Monthly Archives: September 2009

HMV has revealed that UK and Ireland sales were up by 12.5 percent and like-for-like up 1.7 percent, for the 18 weeks leading up to August 29 with sales up 4.4 percent across the whole group.

“In a tough consumer environment, the Group has made a solid start to the new financial year,” said CEO Simon Fox. “Our plans for the peak selling period are in good shape, and with a strong line-up across all product categories our focus is on providing our customers with the very best offers for Christmas.

“The strategic initiatives that comprise our three-year plan are on track, and beyond this we are continuing to drive new initiatives for further growth.”

HMV also revealed plans to acquire 50 percent of 7digital £7.7 million. 7digital will now become “the sole supplier of HMVs digital operations, with its catalog of over six million digital music tracks as well as video entertainment,” reports GI.biz.

“Combining our experience in digital and HMV’s brand, customer base and wealth of experience in music, video, games and book retail, we are creating a powerful force in digital entertainment,” said Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital.

“With consumer adoption of legal digital media now reaching the mass-market, this joint venture partnership is great news for our customers and suppliers.”

More through the link.

Ubisoft has just tweeted that the first gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed 2 has been released.

We have it posted after the break.

It’s great. Enjoy.

More »

Funcom’s Ragnar Tørnquist has revealed to Norwegian website Dagbladet part two of the teaser trailer for The Secret World.

In the video he also discussed the game stating that the firm took inspiration from mythology and pop culture to create the game world and its time line.

“We take inspiration from history books, mytology, urban legends and pop culture and mix them together in a thrilling universe,” he said. “The game was begun nearly seven years ago, but the history of the game stretches literally millions of years back.”

The trailer, according to Kotaku because we can’t get it to stream, says that “a blonde woman walks through a playground at night; a mysterious creature appears; awesome ensues.”

The official website also has a link with a personality quiz that rates your suitability for one of three secret societies – the Illuminati, Templars, or the Dragon. Completing the quiz and filling out your details not only qualifies you for game updates, but a chance at beta access, and an exclusive in-game item once the MMO launches.

We’re a Templar. Kickass.

More through all the links.

Sony president Shuhei Yoshida has said that company was “late” in offering “platform-level” online support for the PS3.

“I think we were late to offer the platform-level support, to make the online functionality work at that level,” said Yoshida in the latest issue of Edge. “We made the prior decision that you do not introduce the common centralized network names into every experience, so publishers made their own. That was fine at the start, but as more and more games have online functionality you need a unified approach.

“So Microsoft took that approach in the last generation, and maybe that’s where people see the difference when they compare Xbox Live and PSN.”

Yoshida goes on to say that Sony is “making improvements with the new 3.0 firmware”, beefing up the PS3 experience within the PlayStation Store and admits that with 300 million people on Facebook the company is not ruling out integrating social networking sites.

More over on CVG.

Looks like Blizzard and the folks over at the BlizzBlues blog had a back and forth over the effects and lighting in the latest iteration of the RPG.

Some fans took screens from the game, and highlighted areas with text stating was was good or bad, right or wrong.

Here is just a taste:

BlizzBlues: The reasons we would like a tone down of spell effects / lighting is because they are unnaturally bright and don’t blend into the game world. They don’t have that “diablo touch” or feel, yet. They dominate the battle by flowing over the enemies and they are just plain too bright.

But hey, thanks for the feedback. It was delivered in a very hostile way.

Blizzard: Yeah, and that’s cool. It was said I don’t know how many times at this BlizzCon alone that we’re always working against the issue of having too many effects that are too crazy and over the top going off at the same time. So yeah, it’s always a potential problem. I just don’t think our artists need to be drawn a schematic of how to fix it. They’re paid professionals, they do this for a living.

They seem to indicate, in an unnecessarily blurry way, that spell effects should change depending on the environment. Which is a really odd and unnecessary direction. They also seem to indicate that Diablo games do not have bright/flashy/glowing weapons, armor, enemies, or spell effects to help differentiate things on-screen, that each environment should be a brown mess and spells are indistinguishable from the background. I can only assume they did not play Diablo II.

Truthfully whoever created those images has an entirely distorted perception of what Diablo is. Really.

Oh dear. Go have a read through the link, or over on the Diablo III forums/blog of IncGamers.

The Japanese Software Sales are in for the week ending August 30, and it looks as though Tomodachi Collection (Friend Collection) for DS was the best selling game over there once again last week.

Dragon Quest IX came in second, with Wii Sports Resort still going strong at number three.

All in all, there were 11 DS games in the top 30 with seven for PS2, six for PSP, four for Wii, and one a piece for PS3 and 360.

Games that hit 11-30 are listed after the break.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

1. [NDS] Tomodachi Collection (Friend Collection) (Nintendo) – 80,000 / 890,000
2. [NDS] Dragon Quest IX: Defenders of the Starry Sky (Square Enix) – 71,000 / 3,794,000
3. [WII] Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo) – 46,000 / 1,085,000
4. [360] Dream C Club (D3 Publisher) – 46,000 / NEW
5. [WII] Monster Hunter 3 (Capcom) – 34,000 / 836,000
6. [PSP] Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny (Namco Bandai) – 29,000 / NEW
7. [NDS] Super Robot Gakuen (Namco Bandai) – 28,000 / NEW
8. [NDS] You’ll Incur Losses if You Remain Ignorant: How Money and Things Work DS (Nintendo) – 21,000 / NEW
9. [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2 G (BEST) (Capcom) – 18,000 / 925,000
10. [PS2] Hakuouki: Zuisouroku (Idea Factory) – 17,000 / NEW

More »

A video for the online multiplayer part of Brutal Legend has popped up over on Eurogamer France.

The game’s out in October.

You should go have a watch.

This week’s European PSN Update includes an updated demo for Fight Night Round 4, a Disgaea 3 content collection, and extra content for F.E.A.R. 2, Pain and High Velocity Bowling.

PSP owners get Fate/Unlimited Codes and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, a demo for Holy Invasion Of Privacy Badman!, and the first pack available for Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?

Full thing is through the EU PS Blog, with highlights posted after the break.

More »

Contra Rebirth will be released on WiiWare tomorrow, Konami’s said today.

The platform-shooter contains five stages and will cost 1,000 Wii Points.

More on CVG.

Sounds as though any aspiration EA may have had to make more NASCAR games has gone south.

“There are no plans right now for NASCAR from EA,” EA Sports boss Peter Moore told Gamespot.

“We had a great relationship over the years that I thoroughly enjoyed when I first got here. Unfortunately…we had to make some tough trade-offs.

“We’ve had to redeploy some of those folks. A number of the NASCAR team has moved over now to EA Sports MMA, which will be shipping next year. [We're] still a huge fan of NASCAR, but no plans right now to develop any further games for NASCAR from EA Sports.”

Moore’s comments represent a shift in position from April this year, when he told VG247 that “NASCAR and ourselves are in negotiations about where we go from here.”

Clearly not any more.

This is how easy it can be. Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy have told CNN that Harmonix’s initial cash input was peanuts scrounged from personal contacts.

“We raised an initial round of capital from friends and family, meager by today’s standards – $100,000 – but it lasted us a whole year because I was still living like a grad student,” said Egozy.

He added: “Somewhat selfishly, we just wanted to keep working on the cool things we were doing at the media lab. Our revenue was pretty much zero for five years.”

Rigopulos lived with his parents in the early years.

And look at them now, eh? Hit the link for the full thing. Note that Harmonix was founded in 2995: its success is the product of demonic time travel. Thanks, supererogatory.

Shots of Forza 3′s Australia’s V8 touring car series have popped up on Kotaku, and very pretty they are too.

In case you missed it, you should definitely watch yesterday’s video of the Bugatti Veyron being modelled for the racer: it’s something else.

Forza 3 releases on October 23 in Europe and October 27 in the US.

This may not be going according to Bungie’s plan. Almost 30 minutes of HD Halo 3: ODST footage has appeared on YouTube. It’s 720p direct-feed capture of the game’s opening.

Obviously, this is a huge spoiler. To be clear – This is the first 30 minutes of Halo 3: ODST – DO NOT WATCH IT if you don’t want the game to be spoiled.

The vids are here: one, two, three.

It’s out on September 22. Thanks, G1GAHURTZ.

Square Enix Europe, the company’s latest name since it assimilated all Eidos products, may see a further branding-change, VG247 has been told.

A rep has confirmed that the moniker is “currently a placeholder name and might not be permanent.”

An emailed statement added: “Square Enix Europe, is the new company integrating the publishing, sales and marketing forces of Square Enix Ltd. (Square Enix) and Eidos Interactive (Eidos).

“Eidos still exists as a brand, but Square Enix Europe is now the publishing company. All Eidos developed titles, from IO Studios, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal etc. are part of Square Enix Europe.”

We asked because we wanted to know what to call the publisher. “Square Enix Europe” is it, then: for now.

Kotaku’s posted the cover art from the God of War Collection. The one Europeans are going to be importing before Christmas.

It looks pretty. We want it. And yet we won’t be able to buy it in Britain. So cruel.

Adventure specialist Telltale is gearing up to announce new titles “around October,” head honcho Dan Connors has told VG247 in a phone interview, and it sounds as though the studio – known for its episodic comedy titles, such as Sam & Max – is about to get more serious.

“Yes, probably in the next few months,” said Connor on the subject of when we’re going to see new Telltale series announced.

“I think there’ll be some combination of things. I think we’ll be sticking with some of the franchises we’ve worked with, and we’ll be announcing some new franchises, probably in some new genres as well, not just comedy.”

Connor went on to say that audiences had allied with TV shows such as Sopranos, True Blood and Lost thanks to their “drama” and “psychological connection,” and added that games like Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain may lead Telltale towards the same goal.

“Heavy Rain is something that really seems to be going after that sense,” he said.

“We’ve always believed that there was a chance to get there as well. We want to continue to evolve the genre. We’ve already evolved the genre in a lot of ways in what we’ve done with Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit… but we believe there’s a lot of head-room to make more dramatic advances in storytelling and drama inside of this genre.”

We’ll have more from the interview soon.

Square Enix has confirmed that the Wii version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time is actually a tweaked DS game.

The Wii version came out because it was a painless process to bring Echoes of Time to the console.

“The DS version was the original source code, we made a system that automatically generated the Wii version,” Mitsuru Kamiyama, Echoes of Time director, said at a CEDEC panel, as reported by Gpara.

There’s more on Siliconera. How’s that for efficiency?

A convenience machine’s been spotted in Japan offering FFXIII for ¥8,240 (US$88.99), as reported by Gigazine.

As a comparison, the PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia is priced at ¥7,800, and Bayonetta will cost ¥7,980.

That’s it. The Square RPG ships this “winter” in Japan.

Thanks, Kotaku.

OnLive boss Steve Perlman’s confirmed on his blog that the cloud gaming service has now entered closed beta.

“Beta is an AWESOME milestone for OnLive, capping many years of work. We’re really looking forward to hearing what you think,” said the exec.

Of the beta’s goals, Perlman said: “One of the key challenges that OnLive technology addresses is providing a high-quality, fast-response gaming experience over a wide range of situations: different speeds/locations/types of broadband services, a variety of different PC and Mac configurations, several kinds of input and display devices, etc.

“So, a major focus of OnLive Beta is to test as many of these different situations as we can.”

You can still sign up for the beta, if you haven’t done so already. Bear in mind it’s US-only.

Square has announced that Order of War will land on PC in North American September 22.

Good news, that.

There is a demo over on the official website should you have yet to try it.

Might still be one up on Steam too.

Via Kotaku.