Monthly Archives: September 2009

Turbine’s Adam Mersky has revealed that the early-access launch of Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited was a success.

So far available in the US only, the MMO “turns regular subscribers into VIP members”, providing access to all game content and a monthly “Turbine Point Allowance”.

“They all got a ton of points for being loyal subscribers, for being in the beta,” Merskey told Kotaku. “We weren’t really expecting a ton of sales – they had no incentive to. They already had access to all of the content as VIP subscribers, and we just gave them a butt-load of Points.

“They’ve gone through their points, and we’ve already sold millions more Turbine points, and we’ve not even opened up the world to the public yet. The hottest selling items are the new Favored Soul class, which is unlockable in-game, but all of our subs just went ahead and spent points on it, unlocked it, and they’re playing it right now.”

Unlimited goes live in North America tomorrow, with a European date still to be set.

Via Eurogamer.

Joystiq’s carrying an image of the Batman menu screen showing a message about some free DLC: it’s coming next week, apparently.

Rocksteady’s Paul Crocker did mention “the DLC” in an interview with us recently, but refused to go into detail.

Just checking now.

Update – Just got this from UK PR: “We can’t talk about DLC for the moment.”

Codemasters done good, say the reviewers of the internet. Releasing this Friday, DiRT 2′s managed an 89 percent MC average on 360 and 88 percent on PS3, and all anecdotal indications are accompanied by large thumbs pointing up.

Round-up below. Do yourself a favour.

• Gamepro – 5/5
• SI – 9.3/10
• Team Xbox – 9.2/10
• IGN UK – 9/10
• GameTrailers – 9/10
• OXM US – 9/10
• OXM UK – 9/10
• VG – 9/10
• IGN US – 8.4/10
• Go – 9/10

WWW – 8.8/10

That time of the month again. Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter just released his August estimates for the US, showing a 14 percent year-over-year decline.

Wii sales, said the analyst, are likely to have fallen nearly 50 percent. He added that a price cut will be needed this year for Nintendo to hit forecasts.

From a note:

We estimate sell-through of 240,000 Wii hardware units (down 47% from last year), 205,000 Xbox 360 (up 5% from last year), and 160,000 PS3 consoles (a 14% year-over-year unit decline) as the overall sales decline trends continued until price cuts spurred demand in the last few days of the month. Sony cut the PS3 price in the last week of the month, and we expect to see PS3 sales grow substantially in September. We do not think that Nintendo’s Wii hardware forecast is achievable without a price cut, and as long as the Wii remains at its November 2006 launch price of $249.99, we expect continued year-over-year declines for that console’s sales. We expect a Wii price cut no later than November.

August’s NPD hit this Thursday.

Apogee’s Prey now appears to be in the trusty hands of Zenimax, as you can see from this USPTO filing. Native American FPS still has a home, clearly.

Zenimax has also filed a new trademark on the property.

We’ll check now. Thanks, superannuation.

Square Enix Europe has just told us that it’s to put a European date on FFXIII imminently.

“We plan to announce the PAL release timing of Final Fantasy XIII in the very near future,” said a rep.

The company has just confirmed a December 17 launch for the RPG’s PS3 version in Japan, priced 8,800 yen.

We were told by the game’s developers at GamesCom that it’ll hit both the US and Europe on 360 and PS3 early next year.

Square Enix just confirmed that Final Fantasy XIII will release on December 17 in Japan, priced 8,800 yen.

The news was leaked yesterday, but what the hey.

As Kotaku points out, that’s 9,240 yen (£60.54) with tax (thanks Blerk).

This is coming out of a Square Enix event in Tokyo. Watch 1UP’s liveblog here or Kotaku’s at the link.

Peripheral manufacturer SteelSeries has shown quite the most amazing custom keyboard for NCsoft MMO Aion, featuring an extra panel of hotkeys on its right hand side.

It features:

• Dedicated action keys, menus, and chat commands that are labeled across 69 keys
• Full customization of each key through the SteelSeries Z Engine
• Quick-access emote keys for greeting, intimidating, or taunting your opponents

It’ll never be better than this. Full PR here.

Realtime Worlds community chap Chris Collins told EG at PAX that the APB beta is imminent.

“We’re weeks rather than months away from starting closed beta,” said the developer.

The shooter-MMO’s down for release early next year.

After the break. The Frontier WiiWare follow-up sports water and snow, which is all very nice.

There’s no date on it yet. Pretty though, innit?

Via Kotaku and Offworld.

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Rock Band’s bad. Rolling Stone Bill Wyman and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason say it stops people learning how to actually play musical instruments.

“It encourages kids not to learn, that’s the trouble,” Wyman told the BBC.

“It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument. I think is a pity so I’m not really keen on that kind of stuff.”

Mason described the likes of Rock Band and Guitar Hero as “interesting new developments,” but added:

“It irritates me having watched my kids do it – if they spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they’d be damn good by now.”

We’re saying nothing. You’ll be able to press buttons along to Beatles songs in return for hundreds of pounds tomorrow, don’t forget.

EA’s released a handy press release detailing tracks, pricing, future DLC dates and everything else you could possibly want to know about The Beatles: Rock Band. Get it after the break.

The game releases tomorrow. Have £180 to spare? Now you know what to do with it.

Take a look.

More »

Bit of an unshock, but Cryptic’s excellent Champions Online has gone straight in at the top of this week’s Steam charts, seconded only by the Aion pre-order. MMOs, eh?

The PC version of Street Fighter IV’s in there at number three, thanks to a 50 percent weekend discount.

Data below for the week ending September 6.

1. Champions Online
2. Aion (pre-order)
3. Street Fighter IV
4. Left 4 Dead
5. Counter-Strike: Source
6. THQ Collector Pack
7. Section 8
8. Team Fortress 2
9. Killing Floor
10. The Orange Box

Get ready, Lightning fans. Square Enix is about to hold a large Final Fantasy XIII event in Tokyo. It starts at 7.00pm local time, which is 3.00am PST, 11.00am BST and 12.00pm CET.

Liveblogs:

• Kotaku
• IGN
• 1UP

What are we going to see? A confirmation of yesterday’s ostensibly-leaked December 17 Japanese street date for one. European and US dates? Maybe.

Watch. Like hawk. Divert eyes from screen at peril.

Addicted to World of Warcraft? Have $14,000? Live in America, or have access to an aircraft that can get you to America? Son, your boat’s come in.

Something called ReSTART’s been launched in the US, offering a 45-day, $14,000 program that employs a “cold-turkey” approach to help people wean themselves from “pathological computer use,” which can include obsessive use of video games.

“We’ve been doing this for years on an outpatient basis,” said Hilarie Cash, one of the center’s bosses.

“Up until now, we had no place to send them.”

WoW addiction has a home. Hit the link for more.

The Beatles: Rock Band may now be a top review-grabbing, sure-to-be-successful super-game, but Paul McCartney’s initial thoughts on Harmonix’s pitch weren’t exactly complimentary.

From this Guardian piece:

There were “a couple of grown-ups standing looking very foolish with these little plastic guitars playing to a screen”, he says. “And we’re going, ‘Yeah, all right… It just looks like a really bad band.’ They said: ‘We really can do a great one with the Beatles, and we’ll show you.’ So Ringo and I got a bit intrigued. They said: ‘Look, the thing is, if we get it right, these things are very, very popular.’ And we go, ‘Yeah, well, we know, because our kids and the young people we know do it.’”

McCartney’s scepticism gently lifted. “The scepticism is in order not to make a terrible mistake,” he explained. “We go, ‘no, no,’ and we’re really down on it, and they’ve really got to prove themselves. We won’t go, ‘Oh, that’s nice… go on boys, you just do it.’ We guard the flame a bit. But then they did come back one day and they had something. They were playing our songs, they had some visuals that were half-working, and the penny dropped. We went, ‘You know what? This could be pretty cool.’”

And the rest is history. Good history, “the Shareholders” hope.

Game Watch has thrown up a stupendous array of MotorStorm Arctic Edge screens. There’s even a bit of snowplough art there.

The lucky Japanese get to call the racer MotorStorm RAGING ICE. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t jealous.

It’s out on September 29.

The One Life Left chaps have posted up another show after a three-week break – and here it is.

Listen to it. The inconsiderate Americans had a public holiday yesterday, so there’s not much else going on.

Rockstar’s put live nine new screenshots of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the PSP.

You can find them over at GTA Hood.

The game is out on October 20 in the US, October 23 in the UK and Europe.

The huge spike in sales of the PlayStation 3 that was confirmed to VG247 today by Chart-Track was beyond the “expectations” of SCE UK. That is according to sales director of Sony UK Mark Howsen.

“The first week’s Chart-Track numbers for sales of the new PlayStation 3 were ahead of our expectations, so we were extremely pleased.”

Speaking to GI on the 1,000% increase in sales in the UK of the console, he said “A new price point and a new machine has proven a significant catalyst to help consumers make the move onto PS3.”

“Our new advertising campaign, The Game Is Just The Start, is also demystifying the value proposition.

This ongoing campaign and the addition of some great exclusive and new IPs – Uncharted: Among Thieves, EyePet, Heavy Rain – and services [such as] PlayStation Video Store, will hopefully provide even more trigger points to drive future purchases of PlayStation 3.”

More through here.