Newspost for 01-31-07
Industry and multi-console news:
- Finally responding to EA's exclusive NFL license, Visual Concepts has announced All-Pro Football 2K8.
- Two trailers for Uwe Boll's Postal have been released, if you're feeling masochistic.
- A Ukranian gamer is facing up to 15 years in prison for killing a fellow gamer after a fight at a real-world meeting of Lineage II players (and rivals).
- Atari has announced Godzilla: Unleashed for the Wii, DS and PSP this fall.
- While the game was known of before this, Ubisoft has now officially announced and given some details on Blazing Angels Secret Missions.
- Any time is the right time to laugh at Gizmondo: An E3 display they used in 2003 that cost $2 million is now selling for $110,000.
- The new Dynamite Deka game is getting a European release.
- Oh, you crazy kids. First Microsoft advertises Gears on the back of a PS3 magazine, now it turns out that there are PS3 ads inside an upcoming 360 soccer game.
- The Interactive Australia 2007 report breaks down all sorts of details on the Australian public's gaming habits.
- The entire Dead or Alive movie has been uploaded to Google Video. As you can imagine, it won't be around long, which is probably for the best. Let me just say that within the first five minutes, Kasumi jumps over a wall to what is apparently a drop of 10,000 feet and unfolds a hang glider on her back.
- Bandai is recalling 173,000 Let's TV Play units in Japan because they can heat up and start smoking.
- Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was blocked from receiving a special jury prize at Slamdance. A couple of jurors at the event, including The God Who Wasn't There director Brian Flemming, watched an unofficial demo of the game put on outside of the competition tent, and wanted to give it an award. But Peter Baxter, the man who originally kicked the game out of competition to begin with, refused to allow it, claiming the game had "music clearance issues." How many excuses does that make, now?
- bits bytes pixels & sprites presents a video of Superbowl XLI played out through Tecmo Super Bowl, with announcer commentary.
PC news:
- Sports Interactive has been forced to abandon the Eastside Hockey Manager series due to piracy. "There are no excuses you can give that are valid for stealing - you have lead to the demise of a game that you enjoyed playing."
- Firing Squad looks at how game performance is affected when Vista's Aero Glass is turned on. The result may surprise you.
Nintendo news:
- Sega has announced that Streets of Rage and Vectorman will be hitting the Japanese Virtual Console in February.
- Majesco will be bringing New York Times Crosswords to the DS this spring. The game will feature over 1000 puzzles, with the ability to hand write in answers.
- IGN has new videos of dogfighting game Heatseeker.
- An overzealous fan has made a website dedicated to requesting a Wii cricket game. I'm sure one will come eventually, I don't think begging is necessary.
- IGN has a, sadly, fairly long list of planned games for the Gamecube that were never released.
- Nintendo says it's not possible to save Mario Kart 64 ghost data due to "unavoidable technical reasons."
- Apparently, there was nudity in the Kid Icarus manual. And it took 20 years for anyone to notice.
- This is a Link carved out of ice. It really doesn't get any simpler than that.
Sony news:
- Echoing the same thing that happened on the ESRB's website a week or two ago, a Vice City Stories PS2 port was listed on Playstation.com, then removed. Gee, guys, I wonder if there's a VCS port in the works.
- THQ has confirmed Saints Row for the PS3.
- PSP firmware has been upgraded to 3.10.
- Sony's goal is to break even on the PS3 by March 2008. While not making guarantees, they are factoring in possible price cuts to this equation.
- A company called SplitFish has announced their own rumble technology that works with motion sensing controllers without stepping on Immersion's existing patents. But Sony still isn't interested.
- Another video clip of God of War II, this time showing the first boss battle.
- A new Motorstorm dev diary video is out.
Microsoft news:
- A Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 demo is now up on Live. But only if you've got Gold, sucker.
- Now that Blue Dragon has been out for a couple months and Gears was recently released, Gamasutra looks at how the 360's presence in Japan has changed, if at all.
- New screenshots have come out for Midway's recently announced Hour of Victory.
Comments
I knew about that nudity in the Kid Icarus manual for quite some time. I thought it was something interesting, but never figured most people weren't aware of it.
It only really goes to prove that despite internet interest in Kid Icarus games, not too many people bought it new to being wih.
Posted by: Tony | January 31, 2007 8:21 PM
it's weird that the study on australian gamers is so blatently pro-gamer. for example, results from the question about what people do with their time show that gamers are significantly less likely to want to exercise, which is completely ignored in any of the comments or highlights. another cause for concern could be that even 4/5 of gamers (and 9/10 of non-gamers) thought that interactivity made the content more violent. this too was glossed over.
it's great that they are not trying to demonise gaming and debunk some of the myths surrounding it, but surely in any productive discussion about gaming we should be recognising the positive and negative effects that might come with it?
Posted by: webber | January 31, 2007 9:44 PM
oh, and as for the wii cricket game: you would be surprised. unlike previous generations where ea could just crap out the same game for each console and put a different player on the cover depending on what country it is sold in, this game would have to be specifically designed for the wii, and i would not be surprised if ea (or codemasters, or whoever) would be skeptical about whether there would be enough demand in pal wii countries to bother.
hell, it was only a couple of years ago that they bothered to make a reasonable rugby game, and even that i dont think has been updated since 2004.
Posted by: webber | January 31, 2007 9:58 PM
A new football game from Visual Concepts? Fuck yesssssssss! It's about damn time.
Posted by: Jim | January 31, 2007 11:07 PM