Category Archives: That was the news

The Americans were pulling little colon-”o” emoticons, but the news was greeted with surly derision in Europe. SCEA announced last week that the MGS4 gunmetal PS3 was to launch in America in limited quantities, the pack to include a 40Gb PS3, a DualShock 3 and the game itself.

America, it seems, is blessed by Sony. The region now has confirmation of the highly desirable gunmetal machine and an 80Gb MGS4 bundle, which will replace the current 80Gb Motorstorm pack in June when the latest Metal Gear launches.

Europe, however, still has no kind of special promotion announced for the launch of MGS4 (although SCEE did tell us this morning that it’s waiting to hear on whether or not we’re going to receive the MGS4 special edition).

Worse, there is still absolutely no official indication that an 80Gb SKU is heading this way and there’s no news on when we’re going to get DualShock 3. The weary hope is starting to turn sour: savvy European punters are simply getting tired of waiting.

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The last week in games news was dominated by one game and one game only.

Yes, Relic announced Dawn of War II, and yes, it looks great. It looks as though another Thief’s on the way, and that’s fine. Even news that journalists had been to Konami Japan and finished MGS4 just bounced off the surface.

In the grand scheme of things, it was all filler. Nothing came close to GTA IV’s impending release as an attention generator, nor will it for the foreseeable future.

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The Byron Report – a study commissioned by the UK Government to investigate games and internet use among the young in the UK – was delivered last week, saying almost exactly what everyone thought it was going to say and showing its author, Doctor Tanya Byron, in a highly professional light.

Probably the best thing about the publication, however, is that fact it’s now been and gone and we can (almost) stop writing about it.

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Ubisoft announced last Thursday – just as most of the British press had landed in the pub to “celebrate” Easter – that it had acquired the rights to the Tom Clancy brand from the man himself, in itself a major announcement.

In an investor call after the press release was issued, though, Ubi CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed that the publisher was now to start work on a Clancy-branded MMO. It only takes a small leap of logic to realise that the ramifications of such a project could be seismic.

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Following NPD data for February on Thursday, and a slew of “brave” journalists pointing to “worry” in the Microsoft camp, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter spelt it out: if Xbox 360 isn’t in serious trouble now, it very soon will be. The analyst said that by year-end the machine will be outpaced by PS3 in Europe to the tune of 20-40 percent, and that the Sony machine will “kill” 360 in Japan. In the fourth quarter, said Pachter, PS3 will start to pull ahead in the US, an unstoppable rise in sales fuelled by Blu-ray inclusion, a potential price cut, and an increase in HD screen take-up.

It’s a nightmare situation for Microsoft, however hard it spins it. Pachter’s saying that by the end of 2008 Xbox 360 will be dominant nowhere, the machine being outsold massively by Wii in all major territories and looking forward to a grim near-future of being steamrollered in the “core” market by a maturing PS3. Essentially, it’s “lost” and the big question now is not who’s going to “win” this console generation: far more pressing is the issue of whether or not Microsoft will release a successor to Xbox 360 at all.

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“I’ll tell you one thing,” said a UK journalist at the end of last year’s E3. “The mobile’s dream’s well and truly over.”

It really did seem like it. For endless years, the mobile games industry had been banging the drum of promised success, but two factors had always prevented the supposed explosion from finally happening. Firstly, the games were either rubbish or completely misappropriated to the casual audience. Secondly, the carriers didn’t take gaming seriously, and delivery methods and presentation across a bewildering swathe of handsets was both stupidly flawed and obviously impractical.

With no central focus to last year’s E3 for the first time in its history, there was no way for the believers to get their products in front of journalists by default and the awful truth emerged: no one cared. All that VC was looking very ill-advised indeed.

The situation for mobile gaming, however, could well have changed dramatically last week.

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Last week was a big one for news – including the end of Phil Harrison’s 15-year career at Sony and first details of CMP’s intentions to make GDC an invite-only affair for press – but no other story came close in importance to EA’s desire to purchase Take-Two.

Made public late on Sunday night, the news has both set the scene for the publisher supremacy scrap of this generation and cast EA CEO John Riccitiello – and his master plan for the company’s growth – in a vastly brighter light than has been seen in recent years.

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Last week’s GDC was a strange affair that threw up more questions than answers. While it carried the predicted unveiling of Gears of War 2 and a Microsoft keynote holding traditional big hitters such as Fable 2 and Ninja Gaiden II, the event’s main speech’s message was by no means “the norm”. Yes, the blood, swords and guns were all where they were supposed to be, but at the core of John Sheppard’s keynote was a theme of radical change that permeated the entire conference, and one that left both developers and platform holders alike chewing their nails.

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Hindsight’s a beautiful thing. We all said CES was terrible for gaming this year, and we were right in part. Microsoft decided to stay away, not even showing Xbox 360 on its stand, and PS3 was virtually non-existent. One of the big stories of the show, however is likely to have a huge impact on how this console generation plays out, even if most of us didn’t realise it at the time: just before the Las Vegas expo, Warner Bros. dropped HD-DVD.

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One story emerged last week that is to dominate the British games industry for months, and possibly years, to come. Tanya Byron, ex-TV psychologist and compiler of a report commissioned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to look into the affects of videogames on the young and make recommendations as to future regulation, is to deliver her findings next month. Inevitably, the press decided to deliver some of them first.

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This week’s news was dominated by EA’s third quarter conference call, but it was just smoke and mirrors masking the main event. While not blatantly obvious, this GamePro cover was by far the biggest story this week, signalling the beginning of 2008’s big reveals and the start of the stories and games that will dominate consumer, trade and retail press for the rest of the year.

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