To: Crecente
From: Ashcraft

Last night was pretty rough. Kid woke up suddenly and starting barfing all over the futon — which I had the pleasure of cleaning. Beef stew. Yay! He didn't go to school today, but stayed home and watched Kiki's Delivery Service over and over again. Seems okay, now. I probably won't be eating beef stew until sometime during the next World Cup.

OH. So, today I started using two separate laptops while working. It actually seemed to increase my productivity. I can totally understand why Elvis would watch four (was it four?) TVs at once. Felt like I was getting more down switching between them. Now whether I actually was... Don't you switch between two computers while working?

What you missed last night
Stupid man talks GTA IV
Yet another MGS4 bundle
MGS4 changes
Miis are serious business
Another manufacturer says Blu-ray Xbox 360 is coming
Rockstars suggestions for GTA IV lock-ups
Iwata answers
Activision sitting out E3

Late Night with Conan O'Brien's Conan O'Brien said this about Grand Theft Auto IV in his opening monologue:

In the past, Grand Theft Auto's been severely criticized for being too violent. The new version, it's been toned down a lot, I think in reaction to the criticism.

I'm not sure it's better. Take a look.

It's Friday, and the PlayStation Network's up and running again after the recent overhaul, which means it's time for SCEE to start updating the SingStore again. This week sees 48 tracks added to SingStar's online store, with 23 english-language tracks joined by 25 songs for Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Portugese and Spanish fans. I can't speak for the non-English stuff, but the English tracks, they're still just bringing over songs already available on the PS2 versions. Who knows, maybe they're saving the new stuff for the game's US launch later this month.

Last we heard about the Clock Tower movie was way back in 2006. Chilean horror filmmaker Jorge Olguin was supposed to helm the pic and When A Stranger Calls scribe Jason Wade Wall was taking writing duties. Well, all that's been scrapped it seems. Hollywood trade Variety is reporting that Senator Entertainment is set to produce the Capcom game adaptation for Weinstein Co. The script is being written by Eric Poppen (Borderland) and will be produced by Marco Weber and Martin Weisz (The Hills Have Eyes 2). Capcom's President Haruhiro Tsujimoto is set executive produce. Shooting starts this July.
Senator Adapting Clock Tower [Variety Thanks, jmh!]

Poor Britain. Your 360 Video Marketplace, it was so late! And is still woefully understocked! What could possibly make amends for this? How about...uh, five Michael Jackson videos? Bad, Billie Jean, Thriller, Beat It and Black or White are all available, all for 200 points, and all - sadly for the legions of Macaulay Culkin fans in Ireland and the United Kingdom - all in standard definition. No, before you ask, I don't know why the hell they're there either.
Marketplace Roundup for May 1, 2008 [Microsoft]

Yes, yes. Japan wants a Final Fantasy VII remake. Maybe you want a remake, too. This we know! But is it possible? Well, of course, it's possible. But what are the chances of it actually happening any time soon? Square Enix's Yoshinori Kitase, director of the original FFVII, says:

My feelings are that if a remake were to work well then all the core members of the original team must be reassembled, all the artists and designers.

The problem is that, although all of us have an idea of what a remake should be and how to do it, organising such a thing right now is logistically very difficult. All the different members are now involved in very new, very large projects like Final Fantasy XIII and those projects are going to take a while.

Maybe, when all those games are finished then we can look at doing something like that.

Of course, that said we came up with the idea for Crisis Core in just two days. It was a case of 'this is what we want to do, so let's do it'. So, you can definitely expect the probability of something spontaneous happening at some point, but it's hard to predict.

Just as a quick follow-up to last night's post, it looks like Rockstar have collaborated with a lot more than just RockersNYC when clothing the denizens of Liberty City. Players have since spotted some of the game's NPCs sporting LRG's "Dead Serious" hoodies, which means the game's probably full of this kind of unannounced, niche-targeted advertising. Sneaky, and no doubt equal parts fascinating to marketing students and streetwear fashionistas alike.
LRG Dead Serious Hoodie in Grand Theft Auto IV [Hypebeast]

Nice to see that Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi isn't pussy footing around. Dude is clearly able to drive. Fast. Here he takes to the wheel of the new Nissan GT-R and pushes it upwards of 190 mph. This is exactly the person you want making your realistic racing simulators.

Gran Turismo Creator [Auoblog]

Griffith University, with campuses spread across SE Queensland, Australia, love them some Portal. Or, at least their webmasters and/or design team love them some Portal. Because when the time came to design a new "gateway for student and staff services" on the university website, they called it a - yes - portal. Then updated its logo accordingly.
[Griffith University, thanks Christian!]

Face it: The Xbox 360 hasn't done so hot in Japan. That doesn't mean everyone in Japan hates it. Oh, no! Not at all. In fact, at least a handful people really like the Xbox 360. Look at the above picture. This individual likes the 360 so much, he/she/it bought back-ups. If that's not undying adoration, we really don't know what is.

Look, I'm not normally one to get all hot and bothered by the stuff people that don't play games say about game. But this rant, by CNN's Glenn Beck? As a gamer I'm stumped. But as a gamer and a history grad, I'm...less than amused. It's like a one-two punch with ignorance-coated knuckle-dusters.
[thanks James!]

It's not that Matt Damon doesn't like the action-heavy Bourne game, it seems he just doesn't like video games! Lev Chapelsky from Blindlight says they've tried to get him in games before, but Damon's not all that keen. Blindlight is responsible for helping to put Robert Downey Jr. in the Iron Man game and Edwart Norton into The Incredible Hulk game. According to Chapelsky:

Don't know why Capcom bothered with all these. There's 14 shots of Lost Planet: Colonies here, and they really only needed to send one, because when you show Frank West in naught but his Capcom-flavoured undies, we kinda get all distracted...

Yup. Another one. Well, another three, to be precise. Sony Japan have just announced that they'll be releasing a new PS3 bundle - The "Metal Gear Solid 4 Welcome Box" - to tie-in with the release of MGS4 next month. The bundle will be released on June 12, will retail for ¥49,800, and will include a 40GB PS3, Sixaxis, a vanilla copy of MGS4 and a DualShock 3. It'll be available in all three Japanese colours: black, white and silver (both controllers will be the same colour as the console), and will be offered for a limited time only. More pics, and the presser, after the jump.

No surprises here! None at all! Japan's Dengeki Online polled a few of its readers, asking "Which video game do you want remade?" The results are:

Late last week, Kojima Productions released a (mostly) new MGS4 trailer. This is, it wasn't new new, but rather, "new." Kojima Productions went through and made various changes, alterations to assets that appeared in earlier trailers. But what kind of changes? Are they changes for the better? Or not? Above, is a comparison. On the left is footage from an older, yellowish MGS4 trailer, while on the right there's brand new footage. Keep in mind this isn't the first time Kojima Pro has tweaked cut scenes. Probably not the last, either!

Click through the gallery below. Some of the changes are also circled in red so you can easily see them.

The PAL PlayStation Store's usual slim pickings gets somewhat of a free pass this week, as with GTA IV upon us I can't imagine too many people clamouring for PSP demos or wallpapers. It's still slim pickings, however. No Echocrome, no PS3 demos, just Ape Quest for the PSP and some Need for Speed DLC.

It just won't stop. And you can be damn sure Uwe Boll will do everything he can to make sure it doesn't. That's right, we're back for another round of Boll vs. Bay in which crappy low budget director Uwe Boll and crappy big budget director Michael Bay butt heads! Boll said in an exclusive video:

Hi here's Uwe Boll, I'm very happy to say the fight is on. Boll Vs. Bay. It's a rumble in the jungle 2, it will be in Kinshasa, Zaire. I think September 30th will be the fight. Boll against Bay. He agreed to do it, I'm very proud of it. So if you want to be live there you need ten tickets from Postal opening May 23rd. You bring these tickets and this will be the entry to the boxing fight, Boll against Bay. Or you can buy tickets on eBay or wherever else you can buy it, of course also, but I think the cheapest way is with the Postal tickets. OK, so Michael Bay, start training and I think you will go down to be honest. I think round three or round four you will go down in history, not only for the worst war movie ever: Pearl Harbor, no, also for the worst boxer in the ring against Uwe Boll ever. Thank you.

Forget the list Miyamoto made. That one was an internet popularity contest, and considering the mobilisation powers of Nintendo fanboys, his prominence should surprise nobody. What is a pleasant surprise, however, is the presence of some gaming luminaries on the real Time 100, the list put together by the magazine themselves. They've honoured Harmonix's Alex Rigopolous and Eran Egozy, both for their innovation with Guitar Hero & Rock Band, as well as the knock-on effect of saving "classic rock for generations to come". Rock Band: not just a game, an instrument of history.
Alex Rigopulos & Eran Egozy [The Time 100] [Pic]

The latest issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine has more info on what-looks-like playable Metal Gear Solid memories in MGS4. According to the magazine, cut scenes at the beginning of the missions refer to the franchise's evolution. What's more:

If you're in the market for a couple of shiny new peripherals for your PC, then this offer from Microsoft might be worth a look. Until the end of July, the company will give you 30% cash back on a selected range of its peripherals. This range includes predominately keyboards, mice and webcams. The 30% is based on the RRP of the product.

You'll find a press release with eligible products and terms & conditions after the jump. Oh, and before you ask - Xbox hardware is not part of the deal.

Sony boasted of increased hardware sales, GameStop traffic anecdotes and the word of Pach, so what can Microsoft bring to the table in this battle for GTA IV sales supremacy? More anecdotes. Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has told Next-Gen that "retail partners" are telling them the 360 version not only racked up twice as many pre-orders as the PS3 version, but has been outselling it by the same margin. He also says that, according to the same partners, 360 hardware sales have increased during the week, before urging "we typically wait for NPD to give us a better read on that". You know what? With all these anecdotes flying aroud the place, we might wait too. Thanks.
MS: 360 GTA IV Outselling PS3 Version 2-to-1 [Next-Gen]

A toned-down version of Dark Sector based on the Japanese build? Yes, we could deal with that.

Sadly, it seems this information was more of a plan rather than solid confirmation, as we were led to believe. Digital Extremes, the developer of the game, got back to us recently with this:

We were aware of the Australian banning, it got quite a few headlines over [in the US]. We did make an altered version of Dark Sector for Japan which could easily be updated for Australia but D3 hasn't requested that we do it yet.

Digital Extremes says it doesn't want us to miss out on the game but as far as it knows "it's not going to happen". Australian retailers: 0, overseas stores: 1.

While any and all GTA sales are good news for Rockstar and Take-Two, a little higher up the food chain Sony and Microsoft are fighting a war over which platform gained the most from the game's release. Stakes are high: no game this big has ever released on both platforms simultaneously, so whichever picked up the most sales (or even sales momentum) could be seen to have struck a mighty blow in the struggle for console dominance. Sony have been the first to claim "victory" in the initial stages of this battle of the platforms, issuing a press release today boasting of an increase in hardware sales, while also calling upon not merely their own chest-beating, but comment from GameStop and, strangely, commenting gun-for-hire Michael Pachter.

Think that waggle machine is all light-hearted fun? Think again. Nintendo isn't screwing around. Nintendo is dead serious. Listen to company honcho Satoru Iwata talk about Miis:

To Nintendo, licensing Mii is identical to licensing Mario. If you read Iwata Asks interview series in website, you can understand how Mii was created in detail, so I hope you can read them if you have time. Mii is actually the result of more than 10 years of efforts.

Mr. Miyamoto, the inventor of Mii, himself has been saying that, 'In a sense, licensing Mii is same as licensing Mario — Nintendo should grant the licence when we can conclude that the proposed project is worthwhile. Should we allow any and all the licensees to use Mii licence for whichever projects, Mii's brand image will be hurt. Because we are not granting Mario licence to any and all, we should not do so with Mii either.'

This is the current policy of Nintendo. So, at the software development stage, we are consulting with the developers as to how they would like to make use of Mii, and our Licensing Department handles on a case-by-case basis.

It's set to arrive many, many months after its debut on consoles, but distributor Funtastic has confirmed a May 29 release date for the prehistoric/sci-fi shooter. Or knifer, if you happen to be my brother.

I'm already quite keen to give Mass Effect another whirl when it hits PCs, because I firmly believe the platform to be the home of role-playing games. I feel the same way about first-person shooters - nothing beats a mouse and keyboard.

I'm also touching base with Funtastic to see if the PC version will have extra content over the console games. Stay tuned.

Valve might make some of the best games for grown-ups around, but that doesn't mean they're a one-trick pony. Speaking with CVG, Doug Lombardi has said that they're actually interested in making games for kids as well:

Tipster Scott has let us know that EB Games has presold its entire allocation of the limited edition of Metal Gear Solid 4. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that EB Games is the only distributor of the limited edition in Australia - at least at retail. According to Scott, this was confirmed by three EB employees and two store managers.

I contacted Atari not long ago regarding the exclusivity of the game locally after the US found out that GameStop would be the grand pumba. It said it had yet to make any announcements.

As a consolation prize, I've included the Australian box art for the game. If the version here is too tiny for your liking, a larger picture can be found after the jump.

A report from Taiwanese news source Economic Daily News says that Pegatron Technology—a recently formed subsidiary of Asus that shouldn't be confused with the Decepticon leader—has received an order from Microsoft to manufacture a Blu-ray equipped model of the Xbox 360. According to the report, Pegatron says that it plans to begin production on the HD version of the Xbox 360 soon, with plans to ship within the next six months, aiming for a pre-holiday release.

In case you haven't been paying attention, both the Iron Man movie and the game of the Iron Man movie are coming out tomorrow (or tonight at midnight), so you only have a few hours to complete your homemade suit of armour before heading out to the stores. Andrew Le already has his done, having painstakingly crafted this suit of armour in just six days.