Monthly Archives: October 2009

Nelson’s just confirmed that the Bayonetta demo is now available for Japanese Live users.

The Japanese PS3 version released this morning.

Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter just predicted that the US games trade is about to return to double-digit growth following six straight months of negative figures.

“We forecast sales of $750 million, up 21% compared to last year’s $618 million,” the analyst said in a note.

Pachter also predicted that PS3 beat both Wii and 360 in American in September.

“We estimate sell-through of 390,000 Wii hardware units (down 45% from last year), 350,000 Xbox 360 (up 1% from last year), and 410,000 PS3 consoles (up 76% year-over-year) as the price cuts for all three consoles spurred demand,” he added.

The NPD releases next Thursday.

The EU PS Blog’s posted up today’s Euro PSN update, and there’s a good bunch of stuff to be going on with.

Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta are both there for £7.99/€9.99, and there are a lot of full games this week including Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?, Tomb Raider Legend and Comet Crash.

Take a look.

Rockstar’s just put out a ton of new screens of the PSP version of GTA Chinatown Wars. After the break.

It’s out on October 23.

More »

Square’s updated the “beastiary” section of the official FFXIV site to show off some of the MMO’s adversaries, and if you’re a Final Fantasy fan you should be in familiar territory.

Behold the one-eyed flying bat thing. Marvel at the running cactus.

It’s out next year for PS3 and PC. Thanks, Kotaku.

Trademark and CV sleuthing blog superannuation celebrates its first birthday today.

Go and give the crotchety old bastard a hug.

Euro PSN users will get an exclusive look at the new Groove Armada video today, courtesy of VidZone. Details on the EU PS Blog.

There’s a picture through there of two old women snogging. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Frank O’Connor, head of Microsoft internal Halo-handler 343 Industries, has told USA Today that the Halo franchise has been planned out from now until 2015.

“We do have a plan that goes out at least six years,” he said.

“Eventually, it will become very apparent that there is a plan for the way the canon all ties together and the way the comic books and the novels all tie together.”

Games, comics, videos, books and action figures all add up to the final solution, but detail on where everything’s going to go is vapourous as yet.

Read the full thing through the link.

While news of Left 4 Dead clearing OFLC regulations this morning will bring relief to Down-Under gamers, it looks as though large cuts have been made to the approved version.

According to News.com.au, the ratings board has confirmed that “the game no longer contains depictions of decapitation, dismemberment, wound detail or piles of dead bodies lying about the environment.

“No wound detail is shown and the implicitly dead bodies and blood splatter disappear as they touch the ground.”

You can read the full OFLC report here.

Melee weapons made the cut. EA’s quoted in that News.com.au article as saying it still hopes the full version will be classified. Hate to be the voice of doom, but it doesn’t look like it, does it?

Left 4 Dead 2 was originally refused classification in Australia last month.

Thanks, Filofax.

Nintendo said this morning that LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias will release on WiiWare this Friday. Apparently it’s the hundredth game for the service.

Frontier’s David Braben’s tickled pink.

“We launched the original LostWinds game on WiiWare with much anticipation, as it was such an exciting and new way to access games,” he said.

“We are now thrilled to be able to mark the hundredth game launch with LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias.”

Get the rest of this week’s WiiWare line-up after the break.

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Kotaku’s reporting that Spider-Man: Web of Shadows dev Shaba’s been closed by Activision.

Apparently some 30 staffers were dropped in the move, which follows similar cuts at 7-Studios earlier this week.

To those that no longer make Spider-Man games: we salute you.

The first Forza 3 reviews are now live, and it’s all looking pretty safe if you were thinking of investing.

Today’s the embargo deadline for reviews of the Turn 10 racer, so we’ll keep adding them as we go along. If you’ve got one you want us to flag up, just stick a link in the comments.

The game’s out on October 23.

• OXM France – 19/20
• Eurogamer.fr – 8/10
• IGN UK – 9.4/10
• IGN US – 9.4/10
• Team Xbox – 9.5/10
• Gamespy – 4.5/5
• G4 – 5/5
• Gamer365.hu – 9.5/10
• JeuxVideo.com – 17/20
• Xboxygen – 5/5
• NowGamer – 9.2/10
• Videogamer – 10/10
• GameDaily – 9/10
• Xbox360Achievements – 93%
• MSXboxWorld – 9/10
• GameReactor.no – 7/10
• CVG – 9/10
• Gamer.no – 9/10
• 1UP – A-

BioWare RPG Dragon Age: Origins is to get a day one DLC pack, it’s been confirmed, titled Warden’s Keep.

The DLC will add a dungeon-based quest along with six new abilities, new items, and a base where players can trade with merchants.

It’s to feature a supernatural storyline set in a fortress once used by the Grey Wardens, the ancient order at the center of Origins’ main storyline.

It’ll be yours for 560MSP for 360 and and $7 for PC when the game ships on November 5 and 6 respectively. The DLC will actually go live in the US for both 360 and PC on November 3.

The PS3 version will cost the same when the game itself hits on November 30.

There’s a preview trailer after the break. Thanks, Gamespot.

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Will Wright’s told Venturebeat that his Stupid Fun Club outfit is currently working on three games.

“Right now we are pursuing three pretty aggressively,” he said.

“We might get up to four or five. I want to stay pretty focused. We have a lot of ideas that we want to do. But it’s just three now.”

Wright said that we should see the first of them in 2010.

“Our first product could be commercialized in six months to a year,” he added.

Wright formed Stupid Fun Club, an “entertainment think tank,” in April this year after quitting EA.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

The Bayonetta demo’s now live on the Japanese PSN, according to this PS3Center report.

Get downloading. Assuming you have a Japanese account, obviously. The Platinum actioner ships early next year.

Valve’s just announced Scavenge mode for Left 4 Dead 2 at a press event in CA, an instant play-fix designed to deliver “quick, more frantic gameplay,” according to Joystiq.

The four Survivors have to retrieve 16 gas cans and use them to power up a generator. Time’s added to a two-minute countdown for each can they successfully deposit. The Infected, obviously, have to stop them.

There’s more through there. The game’s out on November 17.

Update: There’s a video of a full round after the break.

Update 2: PR after the break.

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Uncharted 2′s not a one-and-done deal, Naughty Dog multiplayer designer Justin Richmond recently told Eurogamer. DLC’s on the way.

“There will be downloadable content, yes,” he said. “What you’ll probably see is more of the competitive type: more maps, more modes, stuff like that.”

“The co-op stuff is hugely time-intensive and the size of it – the physical download size – is huge, so that’s probably not an option.”

He added, however, that – with the code now in place – co-op’s a pretty sure bet for future Naughty Dog titles.

More through the link.

Hello there, OFLC website. How are you doing? Oh, hey, what’s that you’ve got there? Is that… why, it is! It’s an MA 15+ rating for Left 4 Dead 2! Guess the game’s coming out in Australia after all.

Gabe, you crazy rascal. What’d you do? Oh… oh my. Wanna talk about it? Come here. Give us a hug.

Sorry, Mr. Major UK games retailer; the verdict’s in on the PSPgo, and – after a bit of our trademark expert analysis – we’ve ascertained that a “300 percent sales increase” doesn’t quite qualify as a miserable failure.

Speaking with Kotaku, Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications and Social Media for SCEA, said that Sony’s “top retail partners” have enjoyed a 300 percent lift in PSP sales since the PSPgo released.

Seybold also mentioned a “significant increase in revenue for PlayStation Network, driven by a 200 percent lift in PSP game downloads purchased from PlayStation Store.”

More through the link.

SCEA’s Eric Lempel has told Joystiq that Mini pricing for PSPgo rests solely in the hands of the publisher – that’s why you will find some games listed whose iPhone counterpart (Hero of Sparta) may be cheaper.

“As far as pricing goes, the publisher of the title sets the pricing,” he said. “I think they have to carefully price their content. Minis was intended to be something a little different and we wanted to see a lot of different types of content through minis.

“If it’s not priced correctly, consumers may be turned off at the proposition and say ‘I’d rather just go for this kind of stuff instead of minis.’”

Maybe after the newness of Minis wear off some publishers will come to their senses.

More through the link.