Week Beginning 1st September

Monday, 1 September 2008

The week in words.

Square Enix (Final Fantasy XII) have made a non-hostile (means they wouldn't be a controlling shareholder) $200 mill (£101 mill) offer for Temco (Ninja Gaiden), who have been in financial difficulties for a while. The bid would act as something of a leash of life, to allow the developer to continue making games. The reasons for this are clear because Temco's selling point isn't difficult as was proved with the immense success of Ninja Gaiden II, but they have been struck by various law suits and staff problems that have left them without much investment. More details.

Ratner, director of Rush Hour and X-Men 3, has announced his wish to direct a Guitar Hero movie. It would, he stated, be one of those 'dream come true' storylines. I hate those storylines so much. More details.

Another business related story. Nintendo have upped their profit projections by 26%, up to a net profit of $1.5 billion for the 6 months ending September 30th, and up to $3.8 billion for the full year, next March. Whilst this could be explained away by the fantastic profits made on products such as the Wii Fit, and also by the affordability of the products next to the Xbox 360 and the PS3. However, what is a big contributing factor is that, for a heavy export company like Nintendo, the weak Yen means great things, and a bigger profit on every unit exported. More details.

The new S.T.A.L.K.E.R game, due for a worldwide release of September 5th, is to be put back a bit due to production problems in North America. This delay will only affect North American purchases of the game, and the European release is still scheduled for September 5th. The American release has not got an exact date, but estimates put it at 15th September. More details.

That's about it for this week. So until next week, I believe there's a Too Human review in the works, and DW will get round to posting some more interesting little gaming ditties. But it's my birthday on Friday, so I doubt I'll get round to posting until next Tuesday (going out Monday night), but I will get to it, have no fear.

Labels: News, Week Beginning

Author: random dave | Comments: | Leave Your Response?

Week Beginning 25th August

Monday, 25 August 2008

Bank Holidays, I hate them. Luckily this is one blog post that doesn't revolve around the day within which boredom rules. Let's take a look at the past week.

After being floored technology-wise by Rock Band, Activision Blizzard have announced a new feature in the upcoming GH: World Tour, allowing players to create their own music tracks and sharing them online. It's certainly innovative, but they've only just started working on what appears to me (as both a musician and a gamer) an incredibly difficult feature to a game which is coming out this autumn. Quite ambitious. More details.

Game publishers Atari, Codemasters, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump and Techland are to send out letters to 25,000 homes over the UK demanding a £300 settlement, or threats of court action, to those involved in the illegal downloading and sharing of games. This seems to be in reaction to (or in conjunction with, at least) the release of Topware's Dream Pinball 3D, which, in the first fortnight, sold 800 copies... and downloaded illegally 12,000 times. Yeah... that ain't good business. More details.

Possibly prompted by news that Age of Conan gamers were returning to WoW, Funcom have stated that a big expansion pack will be released in 09. So far, the only information that's been released about this expansion is some concept art. This was released at the Leipzig convention, which ended on the 24th. More details.

Harmonix announced a while ago that DLC (downloaded songs) for Rock Band will be available for use with Rock Band 2. The process of this has now been outlined: an update for Rock Band will be released when Rock Band 2 is, allowing an 'Export' option to be accessed on the Rock Band menu, allowing all the songs to be exported to a compatible form with Rock Band 2. However, this process will cost a fixed fee: forcing gamers to pay to play these songs that they've already paid for. The fee will be a flat fee for any amount of songs, but still... Rock Band 2 still has no date for European release, despite a US release of September. More details.

Logitech have been contracted to make a force-feedback steering wheel for the Wii: improving on the system used in games such as Mario Kart, whereby a gamers holds the remote level and turns it to turn the vehicle. The steering wheel will retail for $99 when it's released in America this November, and is wireless. Technically a third party accessory, Logitech are designing the wheel to be optimised with the use of the new NFS game: Undercover, also due for a November release. More details.

That's it for this week. But I'll be back on the 31st to do September's issue of The Month, and then next Monday for your own personal weekly roundup of gaming news.

Labels: News, Week Beginning

Author: random dave | Comments: | Leave Your Response?

Week Beginning 11th August

Monday, 11 August 2008

Here's my weekly round up of news around the gaming world. It seems slightly insignificant this week seeing as it has nothing about Georgia (click if you have no clue what I'm talking about), but here it is all the same.

EA have confirmed that the next Godfather game (Godfather II) will be making its way onto 360, PS3 and PC in February. I'm a huge fan of the movies, cinematic greatness in my opinion, but the first Godfather was nothing to get riled up about, so I doubt this one will be either. You get to play as the Don of New York, managing family affairs. However, if you're a 'wiseguy' rather than a 'goodfella' you'll avoid this movie to game blasphemy like the mafia. More details.

Cryptic are taking Star Trek Online online. Details of the game, which has been in the pipeline for a while were announced at the annual Trek convention. I've gotta say, this is one MMO that does interest me if it's done well. If it isn't, it can go in the bin with WoW and the other game that this developer worked on (City of Heroes/Villians). The game will be set 30 years after the most recent installment in the Star Trek timeline (ST: Nemesis). More details can be found in Gamespot's interview with Cryptic's executive producer.

The date for the new 60 gig HDD version of the Xbox 360 has been set at this Friday (Aug 15th). This will replace the current standard 20 gig model with a 60 gig HDD. The price for the model remains at £199, (with the elite still at 259, and the arcade at 159). More details.

Finally a set release date has been put down to Fable II. I remember, around this time last year, it was set for March.. then May... then September... then November for some reason. But now we have a set date. October 21st. Fable is going to be released in both Standard and Limited editions. The LE will have 5 'fate cards', and a bonus material disc (worth the extra tenner?). In more Fable news, an arcade 'pub' game is being released a month before Fable, presumably in order to raise the profile of the game. Some stores will be offering this XBLA game free when you preorder Fable II. So if that suddenly makes you want to buy it, look out for that. More details.

Lastly, we're currently smack bang in the middle of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival (10th to the 12th August). You may not have heard of this, but it's part of the Edinburgh Festival (a huge month long culture and arts festival that lasts the entirity of August, and incidentally, where I'm headed on Saturday). As their site reads: 'Edinburgh Interactive Festival is the only event that brings together the games industry’s key decision makers from games publishing, hardware and development alongside Government, TV, film, press and other entertainment industries as well as students seeking to work within the creative industries.' So we can be sure that some major decisions will be made there on new game franchises and the like. More details.

That's about it for this week. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to do my Week Beginning segment next week (as I said, I'll be in Edinburgh), but I should have internet, so I'll give it a shot. If not, I'll definitely be back to do the next Week Beginning after that, and then September's issue of the Month on the 31st. Happy gaming people.

Labels: News, Week Beginning

Author: random dave | Comments: | Leave Your Response?

Week Beginning 4th August

Monday, 4 August 2008

Still no sign of DW, and I've got no reason to believe he'll be back anytime soon. Anyway, I'm only one person so I'll try and cover as much news as possible in the time he's away.

PS3 owners will enjoy a demo for the new Final Fantasy game, FFXIII, in March. The developers of the game, Square Enix, have stated that, although the game will eventually be ported to 360, the game is being developed squarely with the ideas of PS3 in mind. Square Enix also promised PS3 users that there would be no decrease in quality, despite the port to 360. Good for Playstation, bad for Xbox. However, because the game is going to have a simul release, the release of the Playstation version will be held back until the port is complete and the 360 version is polished off. Everybody wins! More details.

The Prince of Persia movie (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time), previously set for release in 2009, has been pushed back a year by Disney. The reason given for this was to allow more time for special effects to be placed on a film that will certainly need them. The delay puts it in the middle of May 2010, a week after the (in this writer's opinion) tired franchise of Shrek gets spread just one slice more thinly in Shrek Goes Fourth. More details.


The new Doom game has been 'officially' announced now... So what the hell was that announcement made before? More details.

Newly merged 'Activision Blizzard' have announced an 09 release of the next Call of Duty. No wait... The next next Call of Duty.... Call of Duty 6! Being built, I'm sure you'll all be happy to hear, from Infinity Ward. The studio that worked on CoD 2 and CoD 4, but not the abysmal CoD 3, or the upcoming World at War. Activision Blizzard also noted that only one new Guitar Hero title would be being released before the end of the year, namely, GH: World Tour. In other Acitivison Blizzard news, that Lich King thing all WoW fans seem to be worshipping and praying to is set for last quarter of this year. More details.

Rockstar North rocked the Develop 08 awards on July 31st in Brighton. Rockstar won awards for the Visual Arts, Audio Accomplishment, Best In-House Developer and 'Grand Prix' (the overall award for best dev). Rockstar won all of these awards with GTAIV, but GTA itself won 5 awards, also clinching the Technical Innovation award, under Natural Motion/Image Metrics. More details.

That's my roundup for this week. See you on the 11th. And hopefully sometime after then I should have a Soul Calibur review up. It's been out for a while I know, but it's usually DW who buys the games.

Labels: News, Week Beginning

Author: random dave | Comments: | Leave Your Response?