Monthly Archives: July 2009

Microsoft’s released some official shots of the rumoured upcoming 360 dashboard update, confirming that premium Avatar clothing is soon to be with us. Get them all from Gamersyde.

You’ll soon be able to buy a jacket for 160MSP. Cool. We think.

Other additions include content rating, Friends list sorting, and an ‘overall Achievements/Gamerscore’ tab.

Take a look. There’s no date on it yet. Thanks, Blerk.

HMV’s priced the Modern Warfare 2 Prestige edition at £120.

Yep: this is the one with the night vision goggles.

It’s out on November 10. Why would you not want it?

Upcoming Realtime Worlds MMO APB has cost around $30 million so far, company boss Dave Jones told VG247 at Develop this week, and won’t be covered by a “normal” subscription model when it releases next spring.

“It’s not just a game any more,” said Jones. “We’ve got data centres, we’ve got all the hardware. But if you wrap it all up, it’s probably a good $30 million investment.”

The boss added that consumers will pay up front for a disc or download, but that the game’s subs model will be something not seen before in MMOs.

“Basically, you have to buy the client. It’s a traditional game that you buy,” he said.

“We’re not going the normal ‘you have to subscribe to play the game every month’ route. What we haven’t said is which route we are going, and in some respects we’re still looking.”

Jones said the eventually model will be “flexible,” “unique” and interesting, and will allow the player to “get” why they have to spend money to cover Realtime Worlds’ investment.

Watch the full interview with Dave here.

In case you missed it in the PS motion tech keynote liveblog from Develop yesterday, Sony confirmed that PS Eye can already recognise faces.

The SCEE research and development guys said the peripheral is capable of detecting the “position and direction” of your head, the “gender and age of face” and smiles.

It can also detect different parts of the face, such as nose, mouth and eyes.

The camera was shown being used with the company’s motion tech in the Brighton session yesterday, although the demo was the same stuff shown at E3.

Rare animation head Louise Ridgeway told VG247 at Develop this week that the developer’s work on 360′s Avatar system had altered consumers perception of the machine as something for “hardcore gamers”.

“I really think that we’ve kind of changed the face of the Xbox,” she said.

“It’s gone from something that was always perceived as a hardcore gamer’s console. I mean, I really like games. I like Resident Evil, I like Street Fighter, I like the typical boys games, but when I boot up the Xbox 360 and my daughter gets on there to play Street Fighter – she’s really good as Ken – I’m feel really proud of the fact that she can join in.

“It’s just that little bit more inviting, you know, and I think it broadens it to a whole new demographic of people.”

Ridgeway added that 360′s exeperience is inclusive, and should be viewed as such.

“It’s a really great console, and there’s so many great things on it to play that everybody should be involved,” she said.

You can listen to the full interview with Louise, recorded at Develop this week, in our latest podcast.

Develop’s been and gone – find out what we thought of the UK show in the second episode of our podcast after the break.

There’s also an interview with Rare’s head of animation, Louise Ridgeway, in there, where she talks about Rare’s work on 360′s Avatar system. It’s good stuff, so take a listen.

• 0.00-12.09 – Pat and Steph discuss this week’s Develop Conference in Brighton
• 12.10-22.29 – Rare’s Louise Ridgeway on Avatars and how they’ve changed Xbox 360

More next week.

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The final Media Create Japanese hadrware sales for the week have shown that, as predicted, DS exploded on the launch of Dragon Quest IX, nearly tripling from last week to almost 130,000 sales across DSi and DS Lite.

Numbers below for the week ending July 12.

• DSi – 118,202
• PSP – 26,527
• Wii – 22,141
• DS Lite – 10,161
• PS3 – 9,864
• Xbox 360 – 3,561
• PS2 – 3,508

What did you expect? The June NPD released last night, showing the expect big negative figures for the month. Get all the news below.

There are some positives in the mire, though. Xbox 360 and PS hardware sales are up, and 4 million new players have entered the market since last year. Let’s hunt that silver lining, pop-pickers.

Fill your boots.

• June NPD: Prototype clear winner with over 419K units moved
• June NPD: Fourth consecutive month of year-over-year declines
• June NPD: Hardware show DS moving over 766K units
• Nintendo’s take on June NPD: WiiMotion Plus sold 169K units without being bundled
• Sony’s take on June NPD: Hardware offerings up by 132.5K compared to May
• Microsoft’s take on June NPD: Paid downloads increased 73 percent YoY

According to NPD data, Xbox 360 moved 241,000 units during June, which is a 9 percent year-over-year increase and Aaron Greenberg is confident that the 360 will maintain momentum during the back half of the year, combined with the growth of its download service.

“Our console sales for the first half of the year actually grew 20 percent from January to June versus the same six months last year,” Greenberg told Gamasutra. “We’re the only console that grew in the first half of the year.”

“I think what’s interesting there is we were the first to market, so in many ways we’re showing a lot of longevity. Xbox Live data is kind of this untold phenomenon. There are 20 million people there, but what are they doing? Are they buying more stuff?

“In the first half of the year, paid downloads increased 73 percent over the 12 months through June. That significantly outpaces what we saw in growth for console sales or software sales. It’s continuing to become a bigger and bigger part of our business.”

Greenberg says he is confident with the holiday line-up, what with exclusives Forza 3, Halo: ODST and Splinter Cell: Conviction and multiplatforms DJ Hero and Rock Band Beatles.

“We’ve kind of bucked the trend of the declining market,” he says. “I hate to promise or speculate what the second half will be for us or for the market, but I think it will be tough comps for the entire industry, and we hope we can continue to buck that trend, too.”

More through the link.

During the month of June, PS3 moved 164,700 units, with PSP moving 163,500 and PS2 still going strong with 152,700 units moved.

“Coming out of E3, there’s no doubt PlayStation is delivering an unmatched caliber of content for the back half of the year,” commented Patrick Seybold, Senior Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media at SCEA, on the June numbers.

“With positive momentum of PS3 hardware over the past two months, and continued enthusiasm for breakout exclusive games like inFAMOUS, we’re on pace for another tremendous year across our platforms.

“We’re remaining focused on providing great entertainment to consumers and are confident in delivering again on that promise this year.”

inFamous, the PS3 exclusive was once again moving 192,700 copies compared to last month’s 175,900 copies.

PSP moved 63,100 more units compared to last month, with PS3 sales up by 33,700 units, and PS2 up by 35,700 units compared to last month.

In June, combined DS and DSi sales showed movement of 766,000 units, more than all current-generation consoles combined with Wii marking its 21st consecutive month of being the best-selling console.

Broken down: DSi sold 424,000 units and DS 342,000, and Wii 362,000.

Wii Motion Plus moved 374,000 total – 205,000 were bundled with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 and 169,000 as a single purchase.

“More consumers continued to gravitate toward products that offer quality experiences and great value for the whole family,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Consumers again selected Nintendo systems for those experiences, particularly our hand-helds.”

Four games published for Nintendo platforms finished in the top 10 including: EA Sports Active at No. 3 with more than 289,000 sold, Wii Fit at No. 4 with more than 271,000 sold, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 with Wii MotionPlus at No. 7 with nearly 205,000 sold and Mario Kart Wii at No. 8 with more than 202,000 sold.

The June NPDs are out and while the figures may show things brightening a bit, there is some bad news too.

This is the fourth month of decline for the industry – down 31 percent to $1.17 billion – and the worst since September 2000 when the decline was at 41 percent. Even with the industry down 12% year-to-date, it could bounce back with a strong back half of the year providing more titles are not pushed into 2010 or later, according to NPD.

Reports show that 4 million new players entered the market since 2008, but some are new retail consumers and some are playing free online games and on mobile devices. The blame for this is being put on the economy, and NPD admits this is one of the first months the belt tightening has reflected sales.

“While some of the decline in retail sales could be a migration on the part of consumers to acquiring content via digital distribution, our reports on downloads and subscriptions reveal that it’s not yet having enough impact on the console market to be an overly meaningful factor in the retail down-turn,” according to NPD’s Anita Frazier. “That said, there are increasing avenues for consumers to game, including via mobile devices, and it’s clear the industry is sorting through how to manage all these opportunities while deploying resources appropriately.”

Xbox 360 was the only platform to have a sales increase over June 2008, and Wii sales while down are still strong.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010 debuted in June and almost doubled the units sold in the first month compared to PGA Tour ’05 and ’07, which sold 272K units each.

This is the first month since launch that Wii Play has not been featured in the top 10 list for the month. However, good news for Nintendo come with Wii Motion Plus, which sold 169K units in its first month at retail, not counting those bundled with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

More »

The June NPD numbers have been released and US hardware sales for the month came in at $1,697,000 instead of the projected $1,547,800.

Nintendo DS was the clear winner, moving 766,500 units, with Wii coming in second with 350,000 units.

1. DS: 766,500
2. Wii: 361,700
3. 360: 240,600
4. PS3: 164,700
5. PSP: 163,500
6. PS2: 152,700

The June NPD numbers have been released and Prototype was the clear winner last month, moving 419,00 units for the Xbox 360 version. UFC 2009: Undisputed came in a close second for Xbox 360, moving 338,300 units.

Total software sales came in at $625.8 million, which was 1.56 percent more that the projected $616.2 million.

Still, game sales are down 31 percent.

1. Prototype (Xbox 360) -  419,900
2. UFC 2009: Undisputed (Xbox 360) - 338,300
3. EA Sports Active (Wii)-  289,100
4. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii) - 272,400
5. Wii Fit (Wii) - 271,600
6. Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360) -  260,800
7. Fight Night Round 4 (PS3) - 210,300
8. Mario Kart (Wii) -  202,100
9. Red Faction: Guerrilla (Xbox 360) -  199,400
10. Infamous (PS3) – 192,700

The final numbers have come in for Warner’s buyout of Midway Games.

The Chicago headquarters laid-off 60 workers with the last day being September 13, which will not affect the development studio or its 100 plus employees or Ed Boon who were included in the buyout.

A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commissio accounts for about 20 percent of the remaining global workforce of Midway, the writing off of $69 million-$76 million in debt and writing down $41 million of impaired goodwill, or “the value of assets Midway held which were reduced or eliminated as a result of the Warner Bros. buyout.”

According to the SEC, Warner ended up paying closer to $49 million instead of the original $33 million, due to “inventory and accounts receivable” according to a report from Gamespot.

Warner Bros. now owns IPs Mortal Kombat, Wheelman, Gauntlet, Joust, This is Vegas, Spy Hunter, and Area 51, and others.

Midway’s San Diego and Newcastle were supposed to be shut down August 31 unless a buyer was found, but Newcastle shut its doors this week, cutting 25 percent of the publisher’s payroll.

More through the link.

Konami has released some in-game screenshots for Pro Evo 2010.

Kotaku has ‘em posted, and you will see the new card strategy system, the improved player models, and Barcelona vs Liverpool.

The game is slated for UK October 30 and the states for November 6 according to Play UK and GameStop respectively.

It’s to be made available for PC, PS2, PS3, PSP and Xbox 360.

Community manager Josh Olin has announced that patch 1.5 for Call of Duty: World at War arrives on PC tomorrow, July 17, along with Map Pack 2 for free.

Good news, that.

Here are the patch notes according to the official site:

• CO-OP hosts can now kick players from their lobby
• Improved dog spawning in MP
• Addressed an issue with Zombie pathing
• Fixed an instance of the player model displaying incorrectly
• Some unhandled exception errors have been addressed
• Improved server browser’s refresh functionality when the Source is set to ‘Favorites’
• Added support for CODTV
• “cg_DrawFPS 1″ now only displays FPS and cg ms/frame
• Added RCon command “teamstatus” to display players’ team information
• Mods: Added joinsquad script function
• Mods: Players can now join CO-OP lobbies that are hosting map names with more than eighteen characters
• Mods: Users can now load custom maps when the usermaps folder contains fifty or more custom maps
• Mods: Removed the loading of duplicate assets that contributed to the ’2048 materials’ error
• Mods: Increased the amount of mods displayable in the Mods menu
• Mods: Fixed a crash related to the mod.arena file

Michel Gagne and FuelCell Games released a video for the PC title Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

It boasts arcade-style gameplay with some nice looking visuals.

The game is expected to be released on Xbox Live at some point, as meetings with Microsoft have already taken place.

A video of it is posted below, via D’toid.

More »

Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny launches for PSP on September 1, and so far 28 characters have been revealed.

Two are still shrouded in secrecy, apparently.

Here is the list so far, courtesy of VideogamesBlogger.

Sixteen through 30 are posted after the jump.

1. Algol
2. Amy
3. Astaroth
4. Cassandra
5. Cervantes
6. Dampierre
7. Hilde
8. Hong Yun-seong
9. Ivy
10. Kilik
11. Kratos
12. Lizardman
13. Maxi
14. Mitsurugi
15. Nightmare

More »

Gearbox president and founder Randy Pitchford has said that not only are there “dozens and dozens” of gameplay hours possible in Borderlands, but there are “millions and millions” of guns as well, thanks to the AI created for the game.

“There are literally millions and millions of guns in Borderlands, more guns than we could have built,” Pitchford told D’toid. “I mean, there’s more guns in Borderlands than all of the first-person shooters on the 360 and all the shooters on the PlayStation added together. And if you took all the development teams and said “Make guns the way you used to make them,” you couldn’t make that many guns.

“So what we did instead was, instead of trying to do that — which would have been an impossible task — we wrote artificial intelligence software and a gear builder system that actually built the guns for us. And we created all of these manufacturers and all of these materials, like metals and plastics and all kinds of different materials, and all of these components of weapons and all of these classes of weapons. And then manufacturers have their own styles.

“We fed this all into our software and our A.I., and let that build the guns for us. It’s pretty wild stuff man, and I don’t think anyone’s ever tried that. We’ve got some really smart folks on the software development team that worked all that out.

“It blows my mind every day, man. Everyday I’m discovering things I’ve never seen before.”

Loads more through the link.