Monthly Archives: October 2009

Uncharted 2 has entered this weeks UK charts very strongly, but not enough to usurp FIFA 10 from the No. 1 position.

The Naughty Dog shooter still comes in though at a very respectable second. Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising caps off the top three.

Brutal Legend comes in decently enough, coming in at 7.

Find the top ten below. Last weeks data is here.

Speaking at the PLAY conference this past weekend at UC Berkeley in California, EA Sports boss Peter Moore said the games industry is going to be using physical media for a good while yet.

“[The industry is] at least a decade away from saying goodbye to a physical disc. The more important question is what does the next generation of console look like,” he said.

Moore went on to say that Microsoft will probably be the one making the first move on the next generation.

Thanks, Kotaku.

EA’s released Rock Band for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Game costs only £5.99, with bands in the game including Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Beastie Boys and more.

Get it here.

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells has revealed to VG247 that by the end of the development process, 85 people worked on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at the studio. That’s not including outside freelancers and contributions from other Sony groups.

“By the end of the project we had about 85 people working on it internally,” said Wells, speaking to us in an interview published last week.

“We also had several contractors helping us in the closing months and we did a lot of outsourcing. Sony also has some amazing support groups that were instrumental in us completing the music, sound, and animation.”

This is in stark contrast to the 500 people who are working on Assassin’s Creed II at Ubisoft Montreal: something Wells thinks would be “difficult” to do at Naughty Dog.

“I think it would be difficult for Naughty Dog to work on a game with a team that large. We aren’t very hierarchical and we expect everyone to be able to work with very little management. That philosophy would probably fall apart with a team that was too large.”

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is out now for the PS3. Go out and buy it now. It’s the shit, innit.

Find our full interview with Evan Wells here.

Geoff Keighley’s tweeted that you’ll be seeing some new footage and hearing new info on BioShock 2′s single player in a new GameTrailers TV this coming Thursday. Oh, and new characters will be introduced too in the show.

“Huge BioShock 2 episode of GTTV coming on Thursday. Lots of new single player info and footage! You’ll meet new characters too…”

One to look forward to. Game’s out on February 9 worldwide for PS3, 360 and PC.

Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter has predicted that the price of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions will soon go up, from $50 to “a 100 bucks” within a couple of years.

He made the remark in an episode of GT’s Bonus Round.

“You can’t hook a guy into Xbox Live Gold if he’s playing on a PC. hat’s the other problem — you really want to hook every gamer who has a 360, you want them to buy all their games on 360, play everything multiplayer, pay you 50 bucks a year so that, in a couple years, it’s a 100 bucks a year.

“And that’s going up, we all know that … it’s a profit deal,” said Pachter.

Watch the episode at the first link. Via TVGB.

According to listings on Amazon and Costco, the big, bad 250GB Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle is making its craterous impact on November 10. And hey, so is Modern Warfare 2! Isn’t that a nice coinkydink?

These same listings, however, make no mention of component cables, leaving this boastfully Modern bundle woefully behind the times.

We’ll send our interrogation team over to Microsoft to see what’s what. First, though, we probably need to assemble an interrogation team. Which sounds hard. So we’ll just send an email instead.

Thanks, Engadget.

During a webcast with BASHandSlash, Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling announced IWNet – a proprietary online match hosting system that does away with the muss and fuss of dedicated servers – to… crickets.

“The silence you hear is because we’ve got a community right now structured in such a way that it relied on having dedicated servers,” one of BASHandSlash’s moderators told Bowling.

Infinity Ward, of course, intends for IWNet to ring in a new era of accessibility for PC multiplayer games. The system allows players of the same rank and skill level to stick together, but:

“You’re completely reliant on IWNet and there is no dedicated server or server list. You rely on IWNet for matchmaking and your games, but you still have your private matches,” Bowling said.

So, how will modded maps fare under Infinity Ward’s new regime? “Better than ever,” unfortunately, wasn’t Bowling’s response.

I don’t have those answers yet,” he said.

Hey, where’d those crickets go? Now all we can hear is the sound of pitchforks wooshing upright and… are those torches? Hmmm. Weird.

Thanks, Kotaku.

The voice actor for Mario, Charles Martinet, has tweeted that there is a new game in the works involving the plumber.

The first assumption would be it’s for Galaxy 2 or New Super Mario Bros Wii. But it turns out it’s a completely new game altogether, one not announced yet.

“Awesome new Mario Game! And it’s not NSMB Wii, and it’s not Galaxy 2, but it’s going to be crazy fun!”

In fact, Martinet says before the said tweet he is working on a new Mario game. Twice, actually.

Let the wild speculation begin as to what said game is.

Thanks, Gaming Target.

Loads of MMOs are planning Halloween and fall festivities for users, but some have already launched tricky goodness.

You can find out more about those past the break, but while you are headed that way you will also learn other sorts of stuff  like: Legends of Norrath’s eighth expansion has launched, CrimeCraft is headed to iPhone and Facebook, and having gone free-to-play D&D Online is doing great, apparently.

Also, Star War Galaxies is overrun with zombies. That’s right. Zombies.

It’s all there kids. Enjoy.

More »

An ex-US Postal Service worker in Pennsylvania has admitted in federal court to five-fingering 2,200 rental games bound for customers of GameFly.

Reginald Johnson, 34, of Germantown, faces 12 to 18 months in prison with sentencing set for January 13.

The mail-processing clerk who loaded and unloaded tractor-trailers of mail stole approximately $86,000, worth of games between April and September 2008.

After being under surveillance, the feds showed up to get him at work, only for him to flee the scene in his vehicle, and he was only apprehended after wrecking his SUV and running on foot for a bit. During this time he dropped a duffel bag, which was found to be packed with 81 GameFly titles.

Further search of the vehicle found another bag containing 79 mailers from the game rental service.

Apparently, Johnson had been trading the games to GameStop and inside his vehicle the feds found receipts from the store along with five Nintendo Wii Sports, three Wii Fits, a Playstation console, and game controllers.

More over on Philly.com.

LocoRoco Midnight Carnival has been announced for a PSN release on October 29.

It will run you $15 and has 16 stages, two mini-games competitive and co-op modes, and additional bonuses.

Sony says that more details regarding the multiplayer will be revealed next week.

Until then, head on over to Shack for some screens of it.

Konami has announced that the PC release of SAW will be exclusive to Steam.

It’s already out for PS3 and Xbox 360.

You can expect it to hit the service sometime this month.

Thanks, BigDownload.

There are a few tidbits of indie and other games of interest stuff past the break this week. One stand out, in our opinion, is Miami Shark, where you literally get to play as one of the giant fish. Awesome stuff.

Also, there’s the usual free stuff, sneak peeks and a barrage of other stuff you normally wouldn’t see during the week.

Click onward.

More »

Bohemia Interactive has released a patch for ArmA 2, which will bring your game to v1.04.59323.

Here is what it fixes:

• Fixed: support the highest Matrox TrippleHead2Go resolutions
• Fixed: FPS on Dedicated server is not affected by server window manipulation (such as move or scroll).

You can get it from The Patches Scrolls.

Via Examiner.

GameStop has Super Street Fighter IV down for a March 23 release.

Last month, Capcom issued a press release stating that it was to be released in Spring 2010 – so take the retailer listing as just that, a listing until official word from Capcom comes down from on high.

Meanwhile, GS also has the stand-alone disc title listed for $40.

Again, stay calm on all fronts until Capcom confirms or denies either.

More through 1UP.

It looks as though the next Xbox Live update will not only have Facebook, Twitter and Zune functionality, but according Microsoft, music games will get dedicated stores.

Once live, you’ll see stores for Lips, Guitar Hero and Rock Band along with a “News and More” channel that streams headline news from MSNBC.com, MSN Autos, The New Yorker and Dilbert.

Interesting. Those who signed up for the preview and were or have yet to be accepted, will get a first hand look at it next week.

Via D’toid.

A new developer video from Cyrptic for Star Trek Online has surfaced on GameVideos.

In it, the devs are chatting about the timeline and back story and it features some pre-Alpha footage loaded with space battles.

Watch past the break.

More »

Namco Bandai’s general manager, Makoto Yoshizumi, has said that the company is “thinking about” making a Tales of Vesperia 2.

“[During meetings, staff would ask ] ‘Will you be making Vesperia 2?’ [I'd] respond, ‘Don’t talk like a fan!’,” he explained to Famitsu. “It appears that [within the company] there’s a desire to make part 2.

“We’re thinking about it.”

That should make fans pretty happy.

More over on Andriasang.

Amazon has joined up with the million other places offering preorder incentives for Dragon Age: Origins.

Should you choose to get your copy through the online retailer, Amazon will give you a $10 gift card, and the Lion’s Paw Boots – an in-game item that adds to the player’s armor, dodge and missile evasion attributes.

Next up, preorders from the Dollar Tree will net you the Merchant’s ring that has +1 Persuasion, along with a bag of holding and a Tiefling-skin cloak with +7 Charisma and 15% fire negation.

Ok, that was a joke. The Dollar Tree does not sell games. And we made those items up.

The whole gambit of preorder deals can be found over on D’toid in a nicely condensed list and no trace of failed wit.