Monthly Archives: October 2009

Tecmo has released some new shots for its third-person shooter Quantum Theory.

Game’s out for PS3 in March 2010 and sports Sid – who is being hailed as a “dark hero” – and his female partner Filerna who is a “white rebel”.

Okay.

Eurogamer has the shots here. Go take a look.

A source close to Disney has revealed details concerning Warren Spector’s Epic Mickey, to Eurogamer.

The reason Wii was chosen, according to the source, is due to Mickey’s tools: paintbrushes, erasers, thinner, pencils and artist tools. These tools are mapped to Wii remote gestures.

According to the source, the game is also about exploration, thinking and artwork, where you must use your environment to overcome puzzles.

Mickey will also be getting “his first makeover in years” which is why “no one’s seen his face yet, but he’s far more retro than you’ve seen him for years.”

There’s more through the link along with a bit of background story.

NCsoft has said that if adding more servers to Aion would but an end to the endless queues, it would have already done so.

Speaking with Eurogamer, NCsoft’s Ryan James told the site that people are causing the queues by trying to log into the busiest worlds.

“If the solution were as simple as rolling out new servers, we would no longer see queues today, given that we’ve already rolled out six new servers in Europe alone,” he said. “The reality is that there are servers today that have no queues in Europe.

“The problem is more that there are many people trying to get onto very few servers, whilst the rest still have room.”

To combat this, NCsoft will offer a free, one-time server transfer next month to help with the overload.

More through the link.

Maddox Games has announced via an IncGamers interview with founder Oleg Maddox, that the firm’s next project s based on the Battle of Britain air war during WWII.

“Right now we are working full steam on a new simulator series, and the opening release will be dedicated to the Battle of Britain in 1940,” said Maddox. “The guys are using state-of-the-art technologies to achieve the highest realism possible starting with the visual side and ending up with a real feeling of flight.

“We are developing the engine with an eye to the future. It will be capable of much more than will appear in the first release of the series. And you will see this gradual development coinciding with the improvement of PC performance and capabilities.”

Thanks, BigDownload.

Charles Cecil has signed on as designer and to lend his voice to a Christmas Carol game based on Disney’s upcoming performance-capture flick.

Speaking during a BAFTA seminar, Cecil chatted a it about the game based on the Robert Zemeckis movie, starring Jim Carey, Colin Firth and Gary Oldman.

“It was a really nice little project,” he said. “I was approached by Disney to design a game based on a Christmas Carol and it turned out to be really fun. I believe it’s very important for games to be able to broaden their horizons. If we, the industry, can start embracing classic works of literature like Dickens, then that’s really breaking down a barrier there.

“The approach I took was to place the player as the hand of fate, guiding a very willful protagonist down the road to redemption, and he doesn’t want to down that road at all. Players have to interact with people and the environment to make that happen, and it tells the story in really different way.

“I’m very happy with it.”

No word on a release or formats yet, but the film is expected in theaters next month.

More through Develop.

Infinity Ward bossman, Vince Zampella, has told the Official Playstation Magazine that originally, Activision did not want Call of Duty 4 to be a Modern Warfare and had been holding the reins on a more “modern” type of war experience for quite some time.

“With Call of Duty 2, we were dead set against it being World War 2,” said Zampella. “But Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we’d get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War 2 game. We always wanted to be on consoles and Activision saw us as more of a PC developer.

“And something I’ll add to that, Activision also did not want Modern Warfare. They thought working on a modern game was risky and [thought], ‘oh my god you can’t do that, it’s crazy!’ They were doing market research to show us we were wrong the whole time.”

Of course, in the end, MW1 sold 14 million copies. So, there ya go.

Via CVG.

Next Gamer is reporting that another Slim bundle is set to be released.

Posted on the sight, for your viewing pleasure, you will find Tekken 6 bundled with the 250Gb PS3 Slim.

The site says it got the picture from the official Sony site, and are estimating that it will run you around €349.

We’ll contact Sony and see if we can get more information on this.

More through the link.

Some more evidence that Sony plans to offer digital rentals of PSP games has popped up.

Over on The Retail Gamer, there’s an option to sort DLC games by expiration date, and there are list options for “starts” and “hours left”.

This is already done with movie rental content.

Rumors of the game rental service started in May, due to Sony sending out a consumer survey asking for opinions on such a service.

Of course, when contacted, Sony replied that it “don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”

More over at Eurogamer.

After the break. There’s more rinsin’ beats there than there are DJ superstars in a cloudless night sky.

The game’s shipping for 360, PS3, PS2 and Wii on October 27 in the US and October 30 in the UK.

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More developers should do this. Game Informer’s published load of facts about Batman’s creation period, including the nugget that six babies were born to the team while it beavered away on the game.

Know what else? Titan Ivy consists of 44,674 polygons.

Get more tat through the link.

Via Kotaku and Joystiq.

Update: We’ve just had Codemasters on the phone to reiterate that no permanent staff have been affected by this in any way, and the 70 QA positions were held by temps reaching the end of contracts.

Original story:

Codemasters has confirmed to VG247 that it’s just dropped “around” 70 QA staff, temps designed to push through DiRT 2 and Op Flash: Dragon Rising.

We’ve just been told that those cut free today were “never on permanent contracts”.

We’re actually hearing a slightly different story from dev contacts, but hopefully details will become clearer later today.

Videogaming news on the internet appears to have ground to a halt today, so here’s some new Dark Void art. Get it after the break.

It’s the first we’ve seen on the game since GamesCom. Looks as though sack cloth is en vogue dans le Void, non?

The Airtight adventure still has no date.

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Visceral’s third project is a Jack the Ripper game, according to the LA Times.

Citing “two sources close to EA,” the LAT points out that the use of historical material will give the developer free reign in a similar vein to Dante’s Inferno.

There’s no other detail through there. With Dante hitting early next year and Dead Space 2 also in the works, it’s unlikely you’re going to be seeing this for a while yet.

More proof? Check out these trademarks.

Thanks, superannuation.

WET developer A2M has told VG247 that it’s currently assessing working on more original IP.

“That’s definitely something A2M is looking at, so yes, that’s certainly a possibility,” said Patrick Fortier, WET’s creative director.

WET, published by Bethesda, released last month to middling reviews. No matter the game’s reception, however, don’t be hugely shocked if A2M gets back into bed with Bethesda for upcoming games.

“They understand Rubi [WET's protagonist - Ed], they speak the same language as us (since they are developers too, they understand how things work on the floor) and they are consummate professionals, so it’s been nothing but joy collaborating with them,” Fortier added.

No further detail on A2M’s upcoming projects is available as yet.

Venezuela is on the verge of banning all violent “video games and toys,” according to the AP. The move’s expected to come into force in the coming weeks.

Apparently parents are all for it, but, according to that piece, “critics argue the bill is little more than a public relations stunt by supporters of President Hugo Chavez to camouflage his government’s inability to deal with Venezuela’s rampant violent crime — the country’s most pressing problem according to public opinion polls.”

Hit the link for more, as well as Venezuelan kids shooting the shit out of arcade screens.

NoA’s Reggie Fils-Aime reckons the recently-announced Wii price cut and the imminent launch of Wii Fit Plus will have a seven-figure impact to the machine’s sales.

“There are literally millions of consumers out there who want a Wii and had been on the sidelines,” he said, talking to the FT.

“They’d been waiting for that little nudge to go out and pick it up – the price decline, the sampling, the launching of key software like Wii Fit Plus – we believe it’s what’s pushing them over the edge to get into the category.”

And what sort of sales increase have we seen from the cut, Reggie?

“The consumer response has been very strong to the price reduction,” he said, adding that it was too early to release precise sales figures.

We’ll know soon enough.

BioWare’s put out a video showing how Dragon Age’s world was constructed on conceptual and aesthetic levels: get it after the break.

It’s awesome, basically. As with the early Star Wars: The Old Republic movies, it shows just how far the developer is able to push to attain greatness: the answer’s “further than anyone else”.

It’s out for PC, PS3 and 360 in November.

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The American version of EyePet won’t release this year, SCEA’s confirmed.

“The North American territory has decided to take additional time to focus on the EyePet product and can confirm it will not be available this holiday,” the publisher told Gamespot in a statement.

“EyePet is an innovative and exciting new IP to the PS3 platform and SCEA marketing will spend additional time to continue educating consumers and retail channels, setting the table for a successful product launch. We will provide more details on an updated launch timeframe very soon.”

Unlucky, Americans. It’s awesome. The camera-based monkey game releases in Europe on October 23.

Microsoft’s added Grand Theft Auto IV and Left 4 Dead to its Platinum Hits range in the US.

Street Fighter 4, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Saints Row 2 have also been included in the line-up meaning you should now be able to pick them up for around $20.

No news on any similar moves for Europe.

There’s a trailer for the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are game after the break, showing off some of the story’s characters and locations.

For the record. In the book, none of the monsters had names. In fact, the only resemblance this appears to bear to the book is visual. It’s not funny.

Look and see. It’s out this month.

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