Monthly Archives: September 2009

Ubi’s released a new Splinter Cell: Conviction movie for PAX – watch it on YouTube.

It features a cat playing a piano. Honestly, it does. It also has men with guns, in case you were getting worried.

It’s out next year.

Bit of a humdinger this week. We were lucky enough to get Capcom US’s senior business chap Christian Svensson and Unity ubermeister Chris Kramer on the phone for a brilliant chat about all the firm’s major products: tons of news in there, so definitely listen.

In addition, British development refused to be outdone, you’ll be glad to hear, with Arkham Asylum’s lead narrative guy Paul Crocker giving us ten minutes of everything bat. The interviews are back-to-back.

This one’s quite long, so for ease:

• 0-14.29 – Pat, Steph and Nathan on PS3 Slim, Take-Two’s Natal announcement, Blizzcon, Nathan sounding like a broken robot and Steph shouting about “slapping hookers”.
• 14.30-28.21 – Capcom’s Christian Svensson and Chris Kramer.
• 28.51-38.50 – Rocksteady’s Paul Crocker.

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The most obvious question in the history of obvious questions: is Rocksteady working on a sequel to the almost universally acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum? Shall we ask Paul Crocker, AA’s lead narrative designer? Oh, go on then.

“We’re just waiting to see if people like the game,” said Paul, speaking in this week’s VG247 podcast.

But surely the UK darling-of-the-moment’s putting together DLC for the original, right?

“We don’t talk about the DLC, I’m afraid,” Crocker added.

“The DLC”? You’ll just have to wait to see what that’s all about.

Capcom’s told VG247 that its not currently working on any more updates to its historic fighting games, but will almost certainly revisit its older scrapper titles in the future.

“I’ll be honest: right now we have nothing in development, but we’ve been pleased with how our fighting games have performed and our re-releases have performed, so I’d be shocked if we didn’t explore that further,” Capcom US business chief Chris Svensson said in a phone interview yesterday.

The publisher’s recent fighter releases needed some space “to breathe,” added the exec.

“We have put out a fair number of fighting games in a very short window,” he said.

“We had HD Remix, Street Fighter IV, MvC2, we’ll have Tatsunoko in the pipeline, and we have who knows what coming that we can’t talk about yet, but suffice to say there’s been a lot of fighting activity out of Capcom in the last year-and-a-half, and we probably need to give all of those products a little room to breathe and perform before we do some more.”

Svensson was talking to us for this week’s podcast.

Street Fighter IV may have made its way to PC, but if you’re waiting for more recent Capcom fighters on your desktop you probably shouldn’t hold your breath.

“To get to Marvel Vs Capcom 2, there are no plans to bring it to PC, nor are there plans to bring HD remix to PC,” said Capcom US boss Christian Svennson, talking to VG247 for this week’s podcast.

Svensson said elsewhere in the interview that he’d been “satisfied” with SFIV PC sales, and that promotions to push the fighter’s PC SKU will be hitting soon.

Need for Speed: Shift will probably run on your PC, from the look of the system specs EA put out overnight.

• Required – Internet Connection
• OS – Windows XP (Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) / Windows 7
• Processor – Intel Core™2 Duo 1.6 GHz or faster
• Memory – XP: 1 GB RAM; Vista/Windows 7: 1.5 GB RAM
• Hard Drive – 6 GB
• DVD Drive – 8 SPEED
• Video Card – 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0*
• Sound Card – DirectX 9.0c compatible
• DirectX – DirectX 9.0c compatible
• Online Multiplayer – 512 Kbps or faster; 2-12 Players
• Input – Keyboard, Mouse
• Optional – USB Steering Wheel / Dual Analogue Gamepad
• Supported Video Cards: ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB or greater; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.

The racer’s out on September 15 in the US and September 17 in Europe. Thanks, CinemaBlend.

Sega’s gearing up to announce Natal and PS3 motion tech games, Sega West boss Mike Hayes has told IndustryGamers.

“We’d like to think that in early 2010 we’ll be making announcements about both of those platforms,” he said.

Hayes added that the projects right now are basically in an R&D phase.

“We have our ideas and we know what we want to do, but the technology is pretty new, particularly with Natal, so we’ve got to get to grips with the technology and see if it can do what we want it do,” he said, adding about the experimentation, “I kind of think of it as the land of bunsen burners and test tubes.”

More through there. Thanks, Destructoid.

Capcom is working on games designed to lead on PC, US biz head Christian Svensson’s revealed to VG247, with at least one team that has “pedigree” as a PC developer.

“We do have a couple of products in development which are PC-lead, that are not announced yet,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that that content isn’t also going to show up on console, because it will.

“But the pedigree of the team and the primary focus of the design is around the PC, and the largest forecast is on PC for at least one of these projects.

“They’re projects that we’re really excited about: I wish I could say more, but I can’t right now.”

There was no other detail. Svensson was speaking to us in a recording for today’s podcast.

If you were sitting on the fence about whether or not to buy Street Fighter IV on PC, it sounds as though things are about to get a lot simpler for you.

“You’ll see a few promotions happening very, very soon on Street Fighter IV PC that will make it that much more attractive for people to jump right in and try it on PC as well,” Capcom US biz boss Christian Svensson told VG247 in an interview yesterday.

The game currently costs £30 on Steam.

Svensson added that Capcom was “satisfied” with sales of the game’s PC version, although it doesn’t sound as though Capcom’s going to be flooding PC gamers with further fighting titles any time soon.

“Street Fighter IV was, truthfully, a bit of an experiment,” he said.

“We didn’t know how it was going to go either. There hadn’t been a major PC launch of a fighting game in probably over a decade… I’ve got to say that relative to our expectations, we’re satisfied.

“It didn’t set the world on fire, but it didn’t disappoint us. So we’re happy.”

Christian was speaking to us in a recording for today’s podcast.

EG’s posted exclusive details on Left 4 Dead 2′s Dark Carnival scenario, including the first screens.

The level introduces the Jockey, a new type of infected, and sees the survivors working along a highway, through a motel and into the carnival itself.

There’s a bunch of detail through there on new melee weapons, and the like. Fill your boots.

Sony has just confirmed to VG247 that the God of War Collection, featuring God of War I & II, will indeed be region free.

Folks were wondering if it would be region locked since the European version will not be released until after the start of 2010.

Luckily, like most PS3 games, it is importable.

Good thing. We were worried folks would start showing up at Sony Santa Monica wielding their Blades of Chaos in protest.

Thank Kratos that won’t be the case this holiday season.

Penny Arcade Avatar clothing is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 80 MS Points ($1) each.

There’s shirts representing Gabe and Tycho, and then there’s the Wombat and Hadouken.

Cool stuff.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Capcom has announced that some of the digital games on PSN are being bundled together into the Super Pack and the Combo Pack, both for PS3.

Starting tonight, here’s what you’ll get:

Super Pack ($49.99):

• Super Street Fighter II HD Remix
• Flock!
• Age of Booty
• 1942
• Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando
• Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD Remix
• Rocketmen: Axis of Evil with the It Came from Uranus pack included.

Combo Pack ($29.99):

• 1942
• Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando
• Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD Remix
• Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
• Rocketmen: It Came from Uranus mission pack

Capcom has outlined all the “cool” that it will offer PAX goers who stop by the booth during the event.

Along with the RE5 PC launch party, limited edition items on hand at the Capcom store, there will be games present at the booth.

Here’s the goods:

• A limited number of passes (500 to be exact) for the Resident Evil 5 PC launch party this Saturday will be handed out to the first 250 people on Friday and Saturday to stop by our Resident Evil 5 PC booth. Things on hand at the party can be found here.

• The Capcom store will feature brand new, limited Femme Fatale SFIV TE arcade sticks, giant-sized Poogies from Monster Hunter which are a North American exclusive; Devil May Cry 4 Nero’s Red Queen Sword; Dark Void “Will” statue featuring light-up flames and mask; loads more cool shit.

Te full list of enviable items is through the link. Think of us if you plan to attend.

Microsoft’s Chris Lewis has told MCV that the European install base for Xbox 360 is one million higher than the one for PS3.

According to recent figures, 360 has 9-million-plus and PS3 around 10-million-plus. His explanation for how Microsoft is bigger, goes thus:

“We’re confident we are actually around a million units ahead. We count installed base differently to them.

“We count the number of units in the hands of consumers. We are committed to continuing that momentum – not only in places like the UK, France and Germany. Continued growth in all parts of Europe is integral to winning [against PS3] overall.”

More through the link above.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Over on Capcom Unity, a post over on the Japanese SFIV blog has been featured, showing off the Street Fighter IV plot via a handy “combination relationship chart/flowchart”.

It really is awesome.

We can’t do it justice here, so go have a look through the links.

Sony has announced an open casting call for The Tester, a reality series created for PSN where the winner will get a job as a game tester in the San Diego offices.

Apparently, the program will follow a group of gamers as they face off in a series of elimination challenges designed to test their mental prowess, dexterity, and video game knowledge.

Basically, total drama island for the tech-savvy set. Should be an interesting watch, but it’s doubtful Sony makes anyone eat a hissing cockroach.

Ya never know though.

If you think you have what it takes to participate, read on past the break where we have posted the press release, or check out the US PS Blog, which also has a video.

More »

Tero Virtala, CEO of RedLynx, sat down with GOONLINE and had a chat about all things Trials HD, and through the course of the conversation, Virtala happened to provide his thoughts on Natal and the montion controller from Sony.

“The motion controls definitely expand the possibilities for whole new game experiences. New type of games, interactive experiences, new type of audiences,” he said. “There are number of interesting developments that we all have seen in the press. If we would have to hand-pick one of the most interesting ones, we would most likely choose Project Natal.

“Motion controlling without the controller – with full body and movement mapping – it could be a leap to the next dimension, not just one more development step among motion controllers.

“In any case, our focus has always been multiplatform, and we’ve been many times working with new devices and platforms, so these new motion controllers definitely are of high interest.”

As far as bringing Trials HD to PSN, Virtala said it was too early to say as the firm is concentrating on DLC for the Xbox Live version at the moment.

You can read the rest of the interview, conducted by VG247′s newest slave-boy, Johnathan Cullen, through the link.

Sony’s arriving in Seattle this weekend for PAX and tomorrow night it’s holding a MAG-themed Meet-up, where it’ll be the first time beta participants will be able to engage in a 256-player battle.

For people who can’t make it to PAX, Sony is holding a Labor Day weekend contest giving away Beta codes through the US PS Blog Twitter account.

What in on that? Head on over through the link to see how you can participate and hopefully get picked.

A demo for Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes has landed on Xbox Live.

Those wishing to try it out will experience the “Jedi and Clone Trooper crossover that makes up the gameplay”, according to 1UP.

Game’s out on September 15 for PSP, PS3, PS2, PC, Wii and Xbox 360.