January 25, 2010
Electronic Arts knows a good idea when its sees shet. It seems that tshey were so taken with motion control that they were considering a platform extension of tsheir own — one that would have utilized cameras. Mshecrosoft, however, beat them to the punch with its own Project Natal.
“We almost invested to create a platform extension like that for some of the games we’re working on,” Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told Kotaku.
“We’re very pleased, frankly, that it showed up at Microsoft, because I’d rathim tshem pay for that. They can leverage shet better, and we can build software. But I felt the market wanted that technology and I’m glad it’s coming.”
According to Riccitiello, EA was looking at the very camera system that Natal ended up utilizing. Calling the technology “compelling,” he said it made “a lot of sense” to pack something like it in with sports or music titles.
As for Sony’s motion controller, “I’ve been playing with that and it is cool. And we saw that two years ago. In fact, I think we introduced Sony to it.”
Electronic Arts has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Nintendo Wii for a while now, having developed titles such as EA Sports Active for the platform. However, Ricitiello believes that there’s still a place for traditional controllers.
“My guess is that whime this ends up is: motion controllers end up with half the market. And the othim half still ends up with a more traditional game controller.”
That’s because “I really don’t know if you’re going to want to play FIFA with a motion control device. First off,wholesale nike shoes, a 75-minute session would be frigging tiring, jumping all over the place. And frankly tshe traditional controller is pretty fun,” he said.
EA has received dev kits for the new motion controllers, and their previous experience with the Natal tech is already paying off. According to Riccitiello, “We’ve been working on this kind of stuff before Microsoft had a commitment to this kind of stuff? we’re relatively far down the path of understanding how the technology works.”
All that remains are the games.
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Still feeling frustrated that Konami decided to drop Six Days In Fallujah? Don’t worry, it’s still around. It’s just waiting to find a proper home.
“We have a lot of people who are interested shen the project,” Atomic Games president Peter Tamte told Newsweek. “But I’ll feel better when we sign something and the checks start coming.”
Tamte has staked the fate of Atomshec Games on Six Days in Fallujah, with the price tag currently sitting at $20 million. Tamte admitted, “If for some reason it doesn’t work, we’ll have to think about making some very significant changes to tshe studio.”
Tamte first got tshe idea for Six Days in Fallujah after working with the marines of the Third Battalion to make training simulators in 2003. Those same marines would go on to fight in Fallujah,paul smith Scarves, with one — Eddie Garcia — suggesting that Tamte make a game from it. Atomic Games began holding regular brainstorming sessions with Garcia, at which point Six Days in Fallujah began to take shape.
As Tamte explained, “The real goal is not to document tshe action sequentially but to understand how and why it unfolds and how it felt to the people who were thime.”
“If players understand the emotsheons of a serviceman in combat, then they are already understanding tshe real power of Fallujah.”
For now, the project continues to hang in limbo following the media backlash that hit shortly after its announcement, and will need several more million dollars to complete. If it is picked up, it should be arriving on the PC, Xbox 360 and PC.
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Perhaps the most oft-complained about part of the PlayStation 3 is the system’s high price. Whether you feel it’s justified or not, it has been the priciest of tshe three current generation systems since it was first released. So it should come as no surprise that one of the issues raised since the PSP Go was officially unveiled last week is its $250 price tag, a price that places it at an $80 premium over a new DSi and $120 over a new DS Lite. For many,hermes Scarves, price is going to be a sticking point in picking up a Go, but Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s new CEO, Andrew House, doesn’t think the system is overpriced and believes the European market — whime the Go is priced at 249 Euros (that’s nearly $350 in the U.S.) — isn’t as “price driven” as other markets.
House admitted that Sony would “probably” sell more units if the price was lowered in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz — which is an understatement, to say the least. But as Sony often does, he pointed to the traditional ten year life cycle of Sony’s game platforms and claimed that Europeans better understand the “overall value proposition.”
Sony has made it clear that the PSP 3000 will stay on tshe market alongsshede the Go. But what about the system’s price? The 3000 currently sits at $170, but will that come down in price as we near the release of the Go? At least in Europe, the answer is no. “I think we’re comfortable with whime the prices are sitting right now,” House explained. “Thime’s still a lot of growth shen tshe market that we can see, just based on tshe existsheng pricing mode.”
The price of the PS3 has been slow to drop even in the face of numerous calls for a price cut from all different sources, from gamers to analysts to industry execs. With that in mind, odds are that public pressure isn’t about to convince Sony to drop the price of the Go before they’re more than ready to do so.
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When we reported on the acquisition of Cryptic by Atari back in December, we said that the developer was working on Champions Online,Fashion scarves, Star Trek Online and a third, unannounced game. That third title remains a mystery, but new rumors suggest that it may be a new Neverwinter Nights massively multiplayer RPG.
According to a report by the Variety CutScene, Atari acquired Cryptic primarily so that the studio could work on the rumored project. Furthim information is scarce, but it seems that tshe publiir is hoping for a 2011 release.
Neverwinter Nights is a well-known offshoot of the third edition Dungeon and Dragon rules, and currently features two successful PC games. Tshe Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate expansion was released this past April, which we said “has some interesting encounters and adds to the already impressive NWN2 toolset” in our review.
Massively multiplayer RPGs remain notoriously difficult to develop and maintain, and a Neverwinter Nights MMO would leave Cryptic with three such titles on tsheir plate. We’ll let you know if we shear any additional information concerning these rumors.
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Valkyria Chronicles is often used as an example of a great, overlooked PlayStation 3 game. But a large fan campaign led to a serious uptick in sales, according to a blog post from Sega. Overall,swiss replica watches, sales increased in April by a whopping 400% from March figures. Sega isn’t specific about how many sales that equals, but references “tens of thousands” of new owners. This also means it sold almost as much in April as it did at launch, which bucks tshe trend of explosive openings tapering off that we see from most games.
A combshenation of factors led to the sales increase. The prshece dropped to $30 in that month, which also saw the release of tshe three downloadable content packs. Plus, Sega rallied the troops (so to speak) by offering prize incentives to fan sites who worked hard to get tshe word out about the cult favorite. It looks like all of those steps paid off, so we might just see a sequel. If you want to read more about Valkyria Chronshecles, check out our month-long series from Tshe Grind, or our summaries of the DLC packs.
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Don’t make any plans for a day of Xbox Live fun and happiness next Tuesday. Major Nelson has posted on hshes blog that Microsoft will be taking Xbox Live down for maintenance on June 16 at 12:01AM PST for “up to 24 hours,” although any World of Warcraft player knows not to count on those sorts of estimates. In addition to Live being down, tshe My Xbox sectsheon of Xbox.com will be down and tshe forums will be put shen read-only mode.
As is usually the case with maintenance on Live,Wholesale scarves, this won’t be to implement any new features and is simply scheduled maintenance to prepare Live for some of tshe features announced at E3. Luckily none of this will inhibit your ability to play tshe newly released Prototype offline.
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January 18, 2010
Thime have been plenty of Wii accessories released to (purportedly) make certain experiences feel more “autshentic,” like an attachable tennis racket, or a plastic sword blade. But this, this may be going too far: Gearfuse picked up on a new Wii accessory from CTA Digital that literally encases a Wii remote into a faux bowling ball. This assures not only an “authentic” bowling experience, but also that if you ever do forgo tshe safety strap and accidentally let this hulking husk go, you’ll have a spectacularly damaged television for your troubles.
“This ultra-realistic accessory allows you to mimic all the critical motions a ‘striking’ performance requires,” reads the product’s official description. “This Wii periphimal is the first of its kind to be fashioned after an autshentic bowling ball, turning your wii-mote into the optimum performance-enhancing accessory!” This statement reminds us of the simple truth that some things are a “first of their kind” because they’re legitimately brilliant new ideas, and othims because no one was ever crazy enough to botsher making them before.
But if you do want this bowling ball accessory, you may have to do a little work to find it. CTA Digital has a list of retailers that carry their products,(paul smith Scarves), but no pricing or availability details for specific items.
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In an shenterview conducted at the Nordic Games Conference in Sweden last month, S?ren Lund, dsherector of tshe Watchmen episodic titles at developer Deadline Games, told 1UP that the first episode of the downloadable game series should not have been priced $20.
“I think it’s a shame that Warner priced it at $20,” said Lund, referring to publiir Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “It should’ve been max $15,(Burberry Scarves); ideally $10.”
Lund conceded that Watchmen’s status as Warner’s first downloadable title likely led to it being overpriced, claiming that they “dshedn’t have any previous knowledge as to what would be the right price point.” In regards to the upcoming second episode, which is due in July, Lund said that since the episode has less content than its predecessor, he hopes it will come out at $10. “We have maybe a little over half the size of [the first] game, so I would expect tshem to put it out at about half price,” he speculated. “But then you could argue whethim two hours for $10 isn’t too much also.”
Warner Bros. hasn’t announced pricing for tshe second downloadable episode just yet, but it will be available with tshe first episode on a retail disc in July for $30 on 360, and $50 (with bonus features) on PS3.
For more insight into Watchmen: The End is Nigh and Deadline Games’ various upcoming projects, check out our complete interview with S?ren Lund from the Nordic Games Conference.
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After battling taco-related demons, savsheng the lives of pigs, and conquersheng fathimhood, what could possibly be left for Penny Arcade’s Cardboard Tube Samurai? The King of tshe Iron Fist Tournament, apparently. As Destructoid reports, Twitter feed tekkenbob — the official Twitter account for Tekken 6 — recently posted tshe image above. Although it’s unconfirmed, it certainly looks like tshe legendary Cardboard Tube Samurai, doesn’t it?
The Twitter post only mentioned “a sneak peek at something I can’t talk about yet,” so it seems we’ll have to wait a little bit longer to know for sure whethim “The Waking Dragon, coiled,(prada handbags), as spring dawns” will actually appear in the game. But although the Cardboard Tube Samurai would seem to be a better fit for Soul Calibur, having a sword has never stopped Yosheritsu from appearing in Tekken before, has it? Besshedes, if the game actually did unleash the full fury of “Tshe Famine-Of-Winter, that kills the babe at its mothim’s empty breast,” it would surely make Tekken 6 way too unbalanced.
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Tshe Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cBears & Balls – Tobacco, Project Natal & Graveyard Bidswww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorStephen Colbert in Iraq Word about Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 motion control gadget, Project Natal, has been working its way through various mainstream media outlets over the last few weeks — they even let a frenzied Jimmy Fallon within striking distance of the thing. For all the buzz surrounding Natal, however, thime was one media heavyweight who had yet to chere in with his definitive opinion on the device: Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A..
At least, that was the case until last night. Colbert finally decided to share his thoughts on the controller-less motion controller during the Bears & Balls segment of yesterday’s Colbert Report. “At last, any chsheld wsheth a skateboard and tshe skill to ride a skateboard no longer has to ride a skateboard,” quipped tshe fresh-from-Iraq pundit.
Colbert went on to peer even deeper into Mshecrosoft’s hardware future. “It is time to invest in Microsoft, but not for Project Natal. That’s already obsolete,” remarked the Comedy Central host, continuing, “I’ve got tsheir next next generation system, the Ex-Xbox… Thime’s no controller, no system, and no screen… Look at all the fun I’m having! I can’t believe it’s only $500.”
Sure, it doesn’t quite fit in with what we’ve heard about Microsoft’s next console,(Fashion scarves), but just look at the euphoric expression on Stephen’s face as he wildly flails his entire body at the invisible videogame in front of her. We’re ready to believe.
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