As I type, the Game Developer's Conference is going on in San Francisco, California. Part of me wishes GDC would go back to being for and about game developers instead of the hybrid trade show it has become while E3 is trying to regain its former self. Now publishers are seeing another opportunity to build anticipation for upcoming products and keynote speeches are turning into sales pitches. Of course, despite my qualms there are a few noteworthy news items to come from this year's gathering of gaming intellectuals. Most prominently, PlayStation Move. The much anticipated motion controller from Sony's neck of the woods is real, it has a name that isn't too awkward, and most importantly it shows tremendous potential. My general apathy in the direction of Nintendo has been documented, and while I'm not about to jump on the bandwagon of the Move, I do see a lot of opportunity for this to be a successful venture for Sony and its affiliates.
I would prefer to see gameplay, but hopefully the upcoming Brink from Quake Wars developer Splash Damage will deliver a multiplayer experience as diverse and exciting as what's on display in this latest cinematic trailer.
While it is not one of my rare must-haves, Brink is one of those games that I am intensely curious about, and am crossing my fingers that it will deliver the goods and live up to its potential. Of particular interest to me is the game's complete merging of single-player and multiplayer experiences: whether you are playing by yourself or with a full party, the game plays exactly the same. Rather than having a single-player campaign and a separate multiplayer mode, Brink is designed with a consistent structure that doesn't change because it's being played by more than one person. It's an interesting premise, to say the least.
For the first time since 2007, the Xbox 360 came out victorious against the Wii. The last time that happened, a little game called Halo 3 was releasing. Seems like the Xbox 360 could have had a sales boost due to the release of Bioshock 2, which came in number one on the software top ten list. Overall though, retail sales in the U.S. video game market are down 15 percent, falling to $1.26 billion from $1.48 billion.
"Sales came in slightly better than we anticipated (privately, we were forecasting down -19 percent)," says EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich. Divnich also noted that Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware sales exceeded expectations. "Of course, stronger hardware numbers do influence software numbers as PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware purchasers typically purchase at least 1 software SKU attachment," he added.
While the Xbox 360 version of Bioshock 2 topped the software list, the PS3 version was nowhere to be seen. It was not all bad news for the PS3 though. PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain came in at number ten on the list, selling 219,000 copies in five days. We will see if the momentum keeps rolling for Quantic Dream's latest. And in another small victory, the PS3 version of Dante's Inferno outsold the Xbox 360 version 242,000 copies to 225,000.
Continue reading after the break for the complete rundown of hardware sales as well as the top ten list for software.
This week's show is dominated by news. Join Faitios, Robbiejo, Shayward, Golfrat and community member Prophet209 as they tackle the latest in videogames. Expect to hear conversations about Resident Evil, Army of Two and the Just Cause Demo.
Moving into the second half of the show, the talk moves to hype in games and the crew reminisce on their favorite PlayStation 2 games. Finally, they hit the news and cover Portal 2, Activision firings, Socom 4 and PlayStation phone rumors.
MTV Games and Harmonix have announced that Green Day: Rock Band will hit retail shelves on June 8th for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. It will include 47 exportable tracks, character likenesses and rare access to the band's media vault.
GD: RB will support up to six players - three instrument tracks and three vocal parts. The set-list will cover the band's entire career and include the songs "Brain Stew", "Jaded", "Hitchin' A Ride", "American Idiot" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". All 47 tracks will be exportable to Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and the recently announced Rock Band 3 for $9.99 on PSN and 800 points over XBLA. The game will cost $59.99 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. A "plus" version will be released for $69.99 that includes special packaging, an export code and six DLC tracks. Only the regular version will be available on the Wii for $49.99.
Check out the trailer below and let us know if you will be picking this up in the comments.
Sony was kind enough to give an official name to its motion controller during its GDC event yesterday. The motion controller, which is set to release in the fall, will now be known as the PlayStation Move.
Sony is planning an "aggressive" marketing campaign and will ship the PlayStation Move in several bundles. You will be able to pick up the Move solo, bundled with a PS3 or in a starter kit which includes the Move, a PlayStation Eye camera (required to use the Move) and a currently unnamed game for under $100.
Socom 4 (funny how Socom: Confrontation doesn't count), LittleBigPlanet and EyePet were all demoed with the Move. Sony also announced that "in fiscal year 2010, SCE Worldwide Studios will also release more than 20 games that are either dedicated to or supported with the PlayStation Move platform."
Continue reading after the break for some pics of the PlayStation Move in all its glory. Does Sony have it in them to continually support a peripheral? Time will tell.
After taking a year off to create The Beatles: Rock Band, Harmonix is back to focusing on the next evolution of the Rock Band series. Today they announced (via their Facebook page) that Rock Band 3 is in development and that we should be able to play it this Fall.
"Harmonix is developing Rock Band 3 for worldwide release this holiday season! The game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts, will innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again, just as Harmonix did with the original Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. Stay tuned for more details!"
Rock Band 3 will be the second Rock Band game released this year. Green Day: Rockband will be releasing in the Summer with the option of importing the songs into your overall Rock Band music library. Seems like a no-brainer that Harmonix will let you import all your Rock Band 2 tracks (for a small fee of course) once Rock Band 3 is released. We will update you when more information is announced on this.
The Beatles: Rock Band added three-part vocal harmonies to the mix. What kind of direction do you feel the series should take now? What improvements would make Rock Band 3 a day one purchase for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Move over Billy Mitchell and Steve Weiebe - there's a new king in town. According to record-keeping organization Twin Galaxies, newcomer Hank Chien has taken the Donkey Kong world record with a new high score of 1,061,700. The record was set during a 2 hour and 35 minute play session at an arcade cabinet in New York.
"I remember the exact day I knew I could get the world record: September 13, 2009," Chien said in an interview with Twin Galaxies. "That was the day I first broke a million on Donkey Kong to reach 1,037,700. I didn't even realize how close I was to the world record. I was going on a business trip that day and had a flight to catch, but I had about two hours to kill and figured I had enough time for one game. So I fired up my Donkey Kong machine - I wasn't recording of course - and on my first game, boom! Too bad getting 1,000,000 takes about 2 1/2 hours. Still, I caught my flight without getting any speeding tickets, but I realized I couldn't speed and text."
Chien says that he started playing the game after seeing the popular documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. That documentary ended with Weibe overtaking then record-holder Mitchell. Mitchell then took the record back with a score of 1,050,200 which stood for three years until Chien showed up on the scene.
Did you really think you could escape from Lady Gaga? Not content with her songs taking over pop radio, she is now coming to conquer the Rock Band universe. Harmonix and MTV Games announced today that a four-pack of the pop diva's songs will be added next week to the Rock Band Music Store of downloadable content for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.
"Lady Gaga Pack 01" will include "Bad Romance," "Just Dance," "Monster" and "Poker Face" for $6.99 over PSN and 560 points over XBLA. You can also purchase individual tracks for $1.99 (160 points) or 200 Wii Points. Additionally, a special version of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," made famous by South Park's Eric Cartman, will also be available in the Rock Band Music Store next week.
So we all know what this means right? You need to keep your girlfriends and wives away from your consoles next week. This is not a drill. Bad, bad things could happen...
With PAX East approaching, the anticipation continues to grow at a rapid pace. Episode 93 of the Post Game Report offers a small taste of what Boston will bring as JVB, SugarFree, SoldierX, Phoenix410 and HeroicSuperman welcome Pallidian from SFX-360.com to talk about all kinds of fun topics. SFX-360 is hosting an epic party at PAX East, so naturally we have to talk about that. Additionally we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the chaos of the Just Cause 2 Demo and in the spirit of spring training JVB has some kind words for MLB 10: The Show. There's also a host of news items to get to including the Halo: Reach Beta footage, the Rock Band Network launching and much, much more.
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Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac. Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April. Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for both Windows and Mac.
"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."
This is great, great news for Mac users. Any Mac users excited about this news? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
What would the launch of a new Battlefield game be without server issues? They seem to go hand in hand. Many players (myself included) hoping to hop in over the weekend and take Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for a test spin, had to deal with occasional server shutdowns - the latest taking place this morning at 9:30 AM PST. DICE has released an update on these server issues via the official Battlefield blog.
"All teams are actively engaged in diagnosis and remediation. We are adding additional services to alleviate load. Despite having a major infrastructure in place, the peak traffic this weekend has been huge, 400% higher than any other Battlefield's peak simultaneous users. The teams will continue to monitor the services closely. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates on the latest developments as they are relevant."
The Xbox 360 and PC communities seem to have been the most severely impacted. The service is being restarted for both while they are closely monitored. The PS3 experienced a "brief outage, but has quickly recovered and the service is functioning properly at this time."
Such a shame. A series that focuses on multiplayer as its main component and this always seems to happen. It took a couple days for Battlefield 1943 to function properly when it was released over XBLA and PSN this past summer. Hopefully we will see a quick turnaround this time also. There are soldiers down that need my excellent medic skills. If only I could get to them...
Some people will argue that the major shining gems of the last console generation were MGS3, Shadow of the Colossus, Knights of the Old Republic and Beyond Good and Evil. However, to me, there was a single game that, at the time, seemed to get completely overlooked: Indigo Prophecy.
Acting more as an “interactive movie” than a game, it was a great thriller. It told the tale of Lucas Kane -- who killed a man while possessed by a Mayan searching for what amounted to the savior of all mankind -- as he searches for answers. Think about how insane that concept is, and then realize that people didn’t think that part was as insane as much as the introduction of computers trying to take over the world, Skynet-style, and the fact that the protagonist died and was brought back to life by the same machines.
Much of the game’s action takes place in the form of quick-time events. By “much,” I basically mean that almost everything you did was controlled by a QTE. Want to go to the bathroom? Want to eat a Chili-dog? Want to drop kick angels that are attacking you in a church? All of it was done with quick-time events.
So when Quantic Dream, the developers of Indigo Prophecy, announced Heavy Rain, naturally I was excited. The first “Casting” trailer showed off a great level of polish, even for the game being extremely early in production. Eventually, we learned that Quantic Dream was shaping the game around player choices and that the story would change depending on whether or not they failed.
Now that the game has launched, can it be anywhere nearly as good as the hype surrounding it?
Hold L1, circle and X, then release them to hit the jump for the full review.
Seems one of the more hit and miss titles of 2009 is getting a sequel. The latest issue of Nintendo Power has announced that there will indeed be a Scribblenauts 2 released this year for the DS. The sequel promises to add 10,000 more words, 120 new and improved levels, the removal of the par system and improved controls (thank God!).
Now everyone knows that the original Scribblenauts had loads of potential. Many feel the controls got in the way of the world the game was attempting to create. If developer 5th Cell can get the controls down, then I am all aboard for another Scribblenauts. What do you guys think? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.
Microsoft has replaced the previously bundled LEGO Batman and Pure with a couple different games for their new Xbox 360 Elite Spring 2010 Bundle. And to say that it is an upgrade would be sort of an understatement. Starting next week, you can pick up an Xbox 360 Elite bundled with copies of Microsoft exclusives Forza 3 and Halo 3: ODST.
Amazon has these new bundles available for pre-order at $299.99. It will be launching the same day as the $399.99 Final Fantasy XIII "super-elite" bundle. The Halo 3: ODST/Forza 3 bundle will include a 120 GB hard drive. TheFinal Fantasy XIII bundle will include a 250 GB hard drive as well as an additional wireless controller.
Perfect timing on Microsoft's part to get Halo 3: ODST in as many players' hands as possible. This is just in time for the beginning of the Halo: Reach beta which begins May 3rd.
Re: Darksiders - robbiejo - Bucho you should listen to Talking About Gamers. We have been pimping that game since it launched
Re: Battlefield Bad Company 2 Let us know what you... - dew - The Battlefield series has always been a great franchise and it's nice to see a lot of people finally starting to recognise that. I liked the single-player campaign. The story was pretty bad but I quite enjoyed the witty interactions of B-company. While the plot is...
Re: The new and improved Party Thead - mongo - morning all, Great fun with blur over the weekend with you guys and Nevis. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!--...
Re: Darksiders - ettec0ud - Indeed, it was a great game, if you don't plan on buying it at the very least its a great rental game.
Re: Darksiders - bucho the great - I just rented this and love it! With all the dungeon crawling, map finding, treasure chest opening, I really do feel like I'm playing a "mature"...
This week's show is dominated by news. Join Faitios, Robbiejo, Shayward, Golfrat and community member Prophet209 as they tackle the latest in videogames. Expect to hear conversations about Resident Evil, Army of Two and the Just Cause Demo.
With PAX East approaching, the anticipation continues to grow at a rapid pace. Episode 93 of the Post Game Report offers a small taste of what Boston will bring as JVB, SugarFree, SoldierX, Phoenix410 and HeroicSuperman welcome Pallidian from SFX-360.com to talk about all kinds of fun topics. SFX-360 is hosting an epic party at PAX East, so naturally we have to talk about that. Additionally we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the chaos of the Just Cause 2 Demo and in the spirit of spring training JVB has some kind words for MLB 10: The Show. There's also a host of news items to get to including the Halo: Reach Beta footage, the Rock Band Network launching and much, much more.
Some people will argue that the major shining gems of the last console generation were MGS3, Shadow of the Colossus, Knights of the Old Republic and Beyond Good and Evil. However, to me, there was a single game that, at the time, seemed to get completely overlooked: Indigo Prophecy.
