October 3rd, 2008
 
Who you think won that debate?
Posted in Miscellanous, Politics, Site News |
October 3rd, 2008
Notice the definition of each individual rock and the glistening lighting effect in the pools of water. This is just one of many visual highlights the hotly anticipated sequel promises to deliver upon its release in February 2009.
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
October 3rd, 2008
TOKYO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360 outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 in Japan in September, beating the rival machine in monthly unit sales for the first time in Sony’s home market, a game magazine publisher said.
Strong sales growth came after Microsoft cut prices for its game console last month.
Microsoft sold 53,547 units of the Xbox 360 in the four weeks to September 28, compared with 33,071 units of the PS3, data from Enterbrain showed on Friday.
Nintendo Co Ltd safely maintained its leading position in the Japanese console market, having sold 109,548 units of the Wii during the month.
Although popular in the United States, the Xbox 360 has been struggling to compete with the PS3 and the Wii in Japan, home to both Sony and Nintendo.
In a bid to lift sales, Microsoft on September 11 cut the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade, which comes without a hard disk drive, by 8,000 yen ($76) to 19,800 yen. It also lowered the price of the high-end Elite model by 8,000 yen to 39,800 yen.
Sony sells the PS3 with a 40-gigabyte hard disk drive for 39,980 yen, while Nintendo offers the Wii for 25,000 yen.
The Microsoft console also got a boost from Square Enix Holdings’ popular role-playing game, “Infinite Undiscovery”, launched in Japan on September 11.
In the handheld video game market, Nintendo sold 234,477 units of its DS, compared with 109,274 units of Sony’s PlayStation Portable.
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
October 2nd, 2008
This is merely an observation, so if you’re one of those silly fanboy types at least hear me out before you begin the hate campaign. It’s just something that I have noticed occurring behind the scenes over the last year that I think is worthy of bringing up, as it indicates a growing faith in the PlayStation 3 console from developers and publishers across the globe. It does not mean that the Xbox 360 is any less important, just that the PS3 is definitely starting to get equal-footing on multi-format games.
Go back six months and more, almost every game that was multi-format was given to journalists on Xbox 360. Code came in for Xbox 360 debuggers (the devices on which we play unfinished games), promo copies were for the Xbox 360 and almost always games were demoed to us on Microsoft’s console when out at junkets across the world. It’s just the way it was.
Obviously being a multi-format publication, we actively chased PS3 versions of these games but they were rarely forthcoming, and if they did make it in, it could be months later. I sit alongside both the editor of Australian 360 Magazine and Official PlayStation Australia and often see the frustration as the latter continually hassled for code that was already sitting on the former’s desk in the opposing format.
So why did this happen? It is my belief that the Xbox 360 code during this period was simply more reliable. When you’re giving media access to your game, you want it to run as smoothly as possible, play to the best of its ability and hopefully not crash at all (which early code as a tendency to do). In the end, this is your best shot at getting a positive response from journalists. So with developers getting a year’s head-start on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 architecture proving to be somewhat challenging to master it simply came to be that the former’s code was the more predictable beast.
Makes sense, no? And if we had to guess we would have said that the code coming into the office throughout 2007 for games available on both formats would’ve been around 80% Xbox 360 and 20% PS3. Hell, maybe even 90:10. It really was that much of a difference, even right up to the final box copies that arrived post-release. To be honest, it was like most publishers preferred that journalists didn’t experience their game on PS3 if they could help it.
But that was then, and as we indicated above, there has been quite a momentum shift in 2008.
Link
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
October 1st, 2008
Looks like EA has unleashed another brilliant marketing scheme that is sure to fuel arguments from fanboys about which color is cooler (blu-ray blue or 360 neon yellow?). Instead of releasing the same content for both systems, they have gone the Soulcalibur 4 route and released console specific content that should make your decision over which version to purchase that much more difficult.
Okay not really. It’s basically a palette swap and neither really has any advantage/disadvantage unless your particularly fond of, or adverse to one of the color schemes.
I think I’m slightly leaning towards the blue team on this one…. but if the 360 had done ‘Red Ring Red’ I would’ve been all over it.
Hit the jump to check out the full pictures.
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
October 1st, 2008
VS
Which Design looks better?
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
September 29th, 2008
Christmas is nearly upon us– boo! Every year, the holiday period becomes gradually more depressing as we all painfully embrace old age, but the games perennially deliver. In 2007, the 360 had BioShock, Mass Effect and Halo 3. Without a doubt, it was Microsoft’s year, while Sony struggled along with Lair, Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and, to a lesser extent, Uncharted. This year, I’m a little more confident about the PS3’s prospects; as well as the usual batch of exciting, exclusive titles, the range of multiformat games on the market is also more interesting than it has been in recent years. Here are our picks:
Fallout 3
Released: 31 October
It’s hard to gauge people’s interest in Bethesda’s follow-up to Oblivion, given that the game is a follow-up to two ancient, PC-only classics. Then again, the concept – post-apocalypse in Washington – hardly screams commercial success, so it’s likely to be one of those titles that sells steadily over an extended period of time. Then again, I don’t really care how many it sells. Fallout 3 will be incredible.
Mirror’s Edge
Released: 11 November
We received preview code for Mirror’s Edge in the office, today, so I’ll try and post some hands-on impressions later in the week. With the emphasis on pace, quick kills and daring acrobatics, Mirror’s Edge looks accomplished enough to live up to the promise of that first trailer. Bouncy.
Prince Of Persia
Released: 5 December
With issue 170, we became the first folk in the world, outside of Ubisoft, to play Prince Of Persia on the PS3. Of course, that only lasted for ten minutes, so we’re still in the dark as to what the game is really about, aside from one-on-one encounters, crazy platforming and the interplay between the Prince and new chick Elika. Gorgeous cel-shading, though. Can’t bloody wait.
LittleBigPlanet
Released: 24 October
Finally in for review, the response to LittleBigPlanet is fairly overwhelming…people seem to love it. While I panic that the limited memory of the creation tool will hamper gamers’ ambition, it still offers an unprecedented level of customisation. Plus, Stephen Fry provides hilarious narration.
 MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
Released: 31 October (probably)
We loved MotorStorm, and our score stands as one of the highest on Metacritic. It lacked, however, a number of features that could’ve made it the PS3’s defining racing title. Split-screen multiplayer, for example. Differing environments. Monster trucks. Obviously, I’ve made a concerted effort to highlight stuff that’s actually in Pacific Rift, but you get the idea. This aims, and should succeed, going by what I’ve played, to be the ultimate version of MotorStorm. Aces.
Honorable mentions: Resistance 2 (too brown), Call Of Duty: World At War (by Treyarch), Far Cry 2 (PS3 version might be dodgy), Guitar Hero: World Tour (join a real band), FIFA 09 (blah, blah, blah), Dead Space (some flaws), WipEout HD (more of the same, but prettier) and BioShock (came out on 360 last year).
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
September 29th, 2008
Who do you think won the debate the past week?
Posted in Politics, Site News |
September 29th, 2008
We recently got the chance to sit down Cliff Bleszinski, Lead Designer on Gears of War 2. Read on to find out what he thinks of host advantage, Unreal Engine licensees and…the PS3 controller?
The original Gears of War was massive, and when a sequel comes along people expect it to be doubly awesome. Where do you start with it? Do you just take it and make it bigger and better?
Yeah, we were originally saying the bigger, better, more badass thing which was marketing speak, and ultimately became a self parody of itself which is why we want to reinforce that the game is more epic, yet more intimate. We all kind of got together and went through a process of working out what would be new in Gears 2, what would be better than the original, and we came up with a huge list and talked about it for a week. Maybe the campaign would be a little longer, and we knew that we had a better story and would have new weapons, different multiplayer modes and Horde.
I think getting Josh Ortega on board helped a lot in having a fresh perspective on existing characters, and smaller things like having Steve Jablonsky who did an excellent job on scoring, not only on the battle music, but the in-game music as well. We got a very talented writer and composer, and hopefully we’ve built a package that people will play for years to come.
What was the most important thing you wanted to improve upon from the original Gears?
Well in regards to doing something that has a little bit of heart in there, the campaign and the story were the obvious ones. At the same time though I was dying to get back in and tweak the cover system. When I played the first game I thought we did a really good job, but then there were so many little problems with it too. You’d be running and accidently slam into a wall, or you’d dive towards cover or launch a swat turn and you couldn’t interrupt it, whereas you can now. And when you got knocked down I wanted to crawl around and all that stuff. We’ve tweaked all of those things to a very high level and that’s what I‘m really happy with.
Back to the script writing and the directions that the plot took. How much control did Josh have and what was the direction he took with the universe you created?
Basically the way we do the process is, I come up with a two page treatment and then Rod and Mike tear it to shreds, and then I do another treatment and another until we have something that feels like a solid outline of the game. So we have a two page outline of all of the levels and then Josh comes in and that’s the way that Gears 2 panned out. We’re all just learning as we go, the process is continuing to evolve but, erm…Josh is a very charismatic guy, he’s a force of nature. You know he’d battle and push so that we got the product and, more specifically, the best narrative in the end.
Is there anything particular that he pushed for that was maybe a challenge?
I can’t answer that without spoiling any of it to be honest. You know, narrative-wise we’ve taken some risks and we’re doing some things that I haven’t ever seen in a video game before.
4page Interview
Posted in Gaming, Miscellanous, Site News |
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