GAME Australia Lays Off 281 Employees, Closes 60 Stores 
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Have Your Say On Video Game Pricing 
35,000 Telstra Passwords Reset After Games Services Hacked 
Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review Never saw this coming. After depriving Australia of Super Paper Mario for five months, Nintendo finally released it last week. How’d it do? As you’d expect a tasty burger to do when dropped in the hands of a desperate, starving man: it was gobbled up. We didn’t even pause for breath. Also nice seeing Heavenly Sword at #2, proving that Australian PS3 owners do play games on the system, and didn’t just buy it to show off their new HDTVs with.
1) Super Paper Mario 2) Heavenly Sword 3) SingStar Pop Hits (Bundle) 4) SingStar 90s (Bundle) 5) SingStar 90s 6) World in Conflict 7) Ratatouille (PS2) 8) Sims 2: Bon Voyage 9) Pokemon DIamond 10) Medal of Honour: Airborne (360)
[charts courtesy of GfK]
Let’s face it: Square Enix makes Japanese RPGs, and that’s about it. Sure, not the most diverse portfolio, but hey, it pays the bills and some people like those games. But with Japan in its back pocket, Square Enix wants the American market, and it wants it bad. Says Square Enix senior vice-president Michiro Sasaki:
We need to seek co-operation with a US publisher — we need local content. Our strength is in role-playing games and fantasy titles, so it is a bit difficult to appeal to the US market.
Currently, only ten to twenty percent of Square Enix’s revenues come from the US market. Sasaki wants to make it “half” within two to three years. What do you think, can Square Enix do that? Appeal to the average American gamer? Square Wants America [FT via Game|Life]
You know, about the only thing this game needed on top of what we’ve already seen was a bunch of evil hooded men with hammy European accents. Now that they’ve done that? Well, now the game appears to be absolutely perfect.
Last week, the PSP Slim and Lite went on sale in Japan. A new series of ads did a fine job of promoting the portable, which is raking up some impressive sales figures. I really like these ads, which show off different aspects of the PSP. They’re simple, to the point and not all fucked up. I hate fucked up Sony ads so hard.
More after the jump.
And finally, the PSP shows signs of life! At least in Japan. And in direct contrast to our own, highly scientific findings. Enterbrain have announced that the PSP-2000 has sold 250,702 units in its first three days on the market. Impressive, but more so when you consider that counts only the standalone units: another 75,943 Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core bundles were also shifted (earlier in the week, I know, but they also sold out in about three seconds so they get counted), giving us a total of 326,645. If you don’t think there’s money to be made in new colours and the 176th Final Fantasy game of 2007, you’re kidding yourself. æ–°åž‹PSPã®åˆé€±è²©å£²å°æ•°ã¯25万å°(エンターブレイン調ã¹) [Famitsu]
Whew! It’s been a rough couple of weeks. And after every big event, a new flood of commenters appear. While we do welcome the new folks, we also want to warn them. We ban here at Kotaku. Ban like crazy. So please do not confuse our comment sections with your run-of-the-mill forum, boards, blah blah. Next Monday (October 1st) is our favourite Kotakaday, Ban Monday. We are always open to ban submissions, but next Monday the ban sensitivity on the Hammer will be turned up max. Here’s how it works: Send us the commenter page for anyone that should get the axe. If we agree (even slightly), we’ll swing. And swing hard. Though! No ban gloating. Gloating leads to Ban Hammer backfire, which could cause you to get the boot. Tuesday we’ll be back better, lighter, strong and faster. Onward!
What Did You Think of Halo 3? Comment by Lososaurus
I played through the campaign only and played one online match. Judging only on campaign, I’d give it a 8.7/10: Very good overall, however the storytelling elements become annoying towards the end and there’s a few glaring issues on difficulty spikes and feeling like one is just running laps around an area rather than progressing. One thing that really bothered me about campaign were my squadmates driving. More than a handful of times, I wound up with my squadmate driving in circles and I had to get out, drive the warthog across a small area, get back into the gun seat in order to progress.
I wasn’t grabbed by the story either, felt like something was ‘missing’.
The graphics are beyond excellent, I think it’s a type that people don’t really realise how good they are, what effects are going on, how many are going on, no framerate dropping and several characters on screen with several effects on each. You really have to take a technical look at the graphics to appreciate them.
The replay mode is awesome, watching from every angle, seeing where you made mistakes, where you made smarter decisions. The online play is fun too(at least the lone match I played), balanced enough to where one player isn’t totally dominating.
All considered, campaign, presentation, the replay mode, online/multiplayer/co-op modes, I’d give the game a solid 9.5/10
Comment by aelfin
Personally I’m distinctly underwhelmed. I’m only three full levels down, but it doesn’t really either feel or look like Halo to me. The levels are too open (possibly to cater more for the 4-player co-op?), and the graphics boost serve mostly to make the levels look too complex for their own good (and thus just serviing to confuse re the layout) and also to make it not feel like playing Halo. It may sound weird, but the graphics are too shiny and detailed to *be* Halo, for me :/. It’s strange coming across so many Brutes so early on; seeing AFAIK there isn’t too many levels of enemies more powerful than Brutes in the Covenant hierarchy, it makes me wonder what they could possibly offer over the next 2/3rds of a game to mix it up. I guess it’s a wait-and-see for me, but so far, it’s just not that fun to play.
As of right now, there’s no specified platform for TimeSplitters 4. It could be on PC, it could be on DS, it could be a mobile game. But really, going on the history of the series, you’d imagine it’d appear on PS3, and going on the way the market’s looking these days, you’d imagine it’d also appear on 360. And the Wii? It’s also in the fold, Free Radical’s David Doak saying: I think we want to put it [TimeSplitters 4]on the Wii.
Fairly emphatic, that. Course a more formal announcement on platforms would be great (Gizmondo owners, you’re officially still in the running), but until then, Wii owners can at least get a decent nights sleep knowing they’re not being written off completely. “We want to put the sequel on Nintendo’s console,” says the UK developer [Game Informer, via Games Radar]
See that picture? That’s what I look like when I’m hung over and don’t bathe. And I think I’m still in my pyjamamas. During that blur that was TGS, Dan Orlowitz from PTD Magazine interviewed me — it was the day after our Kotaku party. It’s a three parter about all sorts of stuff, somewhat verbose, smells of smokey arcades and bad coffee but just might be interesting if you happened to miss the 1am cab ride from Shimokitazawa. Now that was a conversation. Part 1 of the Interview [PTD Magazine]
For all their pluckiness and sticktuitiveness, Microsoft’s games group aren’t in the business of making money. They lose money, have lost millions over the years, and are still losing money. That is, until Halo 3. Goldman, Sachs & Co. analysts are predicting that the game’s release may have pulled in $US 170 million, which is so much cash it may actually see the group turn a profit. Which would be good news for them, but better news for us: I can only imagine how excited that press release is going to be. U.S. Stocks Rise, Led by Computer Shares; Microsoft, Apple Gain [Bloomberg]
