Monthly Archives: August 2009

According to a post on Digital Foundry, testers of the upcoming Xbox 360 update are finding that their installed games have lost a few MBs.

“The new King of Fighters XII game from SNK drops from 3.4GB to a sub-demo sized 703MB (!), while Raiden Fighters Aces drops from 3.4GB to 484MB (!!). Left 4 Dead is another example of a solid saving, with the original NXE install occupying 5GB while the new install drops 1.3GB to a mere 3.7GB,” the site explained.

Our 20GB hard drives just got a new lease on life.

More through there.

The Resident Evil films may stray a bit too far from their progenitor’s plot path for comfort, but — nerd-ire be damned — someone likes them. Otherwise, the upcoming Resident Evil: Afterlife would’ve never made it into production. Glaring Expert and movie star Milla Jovovich explained:

“The movie makes money. If it makes more money than the last one, you’d think that people want to see another one, so we’ll do another one. There’s been a lot of interest online, there’s been a lot of letters from fans… film company,” she told shocktillyoudrop.

“It’s not like I said, ‘Hey, honey! Let’s do another one right away!’ I mean, it’s an expensive film and it’s all business and if the third one didn’t do well, there wouldn’t be another one.”

Jovovich went on to explain how no expense is being spared on Afterlife’s 3D effects, with director Paul W.S. Anderson studying a number of 3D films in hopes of really making his film pop off the screen.

Movie’s coming in September 2010, if you’re interested.

The Batman: Arkham Asylum demo will release this Friday, August 7, Eidos just confirmed.

Tasters for all formats – PC, 360 and PS3 – will be available.

The full game’s out August 28.

PR after the break.

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Capcom will launch Monster Hunter Tri in North America and Europe in early 2010.

The publisher also announced it’s bringing the Wii title to GamesCom in a couple of weeks, so visitors can try a localised version for the very first time.

Get the PR, after the jump.

The game was released in Japan over the weekend.

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A shitload of info has come out for Final Fantasy XIV, thanks to Famitsu Wave DVD interview with the MMO’s dev team. Watch it after the break.

The game’s locations, characters and races are discussed, as is the soundtrack. which will be solely done by legendary composer of previous Final Fantasy games, Nobuo Uematsu.

It’s out next year for PS3 and PC. It’ll be at GamesCom too, alongside Final Fantasy XIII.

From SCRAWL, via BluesNews.

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SCEE has told CVG that talk of a Christmas release for Gran Turismo 5 is just that: “rumour and speculation”.

It comes as GT Planet tagged the game would for a release in time for the holidays, although the site claimed a date from Amazon US, December 29, is wrong.

“We haven’t announced a release date for GT5 yet,” said a rep from Sony, adding that it “can’t comment on the US.”

Keep an eye on Cologne in two weeks. It’s more then likely the date will be announced there.

Subs issues of the latest Official PlayStation Magazine have shown a Batman: Arkham Asylum review score of 9/10.

Game’s out near the end of the month, August 28 in Europe, on PS3, 360 and PC.

PS3Vault has all the mag’s scores.

EA has announced the first expansion pack for The Sims 3, known as The Sims 3: World Adventures, which will ship worldwide on November 16.

The expansion sees your Sims taken out of Sunset Valley as they go across around the world to countries including China, France and Egypt.

Press release and the first three screens are after the jump.

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Update: Eidos has confirmed the demo will release this Friday.

Original Story: Eidos has confirmed that news concerning a Batman: Arkham Asylum demo will be coming on Friday.

Speaking on the game’s official forums, an Eidos moderator, posting under the alias of chip5541, made the announcement last Friday.

“I just got word that news concerning the demo will be coming next week.”

There you go then. Tune in same bat-time, same bat-channel, to see what happens.

Activision just confirmed a DS version of Modern Warfare in Mobilised, to release on November 10.

It’s to feature a unique story to the single-player and a six-way online segment.

PR after the break.

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Activision’s confirmed to Eurogamer that Miis will work for the Wii version of Guitar Hero 5, exactly in the same capacity that Avatars will work the game’s 360 version.

However, plans to do the same for the PS3 version, using avatars from Home, are unlikely: the publisher has said as much.

“While there are no plans to have Home avatars for the PS3 version, the US has confirmed that Wii owners will be able to rock out with their Miis in Mii Freestyle Mode,” said an Acti rep.

Avatars for the 360 edition of GH5 was confirmed last Friday.

Sega has pretty much confirmed the existence of a brand new Phantasy Star Portable, if the cover of a classics version is to be believed.

According to Kotaku, the latest edition of the first Phantasy Star Portable will contain the opening movie to a sequel. Better yet, the game is also dated for this winter in Japan for the PSP according to them.

Phantasy Star Portable: “The Best” will release on October 8 in Japan.

Bethesda has confirmed that Mothership Zeta will be the final piece of Fallout 3 DLC.

As pointed out by MTV Multiplayer, the description of the DLC’s launch trailer, on the Fallout website, shows that Zeta will be your lot after today.

Although, remember what happened last time?

Zeta went live earlier this morning.

Microsoft’s put live Mothership Zeta, the final piece of Fallout 3 DLC, on Xbox Live Marketplace. Queue it up here.

It’s available for 800 MS Points and comes in at 324.36Mb to download.

Take a look at the launch trailer if you’re still undecided, although truth be told, we honestly don’t know why you wouldn’t be.

A release date for the PS3 version is to be confirmed.

Final Fantasy XIII looks perdy, no question. But what does it look like a year on from them CG trailers and gameplay screens?

Japanese gaming blog, Hatimaki, has published an comparison of new and old screens.

The shots included run from the game’s reveal at E3 2006; to last year at Square Enix’s sigma event; to more recently, including stuff from the demo released in Japan in April as well as the Jump Fiesta trailer from last December.

The difference is notable, especially in the lighting.

The game’s out next year in the West for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but the game gets a Japanese release for the PS3 this winter in time for Christmas.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Titan Studios has said it’s found a “specific problem” as to why most people can’t connect to a online game in Fat Princess, but insists it’s working on it right now.

“Players are sometimes experiencing significant lag in some games. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve identified a specific problem and already have a fix in testing.  The matchmaking system will randomly pick potential servers bases on a number of criteria. As implemented, the results that are returned are fit in some regards, but sometimes have a high ping for your location,” said the studio on its blog.

“We have implemented a number of fixes for previously identified problems, focusing most of our efforts on connection failures. We have already tested this patch on our own client machines, and performance appears to be dramatically improved.  We are working with Sony now to get the patch into the Sony testing process as soon as possible.”

Fat Princess was released onto the PlayStation Store last Thursday.

Games Convention Online happened in Leipzig last week, attracting 43,000 people according to the PR after the break.

Apparently “90 percent” of attendees were “online gamers”. A 2010 event has now been confirmed.

“Our exhibitors were very satisfied with the visitor structure, which has laid the foundation for Games Convention Online,” said Messe boss Wolfgang Marzin.

“Everything for GCO 2010 is headed for growth.”

Which is awesome. We miss Leipzig. Full thing after the link.

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A few videos of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 being played at Comic Con after the break. Looks like a snowy shooter, as you’re expect.

There’s no date on it yet, according to officialdom, although “early next year” probably isn’t a million miles away.

Thanks, NextGamer.

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Ubisoft’s Michael De Plater has spoken out on releasing new IPs against big blockbuster games at Christmas, citing the holiday season as a “brutal” period to send them out to the market.

“It’s a bit tough to launch a new IP exactly at Christmas when you’re head-to-head with blockbuster sequels. It’s interesting to see a number of big titles, like Heavy Rain, being targeted at 2010 to avoid the Christmas rush,” said the dev boss.

“And Ubisoft’s got Ruse coming out in 2010. Even God of War 3′s in 2010, that’s how brutal it is. I mean, you’ve got Assassin’s Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Mass Effect 2…

“To me, it’s been a period of enormous change, and the last four years I would say has been the time when games have actually surpassed movies as the premium blockbuster entertainment.”

More at GI.

Ubisoft dev head Michael de Plater has told VG247 that the differences between success in the PC and console spaces are less to do with design and more concerned with “the market”.

De Plater most recently headed up voice-based multi-format RTS EndWar at Ubi Shanghai.

“It was the biggest learning experience of my life,” said of the game. “We did well over a million, and us and Halo Wars were the biggest RTSes of the past few years. We beat C&C on our first go, we beat Total War. So we were like, ‘Wow, this is fantastic. It’s this huge new RTS.’

“But, in the console space, there’s so much pressure to really be in the top ten… It was a big learning experience that really the difference between console and PC isn’t so much about the players or the game design or the things we thought it was: it’s actually about the market, about how blockbuster-driven it is, and how hit-driven it is, and how big you have to be.”

De Plater has since moved from the Shanghai studio to to Ubi’s Montpelier developer.

Ubi Shanghai has already started work on an EndWar sequel.