Monthly Archives: September 2009

Speaking at PAX, Valve’s Chet Faliszek has admitted that the developer has tossed aside and “thrown out entire games”.

No really, we’ll let Chet take it from here:

“We’ve thrown out entire games. You think something’s gonna work and… [developers] talk about this giant design document and it’s just like we’re so much more iterative.

We have these ideas we want to express [and] the easiest way to test those is get them in the game as soon as you can and then have someone not on the team play it.

All through the Left 4 Dead process, all through the Left 4 Dead 2 process we’ve had outside players come in and play the game and give us feedback.”

More at TVGB.

Not content with UK sales going up by a 1,000% and initial Japanese harware sales at 150k, La Tribune are reporting sales of the PS3 have gone up in France by tenfold.

How many units were sold? According to the article, over 37,000 units sold of the Slim have been sold in France, with 12,000 sold during last weekend (if what we can gather from the translation is right).

The only main SCE region to not officially release figures yet are SCEA, although we have sent an email to them on the numbers for America.

More through the third link.

Is Lightning the female version of Cloud? Is there more that meets the eye with the pair of them? Lets ask Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase.

“There might be some very superficial similarities in that Cloud and Lightning are really cool and composed characters, and also they both have a military background. Those are the only two things that are really similar about them.

“Otherwise, if you really get to know Lightning, she has a totally different story. Once you play the game you’ll find out more about her.”

During the same interview at GamesCom, Kitase confirmed to us that they’re aiming to have a minimum of three DVDs for the 360 version of FFXIII, which will sim-ship next spring in the US and Europe on PS3 and 360, according to him as well.

Final Fantasy XIII was dated for Japan tonight for December 17 for the PlayStation 3.

Major‘s announced that this week’s Xbox Live Deal of the Week is Puzzle Quest: once 800 MS points, now 400 MS points.

Queue it up here if you’re interested.

Remember – Gold members only.

Microsoft Games Studios head Phil Spencer has defended the decision to give development of Crackdown 2 to upstart Ruffian Games instead of developer of the original, RealTime Worlds.

“It would have been easy to chase the money but, again, I wanted to make sure that anything we work on is correctly nurtured. We had to find the right team who really understood what game it is – and that was Billy and the team at Ruffian,” said Spencer.

He also admitted that Microsoft thought long and hard on whom they should have given the contract to.

“We own the Crackdown IP and we could have just found another developer out there and done something called Crackdown 2 but as you and others know, it’s one of my favourite games of all time; so I personally wanted it to be special if we went ahead with a sequel.

If there was anyone that was a stickler about commissioning a new one, it was me. I didn’t want to just turn the crank.”

More over at Develop.

So what have you kiddies got for you from uncle Nintendo?

On WiiWare, you get two games in Contra Rebirth and ColorZ. The Virtual Console recieves Super Return of the Jedi and DSiWare gets Clubhouse Games: Express Family Favourites. Hooray!

Full details of all four games is after the jump.

More »

Square Enix has just tagged December 17 as the Japanese release date of Final Fantasy XIII.

We just came.

The date was meant to be announced tomorrow at a premiere event in Tokyo, but an accidental leak on the online side of the announcement has meant Christmas has come early for us.

Square also started an ad promotion today on YouTube Japan, building up to the announcement.

More at FF-XIII.net.

Our French is a little rough, so help us out here if you’re fluent.

Jeuxvideo’s posted details of several holiday PS3 bundles – including packs for Uncharted 2 and Assassins Creed II – apparently gleaned from a local retailer.

There’s a GT5 deal there, too. The bundle is a Slim plus the game for €339, releasing on December 4.

The full bundles are:

• PS3 Slim + Need for Speed: Shift (October 1): €339
• PS3 Slim + Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (October 14): €339
• PS3 Slim + Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 (October 24): €339
• PS3 Slim + two unconfirmed Blu-ray movies (date and price tbc)
• PS3 Slim + Tekken 6 (November 4): €339
• PS3 Slim + Assassin’s Creed II (November 19): €339
• PS3 Slim + Gran Turismo 5 (December 4): €339

Rumour, obviously. There’s been no announcement. Thanks, Gekidami.

Valve writer Chet Faliszek has admitted to Eurogamer that Left 4 Dead 2 is “a really big departure” for the developer while creating the sequel.

“Left 4 Dead 2 is a really big departure for us. For example, with Half-Life 2 Episode 1, do you remember when you get into the Citadel for the first time, there’s one of the big things that fly over you, and he’s holding some striders?

Getting people to look up to that was impossible. We put a guy up in a balcony shooting at you, and then you turn and look. Problem with Left 4 Dead is, it’s all dynamic, it’s meant to be different every time, we never want to have that guy up there always shooting at you,” said Faliszek.

Game is out on November 17 for Xbox 360 and PC.

More from the interview through the link.

No, really.

Mirror’s Edge is dirt cheap at Amazon.

You can buy ME from £6.17 for the 360 version, with the PS3 and PC versions at £7.42 and £7.99 each respectively.

Truth be told, if you dont buy the game for either one of them platforms, you’re making a big mistake.

Take your pick.

United Front Games producer Dan Sochan has said in an interview with Edge that the studio picked PS3 as the console of choice they wanted to release ModNation Racers on because of the fact the PlayStation Network is free.

“As we were coming up with what we were doing and what we wanted to create, we spoke to some different publishers and immediately there was this sort of synergy between us and Sony.

And in terms of the hardware, the power of the PS3 and the PSN network being free – that we could make sure that everyone who buys a copy of the game is able to get online for free and then share all this content – were really important for us,” said Sochan.

Find the full interview through the first link.

Via CVG.

Rockstar’s put out 15 new screens of Red Dead Redemption.

They’re at Kotaku, and boy, do they look nice.

The game will be out in the first half of next year, with BioShock 2 and Max Payne 3, for PS3 and 360.

According to early reports from Famitsu, the PS3 Slim has sold over a staggering 150k in Japan within the first three days of it’s launch from Friday.

The exact number is actually 152,252, which is still actually incredible considering only 88,000 were sold within the first two days of going on sale. The figures also mean that it’s the biggest sales count the PS3 has ever recieved in Japan.

Earlier today, Chart-Track confirmed to us that PS3 sales in the UK were up 1,000%. The fightback is on…

Thanks, Kotaku.

Xbox World’s dropped new info on Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony. “Dropped” being the operative word: parachutes are back.

Basejumping, helicopter battles with yachts and more new weapons and new vehicles are going to be included.

And that the Middle Eastern business man in the trailer is comedian Omid Djalli.

The mag played a mission where Luis has to skydive onto a subway train while avoiding snipers, and try to unhook a carriage from the train then attach it to a custom helicopter – the same one from the trailer.

This is shaping up rather nicely, innit?

More info through here. The DLC is out on October 29 for 360.

The VG247 podcast has finally been added to the iTunes Store – you can subscribe to it here.

I hate podcasts, you’re saying. They’re all the same. And you’d be right: apart from the fact ours is different.

Subscribe now and you’re going to get an exclusive interview with Blizzard lawmaster Chris Metzen on Friday, in a wide-ranging chat on StarCraft II plot and background. You’ll also get to listen to Just Add Water’s Stewart Gilray on the PSN- and PSP-exclusive Gravity Crash.

There’ll also be Pat, Nathan and Steph talking crap for ten minutes about the week’s news. That’s the best bit, obviously.

Last week we had Capcom’s US’s Chris Svensson and Chris Kramer talking about just about everything the firm has to offer, plus an exclusive chat with Rocksteady’s Paul Crocker on Batman.

Want to listen to website staff talking for an hour about what games they’re playing at the moment? Pick any of the others on the iTunes Store. There’s absolutely loads there.

Need for Speed: Shift developer Slightly Mad studios has said to Gamerzines that the damage model for Gran Turismo 5 is not “quite so realistic”.

The revealation came from the studio’s Andy Tudor.

“Actually, when the footage of Gran Turismo 5 came out of GamesCom with the doors flying off, we were all like ‘what the fuck? How are they able to do that?,” said Tudor.

“But then we looked closer and saw that they had fitted a roll cage to the car, which is fine, but it’s not quite so realistic.”

Buuurn.

Shift is out on September 18 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. More through the link.

In what can honestly be described as the shortest press release in history, Sega has announced that it’ll be releasing new DLC for Valkyria Chronicles in winter 2010 (Jan or Feb most likely).

We would stick it below after the jump, but it really is too short. Look for yourself:

“Today, Sega announces new downloadable content for Valkyria Chronicles on PS3. ‘Challenges from Team Edy’ will test your strategy skills in all new missions! The DLC content will be available Winter 2010.”

See?

Thanks, SI.

No, seriously.

Speaking in a weekly column for Nikkei, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada has admitted he is seriously obsessed with Dragon Quest IX.

How obsessed? He culmated 30 hours in the first four days after the game was released in Japan in July.

You’re proper hardcore now, Wada-san, innit.

But he doesn’t just play for the enjoyment. He also plays to see what makes a good game at Square Enix, what makes a hit over there and what to do next with a game in development.

Thanks, RPGSite.

Bungie’s Brian Jarrard has admitted to Eurogamer that if the co-op mode in Halo 3: ODST, Firefight, is a success, it’s very likely that it’ll feature in Halo: Reach, when it releases next year.

“I can’t talk too much about Reach specifics, but hopefully the game mode’s going to be received as well we think it will be, and people are going to enjoy it.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever been known to really take things away from each successive release, so I think it’s safe to say that if Firefight gets a lot of traction and people love it, it probably has a good future home in our next title as well,” admitted the community leader of the developer.

More through the link.

EU team leader for PES Jon Murphy has revealed to Videogamer that anybody waiting on a demo for PES 2010 is “not long” off.

“Not long to go now until we release a demo for everyone to test. You’ll get a chance to see the new PES for yourselves and make up your minds about how we’ve reflected what the what fans want,” said Murphy.

Game’s out this fall for PS3, 360, PS2, Wii, PSP and PC