Monthly Archives: August 2009

Online retailer Amazon has warned that due to the high demand for PS3 slim, the new limit for preorders in the US has gone from five per household to one per household.

No eBay for you!

The newly designed console has already climbed to the top of the Amazon game sales charts.

Better hurry if you want one right away folks. This may happen in the UK as well.

Via Gamasutra.

Coming this fall, players and fans of World of Warcraft will be able to subscribe to the game’s very own print magazine, through Future Publishing.

World of Warcraft: The Magazine will be released quarterly with 148 pages per issue and will be totally ad-free and will run $39.95 a year.

The first issue launches tomorrow at BlizzCon and if you happen to be at the event and sign up for the new mag, you will get a free plush murloc.

Full press release is posted below.

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Zipper Interactive has confirmed that the open beta for MAG will kick off on September 17: a full week before Tokyo Game Show.

Only recently has the beta begun in earnest with staff from SCEE trying the game earlier this month. It was only this week that SCEA sent out invites to people in the US, while SCEE Beta Trial Testers had only their recieved codes on Tuesday.

Andy Beaudoin of Zipper confirmed the news, adding : “On September 17, we will start an official public beta version”

From Eurogamer Germany.

Turbine is running a special for former subscribers of Lord of the Rings Online.

Should you have canceled your account, you can log into the game between now and August 24 and experience all the updates and the summer festival for free.

Players just have to download the client, patch, log-in, and get a 25 percent experience bonus -which also applies to all players during this time.

Loads more information is over on the official website.

Thanks, Massively.

The words “launch timing” were “cut out” of SCEA boss Jack Tretton’s FFXIV exclusivity announcement FFXIV at E3, producer Hiromichi Tanaka told VG247 at GamesCom today.

“During the press conference, the ‘launch timing’ words were cut out of the comments, so the launch timing is going to be exclusive to PlayStation 3 as a console,” said the developer.

“Of course, we have a Windows version as well in that launch timing,” he said, adding: “PS3 and Windows are going to be at the same time.”

Own an Xbox 360? Want to play FFXIV? Don’t despair.

“That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have a 360 [version] in the future, but at the launch timing, yes, it’s going to be Windows and PS3 only,” said Tanaka.

It’s out next year.

Oh lord, we don’t know what to say.

2k’s confirmed to Joystiq at GC that BioShock 2 has moved to the second half of Q1 2010, which means you can assume this’ll eventually be moved into Q2 2010 eventually.

The dev also confirmed that there will be a new trailer of the game shown at PAX East in Boston next March.

Well, thats one less game to worry about in the clusterfuck of Q1, but possibly another one to worry about for Q2.

The executive vice president of the digital media end of Marvel, Ira Rubenstein, has told Joystiq that Marvel is finished with making “crappy” movie-based games.

Still, it would like to have games tied to the release of movies, but each character will stay in his/her own little world and used the lastest Marvel game X-Men Origins: Wolverine as an example.

“We are not doing movie-based games anymore,” said Rubenstein. “Actually, wait … we are not doing crappy movie-based games anymore. You can quote me on that.”

Rubenstein told the site that Iron Man 2 has been in the works since the first game was finished, and since he was not involved with it, not to blame him for the quality.

More through the link.

Final Fantasy XIII’s story will last over 50 hours, not including side-quests, producer Yoshinori Kitase said at GamesCom today.

There was also two new characters announced during a presentation of the game earlier. The first one doesn’t have a name for now, just that she wears a sort of summer dress, white top, pink mini-skirt and a pink braid, but more info will be coming at Tokyo Game Show next month.

The second character announced is the son of the already announced Sazh, but there was no more info then that.

Finally, Kitase announced that the English dubbing for the game is finished and that the game will have English and Japanese sound dubs only, but will have subtitles in your native language.

Kitase confirmed to VG247 earlier this afternoon that the game will be out in the US and Europe in spring 2010, although a specfic date is to be confirmed. He also told us that they are trying to make sure the Xbox 360 version of the game will only hold three discs.

From Meristation, via FFXIII.net.

The Euro PSN update today has some nice demos for you. WET, DiRT 2, Mini Ninjas, and IL2 Sturmovik: Birds Of Prey.

Add-ons consist of Andy Dick for the game Pain, a Street Fighter II themed table for Zen Pinball and the usual Rock Band and Guitar Hero stuff.

PSP users can get Wild Arms XF, Riviera, Warriors Orochi, and demos for Dissidia Final Fantasy and Colin McRae Rally 2005.

The full thing is over on the EU PS Blog. Go have a look.

During Gamescom, Sony announced that PlayStation Home’s core client will be getting an upgrade this fall.

PlayStation Home v1.3 will include universal game launching which will allow you to launch into any PS3 game directly from Home. The games that allow this will be designated by its own icon over an avatar’s head, with varying degrees of multiplayer functionality.

A new in-store item previewing option will be made available so that you can try on clothes in 3D; this applies to furniture as well. Portable objects -like the Bubble Machine- will be made available to the community and everyone will get free cameras can snap pictures from either a 1st or 3rd person view.

Loads of other updates are heading to Home as well, and you will notice that your avatars will have additional emotes including two new action emotes.

A SingStar space is coming as well, and it looks like a “swanky night club-esque SingStar-themed game space”.

Loads more information can be found over on the US PS Blog.

NCSoft has shown off a teaser trailer of Guild Wars 2 at GamesCom today.

When they said they’d show it off soon, we didn’t think they’d mean this soon!

The website for the game has a streaming version of the trailer up already: go get it here.

Meanwhile, they’ve published a PR on it. It’s after the jump.

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Badaboom. FFXIII’s PS3 and 360 versions will release simultaneously next spring in Europe, producer Yoshinori Kitase told VG247 at GamesCom today, calling the info the “new announcement”.

“We don’t have the actual month down yet, but in Japan it’s scheduled for a winter release, and in Europe and North American territoriers it’s spring 2010,” said the developer.

He added: “For Europe and North America, the PS3 and 360 versions are going to be released simultaneously.”

Kitase said that the team had made significant headway in cutting down waits for Europe and the US.

“For previous titles it took usually about a year to localise each version and bring it over to Europe, but for this title there should be a considerably shorter gap and [we'll] bring it to European territories as close to the North American release as possible,” he said.

So there you have it. Go nuts.

The 360 version of FFXIII will ship on multiple DVDs, producer Yoshinori Kitase confirmed to VG247 at GamesCom today.

“This is not the final count as we’re still working on it, but we’re aiming for about three discs for the Xbox 360 version,” said the developer.

Kitase went on to assure that the two versions will be practically identical, although he did concede that there are likely to be “subtle differences” between the two.

“The 360 version and the PS3 version should be pretty much equal, both in terms of content and the visuals as well,” he added.

“Since the hardware is different, there might be some subtle differences if you compare screenshots side by side, but the team’s being very careful about the compression of the data and the visuals, so that it’s exactly the same on both.”

FFXIII releases this winter in Japan and next year in the US and Europe.

Gran Turismo 5 is on the showfloor in Cologne this week.

Is it the bees knees? Well, we’ll be the judge of that when it releases. But for now, Gamersyde has up two brand new gameplay videos of GT5 from the showfloor.

One shows off proper racing and the other shows off damage for the game at last after years demanding it for the game! Or at least, showing it in a limited way: as in not on retail cars but in racing cars.

The videos are after the jump. The game’s date is tbc, but it’s looking very, very likely it’ll be out at Christmas.

And while it is on the showfloor, why was it absent from SCEE’s GamesCom presser? Click here to get your answer.

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Sony Computer Entertainment America’s John Koller has told Ars that backwards compatibility on the PS3 won’t be making a return anytime soon, be that with a new hardware SKU or in a firmware update.

Ever.

“It’s not coming back, so let me put that on the table,” said Koller.

“It’s not as big as a purchase intent driver as you may be hearing. We’ve got such a substantial lineup of titles on the PS3; most people are buying the PS3 for PS3 games. They’ve buying it for PS3 games and Blu-ray movies.

That won’t be returning.”

Consider that one put to bed.

Go though the link for more.

Thanks, spikeymike.

Ubisoft’s sent out four new screens of Splinter Cell: Conviction and boy, do they look hawt.

They’re after the jump.

The game was due for a release this year but, like every game this year, it’s now being released in Q1 2010 for the Xbox 360.

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EA’s sent out brand new screens of Rage for you to look at it. They’re after the jump.

Nathan went to see the game last week at Quakecon. How did he do? Look here for you to find out.

Game’s out next year for PS3, 360, PC and Mac.

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What can’t Johnny Minkley do? Well, you don’t have to add burglary and destroying a PS3 demo pod to his CV of cant’s as the Eurogamer TV editor nicks the PS3 Slim and pulls apart a demo pod, all roughly within three minutes.

He does a comparison with the fat PS3 as well, abit a debug PS3, hidden in the demo pod and revealed to the not too happy SCEE PR’s.

A little Thursday morning humour for you. Go watch it here.

Sega said at GamesCom yesterday that Rebellion’s Aliens Vs Predator will have a good variety of multiplayer modes and make decent use of Steam’s feature-set.

All three formats – PC, PS3, 360 – will have 18-way multiplayer, we were told after a demo, and all will fgeature mixed and pure-species game modes.

“If you’re playing on PC, we’re also leveraging Valve Steamworks to provide anti-cheat matchmaking Achievements, and we’re using Steam Cloud as well, so your saved games and settings” can carry over onto any PC you happen to be using, Sega chap Rob Bartholemew said.

Four-player co-op will be present in a Survival mode, where you and friends play as marines facing waves of aliens. Sounds a bit like Gears 2′s Horde mode.

It all looked very good from where we were sitting. Very bloody. Screamy, even. It’s out early next year.

EA CEO John Riccitello has told the Chicago Tribune that the newly introduced price-cut for the PS3 has come at the “right time” and is a “great move”.

He also praised Sony for not doing it just before Christmas or Thanksgiving.

“Consumers will likely be bombarded during the holiday season with an onslaught of messages from companies selling everything from DVDs to TVs to cell phones. Doing the price cut in the middle of August instead really stands out,” he said.

Sony cut the price of the PS3 to £249/$299/€299 on Tuesday at their GamesCom conference which went into effect as of yesterday.

More through the link.