Nike? Ha! Adidas? Whatever! EA’s Peter Moore is rarin’ to turn his company into a sporting brand that eclipses all. Says Moore:
EA has had an extremely successful sports brand for years, but we’re evolving with new experiences targeting new consumers in our space… There’s a hunger that fuels our teams to challenge to be the leading sports brand in the world… We need to knock down the barriers to those who find the learning curve of our games too steep, and find new areas in sports – and health and wellness — that our brand can truly make a difference.
Well, there ya go, Peter Moore lays out his plans for EA to conquer.
Rockstar Games gets lots of hate. And that’s a shame, because Rockstar makes good games, which make lots of money. So we guess that balances it, so whatever. Here’s company co-founder/president Sam Houser on that: Most of the people who hate us are people it is truly an honour to be hated by — reactionary creeps with strange agendas — and the Daily Mail. Most people who know about modern pop culture know about GTA and like or dislike it on its own merits…
I think we [Sam and his brother and co-founder Dan]are both depressed at how boring we really are and how unexciting even the worse fabrications and exaggerations are when you read about them. None of it seems very rock and roll, so we find it a little sad, when there are probably better stories that could be written about both us and the industry/medium. No sharks, groupies or pounds of coke or anything fun at all. We read like angry dorks, which might be true, but is certainly not very exciting.
So all you haters, just think of Rockstar as angry dorks. That, and take deep breaths.
Grand Theft Auteur – Part 1 [Develop Mag via CVG]
And that’s all we know! Because all we know is that a rating for the game has turned up on the website of the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (ie the USK, ie Germany’s classification board), it’s got a 12 rating, it’s only for the PS3, and it is, apparently, a military strategy game. Seeing as we’ve never heard of this before, odds are good that it’s a PSN title. Odds are equally good that we’ll be seeing it at some stage during Sony’s lone ranger press conference at Leipzig next week.
Savage Moon [USK, thanks everyone who sent this in!]
We already knew that Mark Wahlberg won’t play Max Payne because of his “addictive personality”. Well, what did he think of the Max Payne script when he first read it?
They knew I wouldn’t even had read it if I knew it was based on a video game. But I read the script, and I thought this is a great script and a great character. And then, after seeing the game, I thought, ‘Wow, this is the most elaborate story I’ve ever seen from a video game.’ Really, there’s a lot going it, it’s a very intricate story. And, you know, the writers didn’t have to take my liberties… My assistant, who’s a complete gamer freak… I let him play the game non-stop…
That was nice of Marky Mark — you know, letting his gamer freak assistant to play! Wahlberg says that he does enjoy Wii Tennis with his daughter. While playing it, he also mentions how he hurt his thumb. That’s too bad.
Spike Interivew [Game Trailers via CVG]
Crysis Warhead is coming with a little bundled extra: Crysis Wars, a new take on Crysis’ multiplayer aspects. This trailer, made from in-game footage, shows that it’s looking both nice and fast, but if they don’t fix it so the Koreans don’t take 1,736 bullets to kill, it’ll all be for naught.
BlizzCon tickets went fast, completely selling out. And while Fahey didn’t have the best of lucky unluckily trying to secure tickets. Blizzard CEO Mark Morhaime released a statement on the WoW Forums:
I’ve got a bit of a rule when it comes to posting box art, since 90% of the time it’s utterly unremarkable. If it’s going up, it either needs to be for a big, big game, or it needs to be truly excellent cover art. It’s lovely when – like in LittleBigPlanet’s case – the two come together. Click through for a bigger version.
Exclusive: LittleBigPlanet UK packshot [Three Speech]
Sony Computer Entertainment announced two new entries in its “the Best” series: Patapon for PSP the Best and Oblivion for PLAYSTATION 3 the Best. Patapon is out September 25th for ¥2,8000 ($US 26) and Oblivion is out September 4th for ¥3,800 ($US 35). Wonder if you can get them cheaper used…
Know this, industry followers: Sony aren’t kidding around when they say the PS3 will have a ten-year shelf life. They mean it. It’s hard-wired company policy, that comes straight from the top. What’s not so widely known, however, is that it’s a policy that is being applied to all PlayStation products. Which, yeah, includes the PS2 (which is nearly there), but also the PSP. Sony’s Scott Steinberg: We do not have a planned obsolescence strategy [for the PSP] . Whether it’s Skype or some other peripherals, it’s not just a dumb terminal that lies secluded and isn’t enhanced with all the recent technologies and opportunities.
Did he…did he just call the DS a “dumb terminal”?
SCEA’s Steinberg On ‘Future-Proofing’ A Ten-Year PS3 [Gamasutra]
Remember when Japanese people lined up for Xbox 360 RPG Tales of Vesperia? That was pretty kooky! Kookier even still is that the console is sold out at gianormous retailers like Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo’s Akihabara. Above is a picture of the retailer from spring. According to CheapAssGamer‘s CheapyD, who spotted this sell out:
Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara is not just a big electronics store in Tokyo, it is one of the (if not the largest) electronics stores in the world. I was there earlier this week and was pretty suprised to see that they had sold out of all versions of the Xbox 360 consoles. Looks like the Japanese have got Tales of Vesperia fever, which was recently released over here.
Might be that or just an Akihabara thing — or it could be that stores are making space for the 60GB SKU. Read more of our previous and thrilling Xbox 360 Japan shortage coverage here. Hit the jump for Cheapy’s photographic evidence!
