Monthly Archives: September 2009

Polyphony boss Kazunori Yamauchi told Joystiq in Japan last week that GT6 won’t take as long to develop as GT5. That’s good news, to be fair.

“GT5 is a title that was pretty much remade from scratch, but because we did that, the next version is actually going to be faster — the time period it’s going to be released,” said the developer.

“But I think when GT5 comes out, we’re still going to have things that are left undone, and whether we complete that in GT6, or the next version for PSP, I’m not sure yet.

“I’ve been working very hard for the last 15 years, and I think that hard work is just going to continue.”

GT5 ships in Japan on March 31.

Tiny-teamed MMO Love is available for download now. Sort of.

You won’t be able to log on and play in this “open alpha”, but you will be able to run the art-game’s engine on your PC.

Why?

“The client will contact my master server and send the name of your graphics card and if its supports the three OpenGL extensions I use (FBO, VBOs and GLSL), no other user data, ip addresses, or anything else is collected. This data will also let me count you in order to estimate how many servers I will need,” said Eskil Steenberg, the game’s sole developer.

Love’s about walking round a painting and overthrowing an empire, pretty much. Read more about it here.

Thanks, Massively.

Fumito Ueda has revealed to Kotaku that the possibillty of an ICO/Shadow of the Colossus collection will be raised at a meeting to be held this week.

The Team ICO boss did stress an interest in the possibillty of an collection earlier, but with this news, the dream could become a reality soon.

“I do have an interest in that. Next week, I’ll have a meeting [about the possibility] … But it might not be so easy, because, with both titles we really stretched the limits of the PS2. It’s complex. So it’s not such an easy transfer to the PS3. But I want to discuss it.”

Demands of a Team ICO collection to prepare for The Last Guardian comes as SCEA announced the God of War Collection a couple of weeks back.

More through the link.

During a Q&A on the European PS Blog, Sega has dodged a massive bullet on the matter of Valkyria Chronicles returning to PS3 sometime soon.

Valkyria Chronicles was released on the PlayStation 3 last autumn in the West, but it’s sequel will be on the PSP when it releases this winter in Japan and summer 2010 in the West. But Sega insist it is still too early to talk about the future of the series beyond Valkyria Chronicles 2.

“We’re still developing Valkyria Chronicles 2 so, to be honest, we’re not really thinking about Valkyria Chronicles 3, 4 or 5 at this point. Just in terms of how our team develops titles and our way of thinking when we choose the platform for each of our titles, it’s not necessarily “let’s make a PS3 game!”. It’s more a case of “what kind of game do we want to make?”.

For example, the first Valkyria was on the PS3 because of all the features we wanted to incorporate into the game and we felt the PS3 was the most suitable platform, so that’s how we develop games in our team. So potentially Valkyria Chronicles 3, or another title that we work on next might be on the PS3, it might still be on the PSP, we don’t know at this point.

“Because we’ve already got experience of working on the PS3 and now we’re developing another game on the PSP, that just adds to our level of experience and understanding of these platforms and will definitely help us in determining what is the best platform for the next game that we make.”

You can find more info on Valkyria Chronicles 2 through here.

EA has announced that a software version of Rock Band 2 will be released on Wii from October.

It’ll retail for £29.99 in the UK.

Only the original, a couple of standalone track packs and Beatles: Rock Band have been released on the console so far.

PR is after the break.

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IGN has live a new gameplay video of Final Fantasy XIII showing the summons for Lightning and Snow, Odin and Shiva.

It does look great, but it can’t beat the new trailer, innit. It’s after the jump for you to watch.

It’s out December 17 in Japan. Spring 2010 in the EU and US.

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Want to know more on that hot tattooed chick from the newest trailer of Final Fantasy XIII? You will next month anyways, according to Square’s Tetsuya Nomura.

Speaking in an interview with Famitsu at Tokyo Game Show (translated by Andriasang), the character designer of the game revealed that more info on the character will be coming within the next month.

He also hinted that there may just be more new characters revealed between now and the game’s Japanese release on December 17.

Catch the spectacular new trailer released this morning here.

Speaking in an interview with Famitsu, Final Fantasy Versus XIII director Tetsuya Nomura has revealed that gameplay tests have been carried out on the game since March this year.

The news comes as footage from one of the tests was shown at a secret theatre for anyone who played Final Fantasy XIII or Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep at TGS this past weekend.

That’s despite Nomura saying a couple of weeks back that the game wouldn’t be at the event. The footage shown wont be in the final game.

Nomura also revealed that the character model of main character Noctis is finalised.

More info at Andriasang.

SCEE just lifted an embargo on some new GT5 screens, and these really are serious shit.

We’ve posted them hi-res for you after the break. It’s out in Japan next March.

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Fumito Ueda has said in an interview with Dengeki that he cites E.T. as an inspiration for The Last Guardian.

“I have many obviously. To name two, E.T. and My Neighbour Totoro. We’ve also looked at the charm and qualities of different animals, but not only that – we’ve focused on the wild behaviour of these animals as well,” said the Team ICO boss.

He also mentioned that the trailer was based on Toriko specfically, and how natural his animations and expressions are.

“The natural expressions of an animal. With Shadow of the Colossus and its console, PlayStation 2, we were limited as to what we could achieve. We had to cut out an incredible volume of information. Now we don’t have to do that anymore.

Everything’s expressed naturally, even the movement of the eyes. If the object of attention moves, so do the eyes of the characters following it. We’re also able to express for the first time, thanks to the new hardware, the ferocious behaviour of wild animals. I hope we did a good job on that.”

Watch the full beautiful TGS trailer here.

No date yet.

Thanks, Vandal.

The imaginatively-named French site JV247 has posted what are apparently the first ever screens of Super Street Fighter IV.

The game was teased overnight, and it looks as though there’s been some gun-jumping here: the announcement wasn’t supposed to be made for another day.

No details. We’re calling Capcom now. Go properly mental.

Update – Capcom: “No comment.”

Infinity Ward’s Rob Bowling has confirmed that a demo for Modern Warfare 2 won’t be coming before launch at least.

He confirmed the news in a Tweet.

“No plan for a Demo before launch. The entire team is focused on polish all the way up to ship of the full game.”

There you have it. A beta of the multiplayer before the game’s release has been debunked before.

Thanks, Beefjack.

Eurogamer Portugal has for your viewing pleasure the TGS trailer of Ninety-Nine Nights II for you to gasp upon.

It looks alright actually. Worth a look, anyways.

No date yet for the Xbox 360 hack and slash.

Eurogamer Portugal’s gone live with six new shots of Gran Turismo 5.

Looks great, innit. Pitty then we’re waiting until spring 2010 at the very least before we see it.

Shots are through the first link.

Dragon Quest IX is already in the top 15 best selling games of all time in Japan, two and a half months after going on sale.

Thats according to a list compiled of the top 50 biggest selling games of time in the land of the rising sun, going from the Famicom to today’s systems.

The game lands in at 13 on the list with lifetime sales of 3.8 million. But it isn’t enough to overthrow Pikachu and Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow from the No. 1 spot.

Top 15 is after the jump. The full top 50 is over at Nintendo Everything.

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The first footage of the God of War Collection has been leaked onto the interwebs.

In it, it shows Kratos doing what he does best: kill Greek gods in a moody and angry way. It’s after the jump.

The collection is due this year, with added God of War III demo, in the US. Europeans can expect it in 2010.

From the Examiner.

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If a new concept art picked up by Sega Nerds (via IGN) suggests what we think it suggests, a new Sega racing game could involve Daytona.

Imaginatively known as Sega Racing Game, the concept art shows a Daytona car under a trademark blue sky. The cover also contains a Ringwide logo, so it seems likely that the game is for the arcade.

More through the links.

Speaking in the newest issue of Edge, Assassin’s Creed II producer Patrice Desilets has revealed you will be playing parts of Ezio’s life, stating this is part of the game’s new found variety system in the game.

“Assassins’ one major flaw was the fact that we revealed the entire game structure early on and never changed it.

After one hour you knew there are nine targets, and those nine targets will be divided into nine districts. We never broke that pattern. This time we said no. This is Ezio, and Ezio has a life and needs a link from one mission to the next,” said Desilets.

More over at CVG. Beware though: it does contain spoilers for the start of the game.

It’s out for November 20 f0r PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. PC version was delayed until 2010 last week.

Samorost follow-up Machinarium will release on October 16 for $17 if you pre-order.

The adventure title will cost $3 if you wait. It’s being released on Steam, Impulse and all the rest.

Almost certainly going to be well worth a look. Samorost was awesome.

Thanks, RPS.

Watchmen DLC hits LittleBigPlanet this Thursday, Media Molecule’s confirmed on its blog.

A sticker pack and costumes will be available for four characters from the graphic novel.

A short teaser for the DLC is after the jump.

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