Archive for June 19th, 2008
Filed under: News
A new study out today by Experian Consumer Research concluded there are differences between consumers who purchased the PS3 and those who purchased the Xbox 360. The biggest difference being that while the Xbox 360 appeals the most to gamers who are 35-44, the PlayStation 3 appeals to the more senior demographic of 45 and up. The study also finds that youngsters ages 18-24 prefer the Nintendo Wii. Finally, the study uses “new media respondents” as a control group, defined as those who spend more than one hour online per week.
This study doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know; they don’t state any specific numbers in their press release and the presentation you can download basically concludes that there are no differences between PS3 owners and 360 owners except for age. After seeing a sample of their rudimentary research, if we were a company looking for statistics to help us market to gamers, we’d stay away from them.
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: PC, First Person Shooters
It’s always a little … graceless explaining to guests that the “modern art” in our living rooms are actually PCs melted by playing Crysis on its highest settings. Thankfully, Crytek has heard our whimpering and is working to make Cysis: Warhead play more nicely with mid-anger gaming rigs.
Voodoo Extreme was kind enough to translate an article on German gaming site PCGamers.de which states that the PC-exclusive Crysis folllow-up is being designed to run at a locked 30fps on a roughly $600 system. Now, compare that to the original game, which was sluggish even on a PC costing three times that much and … you have happier PC gamers. If Crytek’s programmers can actually pull off such a formidable feat, we sense a stalling in the PC upgrade market come the game’s release.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: News, Imports
Just when we were starting to wonder if Prey the Stars was something we completely imagined, news popped up about the game being rated by Australia’s OFLC. Still, we had nothing tangible to hold onto until Koei Europe announced the company’s upcoming games line-up. Oddly enough, the list included Prey the Stars, which is scheduled to release in the continent this October.
We hope that means we’ll get to find out more about this eating-based title before it comes out, but we’re really just relieved to know that it is coming out somewhere outside of Japan.
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: News
The PlayStation 3 has outsold the Nintendo Wii worldwide for the third time ever for the week of June 7th to June 14th, according to VGChartz. This is the seventh time the PS3 was able to outsell the Wii in the US while in Japan this was the third time. This victory is likely due to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, an incredible deal on the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle, and the Walmart deal that included a $100 gift card with the purchase of any PS3. Those of you who were very auspicious were able to combine the aforementioned deals. Naysayers like to attribute the Wii shortage in the US for the PS3’s triumph, but this time around the numbers are worldwide.
Is the third time the charm? Will this usher in an era of PS3 dominance? What do you guys think?
[Thanks, Trevor!]
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: News
Although most of Nick Rumas’ Gamasutra article on the ubiquity of R4 flashcart piracy in Korea is based on anecdotal evidence, we still found his piece to be pretty fascinating. While DS piracy may not be rampant in the U.S., Korea is renowned as a hotbed of piracy in videogaming, and Rumas claims that as many as three in five DS owners there possess a flashcart — and we can’t see all of those being used for homebrew.
Rumas also tells tales of traders in Seoul’s Yongsan Electronics Market openly selling customized R4 flashcarts to customers (who simply pay up their $87 and select the titles they’d like from a master list), and of Korean consumers who are far more clued-up about game piracy than their western equivalents (including middle-aged women, and young children).
He eventually chalks this widespread acceptance of piracy up to more than one factor, including Korea’s low minimum wage, an increasingly high cost of living, an dispirited government, and the fact that downloading games without paying for them is simply more of a cultural norm. With the DS now selling in respectable numbers in Korea, we can’t imagine Nintendo being overly happy to hear of Korea’s piracy endemic, but as Rumas notes, “Regardless of what [government] measures are undertaken, no real dent ever seems to be made.”
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: News
Are you still worried about Silent Hill: Homecoming being in the hands of a Western developer instead of Team Silent? Konami producer William Oertel put it pretty well: “Much of it is very deliberate. You don’t have to go into every single detail. You abandon it to the fans to decipher…In a sense, the whole game is like a puzzle.” This is part of the ideology of the development staff — to keep the game more on the psychological level like the legendary Silent Hill 2 and less on the literal side, like the first and third installments. We support this move.
A preview of the game doesn’t go into the storyline very much, since they claim it is quite on-track with previous titles and wish to refrain from spoiling anything. However, they do comment on the new battle system and how it, actually, works in favor of the Silent Hill style of play. Every weapon as a finishing move, dodging is challenging … combat is, essentially, more difficult. Enemies detect sound and light pretty viciously now — they reacted before, but now it’s clear when you knock over any of the surrounding stuff, the enemy comes running.
Conversations branch, too. During some of the games discussions between characters, you can choose from a couple of different answers that will yield different reactions or get you a little more background information. It doesn’t sound overly complex, but it’ll be interesting to see if these branches actually influence the type of ending you get. All in all, it’s sounding pretty well done.
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action
This is precisely why we’re not in video game marketing. If we were trying to get our open-ended gangster romp into the hands of millions, we’d be sure to have “Just like Grand Theft Auto IV!” emblazoned across not only the game’s cover, but all of its magazine ads, television commercials and special edition lunch boxes. Of course, the major failure in our marketing strategy would be in its honesty — our game, “basic Car Nicking,” really would just be Grand Theft Auto with slightly murkier textures.
That’s why we’re not in game design either, but we sure are good at copying and pasting quotes from THQ CEO, Brian Farrell! Like this one (via Next-Gen), from an investor meeting held on Wednesday in Chicago, where he said, “We think that we have a very differentiated product with Saints Row 2.” Farrell acknowledged Rockstar’s opus as “the leader in the genre,” but noted that Volition’s bandanna-wearing blockbuster would go in a different creative direction with “silly, over-the-top gameplay.”
We’ve certainly seen shades of that in the most recent Saint’s Row 2 trailer, what with the encouragement of public streaking and outrageous misuse of sewage. It’s out — and very differentiated — this October.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: Fan Stuff, Kingdom Hearts
We stumbled upon a great collection of fan-made box art for the upcoming PSP Kingdom Hearts game. Many of these efforts do a great job of capturing the spirit of previous Kingdom Hearts games. In fact, many of these look like the real deal. Check them out here.
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: Screens
A pair of new scans for Valkyrie Profile have surfaced on the net. Coming from Japanese mag V-Jump, the scans are chock full of goodies from the game. We’ve got a look at some of the title’s characters, which you can see above in the cropped image, as well as some very affable in-game screenshots. It’s pretty much become par for the course. Now let’s just hope we actually have a chance of getting the game outside of Japan.
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Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, RPGs
Delays are never good, but in the case of two titles emerging from EA’s acquisition of BioWare and Pandemic, it’s affable to see the publishing giant giving its studios the time they need to get the job done right. In particular, we’re talking about BioWare’s all-new original RPG title, Dragon Age, and Pandemic’s WWII action game, Saboteur, both of which EA boss John Riccitiello revealed are now 2009 titles during a speech Tuesday.
BioWare, hot off the PC release of Mass Effect, has been crafting its first fantasy RPG since Neverwinter Nights for some time. Saboteur showed substantial promise when we saw it last year; it’s a third-person action game set in Nazi-occupied France, starting off in black & white, with color appearing as Nazi’s are driven out of areas of Paris.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
Continue Reading June 19th, 2008
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