Monthly Archives: September 2009

Update 2: Harmonix CEO, Alex Rigopulos, has confirmed “The End” as the 45th song on the The Beatles: Rock Band during the GameStop managers convention in Las Vegas. Good to know.

Update: Apparently the “mystery” song is “The End”. Thanks for spoiling it for us internet, and thanks for the lack of creativity Harmonix – if this turns out to be true.

Original Story: Forty-four songs have been announced for The Beatles: Rock Band so far, but there are actually 45 on the disc.

According to an MTV representative speaking with Kotaku, the remaining track is to remain a surprise for people who purchase the game.

Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s, and Abbey Road are to be released not too long after the September 9 release, so it is doubtful it’s a track off any of those, unless Harmonix decides to purposely be redundant.

The full track list is below the break so you don’t have to go searching the site for it.

Start placing your bets now on what it is. Maybe Eleanor Rigby? Penny Lane? Hey Jude?

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Eidos has sent over some lovely Batman: Arkham Asylum screens for PC showing off how it looks with the Nvidia PhysX real-time, hyper-realistic physical and environmental gaming effects.

Sounds like a commercial, we know, but still they are lovely to behold.

Game’s out for PC September 15.

The gallery is posted below the break along with the video.

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UK retailer Toys R Us is now running PS3 Slims for £229.99.

ShopTo has them for the same price.

The machine, which launched yesterday, is still priced at £249.96 on Amazon, and Play is charging the full RRP of £249.99.

We got one today. See how pretty it is.

SCEE just very kindly sent over a PS3 Slim. We got so excited we took some pictures of it in its virgin state. See them after the break. That’s my daughter’s feet, there.

It’s actually a thing of beauty. In case you missed the world, you can buy them now, RRP £250. If that’s too much, check out Toys R Us or ShopTo – they’re doing them for £230.

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All that talk of a God of War III demo being included in the pre-Christmas God of War I and II pack looks to be hocum.

“That is unlikely at this juncture,” John Hight, dev boss at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, told IGN.

“First and foremost, we want to be able to have this available for this holiday, and we don’t have a demo available yet that we feel is release-ready.

“I know a lot of people played the E3 demo and dug it and everything but, as far as our standards, it’s not ready to go into everybody’s home. So we wouldn’t want to hinder our efforts to get God of War 1 and 2 out.

“We felt like the fans were pretty outspoken as far as, ‘Man, I want to play now,’ and, “I want to play this Christmas,’ so we put the emphasis on that.”

So there you go.

DF’s posted up a movie comparing PS3 Slim’s install speed compared with the old SKU. It’s 25 percent faster.

The install’s the amazing 20-minute DMC4 load, so it’s easy to see how much faster it is. Good stuff.

Looks as though the latest IL-2 Sturmovik, Birds of Prey, is no slouch. The air combat title, releasing on Friday in Europe, is keeping its head above 80 on MetaCritic and seems worthwhile of those soon-to-be heavily depleted notes in your pocket.

Round-up below. Got to be worth a waz, innit.

• WonderwallWeb – 9/10
• Xbox World 360/CVG – 9/10
• Eurogamer Germany – 8/10
• Eurogamer.net – 7/10
• Team Xbox – 8.8/10
• IGN – 8.6/10

Whoops. Codemasters won’t be running Archlord in the West any more, as you can see from this “transition FAQ”.

Codemasters is shutting its ArchLord servers down on October 2. License-owner Webzen is claiming it’s to open its own servers for the game on October 3.

Codemasters now operates two MMOs in Europe: Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Thanks, EG.

Cryptic’s announced the first content addition to Champions Online in Blood Moon, a spooky patch due late October.

Zombies, werewolves and Takofanes, “the Undying Lord,” all feature, as does a new Celestial powerset (thanks Phoenixblight).

Atari MMO Champions Online hit the US yesterday, and releases in Europe on Friday. Buy it, because it’s awesome. We told you you’d be getting details on updates almost immediately. You should listen to us.

Thanks, EG.

Microsoft’s confirmed a price cut for 360 in Japan, as expected.

And the numbers are:

• Xbox 360 Elite
  Previous Price: ¥39,800 (US$429)
  New Price: ¥29,800 ($321)

• Xbox 360 Pro
  Previous Price: ¥29,800 ($321)
  New Price: Open

• Xbox 360 Arcade
  Previous Price: ¥19,800 ($213)
  New Price: ¥19,800

All details on Kotaku.

Frontier’s released the first screens and art for the newly-announced LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias. Get them after the drop.

There’s no date on the WiiWare game, but from the conversation we had this morning, you’re not going to be waiting too long.

Take a look.

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Cars. On a PSP. Made by Polyphony Digital. Images of.

They’re on Destructoid. GT PSP ships on October 1 alongside PSP Go.

According to this USA Today piece, Guitar Hero 5 owners will be allowed to import up to 35 Guitar Hero: World Tour tracks to their new game. For a charge.

“Immediately, players can import 35 songs from Guitar Hero World Tour for 280 points on Xbox Live and $3.50 on the PlayStation Network,” said the article.

“Later this fall, songs from Guitar Hero Smash Hits can be imported, too.”

Guitar Hero 5 ships on September 11. Just checking this with Acti now.

Funcom has confirmed it’s to open a studio in Montreal. Dev boss Ragnar Tørnquist said last night that “a large and important part of the TSW [The Secret World - Ed] team will be located in Montreal. I’ll need to brush up on my French.”

The studio will be headed up by Ole Schreiner, previously Funcom’s VP of operations.

“We are excited about the opportunity that Montreal represents to our company, not only because of the great incentives offered by Quebec, but also the authorities’ strong commitment to training qualified video games personnel and building a video games cluster in Montreal and Quebec,” said Schreiner in a statement.

There’s loads more on Gama.

Fable III drew the most traffic for Eurogamer over GamesCom for a single game, according to this GI piece.

Which is all very nice, but the real story here is the graphs. Just look at that shit. Pastel shades, italics, extended radial spokes on the pie; a new level.

Hit the link to see for yourself.

Frontier’s confirmed LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias as a WiiWare title, but has failed to add a date or price.

The indie sequel will feature “all-new expanses of the stunningly presented, magical land of Mistralis as you experience Toku and Enril’s new adventure to save Toku’s mother, lift an ancient Curse and thwart the evil Balasar.”

Rubbery. PR after the break.

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Whoops. 1UP got to play the PS3 version of Platinum’s Bayonetta at a Tokyo event recently, and it’s not sounding promising. We’ve seen the game twice, and both times it’s been demoed on 360. Here’s why:

While the 360 version on display looked crisp and smooth, the PS3 version was very blurry and the framerate was all over the place. During one portion of the demo, a crazy scene where you are jumping off of falling parts of a giant clock tower, it was often hard to keep track of the action because of the graphical issues on PS3.

The was the PS3 version’s first showing. The game’s out early next year.

Thanks, FeaturePreacher.

Take-Two pretty much defined the term “tough comps” last night, soldiering down to over $50 million losses in the last quarter from a sexy $50 million profit this time a year ago. There’s only one GTA IV, clearly.

Here’s all the news from the firm’s Q3 earnings call last night. We do this because we love you. And we want to have sex with you the wrong way. And we definitely won’t respect you in the morning.

• Take-Two Q3 2009 financials show $55.5 million loss
• Take-Two Q3 financials: Big four delays are still on track for first half of 2010
• Houser – Gay Tony must hit discs to get to “more people”
• Take-Two: Natal dev kits “embedded in just about all of our studios”
• Take-Two on GTA V’s announcement – quote of the century
• All Take-Two games “need to have a download component”
• LA Noire is “exciting” and “innovative,” says Feder
• Take-Two Q3 earnings call – the full transcript

Seeking Alpha’s posted up the entire transcript from last night’s Take-Two third quarter financials call, and lots of fun it was too.

Strauss and Ben waffled on for 20 hours about iPhone. There was tons of other stuff too, thankfully.

Knock yourselves out.

Not only is LA Noire not dead, but it’s also “innovative”. Take-Two CEO Ben Feder said so in the publisher’s Q3 earnings call last night.

“It’s in development,” he said in response to a direct question on the game’s status from Janco’s Mike Hickey.

“Nothing to announce today. When we have more to announce we will announce it. We’re continuing to develop it. We think it’s pretty exciting and innovative, and when we have more to share we’ll share it.”

Interestingly, when Hickey asked if Rockstar San Diego was working on the game, Feder emphatically answered:

“It’s handled by Rockstar.”

Wasn’t Rockstar’s Australian team doing this?