Looks like the PC gamers are getting slowly squeezed out by the industry: Activision ‘Not Overly Concerned’ With Modern Warfare 2 PC Backlash

This one is a heartbreaker! Zelda Wii might miss 2010

Staring into the crystal ball

During a recent sales meeting, Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, admitted that the Wii was losing momentum. Sales were down, interest was slightly dissolving in favor of higher-definition systems and the holiday season, with only one big release (New Super Mario Bros. Wii), looked grim. But cheer up, Nintendo. Your future isn’t nearly as bleak as you may think. Here’s what we expect from the world’s biggest video game publisher. Nintendo’s Next Move

Microsoft’s social hub for all things Halo-related successfully launched yesterday, and the new animated show “Halo Legends” will kick off tomorrow. Halo Waypoint is being dubbed “the new virtual home for all things Halo.” Launched yesterday as part of the Xbox Live service, Waypoint will serve as a social hub for Halo players, as well as a place to go for daily updates of Halo-related content. Microsoft promises “daily updates of fresh, exciting content such as developer interviews, trailers and screenshots, exclusive video footage, community activities and the latest Halo news.” Halo Waypoint live, Halo Legends starts tomorrow

Rock Band 3 Won’t Be Just a Rhythm Game – Don’t expect the next Rock Band to be a rehashed title with an updated set list. It appears Harmonix is hard at work on reinventing the music game genre.

Dhani Harrison, son of Beatles legend George Harrison and developer on The Beatles: Rock Band, told the Chicago Tribune new details on the still unannounced Rock Band 3 project. Ultimate WoW Guide

NetFlix In Action on the Playstation 3

That’s just a few of the cool stories I found. I’ll put up more later if I get a chance.

On another note, I’m finally playing Company of Heroes, yet another of the cheap videogames I bought during the Direct2Drive $5.00 special. I’ll write a review once I’m done.

October 8, 2009 – Sony’s Gran Turismo may still sit in the pole position among racing sims for many, but Microsoft is making a hard charge with Forza Motorsport 3. Developer Turn 10 has adopted a new philosophy for Forza 3: Make it accessible. The result is a hardcore simulation racing title that can also be enjoyed by the most casual of fans. The career mode is easy to get into but offers an immense challenge; you can auto-tune every car or dive into a rich set of tuning options; and driving can be toggled between a simple point-and-go system and the most physics-driven sim every created.

Forza Motorsport 3 – Corvette Gameplay

Forza Motorsport 3 – Ferrari Silverstone Gameplay

Forza Motorsport 3 – Laguna Seca Comparison

Left 4 Dead 2

Amazon to sell PSN digital content

Sony Computer Entertainment America and Amazon US are joining hands to sell codes redeemable for games and game-related content through Sony’s US PlayStation Network. The deal allows customers to purchase “digital access codes” through Amazon’s video game store, then redeem those codes while logged into the PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable‘s PlayStation Store, thus unlocking the relevant piece of digital content for immediate download.

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes Review

LucasArts’ Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes is a 3-D adventure that takes place, as the title implies, during the Clone Wars. With Obi-Wan Kenobi initially away on business, Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, visit the planet Ryloth to crush what’s left of the droid army. A legion of clone troopers back them up, and LucasArts breaks up the levels between troopers and Jedi, allowing two players (offline or through Xbox Live/PlayStation Network) to team up and destroy tons of bad guys using lightsabers, Force powers and conventional weapons like blasters, Thermal Detonators and rocket launchers. To that we say, bravo.

Dead Rising 2 – PC – Preview

When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will hit the casinos.

The mall-zombie, snarky social-commentary conceit for Capcom’s original Dead Rising… well, we had seen it before, hadn’t we? Like, literally seen it, on movie screens (twice, in fact—once in George Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead, and once in the remake). The blatant ‘inspiration’ provided by the films didn’t make the game any less entertaining, of course—in fact, I would argue that the blaring homage only made the game’s entertainment factor that much higher—but you can really only get away with something like that once. Everybody knew there would be a Dead Rising 2, but the question was: “Where do we go from here?”

Features special 3D cover, artbook and access to exclusive game content. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that a Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time Collector’s Edition will be available in the UK exclusively from GAME.The Collector’s Edition will come in a special foldout digipack containing the following:

“PSPgo will fail miserably,” says major UK retailer

---

Happy Birthday…Manaka Takane

You remember all those reports that came out of Japan a year or so ago, claiming Monster Hunter on the PSP was a “social phenomenon?” I think Love Plus just took its place.

Aion To Retain Huge Numbers, Says Poll

According to a poll on an Aion website, over 86% of players intend to renew their subscriptions after the first free month of game play has ended.

Over 1,000 readers on aionsource have voted so far to say whether they will continue to pay NCsoft to play the recently-released Aion after the free period has ended. However, from the 86% that said they will continue playing, almost 13% said they will only give the game another month unless the queue issue is resolved.

Live Test of Facebook on the Xbox 360

Browsing through Facebook on the Xbox 360 is much like browsing through the community portal on your computer – with one exception.

Sitting on a couch in a hotel suite opposite the Tokyo Game Show last month, Microsoft’s Scott Austin, director of digital games at Live, ran me through a quick demonstration of the service on an Xbox 360 he had set up on the room’s flat screen.

Joyswag: Direct2Drive’s 50+ $5 games for you, dear reader

We’ve got quite the prize pack up for grabs, as Direct2Drive is hooking us up with 53 games (full list after the break) to unload on one lucky reader. If you’ve been keeping up with the weekly deals that are part of Direct2Drive’s fifth anniversary, then you know the service has been offering some pretty sweet titles. Well, we’ve got all of them, and one of you will be lucky enough to win them!

Something tells me that a lot of people are going to be surprised by Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Codemasters has loudly proclaimed that their new game will take players “as close to war as they’ll ever want to get,” but secretly part of me doubts whether most gamers will know what they’re getting into. Call me a cynic, but I suspect that more than a few people will pick up this up in the mistaken belief that it’s an alternative to Modern Warfare 2. Anyone who does this is in for a rude awakening, that’s for sure.

Infinity Ward: Activision wanted more WWII games instead of Modern Warfare

Infinity Ward bossman, Vince Zampella, has told the Official Playstation Magazine that originally, Activision did not want Call of Duty 4 to be a Modern Warfare and had been holding the reins on a more “modern” type of war experience for quite some time.

“With Call of Duty 2, we were dead set against it being World War 2,” said Zampella. “But Activision really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we’d get some dev kits for consoles in exchange for doing a World War 2 game. We always wanted to be on consoles and Activision saw us as more of a PC developer.

Undead Knights: Zombie Rush

Tecmo began work on Undead Knights before they merged with Koei and yet its an epitome of Tecmo Koei title. Undead Knights takes Dynasty Warriors’ formula and adds zombies to make it, like most Tecmo action games, over-the-top.

At one time the Blood family were loyal… and human. Now as legions of the undead they only thirst for revenge and HP restoring souls. Romulus Blood, the head of the Blood household, looks like a stereotypical black knight with evil red veins. Sylvia carries a Grim Reaper-like scythe larger than her and Fatima, the mysterious queen at the center of the story, flaunts her cleavage. This is, after all, a Tecmo developed title.

DJ Heros Full Set List Revealed

Hailed in the press as one of the most fun, innovative and highly-anticipated games of the year, Activision Publishing, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) today dropped the needle on DJ Hero’s™ full set list featuring 93 exclusive mixes from the biggest stars in hip hop, R&B, rock, pop and dance and created by some of the greatest DJs of all time. On October 27th, living room legends and budding superstar DJs alike will start the party off right with an unprecedented array of talent DJs including DJ AM, Cut Chemist, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, J. Period, DJ Shadow and DJ Z-Trip spinning tracks from JAY-Z to Eminem; Daft Punk to Black Eyed Peas; Rihanna to The Killers; Kid Cudi to Gwen Stefani; and Marvin Gaye to Beastie Boys.

Dead Space Extraction

Dead Space: Extraction scared my girlfriend’s cat. Don’t get me wrong – EA’s on-rails horror/shooter terrified me too, but having the ability to frighten such an indifferent, grumpy creature to the point that he exerted the effort necessary to exit the room is impressive. And that isn’t the only surprising feature in this Wii-exclusive prequel, as nearly everything that it attempts to do is performed so unforgettably well that I can’t see another horror game this year approaching these highs. If you ever said that the Wii is only for kids, Dead Space: Extraction will not only make you eat your words, but will also create an entirely new set of words to shove down your throat so that you can accurately describe the awesomeness of this shooter to others.

When rumors of Band Hero first surfaced earlier this year, some assumed it would be a rebranding of the Guitar Hero series, which embraced a full band lineup with last year’s Guitar Hero World Tour. Instead, it has ended up being something else entirely — well, almost. Though the core of the game looks very similar to this month’s Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero differentiates itself via a focus on pop and mainstream music, featuring a mix of timeless favorites and recent hits, plus licensed artist avatars and a nod to our current celebrity-crazed culture.

New PSN Game Cards heading to retail

Sony has released new PSN Game Cards to retailers across the US, which give purchasers a code to download select PSP games through PSN.

This comes as Sony’s solution for retailers who’ve, for obvious reasons, been less than keen on the arrival of PSPgo – a download-only device that cuts out the retail middle man by offering games directly through PSN.

Connect to Destructoid with Facebook

Just a quick site update: You can now login and comment with your Facebook account. Better late than never, right? Since FB is larger than most countries and 40% of the Internet is always logged in we thought this might shave 5 seconds off your daily web commute.

If you’re a lurker and have never used Dtoid, just click “Connect” and you’re done. We’ll import your avatar from Facebook automatically and the gates of commenting and blogging will open to you. You know the drill: Don’t suck or we’ll lock you in the refrigerator with the other severed heads.

Nolan North is Drake, Nathan Drake

Gamers around the world know the quick-witted Nathan Drake from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and will soon meet him again in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. But the man who brings Drake to life is actor Nolan North, who happens to also have a sharp tongue that can break up a room during a table read-through. North had a lot of input on both his virtual character and the creation of Naughty Dog’s hit game franchise for PlayStation 3. The actor took some time in between performance-captures at the famous Hollywood House of Moves to talk about the new game and what he sees for the future of interactive entertainment.

iPod Touch Review

It’s been over three weeks since Apple sent me their new iPod Touch for review and in that time, I have never once used it to listen to music. In fact, I haven’t even bothered loading any songs onto it. There are a few reasons for that: one, I’m not a fan of iTunes. Yes, the new flavor of iTunes that was revealed at the recent Apple press event looks great but I’m a far bigger fan of drag and drop functionality. I’d rather not port my entire library over and deal with the hassle; I also buy actual CDs and convert them myself, so I don’t have a massive library of downloaded tunes.

For many gamers who have been with the medium since the ’80s, few third-party developers have had more impact in their lives than Capcom. Even gamers with an inexplicable aversion to Capcom’s work have still, inevitably, absorbed the company’s indirect influence through many of the best titles being published today.

Most game publishers hope to create one big hit that will strike a chord with audiences. Capcom’s footprint on the industry is such that simply naming only one or two of their greatest achievements is a disservice to everything else the company has done for gaming. Can you really elevate Street Fighter over Resident Evil, or Mega Man over Monster Hunter?

GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Within an hour of playing The Ballad of Gay Tony, we’d leapt from the window of a skyscraper and parachuted onto a moving truck below, shot military helicopters out of the sky with an explosive shotgun, shot missiles at a rich guy’s yacht and stolen the front carriage of a moving subway train via helicopter. We didn’t blink once.

TBoGT isn’t about the struggles of immigrant life, gang culture or anything nearly as serious or profound. It’s not a game of culture or morality. It’s about causing an utter shit storm in Liberty City and that’s why it’s well worth getting excited about, even if you have exhausted the original game and subsequent Lost And Damned episode.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Wii renamed

Activision — or someone with some pull — has sneakily changed the name of the Wii version of developer Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex. The new name is a mouthful and a mystery. We haven’t the slightest idea why it was changed.

The Connection Ambassador Promotion is designed to encourage friends and family to get connected with their Wii.

Nintendo announced today the Connection Ambassador Promotion, a rewards scheme for loyal fans of WiiWare, will start in Europe this October and will allow players to become Ambassadors by encouraging friends and family to get connected with their Wii.

Konami Stealth Announces Fairy Tail For PSP

Konami is still rolling out their Tokyo Game Show line up and we just spotted a Fairy Tail game.

Details are scarce and Fairy Tail isn’t even the final title. We do know the game is in development for PSP and there’s a tiny screenshot of it.

Get extra units with Order of War Steam pre-order

Next week Square Enix ships Order of War to stores and online. The first true Western developed game from this Japanese based publisher is a WWIi RTS game from developer Wargaming.net. However, the folks at Valve’s Steam are giving people who pre-order Order of war from them some exclusive in-game units.

Is there a market for a $400 Xbox 360?

With the recent news of the Limited Edition Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360, we had to ask ourselves – is there still a market for a $400 console?  The Wii is $250 and will likely soon be $200, the PS3 Slim is just $300, and the arcade version of the Xbox 360 is only $200.  Without even mentioning the struggling economy, can Microsoft really expect this $400 Xbox 360 to sell?

Sony And Microsoft Is Keeping PC Gaming From Growth

Sony and Microsoft actually have something in common, and that’s the contribution towards the decline in the PC Gaming Market.

For a long time PC Gaming was considered the end all top – tier of the gaming world why? because they had the high resolution gameplay, online community, better games and exclusives, along with the ability to consistently upgrade hardware wise which consoles couldn’t and still can’t.

Direct2Drive’s $5 deals on BioShock, Dark Athena, Pirates, many more

Outdoing its own sale from a couple months back, Direct2Drive is having a massive sale on many great PC titles for a mere $5 each. Today marks the beginning of Week Two which, as promised at the outset of this promotion, would be all about “action games.”

OFFICIAL: Uncharted 2 Beta Starts Tomorrow

The same question has been flowing around the net today: “Doesn’t the Uncharted 2 Beta start back up tonight?” TheGamerAccess.com contacted a Sony rep and this is what he/she had to say.

Wipeout HD officially announced for Blu-ray release on PS3

SCEE has announced PSN hit Wipeout HD will see a Blu-ray release for PlayStation 3.

The release will include the original game, as well as the recently released Fury expansion, all for £19.99 and released on October 16.

It comes as it was rumoured this morning a Dutch PS3 site had the game listed for retail for €24.99 on the same date.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey Adds Peripherals to its Arsenal on Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3

505 Games today announced that the critically acclaimed WWII aerial combat game IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey is compatible with the Saitek Aviator as well as the THRUSTMASTER T-Flight Stick X and THRUSTMASTER T-Flight Hotas X.

The Saitek Aviator is compatible with PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360, while the THRUSTMASTER models work with PLAYSTATION 3, offering gamers adjustable resistance control as well as realistic and precise targeting. The THRUSTMASTER T-Flight Hotas X model also features a detachable throttle control. These peripherals help to create an even more immersive gameplay experience in one of the most authentic flight combat games for next-gen consoles.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story Review: A Fawful Good Time

Mario and Luigi’s eternal struggle against the forces that threaten the Mushroom Kingdom—and frequently kidnap Princess Peach—continue in Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, the latest in the lighthearted, action-oriented role-playing game series.

This time, series staple bad guy Fawful has tricked Bowser into eating a particular strain of mushroom that causes him to inhale the court of the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach included. There’s also a nasty Toad affliction going around, known as the Blorbs that needs curing. Of course, the goal is to save the Mushroom Kingdom and rescue Peach, with much of that work being done by Mario and Luigi, trapped inside the anatomical depths of the King of Koopas himself.

Disney just wrapped up their D23 event this week, in which new projects were announced along with details on films already revealed. But it turns out there was at least one bit of gaming-related news squeezed out of the event, as Latino Review reports (via Kotaku) that Tron Legacy producer Steven Lisberger confirmed a videogame tie-in for the film is currently in development.

Sony: PSP Minis to “transition to UMD

SCEE’s Zeno Colaco has revealed that some PSP Minis are likely to be released at retail on UMD or even on PS3.
PSP Minis are small downloadable games for PSP, limited by a 100MB size cap. They form part of an initiative to allow small indie devs to release games on the portable, but the best ones may end up on UMDs in shops.

Wii sales down 50 percent and probably decreasing

Run for the hills, it’s all coming to an end! Wii sales have dropped! PS3 sales are up! The world is spinning out of control, people. In a recent talk with IndustryGamer, analyst Michael Pachter has said just as much, revealing that the Wii’s sales are down 50 percent year-to-year over the last five months and he expects them to continue dropping if Nintendo doesn’t start selling a new bundle or cutting the price of their system as its two competitors have done.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade – Wii

Acing the Tameshigiri.

In the world of folks unceremoniously known as “gamers”, there’s nothing worse than those gamers who chronically clamor for innovation, exclaim their boredom with all the gritty, photo-realistic first-person shooters, the solid but conservative action-adventure titles, and annualized, money-grubbing franchises, but then are inexplicably afraid of change and anything that they deem weird. They are the complainers that complain about the solution to their complaints. Even if I shove the gorgeously-designed boxart of Muramasa: The Demon Blade in their faces while bellowing how this is exactly the action title they have been looking for, they will pout and say that it looks too Japanese. Hopefully, those gamers don’t include you.

Top 25 Dreamcast Games

Micro-transactions and other models on the table when it comes to Asia and the worldwide market.

By Kat Bailey, 09/08/2009 http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175945

Shut Yer Mouth – WoW Getting Too Easy

John Landis writes:

“Wrath of the Lich King was a firestorm of tears from the hardcore, who complained that their elite raiding guild found the content too easy and didn’t take enough skill or time to master. Now I see it all the time. There are people complaining that WoW has gotten too soft, that it’s not the hardcore game that it started out being. http://www.n4g.com/News-391232.aspx

Darkest of Days Launches TODAY on PC and Xbox 360

Time-traveling first-person shooter takes players on a wild ride through history

It’s here! Phantom EFX, the world’s leading developer and publisher of PC-based casual game titles, and independent game development studio 8monkey Labs announced today that their highly anticipated historically-based first person shooter, Darkest of Days, launches today for both Windows-based PC and the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. http://xbox360.gamezone.com/news/09_08_09_05_01AM.htm

Final Fantasy XIII Aiming For Western Release In Spring 2010

By Luke Plunkett, 5:10 AM on Tue Sep 8 2009, 16,818 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

Copy this whole post to another site

Slurp cancel

select site advertising consumerist deadspin defamer fleshbot gay fleshbot gawker gizmodo idolator io9 jalopnik jezebel kotaku lifehacker valleywag artists gawkershop sploid

Japanese release dates for Final Fantasy XIII are all well and good if you’re Japanese, but what if you’re American? Canadian? British, Australian, German, French? Well, then you’ll want to know dates for the game’s Western release. http://kotaku.com/5354430/final-fantasy-xiii-aiming-for-western-release-in-spring-2010

Disney hires Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian, acquires Wideload Games

by Justin McElroy { Sep 8th 2009 at 11:00AM }

The story of Alex Seropian is a perfect reminder of why it’s a good career move to help make one of the most popular game franchises in history. Because when you co-found Bungie, it’s OK if you make Stubbs the Zombie followed by Hail to the Chimp — you can still be hired to oversee creative development for Disney’s video game development arm!

“We were late to offer the platform-level support, to make the online functionality work at that level,” says SCEE president of worldwide studios. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175900

Halo 3: ODST

Bungie’s new offices are rubbish. Aside from a makeshift motion capture studio they exist solely to handle the massive amounts of admin Bungie now generate as an independent developer and are as terminally beige as offices tend to be. Only the stack of Peter Jackson’s Halo props and a makeshift motion-capture room remind you there’s a game studio just a quarter-mile down the road, but if the offices are a disappointment, ODST is anything but. http://rss.computerandvideogames.com/c/674/f/8604/s/60510ad/l/0L0Scomputerandvideogames0N0Carticle0Bphp0Did0F2225940Dcid0FOTC0ERSS0Gattr0FCVG0EGeneral0ERSS/story01.htm

The moment that Japan has been awaiting for over half a decade may finally have arrived today, thanks to a teaser and some Internet Matlockery. A Japanese Youtube flash ad had been teasing the reveal of Final Fantasy XIII‘s release date today, and a few impatient kids decided to dig a little deeper and find out ahead of time. http://www.destructoid.com/flash-ad-gives-final-fantasy-xiii-release-date-away-147777.phtml

Grading on a curve.

It may be the so-called ‘Triple A’ and ‘top-tier’ cash-cow mega-titles—or their predictable litters of sequels—that end up dominating the gargantuan, seizure-inducing video-display walls (and obnoxious, building-wide, visible-from-orbit banners) at the Electronic Entertainment Expo every year… but for my money, the real soul of the gaming industry still lies in those relatively unsung projects and promising, oddball, up-and-comer games. Throw in the promise of letting players make, tweak, and tool around in our own (easily-created) content and, well, you’ve also just thrown a potentially fascinating wrench into the whole anticipated-games grading-curve. http://www.gamerevolution.com/preview/ps3/modnation-racers

Project Natal, PlayStation Motion Dev Kits ‘Embedded’ at Take-Two’s Studios

With both Project Natal from Microsoft and Sony’s motion controller expected to launch in 2010, game companies are getting their hands on the dev kits and are starting to flesh out game concepts for the new technologies. Speaking on the conference call after Take-Two’s Q3 fiscal results CEO Ben Feder confirmed that Take-Two’s various studios are hard at work on games for Natal and Sony’s motion controller. http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/project-natal-playstation-motion-dev-kits-embedded-at-taketwos-studios/

Diablo III: Monk Supernova Preview

More grisly and grotesque than it’s predecessor, Diablo III has more in store than just destructible environments.

It’s early morning in Sanctuary, the birds are chirping and the pitter-patter of locals pumping water from the village well outside sounds like an elephant is stampeding through your head. The rising sun illuminates your quaint village on the edge of Tristram but all you can think about is how your mouth is dryer then that witch doctor you came home with last night. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gamepro/~3/QtPEnBYtXbs/

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade Attack Hands-On

It’s like a blast from the past in this side-scrolling beat-’em-up.

Ubisoft are bringing these heroes in a half shell back in full force to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, with games such as TMNT: Smash-Up, TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled and recently announced TMNT: Arcade Attack for the Nintendo DS. Arcade Attack was being shown for the first time at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, and we got a chance to play through this side-scrolling beat-’em up and face the menacing Hun. http://www.gamespot.com/ds/action/teenagemutantninjaturtlesarcadeattack/news.html?sid=6216907

Rockstar’s PS3 Exclusive Agent Coming in 2010

In a Q&A session found over on the official Rockstar Games news wire, it looks like the publisher has accidentally confirmed that its upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusive — Agent — will hit the streets next year in 2010. http://feeds.gamespy.com/~r/gsfeeds/all/~3/xnsKM8GSplc/1021941p1.html

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle