Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
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 Capcom is going Hollywood crazy! The Osaka-based publisher is casting a keen eye on the movie business, hoping to get more of its IPs into moving pictures. According to Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto:
We are in the process of working out contracts for several offers we received at the Cannes Film Festival last week and hope to make an announcement soon… If realised, the projects will have a big impact on the game and movie industries… We want to do with games what Marvel did with comics.
Best of luck with that!
Capcom In Talks [Bloomberg via Go Nintendo][Pic]
I’m not really sure how they do things in the US, but down here, standard mobile phone contracts last for two years. Once that time’s up, 99.8% of people go and get a new phone. Simple plan, everybody wins. OH. Except for anyone with a Nokia phone who actually buys games over their new N-Gage platform. See, the games are locked to the handset you purchase them on. If you break your handset, you’ll get them reissued, but if you upgrade to a new phone, you lose your games. Nokia’s explanation? Our policy is that the N-Gage activation codes only work on the device where they were first activated. As with any digital media there is a potential risk of piracy and this policy is one of the ways we are dealing with piracy and ensuring our partners receive their rightful revenues from our platform.
Way to go, Nokia. Didn’t think anybody could have a worse DRM track record than Microsoft, but then, records are meant to be broken.
Gamers ‘angry’ over new N-Gage’s DRM [Develop]
Have a look! Here are the Metallic Rose Nintendo DS famous people commercials we previously mentioned. Above, American Idol-born country singer Carrie Underwood has at Nintendogs on her tour bus. After the jump, she and Ugly Betty star America Ferrera talk about their experiences with the DS. Fascinating.
The last few days have been good sport for anyone who enjoys watching the internet conjure rumours out of sheer fantasy. Take the one concerning Diablo 3, for example. The teaser for next month’s PC Gamer contained the line “so huge we had to go to [CENSORED]to get it,” and from that nondescript sliver, we somehow got a ton of people convinced Diablo 3 is coming. And hey, it might be, sometime in the future, but not now, with PC Gamer telling Shacknews “we’re officially squelching the Diablo rumour. We’ve got two big announcements coming in our August issue, but neither is from Blizzard”. Case closed. Return to your Diablo fan forums and remain there until further notice.
PC Gamer Squelches Diablo 3 Rumour [Shacknews]
America? America loves the Nintendo Wii. Europe? Ditto. And Japan? Man, Japan is bonkers for the Wii. What about Korea? The country finally has an official Nintendo of Korea branch after years of going through shady third party distributors. According to Korean site GameShot.net, the Wii’s first month performance there is only 35,000 units sold out of the 50,000 units released by Nintendo. For game software, Wii Sports sold 30,000 copies, while Swing Golf Pangya and Zack & Wiki each sold about 8,000 copies. FIFA sold 2,000 copies. It seems Korean gamers have better things to do than play Wii Sports — things like waiting for StarCraft II.
How The Wii Is Doing [GameShot.net Thanks, Torokun for the tip and translation!]
Off the back of Tony Albrecht’s blog post on speaker fees for this year’s Game Connect AP conference, a number of the event’s organisers have come forward to address the matter. It seems a little attention has done some good!
Greg Bondar, CEO of the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) and GCAP organiser, posted a comment to the story in an attempt to explain the reasons behind the fees. “Last year we had a number of speaker no-shows and this did no go down well at with delegates not to mention the added cost to the event in finding replacement speakers etc,” said Bondar. “GDAA is a not for profit organisation and I am amazed at those that want something for nothing. Those that are complaining should be supporting us so we can put more back into the industry that we all live for.”
In response, Albrecht posted: “Those that are complaining *are* the ones that are supporting you. Have you considered the cost of creating and giving a presentation? … The people that give these sessions are generally quite senior developers and their time is very valuable to their company.”
I’m not sure if Albrecht’s reply got Bondar thinking, but the next time he commented, his reply was optimistic:
Want to know how to transform a mundane press release about a new hire into a blazing document of fun and excitement? Just make sure the hiree has had something to do with making sweets and treats! This is exactly what Activision has done, though somehow, I don’t think it was entirely intentional… if at all.
The company today announced that Philip Earl, a former general manager of Nestle’s Snacks and Confectionary division, will replace 15-year veteran John Watts as senior VP of Activision Asia. I totally see where Activision is coming from. Snacks are fun. So are games. Match made in heaven if you ask me.
I have no doubt Earl has the necessary experience for a senior VP role and will do the publisher proud. Heck, if the man can “led the confectionary business to record growth levels through innovation on key brands such as KitKat, Aero and Club”, imagine what he can do with Call of Duty!
Hit the jump for the full release.
Atari’s recent woes are common knowledge, and out of sympathy, don’t bear repeating. Suffice to say, they’re in their current pickle thanks to a trail of shitty releases over the past five years or so. So with new Infogrames man Phil Harrison looking to clean up shop, some stock has to be taken, and some changes made. One is an abandonment of big-budget, single-player games.
THQ’s musical Wii title Battle of the Bands hit Australian shelves yesterday. The publisher has decided that, in order to celebrate the release, it has to give stuff away. I don’t know about you, but this is completely cool by me.
So, what’s on offer? A BotB prize pack containing nine limited edition T-shirts and a Battle of the Bands tour bag. For me, that’s an entire year’s wardrobe. And yes, I am implying that I don’t wear pants.
To be in with a chance, all you have to do is answer the following question in fewer than 25 words, and email it tipsATkotakuDOTcomDOTau with the subject line BOTB comp:
If you were going to start a band, what would its name be and why?
There are a few conditions: 1) Comp is open to AU/NZ residents only. 2) The competitions ends next Friday (30/5/08), with winners announced on the following Monday (2/6/08). 3) You may enter as many times as you want. 4) Steve and the Asstones is already taken.
There’s only one pack to give away, so make sure your entry is clever. Like super clever. I want my brain to explode, reassemble itself, and explode again from the sheer wittiness.
Thanks to THQ for putting this together. If you’d like to see what the shirts look like when modelled by a couple of random dudes, hit the jump.
Marijauana, a gateway drug? What is this, the mid-90s? No. Today, kids have far more discerning tastes, and will first experiment with a PlayStation Portable before, after a few parties with their new, “cool” friends (who their parents most definitely do not approve of), stepping up to a full-blown addiction on the heavier shit, like a PlayStation 3. Least, that’s what SCEA’s John Koller thinks, as speaking at the (*breath*) Wedbush Morgan Securities Management Access Conference in NYC, he says loads of people have picked up the PSP as their “first” console, which has later convinced them to upgrade to a $US 400-a-year PS3 & Blu-Ray habit. Be warned, parents: if you see your child playing around on a PSP, and do nothing, don’t complain to us when you wake up one morning and your DVD player’s missing, your wallet’s short $US 50 and your son has passed out on the couch in front of the Blu-Ray version of Planet Earth.
PSP is “gateway drug” to consoles, says SCEA [Gamesindustry.biz]
