Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Sign It Loud (And Off-Key)
11:40PM Brian Ashcraft | To: Crecente From: Ashcraft RE: Luke, Logan and Billy Glad you were able to meet Logan and hang out with Luke. Luke is always a guaranteed good time on a bender. This morning, I woke up super early to go stand in line up with mothers. Mini-Bash had his singing recital today. Since he’s been sick, he hasn’t had much time to practice. He did a good job! For one of the songs, he had to dress up like a mouse — which was disgustingly cute. Many Japanese children’s songs are based on European and American tunes. They music is borrowed, but the lyrics are totally changed. From what I understand, a lot of this went down during the Meiji period when Japan was Westernising itself. Regardless, there’s nothing quite like seeing a bunch of four year olds singing about friendship to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. After the performance, I spotted Mini-Bash in the hallway, who chastised me for snagging lousy seats. “Why weren’t you in the first row?! The Ghost’s mum was in the first row!” She also elbowed the crap outta everyone, kid. What you missed last night Dell’s WoW laptops Celebs are nutso yo PSP or DS? Which does Japan Want Did we give Kane and Lynch five stars? Kane and Lynch site lies PS3 Orange Box impressions More »
Ubisoft Totally Focused On Creating New IP
11:20PM Luke Plunkett | Ubisoft are focused on many things. Milking the Raving Rabbids for all their worth, for one. Another is that they don’t want to rely on sports games, or movie games, or games relying on externally-licensed content to succeed. No, that way is not for them. What they really want to do is conjure up new IP: One of our corporate goals is to create new IP, and we’ve been very successful in launching some of them in the past few years. It’s something we’re very keen on, at a global corporate level. Can’t argue with that. You launch an average game to average reviews and it sells a gagillion copies, even though it’s new IP, you’re doing something right! Ubisoft: More franchises can help quality [GI.biz] More »
Lawyer Fearmongers Top Ten Violent Games
11:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy has once again released her list of Top Ten violent video games to warn holiday shopping parents. Says Worthy, “Please do not buy these video games and bring them into your home. It desensitises (children) to violent acts.” She then tries to pin Detroit’s skyrocketing crime rate on that always easy gaming scapegoat, adding, “It’s no wonder we’re seeing the crimes we’re seeing lately.” Yeah, we’re sure bad schools and lack of jobs has absolutely nothing to do with it! Hit the jump for the list on which game site GamePolitics was nice enough to include release dates. More »
BioShock DLC Hits Today With Sonic Boom Plasmid
10:40PM Brian Crecente | Take-Two just announced that the new BioShock downloadable content pack for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows hit today. More importantly, the press release details what the four new plasmids and gene tonics are included in the pack: * Sonic Boom: Hurls creatures and objects back with a blast of force * EVE saver: Enables Plasmids to use less EVE * Vending Expert: Reduces prices in the vending machines * Machine Buster: Increases the amount of damage players deal to cameras, bots and turrets The pack also coimes with a new 360-only achievement. Brass Balls gives players who beat the game on the hard difficulty without dying 100 points. The pack also adds a widescreen option as well as several other “enhancements” to the game. More »
This Wii Is From The Distant Future
10:20PM Luke Plunkett | Were Tron able to pry himself away from more active pursuits like bike racing and eXtreme frisbee, pretty sure he’d be rocking this Wii. The work of Acid Mods poster kypes, this mod gives the little console a new black coat of paint, winnowed side panels, an extra SD card slot, in-built GameCube memory card and, as a centrepiece, a whole bunch of soothing, flashing lights. Lovely. [Acid Mods, cheers Farmah!] More »
Dell Unveils WoW-Themed XPS Laptops
10:00PM Brian Crecente | Blizzard seems to be getting into bed with everyone these days. First comes news that they have mind-melded with Activision to be come Blizzivision or Actizard, and now comes news of this pretty spanky new World of Warcraft-themed Dell laptop. And this isn’t just any laptop with WoW images slapped on it, this is a hulking XPS M1730 Dell Laptop with WoW images on it. Hit the jump for all the details on the $US 4,500 laptop released just seconds ago. The laptop officially launches on Dec. 11. More »
British Sales Charts
9:30PM Luke Plunkett | OK, Britain. Battle stations. It’s no longer a rumour, a threat whispered on the wind: Pre-Christmas madness is real, and has well and truly taken hold. You’ve no other option but to hold tight and weather the storm until the new year. 1) Brain Training 2) Mario & Sonic At The Olympics (Wii) 3) More Brain Training 4) Assassin’s Creed (360) 5) Super Mario Galaxy 6) Call of Duty 4 (360) 7) NFS: ProStreet (PS2) 8) Big Brain Academy (Wii) 9) High School Musical (PS2) 10) The Simpsons Game (PS2) [charts courtesy of ChartTrack] More »
EA Ready For Blizzivision Brawl
9:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Electronic Arts has some stiff competition with the Activision Blizzard merger. EA is totally not afraid of Blizzivision. EA welcomes this competition. It doesn’t matter if Activision already surpassed EA way back in July as the numero uno third party publisher and that this is just a nail in the proverbial coffin. Nor does it matter that Activision has the World of Warcraft as an IP, Electronic Art is so ready. EA is a fighter. Just listen to this EA rep, who writes: We’re always at our best when we have a clearly defined competitor… [The merger] doesn’t change our strategy. Our CEO John Riccitiello has been encouraging senior managers to think of all other publishers as one large competitor — he’s been encouraging them to think like challengers. But wasn’t EA already the challenger before the merger? EA’s Challenger [Next-Gen via CVG] More »
Other Publishers Shares Rise On Merger News
8:30PM Luke Plunkett | The Activision/Blizzard merger has a lot of people thinking. Take-Two CEO Ben Feder amongst them. But it goes further than that: in the wake of the union, other publishers have seen their stocks rise, as the market anticipates/prays for another big merger to quickly follow. Infogrames – the unlucky bastards saddled with decomposing corpse Atari – saw their shares rise 7.7%, while Ubisoft saw theirs up 6.8%, prompting speculation EA might now be looking at increasing their stake in the French publisher. [Reuters] More »
