Monthly Archives: September 2009

Microsoft’s declined to confirm or deny a TGS line-up that popped up on a Japanese site this morning.

“We have no comment on TGS at this stage,” said a rep.

The list contained mention of a Halo Reach video and apparent news that Crackdown 2 is called Riot Act 2 in Japan.

Official it isn’t. TGS does its crazy TGS shit later this month.

The review embargo for GT PSP lifts at 5.00pm BST today. You really should be watching the mountains later on, hotshot.

That’s 9.00am PST and midday EST, if you’re from the other side.

This is the first major GT release since GT5 Prologue in early 2008, and it’s a hardware launch title. The beans are big with this one.

The game’s out alongside PSP go on October 1. We’ll bring you a round-up once the review kids do-the-do.

EA Sports is still planning on releasing 360 and PS3 versions of Grand Slam Tennis, division boss Peter Moore’s told VG247, but only when motion controllers have launched for both systems.

Moore delayed the games in August following the release of a MotionPlus-compatible Wii version.

“You will do on the new motion technologies,” Moore said when asked if we’ll see the 360 and PS3 SKUs actually make it to market.

“One thing that becamse glaringly obvious is that once you started playing Wii MotionPlus tennis and then you go back to [traditional controllers].”

Moore added that MotionPlus had “ruined” tennis games on standard controllers for him, but reiterated that the success of EA Sports Active had been an equal part of the decision to slip.

“It’s two things,” he said. “Active is such a powerful platform that we have to bring in resources to take advantage of that and get more stuff coming down the pipe.

“Secondly we’ve decided just to wait for Natal and for the Sony motion controller to come out.”

Natal is expected late next year, while Sony’s motion tech should release next spring.

Moore was speaking at GamesCom in Cologne.

The latest One Life Left episode‘s up, featuring Ste, Simon and Anne rabbiting on for an hour about games and stuff.

There’s some music in it as well. You know it makes sense.

IGN’s posted a hands-on of LucasArts’ now-confirmed XBLA puzzler Lucidity, calling the game a “children’s storybook set in motion”.

Lucidity charges the player with placing props around an ever-moving girl in order to protect her from harm.

Apparently the title, which releases on October 7, “is shaping up to be one of the prettiest and most unique XBLA releases of the year.”

It can’t be “most unique,” Mr IGN. Just saying.

Some screens and a couple of videos through there.

Japanese site OnlinePlayer‘s dropped Microsoft’s TGS line-up, and it’s looking good.

We’re trying to get confirmation on some of this stuff now. Halo Reach and Crackdown 2 are in there, for instance.

Via GAF.

360 titles:

• Samurai Spirits Sen (video/playable)
• Fifa 10 (video/playable)
• Lost Planet 2 (video/playable)
• Mushihime Futari Ver1.5 (video/playable)
• Shin Sangoku Musou Multi Raid Special (video/playable)
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow (video only)
• Ninety Nine Nights 2 (video/playable)
• World Soccer Winning Eleven 2010 (video/playable)
• Front Mission Evolved (video/playable)
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (video only)
• NieR Gestalt (video/playable)
• Bayonetta (video/playable)
• End of Eternity (video/playable)
• Dragonball Rising Blast (video/playable)
• Tekken 6 (video/playable)
• Steins Gate (video/playable)
• Forza Motorsport 3 (video/playable)
• Alan Wake (video only)
• Fable 3 (video only)
• Halo 3 ODST (video/playable)
• Halo Legends (video only)
• Halo Reach (video only)
• Riot Act 2 (Crackdown 2) (video only)
• Borderlines (video only)
• Assassin’s Creed 2 (video/playable)
• Splinter Cell Conviction (video only)
• Infernal: Hell’s Vengeance (video/playable)

XBLA titles:

• 0 day Attack on Earth
• Bomberman Live: Battlefest
• Ray Storm HD
• Shadow Complex

Update – Kotaku’s running the same list.

Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver have racked up 1,480,980 sales between them on their opening weekend in Japan, Famitsu reports.

Shortages are being reported, so expect some monster (hunting) figures when the Japanese charts hit later this week.

Lara co-creator Toby Gard has left Crystal Dynamics, according to his LinkedIn page.

No reason has been given for the move. The developer’s now doing general consultancy, providing “services covering story, cinematics, animation, character design, game design and balancing.”

Gard was on the original Tomb Raider team. He famously quit to work on Galleon, which kind of failed a bit. He came back into Eidos to work on the Tomb Raider franchise in 2004.

Never more. Via Gama and Develop. Thanks, Blerk.

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Platinum’s Okami and MadWorld should have been better received, Qs Tetsuya Mizuguchi has told 1UP.

“It’s actually a coincidence that I mention two games by Clover/Platinum, but it’s a shame that unique games like this aren’t embraced by the public more,” said the Japanese dev stalwart.

Madworld’s wince-inducing sales were closely watched as the game was seen as something of a “core” test-bed for Wii, while Okami was hugely-loved, but not popular enough to spawn a Wii Sequel; a DS follow-on has since been announced.

There’s an interview through there.

The first few Scribblenauts reviews have gone live. It’s looking like it might not be quite the super-game E3 promised, but it’s rosy nonetheless.

But still. Essential DS purchase, surely. The 5th Cell puzzler’s out on October 9.

• Eurogamer – 7/10
• PocketGamer – 7/10
• USA Today – No score: “This is the most innovative new game to appear on the Nintendo DS this year.”
• IGN US – 8.7
• IGN AU – 8.5
• HardcoreGamer – 4.5/5

Another giant shock arrives this morning in the fact the American OPM has given Uncharted 2 5/5.

“We were totally thrilled to see that our game received a perfect 5/5 AND the Editors’ Choice award for the month,” said Naughty Dog marketing boss Arne Meyer, speaking on the US PS Blog.

“We’ve been working incredibly hard over the past two years to make Uncharted 2 the best game we’ve made yet and we’re all smiles to hear that we’re not the only ones who think we’ve got something really great on our hands.”

Not sure when the general review embargo lifts, but it can’t be long now. The game’s out on October 15 in North America, with a UK date still pending.

Thanks, Monk.

NPD reckons that 41 percent of all gamers rely on word of mouth to obtain information on video games.

All platforms, including portables, rely on word of mouth above all other information sources, the group said today.

Hands-on play at friends’ and relatives’ homes was the next most important way of coming into contact with games, at 31 percent.

Magazine and online ads, “as well as incentives/coupons and social networking sites” are the least influential to gamers, said NPD.

Full thing through the link.

Square’s released a first teaser of Front Mission Evolved. Get it after the break.

This is a TGS precursor, and shows missiles, large metal men and cities that probably wished they were somewhere else.

Thanks, Kotaku.

More »

Examiner’s got a shot of a Famnitsu ad showing what appears to be a PS3 version of Star Ocean: The Last Hope.

It’s got an “International” tag at the end of the title. Hit the link and see for yourself.

This is shocking. Except it’s about as shocking as the fact you woke up this morning.

We’ll ask Square, obviously.

Update: Siliconera reckons it’s out on February 4 next year.

Activision boss Bobby Kotick is his own man. He doesn’t need consoles to shovel his guitar-based brand of music game to the masses. No sir.

“You should expect to see many of our products to be playable on the television independent of a console,” he said this week, speaking at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco.

Like, seriously. He added:

“I think what the untethered Guitar Hero does is it maybe equals the playing field a little bit more and gives you leverage with first parties on downloadable content and the business model.”

This’d be awesome. Kotick won’t be able to threaten console manufacturers any more, however, which would be a bit rubbish.

More on IGN.

Sony’s released a little PS3 Firmware update, taking its home software to 3.01.

This one’s for improving “stability” of certain games. Read “Uncharted”. Get downloading! It’s fun!

11.5 million’s not a number to sneeze at, but Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick thinks Blizzard’s next MMO can go even “broader” than that. He briefly spoke about the untitled, un-detailed, un-everything-else-traditionally-associated-with-a-game MMO during the recent Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco.

“What we’ve announced at Blizzard is that we have Starcraft [II] coming, Diablo has been in production…and a new, unannounced MMO that has a little more broad appeal,” he said.

Broader than WoW? The real world is doomed.

More at GameSpot.

Over the weekend, an enterprising hacker claimed to have used his evil techno-wizardry to extract Scribblenauts’ 22,802-piece soul, which he then put on display for the entire Internet to see. However, speaking with Fast Company, lead designer Jeremiah Slaczka had a few choice words for said hacker:

“That [number] was leaked by a hacker who does not know anything. It’s more than that,” he explained.

efmeimdkvosoapwemf…

Sorry, our vocabulary is currently cowering in a corner. We’ll get back to that whole “speaking properly” thing as soon as we manage to console it.

After 19 years of faithful service to Microsoft, Shane Kim has decided to leave the company in order to spend more time with his family. Kim, for those just tuning in, is corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and one of the most prevalent “faces” of the not-actually-micro mega-company’s gaming division. He’ll be making his exit this fall, according to a report by Industry Gamers.

In Kim’s wake, Phil Spencer will be promoted to corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. He was formerly its GM.

For now, Microsoft doesn’t plan on filling Kim’s vacated position in its IEB, but you can bet that Phil Spencer will be seeing even more action without Kim around to lighten the load. Fortunately, he’ll be assisted by Dennis Durkin, who’s taken up the newly created mantel of chief operating officer of Microsoft’s IEB.

Has it really been 19 years already? Best of luck, Shane. Tell the wife we said “hello.”

US firm Spawn Lab’s launched a $200 box that allows you to stream games from 360, PS3, PS2 and GameCube and play them on any PC.

It’s a Cloud affair: your PC must run XP, Vista or Windows 7 and have access to a bandwidth of between 500kbps to 1Mbps for SD and 2-5Mbps for HD. It works locally or remotely.

There’s more detail on BigDownload. The box, the HD-720, is available from Spawn Labs’ site now.