Monthly Archives: August 2009

Assassin’s Creed II will beat the original game’s 9 million sales, dev boss Patrice Desilets told us at GamesCom last week, thanks to its setting and sequel status.

“Why? Because of Italy,” he said. “Italy has something, really. I’ve met a bunch of people, and Italy has something. Italy is one of the most visited places in the world, and there’s a reason for that.

“Being able to visit Florence, or visit Venice and Tuscany, is something that people will be attracted by.”

The “II” at the end of the game’s title will help seal the deal, Desilets added.

“And it’s a sequel, and [there's been] good press on it, so I think we’re going to outsell [the original],” he said.

It’s not all serious business, though.

“My producer and I were joking that we’re going to sell, like, 725 million copies of it,” Desilets said.

Everyone needs a goal. The game looks properly awesome. You will buy it on November 20.

Upcoming BioWare RPG Dragon Age is a seriously large videogame, studio chief Ray Muzyka has told VG247: one play-through cost him five entire days’ worth of time for only 90 percent completion.

“On one of the play-throughs I spent 120 hours,” said the exec, speaking at GamesCom last week.

“Two hours a day for 60 days, 90 percent of the game, according to the telemetry. And I loved it. Every minute of it.”

Muzyka is fortunate in that his marriage involves him sleeping less than his spouse.

“I couldn’t wait to come home, he added. “After about ten hours of gameplay, every day I was talking about coming home and I played it for two or three hours, or whatever time I had free, and play it to the early hours.

“Luckily I don’t sleep as much as my wife. I’d stay up till after midnight and play it after she was asleep.”

BioWare. Not doing things by halves. Hit the link for the full interview. The game’s out on November 3.

Update: Whoops. This isn’t true at all. EG Purtugal‘s just posted the following Pyro quote: “The news story that Gamer.nl published is totally false. We always had in mind to bring back to life the Commandos series; this isn’t something new, but nowadays there’s nothing official or decided and everything is still a wish, nothing else.”

“I think that the Gamer.nl journalist turned the wish into news, and he quoted things that nobody said (I was in the gamescom and we always said to whoever asked, and was a lot of people, that perhaps in the future but nothing now).

“We’re only focused in the Planet 51 game and this is the only game that we’re working on.”

Original story:

Pyro’s developing a new Commandos title, the Spanish developer’s confirmed to Gamer.nl.

“We’re definitely working on a new Commandos,” said a rep.

“The time is right for it.”

In case you’d forgotten, Commandos was a stupidly hard strategy action thingy set in WWII.

No date, platform, or whatever.

That’s EG Benelux and EG.net.

Engadget’s running a couple of shots of “next week’s” Target ad, which shows the Xbox 360 60Gb Pro listed at $250, as well as the 120Gb Elite at $300.

This is now looking certain to happen this week. Back-stage chatter in the UK is backing all this up, so keep those peepers peeled.

SCEE’s to launch new PS3 TV ads in the UK tonight as part of an £82 million pan-European PS3 marketing campaign, according to this Guardian piece.

The ads focus on PS3′s range of services, including online gaming and Blu-ray movie playback, downloading TV and film content and being able to watch the BBC iPlayer.

“Two years after launch PlayStation 3 is realising its full potential,” said Alan Duncan, UK marketing director.

“The console is moving beyond gaming and gaming is moving beyond discs.”

Hit the link. You can watch one of the ads through there. Thanks, rrod360lol.

BioWare and Mythic boss Ray Muzyka is a pleasure to interview. Undoubtedly one of the most professional and ambitious execs in the global games trade, Muzyka heads up some of the world’s biggest core games projects in Mass Effect, Warhammer Online, Dragon Age and upcoming MMO behemoth, Star Wars: The Old Republic. He consistently uses words like “humble” and “honour”: not usual in games-boss-ego-land.

We caught up with the Canadian in Cologne last week. Hit the link for the full thing.

More »

Not content with imaginearing a blow-up horse-based Wii controller earlier in the month, Nintendo’s wacky funsters have now patented a pathetic football thing for the motion-based console.

You put the Wiimote inside it, then run around your living room pretending you are John Madden. About 190 years ago.

Best bit? You can “throw” it. Hey, Nintendo? It’s time to do the honourable thing.

Pics and more on Siliconera.

BioWare’s put patch 1.02 live for the PC version of Mass Effect – get the notes here. Download the file here.

The update fixes a bunch of stuff, including players becoming stuck in the Feros elevator. Phew.

Nintendo’s confirmed that Wii Sports Resort has passed the million mark in Japan.

The game, which is packaged with Wii MotionPlus, was released on June 25 in the country.

Sony’s will make a loss on each PS3 Slim unit it makes, PlayStation mega-boss Kaz Hirai’s told Times Online.

“If you’re just talking about the hardware alone, the quick answer is yes,” he said.

“That makes good headlines, but I don’t actually know that that’s the true nature of the business that we’re all in, whether it’s PlayStation, Xbox or the Wii.

“I think the better indicator is to look at the business as a whole platform, to ask: are you profitable in terms of the hardware, software and peripherals. And the answer to that question is yes on a gross profit level since the last fiscal year.”

Bonanza. Slim costs £250. Thanks, Kotaku.

Sony’s new Japanese ad campaign for the PS3 Slim, called “playface,” is — bar none — the most terrifying thing we’ve ever encountered while working in the rough and tumble world of games blogging.

If this is indeed what play looks like in Japan, then we now know why Japanese people are always buried in their work.

To escape. To escape from the nefarious, pitch-black boxes that sit in their living rooms. The horror, the horror.

We’ve locked the commercials away after the break, with the hope that they may never seep forth from beyond the veil.

Why did you bestow this evil upon us, Joystiq? Why?

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Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s title always — to us, anyway — implied some sort of sibling rivalry with FFXIII, but we never expected Versus XIII to overtake its numeral-centric older brother. However, even though FFXIII’s definitely coming out first, Square Enix’s Yoshinori Kitase says that FF Versus XIII’s development is moving at a “comparatively faster rate.”

Apparently, many of Versus XIII’s developers leveled up and learned Hastaga while they were helping out with FFXIII. The “knowledge and experience” points they gained while giving FFXIII a boost are now proving invaluable in FF Versus XIII’s development.

Kitase recently told us that FFXII will be launching this spring. Guess we’ll be seeing Versus XIII shortly after that.

Thanks, Kotaku.

1 vs. 100 butters its bread by asking all kinds of oddball trivia questions, and now — fittingly enough — Microsoft’s following suit by riddling gamers this big question: “If 1 vs. 100 were not available as part of your Gold Membership account, how likely would you be to purchase 1 vs. 100 for $15 per season (13 weeks)?”

At least, Microsoft’s behind this caper if an anonymous Joystiq tipster is to be believed. The question in question allegedly came from a survey on MyThoughtCounts.com, though its legitimacy is still suspect.

We’ve sent an email over to Microsoft to find out more. For now, though, this one gets the big, bad rumor tag. Wear it with pride, 1 vs. 100. We don’t use these things lightly.

Do you constantly fret about keeping your PS3 up-to-date and purring like a Blu-Ray-compatible kitten? Well then, you’ll be happy to hear that you’ve got the rest of 2009 off, as PS3 firmware 3.0 is the last major update Sony’s doling out in 2009.

“This is a big and significant update, so you would be correct to assume that [it's the last major update for 2009],” said PlayStation Network operations director Eric Lempel to G4.

He did, however, note that the release of  a few smaller updates throughout the remainder of 2009 is still a possibility.

More through the link.

Speaking with G4, Sega president and COO Mike Hayes said that Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines is still on track to be released… someday. The “when” of that alien bursting from Sega’s chest hinges on the success of Rebellion’s Aliens vs. Predator, Hayes said.

“I think the detail of that [release date] is probably still too early,” he said. “What I would say is it’s unlikely that we’d launch anything within six months [after Aliens vs. Predator], but probably nine months, eight to 12 months possibly. Though we literally are looking at that at the moment and a lot of is going to depend, as well, on how successful AvP is at the box [retail].”

“It’s what level of ‘well’ does it do,” said Hayes, speaking of Aliens vs. Predator’s release, “do we then determine when we want to bring the next one out and then, of course, determine what the third one in the series is likely to be.”

Yes, that does mean there will eventually be a third Aliens game.

More through the link.

If you’re an XBLA-holic, this week brings two new games to sate your download-lust.

Your options are NBA 2K10: Draft Combine and Watchmen Pt. 2. NBA 2K10: Draft is a sort of trial for the big boy edition NBA 2K10′s new features. It’ll run you 400 MS Points.

Watchmen, meanwhile, is about people in costumes beating up people who aren’t in costumes. Maybe because those people aren’t wearing costumes. We don’t even know. Basically, if you liked the first Watchmen game, this one will do you just fine. It’s going for 1200 MS Points, if you’re interested.

Thanks, Shacknews.

To many, the PS3′s Spider-Man font was like that gaudy tattoo you regret getting in college; sure, it was kinda cool at one point, but you were young and foolish, and Batman is way cooler than Spider-Man.

Fortunately, while you’re covering your left shoulder in shame, Sony’s starting anew. That is to say, the PS3 Slim is Spider-Man-logo-free. So, what happened to it? Kaz Hirai explained in an interview with Times Online.

“We wanted to make sure that we set a new direction for the PS3. The PS logo with the capital P and small S has always been our logo, has always been synonymous with video games and I wanted to reset the thinking. Also internally I wanted to send the message internally that we are resetting the thinking, going back to our roots,” he said.

“What better way to do it than by resetting the logo? That puts the entire organisation on its toes. On a practical level, when you have PlayStation 3 spelt out, the aspect ratio was such that if you wanted it on a billboard it became tiny. It didn’t work in terms of visibility.”

So there you have it. Sorry Spidey, them’s the breaks.

Batman: Arkham Asylum? Never even heard of it. Oh well, Shacknews has a new trailer for it, so — since it’s a slow news day — we thought we might as well tell you about it.

Seriously, though — what an obscure game. Bet it’s not even any good.

Can you feel that? That’s the Internet doing a backflip, because Sony’s motion wand controller thingy finally has a release window.

“We are slating it for spring of next year,” Kaz Hirai told Times Online. “One of the things is that we just don’t want to put out the controller. We need a great software that supports the controller at launch. It’s something that we’ve been working on for the longest time.”

1:1 sword-poking-people-in-the-neck, here we come!

More through the link.

The ESRB seems to have sprung a leak the size of Sony, yet game publishers keep letting it in on all their darkest secrets. And hoo boy, does this one look dark. According to an ESRB listing, Rockstar’s set to release an AO version of Manhunt 2 on the PC.

So, what makes this new version so rough and tough that even the extreme maturity of a 17 year-old can’t handle it? “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs” — you know, the usual suspects, but probably without that weird strobe thing that used to happen when you killed people.

Thanks, Joystiq.