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Midway One Step Closer To Oblivion
Posted by Luke Plunkett at 9:00 PM on November 21, 2008
If you hadn't caught on when their boss resigned, they lost a ton of money or they started firing a ton of people, maybe we need to spell it out for you: once-proud publisher Midway are in trouble. Serious trouble. So much trouble, in fact, that on November 14 they got a letter from the New York Stock Exchange, threatening the company that they'd be removed from the exchange if they can't sort themselves out in the next six months. Midway said, in a nutshell, "yes sir, we'll sort ourselves out", despite the fact they've spent the past 24 months doing little but making things worse.
Let's see, let's see, what's in the PAL store today...hrm, not much, unless you're a big spender on Rock Band/GH tunes. If you are, GREAT, if not, there's the offensively-priced Need for Speed content, some LittleBigPlanet costume stuff and...oh! There's a LocoRoco 2 demo. Neat. Oh! And the PS1 version of SimCity 2000. Also neat. So not all bad, then.
Like Oblivion before it, Fallout 3 is a great game. And like Oblivion before it, Fallout 3 launched fundamentally broken. And broken across all three of the game's platforms. If you're lucky, all you've had to contend with are crashes, lock-ups and graphical glitches. If you're unlucky, like me, 
Ubisoft today took the wraps off two alternate player skins you can use when playing the new Prince of Persia. One is Altair, of Assassin's Creed fame, 
When we jokingly suggested that the addition of 
In my efforts to learn more about the pretty space game EVE Online before it suddenly turns into Deep Space Nine with the Walking in Stations expansion, I've been reading a great deal about the Council for Stellar Management, an organisation of players, appointed by player vote, that bring important player concerns directly to developer CCP, acting on their behalf. It's basically the first democratically-elected governing body in a virtual world, to which players can submit their grievances and suggestions which are then passed on to CCP if deemed important enough to address. 
Square Enix's new Los Angeles studio is 
We've been following the PETA Cooking Mama back and forth with bated breath.
You know 
Capcom have gone a little remake mad. Bionic Commando Rearmed, Mega Man 9, they're falling over themselves trying to put out new versions of old games. And now, they want your help. An innocent-looking post on the Capcom blog asks "what games do YOU think Capcom should revisit?". Know that when a company PR man asks that question on a company PR blog, it's not for the purposes of idle chit-chat. They really want to know. I would suggest you all head over and let your voice be heard, but instead, I'll ask you not to, so as you don't drown out the next sentence.
A USA Today report is the setting for the announcement of Grand Theft Auto IV's long-awaited piece of downloadable content. Titled "Lost and Damned", the DLC will be available on February 19, and will leave Niko's story behind (though he will make a few cameo appearances) to follow the exploits of Johnny Klebitz, a member of the Lost biker gang that the game's radio channels liked to talk about so much. Rockstar's Dan Houser:
Changes are afoot at PlayStation.com next week. The official site is making single sign-on across all things PlayStation that much closer to reality, bringing improved gamer profile features. Starting sometime next week, you'll be able to log in to the site with your PlayStation Network ID. No Trophy integration just yet, but you'll be able to keep an eye on your friends list via the official site and rate and review your games. We're getting there, I guess.
When Google launched Lively, its web-based Second Life-esque virtual chat space, 
Half-Life isn't the only game celebrating its 
For a ten-year-old, Gordon Freeman has some pretty sharp facial hair. Yes, ten years ago this very day, those idiots at Black Mesa opened a pesky interdimensional rift and let all kinds of horrible beasties spill out into our universe. The big dopes.
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan's 
Mama just wants to make the nice people happy! This is the gist of a press release issued by Majesco Entertainment on behalf of Mama herself in response to PETA's recently released flash game, 
Guitar Hero World Tour is getting the Xbox Live Weekend treatment come November 27th, snagging the coveted US Thanksgiving spot on Microsoft's service. They're planning on making good use of the four-day weekend as well, kicking things off with an all-nighter kicking off Thanksgiving Day, lasting from sunset to sun up, targeted at those of you who can somehow stave off the sleepy effects of consuming massive amounts of dead bird. Then on Friday the obligatory play and win sweepstakes starts, running throughout the weekend with prizes ranging from 1GB memory sticks to a Samsung home theatre system. 
...delayed! According to a post on Lionhead's Fable II development blog, good old Sam explains that the Microsoft didn't think now was the right time for the big announcement they 
Posting on his company's official boards, Capcom PR man Christian Svensson's has revealed a little piece of information Sony "have been sharing" with them. That information says that "about" 50% of PS3 owners also own a PSP. It's the kind of statistic that's both immediately interesting and utterly inconsequential at the same time, but it does make you wonder: if half the PS3's in the US/world (it's not made clear) have a PSP in the same house, why aren't developers making more use of the little guy with their PS3 games?
There's been a LittleBigPlanet rumour this year that's been so strong it's popped up twice, once in 
Electronic Arts' mysterious Blueprint division is no more, according to a report from Variety. Formerly lead by EA LA vet Neil Young, the shrouded-in-secrecy project was reportedly established to create lower cost content with smaller teams based on original intellectual property. One of those unnamed projects was being developed by former Metroid Prime developers at start up Armature, but the majority of what Blueprint worked on was never publicly disclosed. It was said to be focusing some of its efforts on casual games targeted at social networking platforms.
