, London, W1D 1LL

Argos, Unit 2, The Gantry, 22-26 The Headrow, Leeds

Smyths, Unit 424, Blanchardstown Centre, Dublin

GameStation, 138 Birmingham New Street, Birmingham

Full press release after the break.

More »

Cliff Bleszinki has revealed that there will be a Gears Universe panel at Comic Con later this week and joining him will be executive producer Rod Fergusson, writer Josh Ortega, Josh Morgan (movie script writer) and film director Len Weisman.

“It’s gonna be hosted by Adam Sessler from P4,” the artist formerly known as Cliffy B tells Major Nelson. “We’re just gonna hang out, shoot the shit about about the franchise, and talk about the future.

“There’s a couple of titbits about the movie and future plans for everything. That’s gonna be fun, that’s gonna be big and exciting,” he said.

We’ll bring you all the news as it happens, innit.

RTS card game Battleforge is to get a new card expansion called the Renegade Edition, so the official site says.

You’ll get 60 new units and structure creating cards along with “dual orb cards and special affinities” that “will deepen and enrich the strategical possibilities of the decks and the combat itself.”

The expansion will hit sometime on August.

Thanks, BigDownload.

Mega-news Monday continues as now news of a new update for Red Alert 3 surfaces.

It’s version 1.12 and fixes the following:

An emergency hotfix that corrects the Assault Destroyer Black Hole Armor error from Patch 1.11.

While Black Hole Armor is active, damage reduction was increased to 35% from what it was in patch 1.10.

Told you it was shit-hot, didn’t we?

Grab it over at GamersHell.

Dave Perry has said that cloud gaming service GaiKai isn’t not aimed at the hardcore market at all but he’s hoping to bring the wow-factor to the non-gamer.

“GaiKai is not built for hardcore gamers – those are the guys that want HD, 60 frames per second, who are happy to sit for an hour and a half, download and install it… that’s just not our audience at all – it’s trying to reach out to new players, the hundreds of millions of people who never touched Mario Kart but would like to,” he told GI.

“They don’t know it yet, but when they click – they’re clicking on games on Facebook, on their iPhone, on MySpace, on Flash games sites – and they haven’t experienced games like EVE Online, or Spore, or LEGO Star Wars. They haven’t bought a console yet, they’re not there yet.

“So that’s the audience we’re going after initially – and it’s a very different approach,” he went on. ”

“To them it will be shocking: ‘Good God, what the Hell is this?’ And that’s the experience we want people to have.”

Dave Perry told us at Develop last week in a video interview that he hopes GaiKai will launch in early 2010.

Full interview through the GI link.

Hold on to your hats, PlayStation firmware update 2.80 is now ready for launch.

What does it do? Well, as we told you last month, not very much, we’re afraid; just a few minor tweaks to improve overall quality.

Still, worth doing anyway, right?

Thanks, CVG.

Update: Oops! Seems like this has been out for ages. Thanks, Syrok.

Dragon Quest IX has already gone mental in the Japanese software charts, but Square Enix wants more, much more.

Company president Yoichi Wada has told the Japanese press that, “We’re look at reaching over 5 million copies of Dragon Quest IX shipped.”

Wada went on to say that he hopes the Japanese gaming industry will profit as a whole from the game’s success. However, the improvement is already there to see – if you’re Nintendo that is – as DS sales have rocketed since the RPG’s release.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Sega has announced that classic brawler, Streets of Rage, is on its way to iPhone and iPod Touch.

The game will feature characters Axel Stone, Adam Hunter and Blaze Fielding, and will have eight levels for you to punch and kick your way through.

There’s no date yet, but the price will be $4.99. Not bad.

Thanks, Destructoid.

Update: it seems Europeans don’t have to wait for this as it’s apparently already out on the Euro App Store for a measly £2.99. Thanks, Robo_1.