Monthly Archives: August 2009

Amazon has cut the price of its 160Gb PS3 bundled with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune by $50.

Effective only in the US, the price now sits at $449.99, leading some to speculate that the cut is in direct reference to clearing inventory for a new slim model as well as a price cut.

GamesCom is just around the corner so, hopefully, the chickens we sacrificed last night will encourage Sony to confirm or deny theses reports at the event.

If not, at least we will eat for another week or so.

More over on GI.biz.

A video posted after the break contains highlights from Naughty Dog’s Comic-Con panel for Uncharted 2.

Watch as Nolan North, Emily Rose and Claudia Black discuss their roles in the game.

Rose and North also provide amusing stories of being both recognized and dissed at their local GameStop store.

Good times.

More »

The top five this week for Xbox Live activity is more or less the same, with GTA IV and Battlefield 1943 changing places. Another major difference you will notice though is the addition of Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

Nice to see a bit of difference for a change.

Top Live

1. Halo 3
2. Call of Duty 4
3. Call of Duty: WaW
4. Gears of War 2
5. GTA IV
6. Battlefield 1943
7. Marvel vs. Capcom 2
8. 1 vs 100
9. FIFA 09
10. Left 4 Dead

Top Arcade

1. Marvel vs. Capcom 2
2. Battlefield 1943
3. Splosion Man
4. Castle Crashers
5. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
6. Worms 2: Armageddon
7. Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers
8. UNO
9. Teeage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade
10. Hasbro Family Game Night

Community and originals are after the break courtesy of the Major.

More »

A demo for Order of War has been released by Square Enix and it’s exclusively on Steam.

It’s a single-player affair for the RTS World War II game, and it should give you a taste of what’s to come when it releases in September.

More through the link.

Treyarch just sent over a lovely little press release announcing a free iPhone App for Call of Duty: World at War.

Apparently, it will allow players to access stats and more for the game o-the-go for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.

Here’s what it does:

• Stat-Tracking: Check your rank on key stats like K/D ratio, win/lose record and more
• Performance Tracking: Gain quick access to all of your weapon usage
• Link with Friends: Monitor online activity, and the stats of friends with linked accounts on www.CoDWaW.com to compare progress
• News: Access the latest news/blogs, Treyarch’s community Twitter feed (Twitter: JD_2020), as well as the latest on new maps, double XP weekends and contests.

The App will also support the website’s 1.75 million registered users and allows participants to link their web account.

More information can be found in the mailer after the break. No date was provided.

More »

The UK OPM’s put the first episode of its podcast live: and here it is.

It’s “the team” talking about reviews from the latest issue, and so on. There’s quite a big chunk on Batman: Arkham Asylum, some rabbiting about baseball and some other stuff.

Listen to it. It’s doubtful you have anything else to do.

DSi has now sold more than 3 million units in Japan, according to Famitsu.

Nintendo hit the milestone on August 2: the machine has now moved 3,062,920 DSi units in the country.

DSi went on sale in Japan on November 1, 2008 for ¥18,900.

More on Kotaku.

A teaser’s gone live for The Witness, apparently the name for Jon Blow’s next game.

It’s “an exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island.”

We say “apparently” as there’s nothing to link it to Blow himself on the site, although 50 million web reports can’t be wrong. Ever.

Hit the link and see why. It should be out in 2011.

The Telegraph’s rumouring that PS3 Slim is to release in two forms, 40GB an 80GB SKUs, at prices starting from £260.

It’s now widely believed that the Slim will be announced on August 18 at SCEE’s GameCom press conference.

That report reckons Slim’s going to be the cheaper PS3 option, although incessant trade chatter reckons it’s the old “brick” SKU that’s going to see the big drop – £199 or bust, Mr Sony.

Sony’s ramping up production to meet increased demand later this year, says that piece, and “has ordered enough parts to make one million consoles in the third quarter of this year, twice as many as in the last three months.”

We’re almost sick with excitement for Cologne. There’ll be bombs everywhere.

PS3 music video service VidZone has now served 100 million plays, SCEE said this morning.

The app itself has been downloaded over 1 million times.

And the top ten tune”z” you’re listening to are:

1. Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow
2. Michael Jackson – Thriller
3. Lady Gaga – Poker Face
4. Michael Jackson – Beat It
5. Michael Jackson – Billie Jean
6. Michael Jackson – Man In The Mirror
7. Eminem – We Made You
8. Dizzee Rascal, Armand Van Helden – Bonkers
9. Michael Jackson – Black Or White
10. Michael Jackson – Another Part Of Me

PR after the break.

More »

Atari’s released details of subs deals for Champions Online, offering life-long play for $200.

Six months’ championing will cost $60. Both deals are available until the end of August.

If you order either, you get beta access to Star Trek Online. See here.

Champions Online ships on September 4.

Thanks, EG.

Sony’s pulled an in-game ad from WipEout HD after it increased load times to up to 20 seconds, EG reports.

“The ad has been removed from WipEout HD and we are investigating the situation to ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay,” said a SCEE rep.

Check out this video to see what all the fuss was about.

Eidos president Ian Livingstone’s confirmed that the Fighting Fantasy books, beginning with Warlock of Firetop Mountain, are to be released as iPhone and iPod Touch games beginning later this year.

“I’m happy to say, because of the advances in technology, there’s been recurring interest,” he said, talking of the paper gaming series in the latest OneLifeLeft episode.

“Not just from the book publishers… but from iApp people who are saying, ‘Why don’t you put these Fighting Fantasy game books onto an iApp.’

“And we thought, ‘Great idea.’”

Livingstone added: “Quite confident in saying that sometime later on this year there’ll be Fighting Fantasy adventures on [iPhone and iPod Touch].”

He also says they’ll play in the same way as the books, and that you’ll be able to shake your iThing to roll dice on the screen.

Listen from 26 minutes onward. They talk specifically about it at 28.30.

Fighting Fantasy was an iconic RPG book series that sold more than 16 million copies in 23 languages, mainly in the 80s.

Patch 3.2 is about to hit World of Warcraft, with all public test realms for the update now confirmed as offline.

In likelihood, 3.2 will go live in the US today and the EU tomorrow.

Get full patch notes here – it’s a monster.

Aliens Vs Predator and Bayonetta will both be playable at this year’s Eurogamer Expo, it’s just been confirmed.

The event takes place on October 27-28 in Leeds, followed by October 30-31 dates in London.

More details here.

Namco’s posted a ¥2.8 billion loss for the quarter ending June 30, a swing from a ¥1.5 billion in the previous first quarter.

Sales were down to ¥75.7 billion, compared to ¥90 billion in the same period last year.

Afro Samurai was the firm’s biggest seller for the quarter, moving 420,000 units in Europe and the US.

Get the full report here.

Dawn of War II shot to the top of the Steam chart for the week ending August 1, thanks to some heavy THQ discounting on the service over the weekend.

Aion’s still looking hot, with its pre-sell knocked down to second place, despite the fact it doesn’t ship till next month.

Last week’s chart here.

1. Dawn of War II
2. Aion Collector’s Edition pre-order
3. Left 4 Dead
4. Counter-Strike: Source
5. The Secret of Monkey Island: SE
6. Killing Floor
7. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
8. Team Fortress II
9. The Orange Box
10. ARMA II

News ghouls will need to be watching l’internet later tonight: EA reports its first quarter figures after market close in New York.

If you want the details first hand, a conference call is scheduled for 2.00pm PST (877-627-6511 passcode 220497 or at http://investor.ea.com). That’s 10.00pm BST. The financials themselves should release just before then.

Analysts are eyeing an increase in fortunes for the publisher in this set of numbers, and product focus is likely to stick to an apparently Modern Warfare 2-resistant roster for holiday 2009. A rise in full-year prediction isn’t expected.

We never miss a chance to hear Big John’s ovalled vowels on the internet. They give us grounding. Join us.

Why are Wii sales crashing? Because there aren’t any big Wii games on shelves, stupid. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said so in the firm’s Q1 investor call this week.

“It’s not the case of the quality of hardware moved, the feeling of missing strong competitive power, lacking its luster or poor sales,” he said.

“Consistently, big time titles will be released in the marketplace for this hardware. When that stops, to reinvigorate the console, or to put it another way, I think the current decline in hardware sales is due to the fact that there aren’t many big titles (at the moment).”

That means there isn’t going to be a price cut, doesn’t it?

“Right now,” Iwata said, “there aren’t a lot of discussions going on about what exactly to do about hardware pricing.”

Thanks, Kotaku.

The dream’s now real – you can upload images from your DSi to Facebook.

Provided, according to this Kotaku story, that you live in the US and aren’t aged under 13. The feature’s already gone live in Japan.

If you live outside the US or Japan, or are aged under 13, you can still use a computer to update Facebook images. Just in case you were worried about that.

See a video of it working after the break.

More »