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When Final Fantasy XIII was announced for the 360, it was hard to miss the high-pitched scream that went out across the internet. Mostly from Sony fanboys, aghast at the thought of a Final Fantasy game appearing somewhere other than a PlayStation. Which was good for a giggle, what with Final Fantasies I-VI on Nintendo machines, Final Fantasy VII & VIII going to the PC, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles going to GameCube and Final Fantasy XI going to every machine known to man. Not like there wasn't a precedent, people.
So rational, normal humans shouldn't have as much trouble digesting these words from Squeenix boss Yoichi Wada, who knows which way the current generation's winds are blowing:
Here's a batch of suggestive Halo 3 screenshots game blog Hawty McBloggy has collected. Suggestively suggestive! There's nothing like riding a Mangoose. Nothing.
Hit the link for a possibly NSFW gallery — depending how you view Spartan sex.
Hot Spartan Pr0n [Hawty McBloggy]
Earlier, we brought word that Activision was taking inventory of Sierra's catalogue and picking and choosing games it wanted to publish. Some games, like Crash Bandicoot, made the cut. Other games like Ghostbusters: The Video Game did not. Does that mean the game's been canned? Well, no. It means that the game doesn't have a publisher. The dev team is still there! Dan Aykroyd is still there! Ernie Hudson, he's still there!! Activision isn't the only show in town, and as a Vivendi spokesperson told game site Destructoid: "It is not cancelled and will not be cancelled".
We are following up.
Future of Ghostbusters [Dtoid]
Making an MMO can be hard. You can put years into developing not just the game, but the necessary infrastructure, only to launch it and have it die within weeks. Sure, Blizzard know how to do it, but few other developers have managed. Microsoft certainly tried, and tried twice (Marvel Universe, True Fantasy). They also failed twice, with both projects canned, something Shane Kim takes full responsibility for:
I'll admit MGS has not had success in the MMO space, and that happened under my leadership, so I take full responsibility. It's a tough and challenging space that's evolving all the time - a lot of shifting sands. We haven't been able to crack the code.
There there Shane, chin up! What do we do when we fall off the horse?
Lionshead head Peter Molyneux is best know for Populous and Black & White. And while he and his team are hard at work on the upcoming Fable 2, Molyneux divulges that the studio has more Fable games planned — Fable 3, Fable 4 and Fable 5, actually. What's more, Molyneux confesses his desire to work on a sports game of all things:
One day I really should do a sports game, just because it really seems such a genre which is just locked in stone. We know how we do sports games. That is a real challenge to me. Same with things like driving games. What I want is for a game I do next is a really big challenge.
Oh man, Peter Molyneux hyping a sports game. Can you imagine?
Molyneux Intervew [GameTrailers via vg247 via Eurogamer] [Pic]
Sony just posted their quarterly financial results (of note: the games division's revenue is up from ¥196 billion to ¥229 billion, and is finally making a profit, going ¥5.4 billion in the black). Amidst the investor-only, super-boring stuff are some hardware sales numbers. And what are sales number? All together now: sales numbers are fun. Between April and June, Sony sold 1.56 million PS3s, 3.72 PSPs and 1.51 PS2s, for a total of 6.79 million pieces of hardware sold. That's an increase over the same period last year, which saw them move "only" 5.49 million. And they accomplished that in spite of sliding PS2 sales, which are down 44%, meaning, yes, the PSP is still selling like hotcakes (up 75% from the same time last year) while the PS3 really starts to pick up steam (up 123%).
In a financial report released today, Sony reports PS3 software sales were on the rise in first quarter 2008. In Q4 2007, 16.8 million units of PS3 software were shifted worldwide compared to 22.8 million in Q1 2008 — that's an increase of 18.1 million units! The financial report does not specify if that includes purchased PSN games or not. PSP worldwide software sales were also up: In Q1 2008, 11.8 million units were moved, which is an increase of 2 million over the last quarter.
While both PS3 and PSP sales were up, PS2 sales were down. Because of that Sony states, it means that overall software sales for the PlayStation platforms were down as well. Q1 2008 saw 19.3 million units sold, and that's a decrease of 11.8 million units.
John Riccitiello is a big (in importance terms, not stature), powerful man in charge of a big, powerful company, but that doesn't mean either of them are perfect. They make mistakes. Have regrets. Develop nasty cases of the sposdas. Chief amongst Riccitiello's - and by extension EA's - regrets is throwing down big development bucks on 360 and PS3 games instead of Wii titles.
...we typically [figure] out who the market leader [is] going to be before the start of the cycle and bet with our development resources on that platform. We made the wrong call there (by betting on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360), which made this transition harder than it would otherwise be.
Well John, like my boy Pepe always says, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em and start churning out shitty family sports games.
Mercury News interview: Electronic Arts CEO champions laser-like focus on making games [The Mercury News]
To get everyone ready in Japan for Soul Calibur IV, Namco Bandai released a manga explaining how to play and features like character customisation. Above is the manga as it originally appeared in Japanese. Think of it as an instruction manual you'd actually read. Below, there's a "scanlation" version kindly translated by website Otadesho. Take a look, it amused us.
It's been said a million times before, but bears repeating. Numbers. Are. Fun. And few numbers are as fun as those which allow us to pit the industry's publishers against one another in a struggle for financial supremacy. Edge have put together an exhaustive feature outlining who they believe the industry's top 20 publishers are, and while the bulk of the piece is given over to their own rankings based on their own opinion, we prefer these hard numbers. Above, you can see the world's top publishers ranked according to their global revenue, while after the jump, they're ranked on their profit/loss margins, which makes for a very different chart.
We're excited about LittleBigPlanet. And maybe you are, too. LBP-centric site LittleBigPlanet Central is obviously jazzed as well and got a total of one hour and thirty minutes hands on with the game at this year's Comic Con, taking copious notes of things it noticed. Let's dive in:
Character Customisation
• There is a Tron suit you can wear in the game, along with a killzone helmet and mask.
• Not only that, but there are about 25 different materials and designs that you can choose to have your sackboy made out of, including 3 types of camo.
• There are held items that you can choose from, such as a wooden sword and a magic wand (a stick with a star on the top). You can't use them as weapons, but when you slap while holding an item you hit them with said item.
There's more after the jump. Lots more.
Europe's Rock Band pricing didn't go down too well, but at least they've got Rock Band pricing. Australia have so far been left out altogether, with only a "later this year" release timeframe hinted at. Well, according to a number of sources across the local retail sector, that timeframe is going to be October. You know, a month after Rock Band 2 is released in the US. But wait! That's bad, but things get worse. Employees at a couple of the nation's largest specialist games retailers have tipped us off as to what the game's going to cost would-be Aussie rock fiends, and the news is not good.
Nintendo has just announced that it and 54 game software companies are filing a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against companies that import "R4 Revolution for DS"-type devices, using the Unfair Competition Prevention Law as the legal grounding. Nintendo is asking for the cease of marketing, sales and importation of these Chinese-made devices. The R4 allows easy software piracy by fitting right into the DS's cartridge slot. Data is stored on a Micro SD and downloaded from websites via a flash drive, and the R4 has a small slot that the Micro SD card goes into. In a statement released today, Nintendo announced that these R4 devices "allow illegal uploading from the internet", adding that "it is causing severe damage to our company and software makers, and this is something that we cannot possibly overlook". In conclusion, Nintendo adds that such devices hurts the growth of the entire game industry and steps must be taken regarding the legality of R4 carts. It's important to note that this legal injunction is for Japan only.
Back in November 2007, Nintendo announced that it was "keeping a close eye on the products and studying them". Earlier this spring, Nintendo apparently pressured Akihabara retailers to stop carrying the popular R4 carts.
Hit the jump for a list of some of the companies who along with Nintendo have filed in this suit.
Reggie wants it. You (maybe) want it. Take-Two shareholders most certainly want it. So Grand Theft Auto on the Wii's a no-brainer, right? Sure looks that way to us, but we're not Take-Two. Our names aren't anything cool like Strauss. Take-Two themselves are being awful suggestive on the subject, with Ben Feder responding to the "GTA on Wii?" question with:
I can't comment on it, but obviously we have one of the best selling third -party games on the Wii in Carnival Games from 2K Play, so we know the Wii pretty well. We're building up assets to develop for the Wii and we're excited about its growth. I can't comment on GTA specifically on the Wii...
Read into that what you will, but we read a man saying those words with a smirk on his face and his right hand patting his wallet ever so softly.
Interview: Take-Two's Ben Feder Talks GTA, Wii, MMOs and More [GameDaily]
Why's Portal being released on Xbox Live Arcade? Valve say it's to give people who otherwise missed it a chance to catch up, see what all the fuss is about. When asked by OXM whether that meant other Valve games might be seeing a similar release, Doug Lombardi responded:
We'll certainly consider it. If you look at what we've done on Steam, we try to make all our games available and we're always reviewing the prices to keep them current. We'd love to do that, but Portal: Still Alive is our first step at doing that beyond the PC.
First step, but probably not the last. Valve love money as much as the rest of us.
Counter-Strike on XBLA? [OXM, via CVG]
Announced on Friday, unveiled today is the character art for the Joker, as he'll appear in the upcoming Mortal Kombat v DC fighter from Midway. As great as the most recent silver screen portrayal of the character may be, it's nice to see the team showing a little restraint and going for the "classic" joker, even if he looks a little more top-heavy than we remember.
So yeah, Metal Gear Solid 4 closes the chapter on Solid Snake. And Kojima Productions have confirmed that MGS4 will be the last canonical game to feature Snake. But does that mean there won't be another Snake in the future? Game creator Hideo Kojima explains:
For the privileged few, a Red Alert 3 beta test is about to kick off. And in order to get those testers sorted, EA needed to let them know the game's minimum system specs. Now granted, this being a beta, and with the game a whiles off, things are subject to change. But if they do change, they probably won't change much. Click through for the full run-down, but if you need a summary first, know that thing's are looking surprisingly generous.
We'd have thrown in some quip about this being the 1,174th time Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway has been delayed, but since that cut a little too close to the bone we let it slide. This one's not too bad, however: the "glass is half full" brigade can console themselves with the fact it's only for a month, with the game's original August release pushed back to September. To tide you over while you wait, the first details on the game's collector's edition have been revealed on GameStop, showing that for an extra $US 10 you'll get a US Airborne figure, a comic book and a map of the upper Rhine, should you ever be bicycling around the area with the missus and wondering about the position of German Panzer divisions.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Suffers Delay, Limited Edition Revealed [Shacknews]
Activision announced today that it would be taking a handful of titles formerly published by (and planned to be published by) Sierra and add them to its own product portfolio. Games in the Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro the Dragon series will join the Activision family of published titles, with Prototype and an unnamed, unannounced fifth title to rest in the shade of the mega publisher's wing.
What's missing from that list? Loads of Sierra titles. Ghostbusters: The Video Game and Brütal Legend to name two. WET and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena to name two more. Want another? 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Yes, "Uh oh" might be the words you're looking for.
"We have conducted a thorough review of Vivendi Games' brand portfolio and are retaining those franchises and titles that are a strong fit with our long-term product strategy", Mike Griffith, CEO of Activision Publishing, said in a corporate statement. "We are reviewing our options regarding those titles that we will not be publishing".
"Reviewing our options" may mean axing of certain non-guaranteed hits or shopping them out to another publisher.
Griffith is also quoted as saying "We are focused on improving efficiency across the combined organisation and are concentrating on businesses where we have leadership positions that are aligned with Activision Publishing's long-term corporate objectives".
That press release speak for "people are going to lose their jobs".
Thanks to Nirolak for the tip.
Sure, everything's rosy over at Nintendo HQ these days, but for a while there, things weren't looking so hot. Any gaming pundit could have told you that. But what were Nintendo thinking during those dark, dark days? They were worried. Especially boss Satoru Iwata, who aside from fearing the company "would die a slow death" if they didn't escape a shrinking market, was also worried about his own job prospects, telling Spiegel:
I was lucky everything worked so quickly. For the longest time I wasn't sure what would happen first: that we'd see success with the new console, or that I'd be fired.
Satoru, someone with your qualifications would have no trouble finding a top-flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries.
"Wir verstehen, dass die Leute enttäuscht sind" [Spiegel, via CVG]
Add Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter (and possibly a few of his less famous co-workers) to the list of folks who believe that Nintendo has not yet shrugged off the "core" gamer. According to a report from Gamasutra, Pachter has weighed in on Nintendo's E3 showing, saying "We think that Nintendo focused upon building upon its formidable lead with the mass market, and do not consider the lack of major hard core game announcements to be an abandonment of its core".
The "core" may still be hanging its head, waking up in cold sweats to the sound of Wii Music clanging through their heads, but that doesn't mean Nintendo isn't doing spectacularly on the financial side.
Pachter figures that the Big N will pull in some $US 3.9 billion for the quarter, adding up to a $US 17.7 billion take for the entire year. If Nintendo has indeed abandoned the core, who could blame 'em? That's "fuck you" money, right there.
Pachter: Nintendo To Report $US 3.91b In Q1 Sales, Hasn't Abandoned Core [Gamasutra]
Over the weekend we posted a rumor about Xbox Live's second class citizens having access to online play on select titles. It's not a rumour anymore, as Microsoft has confirmed that Silver level Live members can indeed have online visitation rights with their Xbox 360 buddies and not just on the weekends. It's all part of an unannounced promotion, we learned.
In tandem with the announcement that MS was "taking off the Gold-only restriction for multiplayer gaming over Games for Windows LIVE", cross platform games (Xbox 360/PC) will be free for all for a limited time, according to a Microsoft spokesperson. Get crackin' online gamers. It won't last long, they say.
With character creation tools in our current-gen games comes some serious character creation; most of it character re-creation. To wit, Kotaku reader CB has gone ahead and created both Raiden and Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 2 style, to tell a tale of souls and swords eternally retold. Or something. Read this post with Soulcalibur announcer guy voice and it might make more sense.
More pics of the sneaking souls in our gallery below. We await the flood of user creations when the game officially streets in North America this week.
Sitting down with Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon at Comic-Con last week, we chatted about the developer's latest creation Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. This was after some extended play time with newly released characters Shang Tsung and Catwoman, both gobs of fun to play.
Having already discussed the previous take on Mortal Kombat 8 at length — with Boon telling me that it had been scrapped in favour of MK vs. DCU and that the ninth proper entry in the series may take it back to its ultra-violent roots — I wondered how much sleep Boon and crew had lost over the decision to junk that, instead adding a bunch of out of place superheroes.
Given that MK vs. DCU has no plans to introduce any new Mortal Kombat characters to the mythos — Boon called the MK side a "greatest hits" line up — how did the team feel fans would react to the inclusion of DC's finest? (The other "Vs". option Boon told us about chilled us to the bone, by the way.)
Posted by Logan Booker at 10:30 AM on July 29, 2008
Why Penny Arcade Took so Long to Go PSN and May Never Go Wii Ware
Easy solution - buy an Xbox or PC!
The Skinny On Resident Evil: Degeneration
It has zombies. What else do we need to know?
Comic-Con: It's a Wrap
Something at Comic-Con 08 you didn't see? It's all right here.
'Uncharted Is Structured Like A Porn Movie'
I must have missed the boobies the first time through. Guess I know what I'll be playing today...
Dead Rising Wii vs. Dead Rising Xbox 360
There are zombies galore in both games, so I'm not troubled at all.
Ah, Fall 2008. It's the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, because early on in a year, Fall 2008 seems to be the Promised Land of game releases. Everything's coming out in that pleasantly hazy "Fall 2008" window.
That is, until the delays begin. "Fall 2008" is liable to become any date from October to February, and that's exactly what's happened with the impressive-looking Afro Samurai, now delayed to January 27th. Feels funny calling it a "delay" when we never really had a date, huh?
Afro Samurai Delayed to January 27 [Shacknews]
The official street date for the new 60GB equipped Xbox 360 — the new "Pro" model — isn't for another week, but some retailers (Target) are already selling the console. It's priced at $349, a not-quite-a-price drop replacement for the 20GB model, if you're in the market for an extra 40 gigabytes. Your mileage may vary, but if you happen to cruise by a Target on the way home, you might score.
Xbox 360 60GB already out at Target [Penny College via Gizmodo]
You might not be as thrilled as I was to see first gameplay footage of Thunderforce VI for the PlayStation 2, but that's largely due to you having no soul and/or no Japanese console to play it on. It may also have something to do with my Sega Genesis nostalgia, as Thunderforce II is a game I bought twice over, back when funds were nigh impossible to come by as a 14 year old. Yes, that warrants three exclamation points.
Don't miss those beefy shot sound effects and classic shot types, even if you're distracted by the totally metal soundtrack. Here's one late birthday gift I'm treating myself to.
When former XNA community manager David Weller expressed concerns about crowding and quality standards when the new Community Games launch on Xbox Live, it resembled some of the discussions that have been had in the past regarding Xbox Live Arcade.
However, a Microsoft representative was quick to respond to Weller's concern that the company has a quality control problem, highlighting a few key ways that it plans to ensure its users get the best experience.
The debate about how to create emotional investment in games is an ongoing one, but legendary Spore designer Will Wright believes that letting users create their own content and characters is the key to creating that connection with players.
In a new interview with Level Up, Wright explains why letting users create their own Spore creatures was so key to the experience:
You never really hear game players telling each other about the cool cut-scene they saw in the games they are playing but they're always talking about the cool unique things they discovered to do on their own. By focusing on giving the players narrative freedom the game becomes more immersive and they show a much higher degree of ownership and authorship over the experience.
Earlier today we posted about an Orlando television station that posted a fact-less story under the headline: 'Video-Gaming' Child Predators Offering Points For Nude Photos.
The story itself has only one quote that touches on this bizarre, and overly-general statement from a Detective Lt. David Maurer who allegedly told the television station: "Kids are playing games, and they are being asked to take photos of themselves naked in order to get game points. There is not only the chatting version of the games but also a webcam involved".
I emailed the station to see if they could explain their story. Maybe tell us which game does this or when this happened, or if this happened. And what about those "points"? What is that about? No response. But intrepid reader Rastaman4200 got a response to his emailed questions:
Kaz Hirai, master of all things PlayStation, better known as Special K to his crew, says that the power of Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios is "unrivalled". According to a report from MCV, Kaz was not quoted as implying that should Nintendo or Microsoft attempt to step to this, they'd best check themselves before they wreck themselves. He then posed.
"Our first-party product is obviously platform exclusive and is the best out there", Mr. Hirai says, namechecking upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusives like LittleBigPlanet, God of War III and Resistance 2. In addition to those internally developed games, Kaz, not pictured, points once again to the power of the Blu-ray format, saying that bonus content exclusive to the PS3 platform is totally rad.
"Peace!" Kaz then didn't say. I'm out.
Look who's writing a column in the recently-revamped Edge Online! It's Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack, and he's talking about cut scenes. That's been sort of a hot-button issue lately, hasn't it? On one hand, it's difficult to tell a story without cut scenes. On the other hand, they fly in the face of a video game's ultimate goal: interactivity.
Dyack recognises this dichotomy, and says that cut scenes in themselves are not a problem, but rather his fellow designers have implemented them poorly:
Over the last five to ten years, so many games have been released where cut scenes are absolutely meaningless. They don't contribute to the content and don't contribute to the characters. They're almost like some kind of reward for completing the level, and that makes absolutely no sense.
As game designers we have to go beyond that. Cut scenes have to contribute to the game. That's a really good rule for people to follow. And it shows you that the classics, well, we still have a lot to learn from the classics.
So what will he do about cut scenes in his Too Human?
It looks like THQ released a trailer during last week's Comic-Con showing off one of the boss fights I described in my write-up of Deadly Creatures.
Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono fielded questions from the Street Fighter fanbase at Comic-Con this weekend at the inappropriately named "Making of Street Fighter IV" panel. While the majority of the questions and answers were gameplay focused or simply unanswerable, Ono did drop some good news — the console release of the fighter won't follow in the footsteps of Soulcaliburs II and IV.
That means it won't be coming home with console-exclusive fighters a la Yoda and Darth Vader (or Link, Spawn and Heihachi). Instead, each version is planned to include the same roster, the arcade line-up plus whatever new additions the SFIV team sees fit. We have a fairly good idea that Cammy is one of those new additions, but hope we'll get much more than just her.
Any requests?
With some calling Facebook the new frontier for gaming, it's unsurprising that it keeps making headlines. After all, it's not part of the gaming industry unless someone's complaining about excessive violence.
Yes, game violence. On Facebook.
If you're already a Facebook user, then you already might know about SuperPoke. If you don't, it works like this: you basically send a greeting message and icon to your friends — "give flowers to", "party with", generally nice things like that. They have "pokes" that are themed around holidays or events like popular movies, too. Some of them are a little bit offensive or silly. It's game-like, in that the more pokes you send your friends, the more you unlock, and it really doesn't get much more complicated than that.
So what's to rail against?
In order, these are the thoughts that went through my mind upon viewing the Comic-Con trailer for Activision's Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. "Hmmm. Neat. Huh. Interesting. Oooooo. Cool! Woot, Wolverine! That's not good." Fighting alongside Logan is a good thing. Fighting against him, not so much. Fighting against a berserk, alien-infected Wolverine? In the comics world that would be at least a two-part story, perhaps even three if they decided to stretch it out a bit. Between this trailer and McWhertor's impressions of the game so far, colour me intrigued. Perhaps Web of Shadows will turn out to be the game we initially thought Friend or Foe was going to be before they went all kiddie on us.
If you happened to miss our live coverage of the Halo universe panel at Comic-Con this weekend, we're not offended. It was pretty missable for the casual Halo fan. But if you're the least bit excited about the release of real-time strategy game Halo Wars, you'll be ecstatic to learn that maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to play as the Flood.
During the Q&A session, a good portion of the panel, a fan asked "Is there going to be a Flood appearance in the Halo Wars campaign?"
"That's a very good question", a panelist responded. "We haven't talked about any other races. All I can say is that it's a complete Halo game". It has already been announced that players will get their hands on a
