Monthly Archives: November 2009

Oh, hello? Whats this? Oh look, party chat for the 360 is blocked while playing Modern Warfare 2.

According to TSA (via GAF), the feature can not be used while playing the multiplayer for the game.

It is down to avoiding cheating in the game, which means that if you want to speak with your friends in the game, it has to be done in the channel in-game.

Find more through the links. The game is out next Tuesday.

Thanks, Gekidami.

Do you hear that? That is the sound of panic at Activision UK this morning, as the latest UK charts released this morning has shown that DJ Hero has failed to enter the top ten of the all formats UK charts. The game actually entered at 20.

Meanwhile, Football Manager 2010 has entered the charts as the new No. 1, taking over from PES 2010, which drops down to five. The top three is rounded off by Wii Fit Plus and FIFA 10 at two and three respectively.

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City debuts at six and Tekken 6 at eight. Find the top ten below. Last weeks data is here.

Sky’s On Demand director Griff Parry has revealed that a PS3 version of the Sky Player could be on the cards for the future.

It comes as the service launched last week on the Xbox 360, with the service being pulled soon after due to “phenomenal demand.”

“I can talk generally about our desire to extend to any device that supports a good quality experience to project the content. The PS3 is clearly a device where that is possible. And so it may very well happen in the future. Having said that, we’re very happy to be working with Xbox for the time being,” said Parry.

So far, in the UK, the PS3 has a native version of the BBC iPlayer service.

Thanks, Videogamer.

Quantic Dream’s David Cage has revealed that the PlayStation 3 is “the best platform” available for Heavy Rain.

He was speaking at his Q&A session during the Eurogamer Expo in London on Saturday, where he said the choice to make the game for the PS3 was down to two reasons: the hardware and the architecture

“Whatever I answer, my answer will be suspicious… I think it had to be on PlayStation 3 for two main reasons: the hardware, the architecture of the PS3 is extremely powerful in the way it is structured. If you make a real PS3 engine, then you can have really fantastic performances. If you try to port from another platform, then it becomes difficult,” said Cage.

“This is a console we all love at the studio. I play PSOne, PS2, it’s really a part of my culture. The controller is part of my home… and it’s a really, really powerful console.

“I’m not so much into graphics, to be honest with you, I don’t believe you need ultra realistic graphics to get emotion, you can get that with very low graphics. But we wanted to create emotion from believable characters, that was the idea. With this approach PS3 was by far the best platform.”

Find more over at PushSquare. Catch some video we captured of the demo that was on the show floor at the Expo last week in Leeds here.

It’s out next year.

In case you haven’t heard, here is a public service announcement – Dragon Age: Origins is out this week.

It’s out tomorrow in the US, and Friday in the UK for 360 and PC. The PS3 version is due later on in the month in Europe, but will release tomorrow in the US.

It’s the shit, apparently.

Anyways, to celebrate the release of the game, JPS has put live the first nine minutes of the game. Go watch it over there.

Infinity Ward’s Rob Bowling has tweeted that Modern Warfare 2′s multiplayer will get a leaderboard reset for anyone who has the game already.

It is to make sure no one has an unfair advantage before the game is released next Tuesday.

“It definitely looks like a full leaderboard / level reset is in order just before the release date to ensure no unfair advantages,” said Bowling.

There you have it, kids.

EA’s quietly released a trailer of the remake of American McGee’s Alice, alongside the release of a teaser site that went live at the weekend.

The end of the teaser trailer shows a 2011 release date for the return to Wonderland for the PS3, 360 and PC.

Find it after the jump, courtesy of Big Download.

More »

Capcom has said in their latest financial report that they expect Lost Planet 2 to sell over 3 million units when it releases next year. To be exact, thats 3.7 million units.

They also confirmed they expect Dark Void to sell over 1.3 million units.

Super Street Fighter IV is expected to sell just 1.1 million units, while Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles will sell 800k and Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition is expected to just sell 300k.

Find more over at Andriasang.

As you may heard by now, the Crystalium System is in, and the traditional leveling up/XP has been kicked out of Final Fantasy XIII.

To show this, Scrawl has a couple of new scans showing the system from Shonen Jump, where the news was made.

Find them over there.

Game is out on December 17 in Japan for the PlayStation 3. As for the US/EU, it’s spring 2010 for PS3 and 360.

Is the upcoming movie not going to be your fill of Prince of Persia? Don’t worry, Ubisoft’s got you covered. How? By announcing a new PoP game in the spring of next year, according to a report from Neoseeker.

The news was apparently confirmed at a trailer preview event for the movie at Bruckheimer studios very recently.

The report says:

“Our last bit of news is a juicy one: Ubisoft will be announcing a new Prince of Persia game in the spring, according to the team, but it’s not their place to give out any details.”

Lovely. Go mad, peeps.

According to a report by Shonen Jump (as translated by Andriasang), Final Fantasy XIII is kicking archaic RPG tropes like “leveling up” and “experience points” to the curb. Have no fear, though, intrepid grind-a-holics; the Crystalium System’s got your back.

“As you defeat enemies in battle, you earn Crystal Points (CP). These can be exchanged for new skills and abilities, shown on a circular chart in the Crystalium management screen. As you learn certain skills, new paths on the chart open up,” reads the report.

Stats – like HP, for example – can also be increased by eating a few bites of rock candy.

More through the link.

Remedy has revealed to G4TV that they are looking at the possibility of removing the ending from Alan Wake from any review code reviewers will get when they review the game before it’s release.

“I think we’re going to be insanely careful about how much of the story we reveal,” said Remedy’s Matias Myllyrinne.

“We’ll clearly discuss with some of our friends at Microsoft whether we even give the ending of the game for anybody’s preview. I’d like to hold it back, [I] don’t want anybody to spoil it for the audience. That’s just my personal feeling .”

Find more info through the link.

It’s out next spring for the Xbox 360.

Well, that didn’t take long. Earlier this weekend, Infinity Ward posted a Modern Warfare 2 trailer that was jokingly sponsored by “Fight Against Grenade Spam.” Instead of uproarious laughter, however, Infinity Ward’s jest was met with the regular, bad kind of uproar. So, in response, the developer’s wiped the video off the face of the Internet.

“I think the core gag is great, the end is a bit too far from the intent of the joke & can appreciate the concerns. Pulled.” tweeted IW’s Robert Bowling in response to a couple of particularly offended games journos.

So, back to complaining about dedicated servers, then?

Thanks, Kotaku.

Gamepex (via Kotaku) has listed the killstreak rewards you will get with the multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2. It starts off with three kills and a UAV, but get all the way up to 25, and you get a nuke.

No, seriously. A nuke. A motherfucking nuclear weapon!

Find the full list at the links. We’ll leave an email with Activision to confirm if this is true or not

The game is out next Tuesday for PS3, 360 and PC.

According to launch day figures obtained by Sankaku Complex, the PlayStation 3 version of Bayonetta has outsold that of it’s Xbox 360 compatriot in Japan.

The PS3 version sold over 93k, while the 360 SKU sold over 45k at launch on Thursday.

We should know more concrete numbers for the game in it’s first week, when the full software charts for the week go live in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The game was pegged for a January 2010 Western release last week.

Via D’Toid.

We’re sure you’d all love to take Ezio for a spin around the lot before you part ways with your precious cash, but according to Connected Consoles, you’ll have no such luck.

During London’s Eurogamer Expo, a Ubisoft rep told the site that there aren’t any plans for an Assassin’s Creed II demo.

Bummer? Yeah. But it’s not so bad. Early reviews have the stab-happy sequel pegged as being pretty great, so it’s not like we’re blindly sending our piggy banks to the slaughter.

Another banner week for news regarding indie and other games of interest.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine may make it onto PC after all, 3D Dot Game Heroes is coming to North America, Nostalgia is now available, The Void sounds awesome, King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame has finally gotten a release date, Eufloria has a demo, and version 2.6 of the Unity Platform is now free.

There’s tons more stuff after the break, too. Surely there is something that interests you should you click onward.

More »

This was a rather large week in MMOs as far as news went, and not all of it was Halloween related.

Past the break you will hear all about how Ultima Online is still going strong, get familiarized with the new patch for Aion, read up on Cryptic’s Blood Moon event via a dev chat, PvP henchmen and Guild Wars, Alganon’s delay, China’s ban on males playing females in games, and many other bits of stuff that didn’t hit the front page during the week.

Also, we hope everyone who plays MMOs enjoyed the Halloween and Fall festivities that their particular favorites hosted. Loads had celebrations, more than likely every single one of ‘em. If we forgot to mention your particular game, head on over to the list through the link ther and add it in the comments section so that we may give it its proper shout-out.

More »