Wednesday, August 13, 2008
News
British Sales Charts
11:20PM Luke Plunkett | Congratulations, Soul Calibur IV! You’ve broken Nintendo’s stranglehold on the top end of the British sales charts. At least for this week (and last week, really, but we missed last week’s charts…sorry!). Because they’re not just the only games for a system that’s not made by Nintendo in the top 10, they’re the only games for a system that’s not made by Nintendo in the top 20. Seeing as both have slipped from their loftier positions last week, however, we expect regular service to resume this time next week. More »
PlayTV Gets Final U.K. Date, Pricing
11:00PM Brian Ashcraft | PlayTV, Sony Europe’s HDTV tuner & recorder for the PS3, has gotten a final release date for the UK. While it was previously announced that the unit would be released September, Sony announced today that PlayTV will be released September 19th for £69.99 ($US 133). Originally, it was thought that PlayTV would retail for £80. Play TV Release Information [ThreeSpeech] More »
News
Quantum of Solace Pooh Poohs Bourne Video Game
10:40PM Brian Ashcraft | Bond game Quantum of Solace stars movie Bond Daniel Craig. The Bourne game does not star Matt Damon. It stars some dude. Quantum of Solace dev Garrett Young chimes in about his thoughts about that: The Bourne movies I think are really good. I think a lot of people maybe thought they were maybe better than the Bond movies until Casino Royale. The Bourne game… we did download the demo, we did look at it, like we do anything that’s new and coming out. Turok we played and other things that are new, we played GTA although that’s not really in our space. But… yeah… not super impressed with the game. No offence to those guys at all. We’re actually now partners. They’re kind of merged in with Activision, so now they’re in San Diego. I haven’t met them yet. I don’t know anything about them at all. I hope their game does well. It’s always tough though when you make a game and you don’t have the lead character from the movie. Yep, yep. The suspension of disbelief is obviously harder. If you’re making a Bourne game, you need fucking Matt Damon. Quantum of Solace’s Garrett Young speaks [OXM via CVG] More »
No Leipzig Press Conference From Microsoft
10:20PM Luke Plunkett | Expecting a big announcement from Microsoft at Leipzig? Don’t! The company have confirmed that they won’t be holding a press conference at the show, instead choosing to focus on…booths and demos. Demos that won’t include Gears of War 2, since that game will be absent from the show entirely. So…no Microsoft presser, no Gears 2, and Nintendo won’t be at the show at all…that leaves us with a single, solitary press conference. Which is Sony’s, on August 20. No arguments over best presser this time! Confirmed: No Microsoft press conference at Games Convention [VG247] More »
The Face of PS3? Sackboy
10:00PM Brian Ashcraft | People are excited about LittleBigPlanet. No wonder the game’s being pushed to push PS3s. Says marketeer for LBP Mark Valledor: We want LittleBigPlanet to lead the charge into a new genre of gaming and turn Sackboy into the next emblematic character for the PS3… We have coined 2008 ‘the year of the PS3′, and are confident that with the launch of LittleBigPlanet we will continue to see the momentum build throughout the end of this year and on to the next… This is a very big title for us. It really is. You think it’ll move PS3s? PS3’s Future Rides on This Unlikely Superhero [Advertising Age via Eurogamer] More »
And The Worst Games To Play On Xbox Live Are…
9:30PM Luke Plunkett | You pop in your Halo 3 disc, you fire up Xbox Live, and you won’t have any trouble finding somebody to play against. Same goes for Call of Duty 4. And Grand Theft Auto IV. But what about the other end of the multiplayer spectrum? What games are you least likely to find somebody still playing in August 2008? OXM ran a little test, and while it’s far from scientific, it’s certainly indicative. They played a range of games for around half an hour – Brian Lara Cricket, World Championship Poker, SmackDown v Raw amongst them – and catalogued how many other players they ran into. The results are entertaining, if hardly surprising, though I’d have loved to see them try Chromehounds. Xbox 360’s Dead Online Games [OXM] More »
Nintendo Copyrights ‘Piktura’
9:00PM Brian Ashcraft | A month before E3, Nintendo Co., Ltd. copyrighted “Piktura” with the Japanese patent office. Hrm, Piktura? Does that refer Pikmin? Or does that (Piktura = a pun on picture?) refer to something connected to the Wii Photo Channel? Or maybe, the new Pikmin game will incorporate the Photo Channel? Who knows. Nintendo, Nintendo does, that’s who. Search Engine [Industrial Property Digital Library via Siliconera] [Pic] More »
Final Fantasy XI Boss Takes At Least 18 Hours To Beat?
8:30PM Luke Plunkett | There’s one boss that stands above all others in Final Fantasy XI. Pandemonium Warden. Never seen it myself (never even played FFXI myself), but I’m assured he’s a tough cookie. So tough, in fact, that when the guild BeyondTheLimitation tried to take him on the other day, they ran into some problems. Namely, that it was taking hours to defeat just a single form of a monster that had already changed form 20 times. In the end, the guild had to call it quits, because after 18 hours of combat members of the party started throwing up and passing out from exhaustion. 18 hours? We get it Square, tough bosses are tough, but 18+ hours of combat isn’t fun. It doesn’t sit well with the game’s own warning message, either. How Long is Too Long? [Pet Food Alpha, thanks Brandon!] More »
Wrap Your Books In Castlevania
8:00PM Brian Ashcraft | This Halloween, DS title Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is getting released in North America and Japan. Konami Style is offering a limited edition pack that includes the game software, two disc soundtrack and a book cover. And not just any book cover, a fancy book cover. All this is yours for ¥8,830 ($US 81). 『悪魔城ドラキュラ 奪われた刻印』にサントラ＆ブックカバー付きの特別版が登場 [Dengeki Online] More »
