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

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Article Posted: Monday 25 August 2008 at 11:54.
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