The pricing at the end may read GBP9.99 for PlayStation3, but we're sure the action in the BF1943 Guadalcanal trailer will be the same the world over.
At first glance it does look amazing - DICE's Frostbite engine appears to be both smooth and laden with juicy effects. The player models look a little wispy - similarly thin as Battlefield Heroes' are - but that's something people can get their heads around if the rest of the action compensates. We don't know yet, but if the in-tank view shown at the 35 second mark is in-game footage we'll be happy.
The big questions we're all asking. That is: can a 24 player limit capture the Battlefield spirit, and what will change with the PC version, out September?
That said for 1200 Xbox Live points or what should be around the $20 mark, this is shaping up to be a no-brainer for console peeps. And dig on that music, how dramatic!
Valve's marketing man Doug Lombardi was in London yesterday spreading the good word. CVG scored an interview with the great man, and managed to get answers to the questions we all are a little curious to know - just how much of an effect does having nearly 40,000 people signing a petition have?
| It really didn't change our plans at all. As I mentioned we had plans to keep releasing stuff. We put the Survival Pack out for free which I thought was pretty cool on 360 as well as PC - it's sort of uncommon to be able to get new stuff out that way. | |
Answer: about that ^^^ much. Lombardi did add that Left 4 Dead DLC would be announced at the end of summer (winter in Australia).
Other interesting tidbits:
The genesis of L4D2:
| The idea for that really came from the team after they had finished had a bunch of ideas for what they wanted to do; melee weapons, new characters, new game modes etc. Then when the game had shipped they saw a bunch of behaviours in the wild once thousands, hundreds of thousands and then millions of people had played the game. | |
"The petition" | It's [E3] not really the venue for announcing DLC and whatnot. I think folks took our announcement as a sign that we were dropping Left 4 Dead 1 and that's just not the case. | |
And arguably the most interestingly - Valve's reasoning behind its disinterest in PlayStation3 development | We've run a couple of experiments over the years of PlayStation in general; we did Half-Life on PS2 with an outside company and then we did Orange Box PS3 with an outside company. We weren't able to deliver the same type of product on PS3 and PS2 for that matter that we were on the 360 and PC.
If you look at it as a matter of Valve doing it, Valve did the 360 and the PC version of the Orange Box and they both go 96 on Metacritic - The PS3 version was nowhere close to that. Left 4 Dead got a 89 or a 90 on 360 and PC. We're really, really proud of the fact that whatever platform you play the game on you're getting the same experience, you're getting the same Metacritic score. And with Left 4 Dead, you're getting the same DLC with the survival pack and some of the stuff that we have coming.
Until we have the ability to get a PS3 team together, until we find the people who want to come to Valve or who are at Valve who want to work on that, I don't really see us moving to that platform.
We've kind of learned a lesson in that again, if we were customers of that product on PlayStation, we'd feel like we sort of got the stepchild version of the product while the guys on the PC and the 360 got the sweet version of it. | |
There's quite a lot more meat in the article, so good job by CVG. Except how they spell legendary band Nirvana as - errrrrrrrr?
"In the old days Details Magazine used to do a feature that was sort of their music issue and they had this big fold-out where all music led back to like James Brown, Elvis, The Beatles and they went all the way down to every band like
Nervana and back up."
That ain't no typo - what is the world coming to? And why does a company like Valve pay any attention to a crappy metacritic score? That's the tail wagging the dog. RAGE.
Terrible twosome is a pretty unfair way to describe Benny & Richie, considering Benny's really the only terrible one. This week Richie conducts a professional and interesting interview with legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk about his new game, and talks the sweet science with Aussie boxer and new Fight Night entrant Billy "The Kid" Dib. Benny on the other hand pushes the boundaries of good taste with his booth babe interviews and calls out Gamespot. GAMESPOT? One of them does Krav Maga Benny. What do I do, Couch Fu...
And we wouldn't have it any other way.
Watch the latest episode now to see it all in action, and boys - don't change. (Also GameArena would totally whoop Gamespot's arse).
This week's update sees Andy talking Monster Hunter Freedom Unite with Ben Dwyer-Roberts - they're not kidding about the friends thing by the way. This game
needs people with you to be any fun. He also takes aim at Obama again, although this time the Prez has resigned himself to the idea that kids will play video games. We also reflect on MJ's career in videogames, and Suze was back on the street asking people questions again!
Watch the latest episode now! If you were going to make a Michael Jackson game today, what the hell would you make? Nobody say anything related to kiddy touching.
Pricing may still be TBA for Australian versions of DJ Hero, but if you thought you were getting any change out of $200 you may wish to start thinking again.
The $RRP for the game in the States? $USD120. Which thanks to the US economy being in the toilet comes out to $148 and change as of the time of writing. Scary fact - the Aussie dollar only recently strengthened, so it could be a lot worse.
It's safe to assume our DJ Hero $RRP at launch will not go under this point (say $150 in nice round figures). If it does, I will eat a bar of soap while playing Guitar Hero (and upload the video).
However with the announcement of the UK's recommended retail - which our pricing usually follows closely after conversion - it may be that $200 is a closer mark. Eurogamer is reporting Activision has told at least one retailer the recommended price for the game in the UK is GBP107.99. Most retailers are likely to hit up punters at launch for around 99 pound, just to put off the psychological factor of shelling out triple figures. This - in Australian dollars - is just over $200 at the time of writing...
It's not easy being number one. Just ask Electronic Arts. After ruling the games industry for over a decade, a few reversals and a timely merger by the opposition saw Activision assume top spot like it was theirs all along.
It doesn't take much to get toppled, and the first real test of Activision Blizzard's top dog rating may come this Christmas, if Janco partners analyst Mike Hickey's comments - circulated to partners - are to be taken seriously.
Hickey - who previously predicted Modern Warfare 2 would be the biggest selling game of 2009 (if not the biggest entertainment launch of the year) - has communed with the spirits and identified a cluster of risks that could "compromise" Activision's end of year sales bonanza.
1. StarCraft II may not launch in 2009
Hickey believes it is "increasingly probable" StarCraft II will launch in "fiscal 2010" period. It seems Hickey is basing this on comments made by Blizzard to Kotaku (...) stating the beta period will run for 4-6 months - meaning a Christmas window would be very tight...
This is literally my first trip out to the Atari offices, and it's definitely larger than I imagined. Upon arrival I'm ushered into the media room equivalent of my dream lounge room. In the centre of the room are two chairs with swivelling bases and a small coffee table. On two walls are massive HDTVs connected to dev consoles - one is showing the Wii version of Codemaster's take on Formula 1, the other playing the menu screen for Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Around the room are life size figurines of Lara Croft and Kane & Lynch, but the real winner - the piece I contemplate stealth KO'ing my gracious hosts for - is a framed canvas for Metal Gear Solid, signed by Hideo Kojima. I'm considering a sneaking mission of my own...
Why do asylums always look so creepy?Hudson Hawk-esque capers aside, even a MGS canvas couldn't hold my attention as long as Batman: Arkham Asylum. I waltzed in the room and I'm immediately asked the all important question "Do you have a preference? PS3 or Xbox 360?"
It's already on the screen on the 360, so my decision is made for me. The game loads straight to Batman escorting The Joker into Arkham Asylum, a sprawling island correctional facility. I'm immediately reminded of the beginning to The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay - except this time you're X to the Z, not V to the D...
Head through for our full first look!
Studio president of Bungie, Harold Ryan has revealed in an interview with the Seattle Times that Natal could be in the mix for Halo Reach, the Halo title coming after Halo 3: ODST.
Well, kinda. The full quote below essentially says Reach could be played with it - something you should be able to do with most games with varying levels of success.
| Bungie also received an early look at the "Project Natal" motion-sensing controller Microsoft is developing for the Xbox. Studio President Harold Ryan said he's enthusiastic about the device and it could be used in "Reach," another version of "Halo" expected in the fall of 2010. "I absolutely think 'Reach' could be enabled with it," he said. | |
Also on the motion control front, word on the street is the new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 on Wii has finally nailed a proper swing mechanic (using Wii Motion Plus). A whole stack of large outlets have been raving about how accurate the control is...
This week Andy shows off his mad skills once again with a sneak peak at the end of Red Faction: Guerrilla. He's also checking out his favourite iPhone game Flight Control from Aussie devs Firemint, sassing Barack Obama regarding his opinions on video games and we take a look at Andy from a few different perspectives on his new pocket video camera.
You can
watch the video here. Have you finished Red Faction: Guerrilla?
It's mainly been one-way traffic when it comes to talking about Crackdown, Crackdown 2 and how Microsoft somehow managed to turn a feelgood story about a dark horse game becoming a success into a murky tale of deception and betrayal. Realtime Worlds, the crew who made the original Crackdown for Microsoft have vented publicly about their displeasure about not being given a crack at the sequel.
Some would say rightly so, as it ultimately transpired the gig was given to Ruffian, a studio that numbers staff who worked on the original Crackdown. Realtime Worlds executives downplayed the number of staff who migrated across, but according to Ruffian's creative director, Billy Thompson tells a different tale in an interview with Edge...
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