Monthly Archives: August 2009

Crytek president Cevat Yerli has said, speaking during a keynote at GDC Europe, that he doesn’t expect the next generation of consoles until 2012 at the very latest, although he and the studio has doubts to if there will be a next-gen.

“…there’s a big debate about whether there will be a next generation at all”, said Yerli.

During the speech, he also mentioned the criticism the studio got for Crysis when it was released in 2007 for making the game high spec, meaning most computers wouldn’t have had a chance of running it.

“We are very often criticized for this but it’s the company’s intent to make things highly scalable. Therefore, users can play the game now, and then, “when you buy a PC in two years time, the game will look better.”

Find out more on Yerli’s keynote at Gamasutra. The studio currently have Crysis 2 in development for PS3, PC and 360.

As per usual, Nintendo has lit the fuse on another week with a new batch of downloadable games. We, of course, are telling you about them, thus making sure the natural order doesn’t fall into chaos.

This week brings PictureBook Games: Pop-Up Pursuit, Family Slot Car Racing, and Revenge of the Shinobi to the Wii, while Brain Age Express: Sudoku and Guitar Rock Tour round out the DSi’s lineup.

Ninjas, guitars, and slot cars? In the same week? This has to be some kind of good omen.

Full descriptions of each game are after the break.

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EA’s released the GamesCom trailer for The Beatles: Rock Band and, holy shit, it’s three kinds of fucking awesome. It has “A Hard Days Night”, “Drive My Car”, “Dear Prudence” and more.

It’s after the jump.

It’s out 9/9/09 for PS3, 360, Wii and PS2.

From IGN.

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Looks like there’s nothing stopping Alan Wake from seeing his shadow early next spring, as Remedy’s told Joystiq that the game’s “all done.”

“It’s all done, we’re just polishing at this point,” said Remedy Managing Director Matias Myllyrinne.

Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman Wake.

More through the link.

Bethesda’s Todd Howard has said that five DLC chapters was “enough” DLC for Fallout 3.

“I think we’ve put enough content out there for this game,” said Howard.

Speaking to Kotaku, the lead designer on the game said that the dev team was split into two after development on the game was done: one half working on DLC for the game and the other working on the next big title from Bethesda.

“About half the team goes on to the next big game. The other half, which is mostly a lot of artists and designers go on to DLC stuff.”

He also revealed that the plan was to do three chapters – Operation Anchorage, The Pitt and Broken Steel – and see what happened from there.

“We knew we wanted to do three initially and we’ll see where that goes. I kind of had in my mind that the upper limit was five. Part of that was what I think people are willing to continue to pay for a game. And a lot of that is our own internal bandwidth.”

And the rest they say is history.

Insomniac Games have been talking about their brand new game during the latest episode of their podcast, Full Moon Show.

A couple of staffers from the developer teased about the game, including community manager, Bryan Intihar and community relations manager, James Stevenson.

“We’re not gonna tell you what they’re working on but we can say we saw it and it’s really awesome,” said Intihar. And as for Stevenson:

“Really good first playable. A lot of fun, a lot of potential and a long way off still.”

This is rumoured to be the project that is in development at their brand new North Carolina studio. The California studio is working on Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time. Obviously.

Thanks, TSA.

Microsoft’s confirmed that popular live quiz, 1 vs 100, has been downloaded over 2.5 million times on Xbox Live since it launched this summer.

Over 230,000 people in the US and 215,000 people in the UK log-in to play the game. The company also announced it’s extending the beta an extra week, up to September 13.

More at GI.

Eurogamer’s put live brand new screenshots of Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. Get them through the link.

They also put live a hands on preview for the game: catch that here. PES creator, Seabass, is in Cologne to show the game for the very first time.

It’s out in the autumn for PS3, 360, Wii, PC PS2 and PSP.

Eurogamer.de has just put online it’s GamesCom schedule, but there’s nothing special in it, right? Actually, there could be.

According to the article, there will be a game announced in Cologne this week, which is known as Dead Nation. This is a game which no-one has heard of as of present, so it has to be revealed tomorrow.

Right now, we know it’s name and we also know it’s a PSP game. Anyways, we should hopefully know more with SCEE’s presser taking place tomorrow night.

Cryptic’s announced that Champions Online has gone gold and will meet the date it was given of September 4 for PC

Umm… thats pretty much it.

Read the PR, after the break.

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Several retailers – including ShopTo – have confirmed to Eurogamer that the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU is getting a price increase, up from £129.99 to £159.99.

It was also confirmed that accessories for the 360 will go up by one to two pounds.

And to add even more mystery to it, only the Arcade and Elite bundles were mentioned, which leads to even more speculation that the normal 60GB will be out the door soon.

Eidos has confirmed that it’ll be releasing a demo of Mini Ninjas this week.

It’ll release on Wednesday on PC and Xbox Live Marketplace, while it’ll appear on PSN on Thursday.

PR is after the break. Game’s out September 8 in the US, September 11 in the UK.

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PQube has announced that it’s picked up the European publishing rights to BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, due for release on PS3 and 360 in Q1 2010.

It’s been out in Japan and the US for a good while now, but to make it up to Europeans looking forward to the game, you’ll get several things not included in the US or Japanese releases. They include:

• The OST for the game
• Character strategy guide
• New characters and moves

From Eurogamer.

Karl Hilton, head of Crytek UK – that’s Free Radical, or what was Free Rad, to you and me – has said in an interview that they are working on some “exciting” new concepts right now at the studio.

“Going forward, we’ve always made it very clear that we want to build original games and we’re going to do that, and we are concepting some of that up at the moment,” said Hilton.

“It’s early days, but there’s some really exciting stuff that we’re concepting. When we’re ready we’ll talk to publishers, and hopefully publishers will like it, and we’ll own and produce those games in our own studio.”

Although they aren’t quite ruling out the possibility of Timesplitters 4. But he does insist that if TS4 were to happen, it would be down to the demands of the market.

“Like with all businesses, content is dictated by the desires of the market. These days the mass-market shooters tend to be aimed at the hyper-realistic stuff. If developers had free reign with the CryEngine, they would easily be able to produce really bizarre, wacky wonderful stuff.”

More at MCV.

It’s been announced that Germany has overtaken the UK to become the largest games market in all of Europe on a country-by-country basis.

According to data from Chart Track GfK international, sales in the UK dropped to twenty percent in the first half of 09, while sales went up in Sweden, Holland and Portugal: the latter having the biggest amount of growth with sixteen percent.

Sales in Italy and Belguim remain unchanged, while the markets in France and Spain had decreased.

It was also confirmed that the largest selling game this year so far in Europe is Wii Fit since the start of the year.

More over at GI.

So close! Lionhead’s posted up its fifth GamesCom teaser, and this time it’s Emma Goldman.

The quote: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”

In case you’ve missed the rest over the past week, we’ve had Lincoln, Robespierre, Che Guevara and Aristotle.

Wednesday morning. Molyneux. Cologne. We’re so excited we may have an accident.

Eurogamer.fr has put live the GamesCom trailer of Alan Wake for you to cast your beady eyes over. Go watch it at the link.

It looks really good, obviously. We hope to see this during Microsoft’s presser on Wednesday.

It’s out in spring 2010 for Xbox 360. PC version’s gone AWOL.

Blizzard’s confirmed that it’s bringing Diablo III and Starcraft II to GamesCom in Cologne this week. Better yet, they’re both playable.

“We’re pleased to announce that Blizzard Entertainment will be attending gamescom 2009 in Cologne, Germany next month.”

“We look forward to welcoming old friends and new to our booth, which will feature hands-on gameplay with our upcoming games. Our booth is open to the public from Thursday 20 August until Sunday 23 August,” said a rep from the developer, answering a question on a Diablo community site.

He then went further to state:

“‘Upcoming games’ isn’t broken down to specifics, but StarCraft 2 and Diablo III are both upcoming games, so draw your own conclusions.”

So there you have it. Of course, we’ve already played Starcraft II and it’s awesome. Impressions are here. Everything else is here.

Update: False alarm. Website now shows the PS3 version as well as PC and 360.

Original Story: It just gets worse and worse, innit?

According to a listing on the Ubisoft website, I Am Alive has been canned for the Playstation 3, yet it’s still listed for a release on PC and Xbox 360.

This can’t end well, right? It’s switched studios, been delayed past April 2010 and apparently slated for a 2011 release.

Via Elotrolado

Run for the hills, children. It’s all about to kick off.

DotDash has put online what appears to be a brand new look to the PS3 boxart: kicking off with Eyepet.

Before, you’d have the Spider-Man logo with the PS logo going down the left side of the cover. But with this, it seems to be reverting to the old days of the PS2 sleeve, with just the PS logo and the Playstation Network logo slapped on it at the top.

Massive obvious hint: here’s the most likely reason why it’s changed.

Tomorrow – we know all.