Monthly Archives: October 2009

A video claiming to be for Max Payne 3 and pulled from the 3D Realms forums has surfaced on YouTube.

The poster even admits they are unsure if it is a fake or not, but admits that it is rather flashy if so.

Kotaku contacted Rockstar, which refused to comment on the video. This means it may actually be the real deal. If not, Rockstar would have said so, right? Not necessarily.

Still, it’s a decent teaser full of bullet time coolness, despite the uncool date at the end.

Watch for yourself below the break.

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A new video released by Ubisoft for Assassin’s Creed 2 introduces us to Ezio’s arms dealer, Leonardo da Vinci.

It’s a rather short video, basically detailing his weapons like his dual blades and his secret gun.

No, that is not a euphemism. It’s a real gun, perverts.

Watch on through the break.

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Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford was on a roll during a discussion with Maximum PC on piracy, Steam, and the like while touching on the “current health” of PC gaming.

“It’s a very powerful platform and it’s very flexible. The longer the generation goes with the consoles, the more the extreme side of the PC will have an advantage, from a technology perspective.

“The other thing is that the PC is a very flexible platform, we can build PCs of a lot of different types. Another angle to that is that it’s a very accessible platform, it invites a lot of different development activities. However, the biggest games in the world are very costly to produce.

“How healthy is the PC platform? I believe the PC has a hard time being a dominant gaming platform, because of the advantages it has. Because it’s such a powerful, flexible platform, it’s also less accessible, to ordinary folks.

“It can be expensive, but you can amortize your investment in a PC in a lot of different ways. You’re not just buying a PC as a gaming platform. You can rationalize that cost in a bunch of different ways. Ultimately though, that versatility of the platform means the PC won’t be the dominant platform, but it also means it will never go away.

“Games will change, but we’re always going to amuse ourselves with whatever tools we have.”

We paraphrased it a bit to cut the length, but the whole thing is through here.

South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play is out now on XBL, as you well know.

However, CVG has a couple videos posted for it, should you care to have a look before dropping the cash or 800 MS Points on it.

There are cows, hippies, and gingers in ‘em. Fantastic.

Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has told Maximum PC that he thinks Steam and Valve should be seperate entites, as it is nothing more than a “money grab”.

“I’ll tell you what. Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve,” he said. “I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.

“It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.

“I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair.

“Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.”

Holy shit.

Holy car exhaust Batman! Turn 10 has released the full list of cars included on both discs of Forza 3.

There’s over 400 cars on it – 400 we say.

All are fully customizable and tunable from over 50 manufacturers and run the gambit of American muscle cars, European roadsters, purpose-built race cars and high-tech Asian imports.

Again, there’s over 400 of ‘em.

Get the list on the official website.

DJ Hero franchise boss Dan Rosensweig has told GI.biz that pre-orders for DJ Hero currently very promising, giving the publisher the backbone to plan 2010 content and in the future being a “tent pole” franchise.

“Pre-order sales of Guitar Hero continue to do extraordinarily well – you’re seeing DJ Hero in particular… we were very loud in June when we announced that Jay-Z and Eminem were having a relationship with the game itself – they spiked up very high,” revealed Rosensweig.

“As major mainstream press is now writing this as one of the top five games you have to have for the Holiday Season, the reviews are beginning to come out… I think we saw a huge pre-sales spike of DJ Hero last week, and as we build to the launch you’re going to see that rise to a nice high number just like Guitar Hero did. We’re really excited about that.

“Our complete expectation is that this is going to be one of our tent pole franchises – we already have a 2010 slate that assumes success of this product.”

More through the link.

Microsoft has gotten back with us regarding the survey it sent out for a Xbox Live specific Arcade space complete with Avatar interaction.

According to a MS spokesperson, a survey is sometimes just that – a survey.

“We regularly conduct surveys about our products but they’re not indicative of any planning,” said the rep to VG247.

The XBL Team refused to comment on the matter.

Sounding similar to PS3’s Home arcade space, the survey asked about names for the service, and which one would compel them to purchase the product.

Joystiq has posted a video demoing Twitter, Facebook, and Last.Fm for Xbox Live.

The vid was taken during the Microsoft Open House event yesterday, where the fall Xbox Dashboard Update was previewed.

Go on and watch past the break.

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Direct2Drive’s latest Top 10 best selling PC games downloaded for week ending October 3 has Risen at the number one spot.

Fallen Earth rose to the number two spot, while Aion’s standard edition dropped to number three, and the collector’s edition to number five.

Five of the titles on the list were on sale for $5, so that should be taken into account as well.

Here’s the full thing, courtesy of BigDownload:

1. Risen
2. Fallen Earth
3. Aion
4. Mount and Blade ($5 Sale)
5. Aion Collector’s Edition
6. World of Goo ($5 Sale)
7. Champions Online
8. BioShock ($5 Sale)
9. Defense Grid: The Awakening ($5 Sale)
10. Civilization 4 ($5 Sale)

Rockstar has released the second official trailer for Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City, titled “There’s Always a Girl”.

Episodes From Liberty City will contain The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony in one package when released October 29 for 360.

Head on past the break for the video, complete with music from Roxette.

She’s got the look, fellas.

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A survey sent out by Microsoft hints at the possibility of a virtual Avatar arcade headed Xbox 360.

Sounding similar to PS3′s Home arcade space, the survey asks, “Which of the following names would most compel you to purchase the product?: Game Room, RetroCade, Tower of ROM, and “Classics LIVE”, among others.

With the wording “purchase the product” included in the survey, it sounds right to assume that the service will not be a free one.

We’ll throw a line out to MS and see if anyone in Redmond bites.

Via Joystiq.

You’ve heard the news. You’ve seen the screens.

Now watch LEGO’s version of David Bowie in action in the video posted after the break, courtesy of GameVideos.

Let’s Dance, people.

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Three former Bungie members announced today the formation of Moonshot Games development studio.

Based in Boston and Seattle, it was formed by Michel Bastien, production lead for Halo 2 and Halo 3, Damián Isla, and creative director Rob Stokes, mission designer on the Halo series.

The official announcement from the company website is past the break.

Thanks, GI.

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Gearbox bossman Randy Pitchford has told OXM that incorporating easy Achievements in games can increase sales by up to 40,000.

“The Achievement hunter, who’s going to make purchase decisions around the Achievements per minute to ratio – he’s probably buying ten to twenty titles a year, or at least playing that many,” said Pitchford. “He’s playing a lot. So he’s a very frequent customer, and you want to be in that pile. That’s just business.

“The time it takes is minimal because you’re designing Achievements anyway, and you can probably affect your sales by something like 10-40,000 units. If you’re talking about a triple-A game selling between 1 and 2.5 million units. You’re talking tens of thousands of units of impact there. Unfortunately most people in the industry don’t think through it that much.

“You have designers designing Achievements, and they’re the worst.”

More through the link.

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Sony has sent us over a lovely press release informing us that digital access codes for more than 200 PSN games and content are now available via the Amazon Video Game Store.

“We are excited to expand our current library of video game platform downloads,” said Paul Ryder, vice president of consumer electronics for Amazon.com. “PlayStation Network games are an important addition and we plan to continue making it easier for customers to instantly enjoy new content as well as their favorite games from the comfort of their living rooms.”

“With more than 600 million pieces of content downloaded to date, consumers are turning to PlayStation Network more than ever for digitally distributed entertainment content,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president of Marketing and PlayStation Network. “We are excited to team with Amazon.com to expand our reach with Amazon’s market leading ability to target current and future PlayStation consumers.”

Currently, this is only available in the US, but we will contact Sony and see what is being offered to our UK’ers.

Volition has updated the multiplayer for Red Faction: Guerrilla and has applied the following list of changes:

• Disabled the following playlists: Bagman, Large Team Mixer, Big Boomers, MLG Playlist
• Added Bagman and Capture The Flag modes to the Partial Recall playlist (Only viewable to those with the Multiplayer DLC Pack).
• Added DLC levels to Anarchy, Team Anarchy, and Team Objective playlists.
• Team Bagman will now have non-DLC maps available in Matchmaking, but the DLC maps will maintain a higher priority.
• Balance adjustments include: Rail Driver will now have 12 max ammo instead of 24; Sniper Rifle will now have 8 max ammo instead of 12; Proximity Mines will now have 2 max ammo instead of 4; Heal Backpack will take longer to recharge; Vision Backpack will take longer to recharge and use fuel faster; Stealth Backpack will now use fuel faster; Firepower Backpack will now take longer to recharge.

These changes are live on Xbox 360 now and should be made available for PS3 within the next couple of hours.

Red Steel 2′s creative director, Jason Vandenberghe, told G4TV during TGS that the game is looking for a release sometime around February or March 2010.

“You can look for Red Steel 2 somewhere around…Middle end of February, early March, something in there,” said Vandenberghe. “We don’t have an exact date but we’re shooting for it being done around that timeframe.

“We got an extension outside of Christmas, which was something the team asked for and we’re really glad that we got it because it means we have the time to do what we’re doing now, which is polish the difficulty ramp across the whole game so that it’s not just cool at the beginning and then no good for the rest of it – and also, work on combining all of our pieces together, making the finish moves and the enemies all work together.

“So we’re using that time to good effort. So hopefully all will go well with that, and I think it will.”

GameStop has the game listed for February 16, with a preorder deal in effect.

Via NintendoEverything.

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and his 38 Studios are working on an RPG for PS3, if two posted job openings are any indication.

One listing is for a senior PS3 programmer with “significant hands-on technical contributions on at least one on a AAA-level PS3 title”, with the other being for a lead art director who will “be working on an RPG for the PS3 platform”.

There is also a listing for a narrative designer on the company’s website for someone with a “minimum of one AAA title shipped as a designer on PC or console (experience in RPGs preferred)”.

The listings are for Schilling’s recently acquired Big Huge Games, so it is being speculated that it could be one of three things: A new project entirely, the RPG already in the works during the acquisition, or to work on a port of 38′s MMO Copernicus.

38 Studios is comprised of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, EverQuest designer Travis McGeathy, Forgotten Realms and Star Wars author R. A. Salvatore, and folks who worked on Oblivion.

Via PS3center.

According to discussions set to take place during this month’s London Games Conference, with digital distribution “poised to outstrip traditional retail sales within three years,” 40 percent of the games industry is underprepared for the shift.

Speakers during the LGC will address the issue, along with Nick Parker of Parker Consulting, who believes that 2013 and 2014 will be the “likely dates for the next generation global launches” from Microsoft and Sony.

“For the first time ever, the games industry has a way of alleviating the pain that traditionally befalls it during generational decline, through online gaming in its many guises – it’s a genuinely exciting time for the industry and the London Games Conference is perfectly timed to discuss these opportunities,” commented Parker.

Speakers at the conference include Mark Gerhard from Jagex, Kristian Segerstrale from Playfish, Nick Pili from Sega, Pete Edwards from PlayStation Home and Neil Thompson from Xbox, along with an opening address from Ed Vaizey, Shadow Minister for Culture.

PR is through the break. The event takes place at BAFTA on October 27.

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