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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review The lay of the land. There are 217 companies appearing at this year’s Tokyo Game show. Here are the floor plans for the biggest ones. Above is 1Hall-3Hall. From top left going across, it includes: Square Enix, Microsoft, SoftBank Mobile and CoFesta Movie Square/TGS Cafe. Below that and moving across are Koei, Cykan Entertainment Co., Ltd., Level 5 and Capcom. Below Capcom and moving right is the Foreign Games Pavilion (go Western Australia!), Marvelous Entertainment, some small companies and SNK by the entrance. Hit the jump for a thrilling look at 4Hall-6Hall:
A joint study conducted by GameSpot and the Internet Advertising Bureau has found that, on the whole, Britons don’t mind a bit of in-game advertising. So long as it’s “contextual and realistic”. Of the 3575 gamers polled, 40% said that advertising added a dash of realism to the game, 14% said it ruined the experience and the rest said they couldn’t give a fig. Most worrying statistic? Only 63.7% of respondents thought that a character drinking a Red Bull to recharge was advertising. For the remaining 36.3%, I’ll give you a hint. Yes. That is advertising. Report: Gamers don’t mind advertising [GameSpot UK]
So Second Life has launched in Japan. And there’s even a in-world branch of Japanese used book seller Book-Off to prove it! The Book-Off isn’t so bad, but the Akihabara nerd shop is depressing. Like more depressing that real Akiba. To be fair, the above clip isn’t brand-spankin’ new, so who knows, maybe this Moeya store looks “better.” The 2channel mascot stuff looks kooky, though. Hit the jump for that!
Former ESA head Doug Lowenstein did a good enough job, but you never got the impression the guy was a gamer. Not that that’s a bad thing, just an…observation. New ESA boss Michael Gallagher, though, he loves his games. Not only does he take on Washington Post games writer Mike Musgrove in a Halo 2, GHII, Fight Night and Wii Tennis and come away with a draw, the guy carries a DS Lite around his pocket. All day. Every day. Why? He likes to get one in the hands of politicians, show them a bit of Brain Training, remind them that only 8% of games released each year earn an M rating, convince them to get off our collective backs. I also like to think it’s because he plays Advance Wars while on his executive can. As Comfortable on Guitar Hero as on the Hill [Washington Post]
Number time: In Japan, the PS3 is catching up with the Nintendo Wii! Well, sorta. In August, the Wii outsold the PS3 3-to-1, moving 245,653 units compared with 81,541. The July ratio was 4-to-1, and the June ration was 6-to-1. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before the Wii is only outselling the PS3 2-to-1. Compare this to Microsoft, who sold 11,288 Xbox 360s in Japan in August. Yup, that means the Wii is outselling it almost 22-to-1. Yikes! Wii Still Cleaning Up [Reuters]
Nintendo, you’re dropping the ball when it comes to toys adult collectibles. Those First 4 Figures things are crap, and as an alternative there’s little outside of Japanese capsule figures. There’s a gap in the market, one where there’s demand, and one which is currently being filled by one man.
Some new PS3 firmware’s available, 1.92 to be precise, and it does…well, we’ve got no idea. Kids over at GAF say it fixes Warhawk crashes, but aside from changing the actual system info display to 1.92 damned if I can see what else it does. Maybe nothing! Then again, maybe something. Since we’ve heard squat from Sony on the subject, a shiny new donkey to the commenter that can dig around and see if it did anything else.
Screw fliers. In summer, fliers do nothing. That’s why many companies, Microsoft included, hand out fans to promote stuff. This is a Halo 3 fan given out to promote the game. (Cue joke about Halo 3 fans in Japan.) Sure, it’s not as kooky and fun as Master Chief freaking out shoppers! Tim Rogers over at game site Next-Gen points out: The tagline is sharp enough: “The year is 2552. The human race continues its fight against an alien race.”
The Marvel vs Capcom games were good. No. They were great. I think so, you think so, everyone thinks so. Even Marvel’s new VP of interactive media, Justin Lambros, who when asked by Gamasutra if there was a chance the games could be re-released via digital download said: Yeah, those are among my all time favourites. I’m a huge 2D fighting fan… the Marvel Vs. Capcom stuff has a definite close place in my heart, so we definitely wanna see that stuff live on.
I’d like to think that’s a positive response. Street Fighters are all well and good, but Marvel vs Capcom 2 on XBLA, the PS Store or even the Virtual Console would be just a pinch better. Marvel’s Lambros Talks EA Fighting Game, Reissue Possibilities [Gamasutra]
The PSP Slim launches in Britain on September 14. Two of the big selling points for the handheld are the new video out capabilities and the colour range. Which is why it makes PERFECT sense for SCEE to gip the Brits on both. There will be NO video cables available for the Slim at launch, at all, and Sony don’t know when they’ll be made available. And as far as colours go, it’s black and black only, the promised white and silver coming somewhere, sometime down the line. Time to bust out that stiff upper lip. Big new selling point… not for sale [Games Radar]
