According to Kotaku, the dry-run of Sony’s E3 presser was invaded by a ‘blogger’ yesterday. The guy from an unnamed website was apparently posting the announcements on the web 15 minutes after they’d been said. No one knows who this person was or if they’d had their E3 press stuff revoked but according to Jack Tretton:
“They found some guy on the third floor balcony laying down taking notes and calling it in to a service,”
This is a bit weird (and oportunistic) people and god knows what i’d have done to get a hold of that news but no it wasn’t me I was busy living my life and liveblogging the full conference from a GameSpot video stream right here in California Manchester.
Whoo David Hayter and Capcom news now! It’s finally been confirmed, the movie adaptation of Lost Planet is being made. Lost Planet fanboys (is there any?) jump for joy. Anyway the big scoop (sausage?) is that, as you may know, Solid Snake David Hayter has penned the screenplay and that he was at the conference yesterday. Hayter’s screenplay and the fact this isn’t a videogame movie directed by Uwe Boll are the only reasons I want to see this.
The conference was only about the movie which is a bit crappy, but at least Snake was there to save the day.
No release date yet but i’d expect it to be sometime in 2009
Jack Tertton’s getting like David Hayter (more Hayter news to come) he’s everywhere. The SCEA CEO has obviously just done the conference at E3 so he’s bound to be cropping up a bit. New he’s speaking on Squeenix’s decison to make FFXIII a multi-platform game.
It was a shock heard around the world as Final Fantasy fanboys screamed in agony as their fanboyism and dedication was slowly being tortured by Squeenix (ok…I went a little too far there).
Anyway here’s what Tretton had to say on the matter:
“Am I disappointed by it? Yes,” he said at a recent meeting with game writers. “Am I surprised? No.”
With how the industry is going he added this:
“It’s going to be harder and harder to hold on to franchises,”
Damn right there Jacky! Let’s hope that Sony can get their act together and start to become the overlord of gaming they once where.
Filed under: Gaming News | Tags: EA, Hamonix, MTV Games, New Features, PS2, PS3, Rock Band 2, Wii, Xbox 360?
Whoo more Rock Band 2 info sweet! Harmonix have said that they’re latest iteration of the franchise is NOT about innovation (what!) it’s about tweaking the existing concepts (few, saved) and adding to them (better) to try and make the Rock Band experience a hell of a lot better (nice!). From the sounds of things these improvements will definitely make the game better.
With the disc content (84 songs) and the rest of the RB1 songs and DLC available that brings the count to a massive 200 songs. Now it’d be a real ball ache trying to find a song but no Harmonix have fixed this with some new sorting features. You will now be able to sort songs by artist, album and decade. Clicking these headers will bring you into a sort of ‘playlist’ kinda thing where you can see everything in that category (i.e. David Bowie takes you onto songs by David Bowie).
Instrument wise there’s no big changes to the microphone (makes sense), but the guitar and drums have both had both had some tweaks done to them. The guitar (as you might have seen) now has a new wooden look to it and now has an auto calibration system to measure the delay and adjust the settings accordingly.
At first look the drums don’t look that different, but when the extras are added they look a lot cooler. The new cymbals can be added and used if you want but they aren’t needed. You can plug in an add-on and make the controller into a fully working electronic drum kit (which, I guess is sweet if you want/need that). Other additions include a better bass pedal and a new ‘drum tutor’ feature which will get newbies (and me) into drumming.
One of the best soundlng new features is ‘Battle Of The Bands’ which basically pits two bands around the world against one another in online challenges. The challenges can range from playing certain songs/setlists or playing songs by certian artists. The challenges will be updated daily and if i could get another two people together then it’d be legen…wait for it…dary (sorry I went a bit Barney Stinson back there).
There have been some tweaks to the ‘Band World Tour’ mode too. The ability to hire staff has been added which will help how much money the band makes and how many fans your band gets which adds a new element of strategy to the main campaign. Not only that but Harmonix have added the new ‘no fail’ mode (pretty self explanatory) and a new ‘jukebox’ mode where you pick the band and the songs and watch it unfold (ok…then it sounds a little meh but it could be cool).
Thanks to Kotaku for the pic of Harmonix’s event.
This’d be cool a PSP with a hard drive would definitely be a good thing, if not a great thing. With the possibility of a lot of downloadable games and the new movie store this would definitely be one of the best ideas for the PSP2 (along with proper buttons and two analog sticks)
Looks like the PSP2 train could be in motion here. Tretton speaks once again:
“I think we definitely thought about it,” he said. “I think that’s the trend moving forward.”
With the recently announced ability to purchase movies on a Playstation 3 and move them over to a Playstation Portable, and as the cost of memory continues to drop, the chance that a new Playstation Portable would include some sort of internal storage option is becoming increasingly likely, Tretton said.
New of the push toward digitally distributed movies through the Playstation Store is also like to impact UMD’s already flagging movie sales, he added.
“I think the UMD has struggled,” he said. “And that’s an understatement. That’s been a very frustrating thing. I don’t think (UMD movies) were handled very effectively.”
He said it seemed that studios said “lets see if we can get people to pay $20 or $30 for crappy movies with less content.”
Digital distributed movies, he said, is either going to supplement the UMD movie’s struggle or be the “stake in the UMD’s heart.”
Wise words from Jacky boy there seems like he’s actually talking sense about Sony’s future now. Sweet!
After briefly touching on the subject at last nights presser Jack Tretton had this to say about Home:
“I think it is in no-man’s land,” he said. “We know how to develop software, we know how to develop hardware. But Home is not a software title and it’s not necessarily a service. It kind of sat in the Worldwide Studio Group, but it really needed a lot of software support. It didn’t get wok on that until more recently.”
“There was a lot of learning and naivety.”
Tretton said the company isn’t bothered by Microsoft’s recent announcement of avatars and a sort of virtual space of their own on the Xbox 360.
“I think we are going in a bit of a different direction in Home,” he said. “We made a line in the sand (about not releasing Home yet) and made a strategic decision on home. It’s a road we are going to go down.”
A major reason behind the delayed release now is that the company needs to fill the space they’ve created, Tretton said.
“I would rather ship it two years from now and have it populated by a lot of neat stuff and be competitive than open something that is a ghost town,” he said. “The shell is there but we need to get the real destinations from the third party publishers and the Nikes of the world.”
“It’s like you open a mall and they’re only two stores in it.”
To an extent I agree with him. It needs to have everything ready, or at the very least the basics, before Sony roll it out. I really want to see it in 2008 though.
This is for those people who didn’t view the conference, missed the liveblog and can’t be arsed to read/don’t understand the transcription. I’m providing you, the readers, with the highlights of Sony’s 2008 E£ press conference.
Here goes:
- Some new Resistance 2 gameplay footage was shown along with a new trailer. Tim Price (from Insomniac) talks about the game
- Jack Tretton uses Little Big Planet’s Sackboy (In Boston Celtics gear) to navigate facts and figures about Sony’s systems.
- Tretton Announces PS3 ‘Greatest Hits’ line of games coming to America (I think they’re gonna be called ‘Platinum’ over in the UK & Europe). The 1st batch are: WarHawk, Resistance: Fall Of Man, Motorstorm, Uncharted, Need For Speed: Carbon, Call Of Duty 3, Fight Night Round 3, Assasins Creed, Rainbow Six Vegas, Oblivion and Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
- Tretton talks about PS2 and social games. Says the Singstore has had 1.9 million downloads.
- New ‘Lego Batman’ PS2 bundle announced – black PS2, Lego Batman Game, justice League DVD
- Tretton talks about PSN. Announces single sign in service. PSN has had 180 million downloads
- Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty ‘Announced’. Trailer plays. Announced that it’s gonna be $14.99
- ‘GT TV’ (Grand Turismo TV) talked about. Top Gear in HD Whoot!
- Jack talks about ‘Home’. Shows new trailer. Announces that Ubisoft, Lucas Arts, EA and Nike are all interested in Home and some are using the beta. Resistance, Uncharted game rooms within ‘Home’ are shown. They look cool.
- Video Store Stuff. Major studios content announced. SD & HD downloads/rentals. TV stuff too apparently. Transferable to PSP.
- Lempel takes the stage.
- Lempel talks about video store.
- Video Store announced for tonight. Very sweet!
- New Ratchet PSP bundle announced – Silver PSP, Ratchet PSP game, Download code for Echochrome, 1GB memory stick e.t.c.
- Resistance Retribution (Resistance PSP) announced. Trailer. Looks sweet. Released “Spring 09″
- Super Stardust Portable Teased in montage
- Life with PlayStation coming at the end of the month.
- PS3 MMO’s talked about.
- DC Universe MMO talked about. Trailer plays. Looks great a lot like that PC heroes MMO but better looking.
- 80GB PS3 to replace 40GB PS3 80GB reduced to $399.99
- Video plays of developers speaking about how good the PS3 is to work with
- Snippets of POP, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2
- God Of War 3 Teaser Trailer – slightly underwhelming
- InFamous getting talked about now. Really cool looking. Trailer plays – looks like one of the games of the show.
- MAG announced. 256 player online games and loads of other features.
There you have it folks, the complete guide to Sony’s E308 presser. Remember to check out all of the posts from this years event and the conference right here at XeNonX.
Filed under: Gaming News
I must have missed this one (or forgot about it) but ‘Flower’ was announced last year at TGS but it’s only now that we get details. The game is being made by thegamecompany (otherwise known as the guys who made Flow). I thought it looked a bit similar. Anyway it’s a game about Flowers. You act as the wind and guide the petals and pick up new ones. Basically it’s Flow with flowers.
It looks ok and the visuals are nice quite soothing too, like flow. Kotaku has some more screens.
I thought this might have been out sooner but sony, yesterday, announced a new PSP bundle that’ll ship this October. The bundle includes:
- A silver PSP Slim & Lite
- Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters game
- 1GB Memory Stick Pro-Duo
- National Treasure: Book Of Secrets on UMD
- An Echochrome download voucher
The bundle will retail at $200 which is a nice drop in price. In fact it’s so good I might have to pick it up when i’m in New York.
That isn’t an insult, it’s a game title. ‘Fat Princess’ will be coming to the PS Store later this year and although I have seen very little of it (surprisingly, sorry about that) it’s the concept that has intrigued me the most. The product description makes this game sound really, I don’t know, something.
Frantic and fun, Fat Princess pits two hordes of players against each other in comic medieval battle royale. Your goal is to rescue your beloved princess from the enemy dungeon. There’s a catch though: your adversary has been stuffing her with food to fatten her up and it’s going to take most of your army working together to carry her back across the battlefield.
32 player online carnage dragging, yep that’s right the ‘Fat Princess’, across the battlefield. The game’s got 10 maps and 5 character classes and actually sounds fun. You can check out some more screens over at Kotkau
Filed under: Gaming News | Tags: Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, Grand Turismo TV, Top Gear
Sony announced last night at their E3 presser that GTTV would be coming to Gran Turismo 5: Prologue on August 1st. Never bought the game (I hate racing sims) but this does sound pretty cool (It’d be cool if they got the same stuff through the PSN video store too). It’s apparently going to hit on August 1st, of what year would be my next question.
The GT TV service will let players/viewers watch all the latest stuff from the car world from races to reviews and even Top Gear! Yep Clarkson, Hammond and May will be available on your PS3 (via GT5P) hopefully on August 1st. Now i’m not a car nut (i love Top Gear!) but that’s pretty cool.
Now this is just crazy. Capcom are porting the Xbox 360 version of the original Dead Rising to the Wii Famitsu have revealed. If they don’t make a PS3 port too they’re throwing money away. Hopefully we’ll here something about a PS3 version soon. If not Capcom have shot themselves in the foot.
Filed under: Next Week In Rock Band | Tags: DLC, Microsoft, PS3, PSN, Rock Band, Sony, The Who, XBL, Xbox 360?
No it’s not an EA released CD (I should’nt give them any ideas) it’s the name of the new Rock Band, 12 song, track pack that hit the PSN (and presumably the Xbox Live Marketplace) yesterday. It was a welcome surprise as I wasn’t expecting it until Thursday.
Not checked all of the tracks out yet but I am going to.
For those who need a reminder the track pack is $19.99 with each track being sold individually for $1.99.
The tracklist is as follows:
- Amazing Journey
- Baba O’Riley
- Behind Blue Eyes
- Emminence Front
- Going Moblie
- Leaving Here
- My Generation
- Real Good Looking Boy
- Sea & Sand
- Summertime Blues
- Who Are You?
- Young Man Blues
I can only afford a few but will probably get the others in due course.
Filed under: Gaming News | Tags: 24, Activision, Call Of Duty: World At War, COD 5, E3, Kiefer Sutherland, The Lost Boys, Treyarch
It was announced by Treyarch at Activision’s E3 presser last night that 24’s Kiefer Sutherland would be doing voice acting in the new Call Of Duty game. There’s no specifics right now but i’ll bet anyone he plays an American solider. It’d be great if he was the voice of the main character but it’s more likely he’ll be an A.I. controlled squad mate or something.
This would really suck if he was in it for like ten seconds then never seen again.
Filed under: Gaming News | Tags: E3, Eric Lempel, Movies, PS3, PSN Video Store, Sony, TV
Eric Lempel announced yesterday at E3 that Sony’s video download service would go live last night. Apparently it did but for me over here in the UK it didn’t and it dosen’t look like I can access the American one either. I can see the big advert on the PS Store for it but nothing happens.
Have Sony now taken to region locking? Damn you (for now) Lempel damn you!
Answers on a postcard please people (or maybe just in the comments section).
