New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land 
Why Robin Makes Batman Better 
Resistance: Burning Skies: The Kotaku Review 
Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle Remember when Japan went bonkers over the DS? Everywhere the handheld was sold out, and if you wanted one, that meant lining up early on a Saturday morning when the new shipments arrived. It got so bad that American DSes had to be re-imported back into to Japan just to satisfy the demand. Let’s take a moment and reflect on those madcap crazy days with food! Here’s a Noble Pink DS Lite bento. It even says “Sold Out” in Japanese on it. Delicious. Nintendo DS Bento [Alafista]
A lot of third party publishers have gotten burnt with the Wii. Bad. Not Ubisoft! Ubisoft shits candy canes! With titles like Rayman and Red Steel, the publisher has faired relatively well. Good for them. So Ubisoft, what’s the secret? Yves Guillemot explains: Those new things are going to be successful in the future and we’ll continue to create new brands for the machine. Compared with other publishers, the difference was going early as well as the huge amount of creativity we channel into the machine.
Of course, the huge amount of hype Ubisoft channeled into the machine didn’t do anything. Guillemot Interview [MCUK]
Just a quick note to let you guys know that our Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness competition comes to an end this week on the 20th. So if you’re thinking of getting your entry in, best to do it soon.
Thanks again to KOEI/THQ for not only supplying the main prize of a PSP Slim and a copy of Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, but four additional copies of the game for our runners-up.
Hit the link below for all the competition details if you’d like to enter.
Win a PSP Slim & Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness [Kotaku Australia]
To: Ash and Luke From: Flynn Subject: GDC looms large
Ahoy gents. It’s been an interesting week on my end culminating in my catching some sort of hideous flu virus. I’m mostly over it but still feeling pretty under the weather. Which sucks since GDC starts tomorrow and I have to be up early. Ah well, no rest for the wicked or ill.
Some things you may have missed this weekend:
Ole’ Jacky Boy is at it again. Big surprise.
WOW causes yet another relationship breakdown
How did this one slip by the big bosses?
And now I am off to down some Thera-flu and get some rest so I can try and be on top of it for tomorrow. Have a good one guys. Goodnight!
A lot of titles this week with a spread over every system. Not a lot here that sparks my particular interests although I’ll be too busy at GDc to really play much of anything. I am however looking forward to the new Ace Attorney game. Hopefully it can retain its freshness by adding a new main character. Otherwise Apollo could turn out to be the Scrappy Doo of the series.
This a pretty interesting short documentary on the making of a commercial for Biohazard 2/Resident Evil 2. The commercial was directed by zombie master George Romero and starred (the recently deceased) Brad Renfro as Leon Kennedy. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a documentary on the making of a commercial but this one is actually pretty interesting with the possible exception of the vapid quotes from the gal playing Claire Redfield. It lasts about eleven minutes and is definitely worth a watch.
[Thanks, king_e_dawg]
Over at InvestorTV there’s an extremely eye-opening talk with some of Australia’s most prominent game developers. Included in the all-local mix are Tony Hilliam, CEO of Auran; Tom Crago, CEO of Tantalus and Krome Studios’ CEO Robert Walsh. While Hilliam gets stuck explaining the downfall of Auran, Tom and Robert go over the positives of games development in Oz.
The first part of the interview sees Hilliam deconstruct the failure of Fury, citing poor sales in the US and Europe and the sheer size of World of Warcraft as contributing factors:
“Ultimately, sales of Fury were worse than our low case projections. We did OK in Australia, we were top 10 in Australia, but Europe was a complete write-off. In the US – again the Australian sales have nearly outstripped the US market altogether. When Australia is almost your biggest market, you have a problem.”
It’s not all rotten, though. Tom Crago paints a more alluring picture of the local development scene:
The powers that be over at iTunes have decided to cash in on the Rock Band cash cow. They have compiled all the songs used in Rock Band into one place on the iTunes store allowing you to download all your favorites to your hearts content. If you want all of them though it’s going to cost you a pretty penny. At US$ 0.99 a song the whole catalog will set you back $US 73.26.
[Thanks, Jordan]
Okay, its $19.95, but I doubt you’ll be handing over exact change when you take GAME up on this deal.
As you can see from the image above, along with the cash you’ll need to hand over two Xbox 360 games. So pick a couple from your collection that you don’t play much, or steal a few from a mate, and head on over to GAME.
There’s a copy of Lost Odyssey quivering in anticipation of your arrival right now.
[Thanks Ryan!]
Stanford’s Metaverse U conference has been going on this past weekend, and Joey Seiler has been blogging from the event, which has a lot of academic theory, predictions about where virtual worlds are headed, as well as how people are trying to implement some of the theoretical aspects into actual practice. One of the most interesting panels looked to be on avatars, some experiments with virtual reality, and preservation of virtual worlds:
