Monthly Archives: July 2009

The Japanese population’s conquest of the videogame industry may have slowed as of late, but that hasn’t stopped Dragon Quest series creator Yuji Horii from believing the latest entry in his diabolically popular series will outdo its predecessor.

“With the spread of cell phones and the internet, there are fewer people who spend their free time on games,” Horii told Japanese newspaper Chunichi (translation via Andriasang.com). “However, there have always been fans who say ‘If it’s Dragon Quest, I’ll play it,’, so we’d like to cross the 4.9 million mark of the last entry.”

Horii also cited DQIX’s decreased price point and all new multiplayer as reasons families might like to toss caution to the wind and buy multiple copies of the game.

If DQIX doesn’t sell more copies in Japan than there are stars in the sky, all of our hopes, dreams, and beliefs are worthless. All that we know would be a lie.

Ubisoft has taken the reigns on Heroes Over Europe, a WWII flight combat game that was originally set to be published by Atari. The game is a sequel to 2005′s Heroes of the Pacific.

Now it’s landing on consoles and PCs worldwide in September.

Thanks, D’toid.

Media Molecule just released the first proper image of its Ghostbusters LittleBigPanet content. Shpooky.

Still not much to go on, though. More very soon, no doubt.

Atlus said today that PS3 RPG Demon’s Souls will release on October 6 in the US.

The game will get a deluxe edition, which includes a strategy guide and a “collectible outer slipcase”.

Pre-orderers of either the normal or bumped-up SKU will get a free art book.

Details after the break.

More »

What happens when you make games cheaper? More people buy them, hence Fallout 3 leading the Steam charts for the week ending July 5.

We’ll do these weekly now NPD’s decided to get all wussy on its PC chart.

1. Fallout 3
2. ArmA II
3. Dawn of Discovery
4. 2K Huge Games Pack
5. Street Fighter IV
6. Left 4 Dead
7. Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
8. Overlord II
9. Trine
10. Counter-Strike: Source

Remember those half-year UK sales figures ELSPA and Chart-track released this morning? They were wrong.

The agency that sent out the data’s just apologised: it was for single formats, not all formats.

Could happen to anyone. Here’s the real top ten in Britain for the first six months of calendar 2009:

1. Wii Fit
2. FIFA 09
3. COD: WAW
4. Resident Evil 5
5. Wii Play
6. Mario Kart Wii
7. Prof Layton
8. Mario & Sonic
9. SFIV
10. GH World Tour

Thanks, Johnny.

Sony’s to work with Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs to “nurture and support” local PS3 software development, according to this TMCNet piece.

The Taiwanese government is to shoulder 40 percent of all dev costs incurred by teams in the country. Nice.

Hit the link for the full thing.

ragon Quest IX isn’t going to be some pansy-assed DS RPG. No sir. It’s for the hardcore.

“We make the game to be quite hard,” series creator Yuji Horii told Touch-DS.

“It’s harder than any of the previous titles, and the enemies are also powerful… We strengthened the bosses, stuff like that.”

It’s out in Japan this month, and in Europe and the US in 2147. Thanks, Kotaku.

PCB Productions, a digital content creation firm, has apparently left a few cats out of the bag by listing Syphon Filter 5 and SOCOM 4 as ongoing projects on its site.

It’s doing motion capture for SOCOM, apparently, and facial capture for Syphon Filter.

Whoops.

Thanks, CVG.

Konami’s announced its Gamescom line-up, well ahead of the event’s kick off on August 19.

The publisher’s to show PES 2010, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and “new additions to its DanceDanceRevolution series”.

The German show’s Konami offering will be located at hall 7.1, booth C30.

There’s a press release after the break, should you need it.

More »

Codemasters said today that the PC version of DiRT 2 will “support the wealth of new performance enhancing features that will be available in DirectX 11.”

In order to get the features in, however, the game needs to “benefit from an extended development program” and ship in December. Not September. As originally planned.

DX11 hardware is expected in the back half of the year. The upgrade will ship with Windows 7 and as a download for Vista.

PR after the break. We’re saying nothing.

More »

Capcom put out three new movies of Marvel Vs Capcom 2 earlier today, one one Hulk strategy, one of Zangief strategy and one on using the two beefcakes against each other.

Get them after the break in that order. It’s out for 360 and PS3 at the end of July.

More »

Codies just published another Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising trailer, this time showing men running around a field getting hunted and shot at by other men. At night.

The gameplay footage looks suitably scary and warry. Take a look. It’s out for PC, PS3 and 360 this “autumn”.

Another sizzling Xbox 360 Deal of the Week for you, this time a chance to grab ninja platform thing N+ for 560 MSP instead of the normal 800.

You could play it for free on your PC, obviously. Just saying.

Cyanide’s Blood Bowl will release in the UK this September, according to this MCV piece.

The Warhammer football spin-off launched in Europe last week.

A British publishing deal’s going to be announced in the next few weeks, apparently.

More through there.

Speaking to OXM, Valve’s confirmed that Left 4 Dead 2 pre-orderers will get a stab at the demo early.

Anyone pre-ordering the 360 version or pre-purchasing the PC version over Steam will get to look at the multiplayer demo early. It’ll be released later for the unbelievers.

Via Kotaku and Joystiq.

BioWare boss Ray Muzyka has played with Natal and reckons it’s a go.

“I got a demo of Project Natal before E3. So I got to check it out hands-on at EA with some other folks, and I thought it was pretty cool,” he told GI.

!We didn’t get to go to the Microsoft or Sony booths unfortunately because we were booked in meetings, but I read some of the announcements and saw some of the feedback and responses. It’s very interesting. And Natal looks exceptionally interesting as a platform extension.

“I think it’s a really powerful idea.”

Controller-free Baldur’s Gate confirmed. There’s a full interview through the link.

Russian cosplayers have taken the entire concept to a ludicrous level yet again, this time “doing” Fallout 3 with an OCD-level of dedication. Check out a ton of shots of the Brotherhood of Steel and other people that should have stayed in a videogame walking round abandoned eastern locales on English Russia.

The last game to get this style of treatment from the Russian mentalists was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. They may have been Ukranian, though. We don’t want to offend anyone. Especially not this lot.

Microsoft just confirmed via Twitter that 1 vs 100 will launch in he UK on July 10.

French and German versions of 360′s TV-style quiz show will release on July 12.

More soon, apparently.

Update – Here we go. The UK and German sites are now live. There’s info there on the respective betas.

Fight Night Round 4′s managed a second week at number one in the UK chart, giving EA Sports a nice double-top with Tiger 10 debuting in second place.

A surprisingly weak showing for Potter there at tenth. End of the dream? Wait till the film comes out.

Last week’s chart here. Data below for the week ending June 4.