Monthly Archives: August 2009

SCEE boss Andrew House has admitted that Sony is going “head to head” right now with Microsoft.

Speaking to MCV, House said that the PS3 and PSPgo does have a fighting chance of taking on the Xbox 360.

“We’ve competing very seriously, head-to-head, with Microsoft in Europe right now,” said House, going further to say “and this gives us a major opportunity to do that more aggressively.”

“We have very high hopes for the new PS3 and think it will deliver a significant increase in our sales.”

More through the link.

Andrew House also spoke to VG247 on Wednesday. Get his thoughts on the PS3, PSPgo and why anybody looking forward to GT5 should watch the mountains here.

BioWare has sent over some new screens, concept art and a video from Dragon Age: Origins, depicting the City of Haven.

There is a description of the village nestled high up in the mountain range of Frostback past the break.

Apparently it seems to be a pleasant place, until you overstay your welcome. Then again, who likes a visitor to linger over long anyway.

Game’s out in November for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

More »

Harmonix has announced that Tom Petty, Jet, Billy Idol and Fleetwood Mac will be heading to the Rock Band Store next week on August 25 and 27 for Xbox 360 and PS3, respectively.

While it is a return to the game for most, this is Tom Petty’s first rodeo with the series.

Here is what you’ll get:

• Billy Idol – Mony Mony, Rebel Yell
• Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop, World Turning
• Jet – She’s a Genius
• Tom Petty – I Won’t Back Down, Runnin’ Down a Dream

Hopefully if all goes well with this, Petty will think about allowing tracks from the album Damn the Torpedos or the song “Breakdown” from his 1976 debut album. There’s good stuff in both, really.

Prices will set you back 160 MS Points ($1.99/£.99/€1.49) each.

Gamestop EVP Tony Bartel has said in the retailer’s Q2 financial call that Modern Warfare 2 could potentially be “the best selling title” of all time.

Despite how evil Activision seems to have become lately, he is most likely right.

He said: “We expect Modern Warfare 2 could be the best selling title of all time.”

He also pointed called out Halo 3: ODST and Assassins Creed II as two other titles that could sell well this holiday season. But let’s be honest, it’s all about Infinity Ward this Christmas, innit?

Bartel said in the same call that Gamestop were “excited” to be selling the PSPgo.

More over at D’Toid.

Treyarch has announced that Call of Duty: World at War’s Map Pack three surpassed one million downloads during its first weekend of availability om Xbox Live.

Combined with the other two packs, this brings the total number of donwloads for the game to 6.5 million world wide.

“The support and enthusiasm from the Call of Duty: World at War online community is tremendous,” said Mark Lamia, studio head of Treyarch.

“The team is appreciative that so many players from around the world have continued to enjoy the game and all of the downloadable content that we have produced.”

Yes, there seems to be a lot of love for the game out there – and PC users will be able to participate in the Map Pack 3 love very soon.

Full press release is past the break.

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EA’s confirmed to G4′s The Feed that Battlefield 1943 for PC will not be coming until next year.

Producer Gordan Van Dyke said of the news: “We haven’t released a Frostbite [DICE's game engine] built game on PC, so going into this project we lacked a starting foundation we had on Console.  There are also many different and unique only challenges to the PC that has lead to us pushing the release even further to Q1 CY 2010 [early next year].”

“Things like support for DirectX 9 and 10, higher player count (up to 32-player matches), wide peripheral support i.e. Joysticks for flying, VoIP, and ranked server provider hosting.  So it was and still is the absolutely right decision, for quality sake, to not release until it is ready,” he further added.

Well, if you’re a PC gamer, but have a PS3 or 360, do what you should have done by now after reading this: buy BF1943 if you cant wait that long for the PC version. £9.99 on the Playstation Store, 1200 MS points on Xbox Live Marketplace.

It looks as though BioShock 2 is still on for an early release in 2010, according to 2K Europe.

Apparently, there was a bit of confusion yesterday over at Joystiq regarding the release date, when a representativetold the site that “‘early 2010′ is a much more realistic release date than ‘second quarter 2010″ for the game to land on shelves.

To clarify, the Stiq has updated the original post.

Just to make sure though, we contacted 2K to confirm that the game is still on schedule.

Sure enough, a 2K Europe spokesperson told us that BioShock 2 is “still looking strong for early 2010″.

Thank goodness. No need to hang ourselves in the barn now.

Interview by Patrick Garratt.

During GamesCom, Bungie’s community manager Brian Jarrard and director of cinematics CJ Cowan sat down with VG247 to talk a bit about all things Halo.

The guys also spoke a bit about the split from Microsoft, why Reach does not fit into the Halo trilogy,and how ODST is a new way to propel the missions and the narrative structure of Halo 3.

Loads more on past the break.

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Activision’s just tagged DJ Hero for a release of October 27th in the US, with a late October date for everywhere else.

It’s also been confirmed that the game is compatible with mics and guitars from Rock Band. What purpose the mics serve beats us, but it’ll make you look like a tit surely either way.

We’ve left an email with Activision to see what the specfic date will be in the UK.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Interview by Patrick Garratt.

Mass Effect 2 associate producer Jesse Houston sat down with VG247 during GamesCom to talk a bit about the game that everyone and their kitten is gagging to get their tiny paws on.

Seems the game has double the amount of physical content of the first one, combat is much smoother as everything’s 30FPS, it will ship simultaneously for 360 and PC, and includes a new interrupt system.

There are loads of goodies in the interview, you should read on past the break.

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Here we go again with another liveblog kiddos. This time it’s BlizzCon 2009.

Be sure and come back to this space for the Opening Ceremony of BlizzCon, and maybe, just maybe we will hear more about the rumored Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft, updates on StarCraft II and Diablo III – and who knows – Blizzard may announce its secret MMO.

One can only dream.

The schedule says that doors open for attendees around 10:00am PST/1:00pm EST – that’s around 6:00pm for the UK and things will get started around 11:30 PST/2:30 EST/7:30 UK.

So, throw on a pot of coffee and join us for up-to-the-minute liveblogging of the Opening Ceremony after the break.

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Rockstar Games has told VG247 that the two episodes of DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, wont be going to the Playstation 3 and are still Xbox 360 exclusives.

It comes as an SCEE community moderator, who was at GamesCom this week, reported last night that The Lost and Damned was playable on the showfloor for the PS3 in Cologne.

A Rockstar rep told us: “The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony are both exclusive to Xbox 360.”

So there you have it, PS3 kiddies. No GTA IV DLC for you.

According to a report by JustPushStart, Batman: Arkham Asylum will be receiving brand new DLC soon, and that it’ll be available for the nice sum of free.

What shape or form the DLC will take is unknown.

Go through the link for more info.

The game’s out next week for PS3 and 360. The PC version was delayed until September.

If you want to find out more info on the game, listen to the podcast from two weeks ago. It feautres an interview with Batman: Arkahm Asylum PR rep, Gareth Williams.

SCEE bossman Andrew House has said to MCV that, despite fears from Amazon it’ll be in short demand, the PS3 Slim won’t be receiving shortages at it’s release.

“There are trucks and trailers leaving right now – it’s on the road,” said House.

“I will make a prediction there – I don’t think we will be having too many of those [shortage] discussions with retail.”

House also claimed how “pleased” he was with how the company was holding on the PS3 Fat.

“I’m very pleased with how we have managed our inventory system on the existing model.”

More through the link.

We sat down and chatted with Andy House on Wednesday. Catch our full interview with him here.

Eurogamer.pt has live brand new screens of Valkyria Chronicles 2.

They’re through the link.

On the one hand, we’re disappointed this ain’t a fully fledged PS3 sequel. On the other, we just glad Valkyria 2 is coming at all.

No western date yet, but it’s coming to Japan by the end of the year for the PSP.

Let the price wars begin.

Tesco are listing the PSPgo for £199.97, £25 short of the RRP. Earlier this week at GamesCom, SCEE told VG247 that the console would retail for £224.99 when it would launch on October 1 in the UK.

The supermarket is the first to dramatically cut the price of the console before it’s even launched. If you do pre-order it from there, you’ll also get free delivery. The only downside is that it’ll be released on October 2 and not October 1.

More at GI.

Sony Hong Kong has announced they are to hold a worldwide launch party for the PS3 Slim on September 1.

They will be the first country to get the Slim in the world, and will kick off the launch day from 6pm HK time with a midnight launch obviously included.

It’ll retail for £249/$299/€299 in the UK, US and the Euro regions.

Thanks, Siliconera.

Ubisoft’s put live the first gameplay trailer of James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game.

It’s after the jump. If you want to download it, it should now be available from the PS Store as well.

It does look kind of okay, but considering what we heard from GamesCom this week, don’t stick your hopes and dreams on it. At least for now anyways.

And yeah, we’re skeptical on the movie too as well.

It’s out in November for PS3, 360, Wii, DS and PC.

More »

You’ve seen Minkley destroy a PS3 demo pod as well as make off with a PS3 Slim, but to cap it off, there’s this.

Watch Eurogamer editor, Tom Bramwell and VG247′s GC livetext supergirl, Keza McDonald, play both Ricochet and Burnout Paradise with Project Natal alongside creative director, Kudo Tsunoda.

Through here and you’ll find your Friday morning happiness.

Enjoy.

Microsoft is going to put live some brand new games for Games on Demand on Tuesday: Burnout Revenge and Need for Speed: Carbon

No prices yet, but you can bet they’ll be expensive as fuck.

Lego: Star Wars has been added to the Australian GoD as well.

Thanks, Kotaku.