Not that many Steam customers will need convincing to pre-purchase Empire: Total War, but just in case you do, Valve and Sega have teamed up to offer you a little sweetener. You may be put off paying for a game in October that’s not due until 2009. Who knows. Anyway, that sweetener is, you pre-purchase Empire: Total War, and you get Rome: Total War (Gold edition) for free. And so free that you can play it right away, you don’t even need to wait for Empire to come out.
It’s not the movie’s fault. This is simply a super short clip from Japanese TV network NHK that shows off…not much of anything. (At least the dragonball looks decent!) The movie is getting released in Japan next spring. The country’s reaction to Hollywood’s interpretation should be interesting, but it should do decent enough here. Some people in Japan are more impressed with Hollywood doing a big budget adaptation than with Hollywood doing a good big budget adaptation.
Microsoft have announced an “Xbox 360 Live Pack”, which contains a 60GB HDD, a wired headset, ethernet cable and 3 month Xbox Live Gold subscription. In other words, everything you need in the Arcade 360, but don’t get. So it’s no surprise to see that the bundle is priced at $US99, which just so happens to be the exact price difference between the Arcade and Pro consoles. It’ll be out in the US in early November.
Fallout 3 is out. People seem to like it. The game press is giving the game good reviews so far, but developer Bethesda Softworks divulges it does get nervous about what reviewers think. Says Bethesda’s Pete Hines, “We’re never really sure how these [reviews]will turn out. So in general, we’re always nervous/anxious.” Hines goes on to say that it’s not just the critics who matter, but also the opinions of those gamers who are purchasing the game with their own hard earned cash. So regular gamer people who have bought Fallout 3, put on your critic cap and feel free to let all know what you think.
Hey, do you use the PSP’s Media Manager? No, didn’t think so. But let’s pretend, for a moment, that you do. Boy, will you be excited by this! A new version of the Media Manager has been released, with the biggest change being integration with the PlayStation Store. Good news for PSP owners without the ability to access the PSP store directly (which update 5.01 now allows).
Resistance 2? Gears of War 2? Far Cry 2? The best shooter this holiday is Call of Duty: World at War — so say the folks who made it. “There’s a lot of competition this year,” says Treyarch’s senior producer Noah Heller, “but I feel very strongly we have the best shooter this Christmas… I’m looking forward to Gears of War, Far Cry and Resistance 2, and I’m sure they will be great games, but I am confident the consumer will come back to Call of Duty.” Well, what do you expect him to say, that they’ve made the fourth best shooter this Christmas. Be sure to buy the new CoD, it’s not as good as the two other big shooters! Fat chance.
While it’s fairly common these days for console games (Wii excepted) to launch with widescreen/16:9 support, PC games aren’t so fortunate. Even in 2008, with widescreen monitors becoming so popular that even the Xbox 360 natively supports many of their resolutions, a ton of PC games don’t ship with proper widescreen support. Widescreen Gaming Forum to the rescue!. If there’s a workaround, you’ll find it there. If there’s complaining to be had, it’ll start there. So it’s great seeing that the site have just held their first “Widescreen Gaming Awards”, to both honour and shame the best and worst in supporting widescreen gaming on the PC.
What better way to say Happy Holiday than with a console price cut. This year, Sony won’t be saying it that way. The company, states Sony Computer Entertainment exec Ray Maguire, “has a business to run” and must “do the right thing” for Sony shareholders. Forget holiday consumer charity! Oh, the brutal honesty, so brutal, so honest. The full Maguire quote: Well the pressure comes from the consumers obviously and so therefore there’s always pressure on price, but you know we have a business to run, and we have to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the shareholders as well… At the moment there’s a marketplace for PS3 and I think for this particular Christmas, with the kind of quality of games we’re seeing coming out this Christmas, I don’t think the price of the console is going to be an issue at all.
Before we go any further, know that this information isn’t scientific. It doesn’t even come from Capcom. But it’s still interesting, so, on we go! Event Hubs have posted a chart outlining – based on the Japanese arcade release of the game – which Street Fighter IV characters they feel are better than other Street Fighter Characters. Their methodology? If two players of equal skill play each other ten times, how many wins would each character rack up?
More Fallout 3 advertising dramas! First it was subway adverts being pulled, now it’s a bunch of online trailers, Bethesda politely requesting that a number of websites, including Shacknews (though, it must be noted, not us), remove any and all Fallout 3 trailers they’d ever posted, saying only the request was being made “in connection with ESRB’s advertising guidelines”. Guess there’s something in those trailers that’s not supposed to be in there. Good thing the ESRB acted so swiftly, and locked this down before the game was released, and…oh.
