Tag Archives: October 2005

J Allard Disses Nintendo Controller, Says Sony Should be “Nervous”

Microsoft's J Allard GameInformer.com recently snagged an interview with the two big-hitters of the Xbox 360 team, J Allard and Peter Moore.
The lengthy interview covered a lot of different topics, with Allard revealing that the hard drive for the 360 will come packed with an audio album, a casual game called Hexic and a “making of Xbox 360″ video.

Allard also saved a bit of scepticism for Kutaragi’s Playstation 3, questioning why Sony’s list of claims about the console haven’t been backed up with much proof, and suggested Sony have a lot of work ahead of the console launching next year:

I hope that Sony’s nervous right now, honestly, because the launch lineup looks great. They’ve shown two really good movies and a picture of a console that doesn’t have any ventilation holes in the cabinet. I mean, their list of claims vs. their list of proof, there’s a big gap to close between now and spring 06. So if I’m in Sony’s shoes I’m a little nervous now because our lineup looks great, our hardware’s the same, we got a kick ass online service that just got better, our media support is really really good, and we got the industrial design right. If I’m sitting in Mr. Kutaragi’s shoes I’ve got a lot of work to do between now and spring.

On the subject of the 360′s other main competition, Nintendo Revolution and it’s remote-like controller, Allard said he had dreamt up a similar idea 4 years ago, but later discarded it because consultation with developers and gamers didn’t yield much enthusiasm:

Four years ago I wrote an email treaty and said, “Why aren’t accelerometers in remote controls? Why can’t I scroll down my channel guide with a gesture instead of up, up, up, up? So I think that’s interesting. We did a lot of research with gamers, talk to a lot of game developers and said, “Should we put an accelerometer in there and do the tilt thing?” And there wasn’t that much enthusiasm around it.

[...]

I don’t think most Electronic Arts games are going to be played with that thing. I think they’re going to be designed for the classic controller.

Peter Moore and J Allard Speak Up via GamesIndustry.biz

2 More Unannounced Titles from Rare

Rare Peter Moore recently announced that the Rare currently has two unannounced Xbox 360 exclusive titles.

Speaking in an interview with MTV, Peter Moore, corporate vice president of worldwide marketing and publishing for the Xbox, told of how Rare currently have two unannounced titles, both of which have 2 years of development behind them and are due to be announced in the spring of next year.

Roll on E3!

Rumour – Xbox 360 Featuring 40 and 80GB Hard Drives?

Joystiq is reporting that they have received a tip that at the recent Digital Life Technology expo Microsoft had Xbox 360′s that featured hard drives of capacity larger than 20GB, including one with 40GB and another with 80GB. Although no photo evidence was given the tipster told Joystiq that during a presentation he saw that one Xbox 360 had 38GB of disk space remaining when navigating a “memory” section for a while.

It wouldnt surprise us if a Xbox 360 did have more than the standard 20GB of disk space, although in a recent interview with Primotech Peter Moore said Microsoft have no plans to release larger hard drives for the Xbox 360.

New GTA for PSP Screens, Trailer

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

Official media and juicy info about Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was hard to come by a few short weeks ago, but the company have ramped up the promotion ahead of the game’s release at the end of this month.

The official website for the game launched in the middle of September, featuring a batch of screenshots, a trailer and a prank at the expense of Rockstar’s nemesis, Florida-based lawyer Jack Thompson.

Yesterday, Rockstar updated the site with information about three new multiplayer modes for the game – deathmatch, capture the flag, and an Attack/Defend style competition.
In addition eight new screenshots have been released, as well as a second trailer for the game.

The new screens can be viewed over on PALGN.co.uk, and the new trailer is available in the Movies section of the official website.

Bungie Reveal Part of Their Surprise, More to Come

After Bungie said they had a surprise announcement up their sleeves for this week, a rumour began that a character from Halo might make a special guest-appearance in Dead or Alive 4, the Xbox 360 fighter from Team Ninja.

Bungie have revealed today that the DoA4/Halo team up will indeed happen, though declined to say exactly which character will be putting in an appearance. They may have dropped a broad clue however with a jokey mock-up image of a lineup of Halo characters; Cortana is conspicuously the only character moving.

The only other concrete information that can be gleaned about the cameo at this point is that Team Ninja took care of the character’s fighting style, while Bungie themselves handled weaving the story of how the character appeared in the DoA universe.

As an extra teaser at the end of their announcement, Bungie also reveal that the DoA4/Halo news is not all of the surprise they hinted at last week:

Who is this mysterious character? We can’t say. Almost every denizen of our universe has some kind of capacity for violence, and it could be anyone…or anything. So keep guessing. The answer will be revealed in time. Oh, and although I did hint at this surprise in last week’s update, that wasn’t everything….

DOA Versus Halo! via Joystiq

Xbox 360 In A Wal-mart Near You

Reports are coming in that Wal-mart is the first retailer to the get an Xbox 360 Gaming Pod in store. A number of stores across the states where reported to have an Xbox 360 with demos of a number of different titles including Kameo and Call of Duty 2.

So if you want an opportunity to get your hands on a Xbox 360 over a month before launch either phone or visit your local Wal-mart and check if they have one in. If they do, great! Now you’ve just got to beat everyone else off it. Good Luck!

Xbox 360 Windows MCE Demo

Channel 9 recently sat down with Jeff Henshaw of Microsoft’s Xbox division and David Alles of Microsoft’s Windows Media Centre division. The guys get down with the Xbox 360′s media centre capabilities, talking about how to connect to your Windows Media Centre PC as well as their recommendations of hardware and telling us the advantages of connecting your Xbox 360 to a Windows XP Media Centre Edition PC.

Not only will you be able to stream images and music over a wired or wireless network, you can stream both standard and high definition video expanding your Xbox 360 and allowing you to use your Windows Media Center PC as extra storage place for your Xbox 360′s media.

You can view the video interview here.

Win a Copy of Comic Book Creator

Planetwide Games have kindly provided us with 25 copies of their new Comic Book Creator software to give away to our readers.

As the name suggests, the program lets you create your own comic book with screenshots taken from your favourite game (or images of your fave next-gen console bosses) using a drag & drop system.

We’ve had a few days of playing around with it, and it’s addictively simple to use; adding backdrops to the comic windows is as easy as specifying a folder with some screenshots, then dragging and dropping them in place. The program comes with a variety of different speech bubbles, and a selection of clip-art that you can add to by simply importing images from a folder. When your creation is finished, the program exports it out to a printer or to a .pdf file.

The software is due for release at the end of October at a price of $19.95, but you can snag a copy for free by sending your name and address in an email with the subject line “Comic Book Creator Giveaway” to competition@igniq.com

We’ll pick 25 winners at random and send the CD’s in early November.

More information about Comic Book Creator

Epic VP Disses Revolution

Nintendo Revolution Mark Reign, Epic Games Vice President has come out with some not-so-nice words about Nintendos next generation console. During a round table discussion at IGN Live, Reign came out with these words;

”Dont kid yourself, you’re gonna see more crappy, cheap, I-wish-I-hadn’t-
bought-it gimmick games based around that controller”.

Thoughts?

Quake IV Website Updated

Quake IV

Earlier this month id announced the long awaited Quake IV had reached Gold status and would be released for PC on the 18th of October. To tie in with the upcoming release, the official website for the game has been updated with a variety of extra content.

As well as the official game trailer, the Flash-heavy site now sports desktop wallpapers, a screenshot gallery, video clips of the game features, detailed information about the storyline and a teaser section dedicated to the Strogg alphabet.

TGDaily reports the PC verson is set to come in two flavours; a $50 standard edition and a special edition that will cost $60.

In addition, Quake IV is also set to make an appearance as a launch title for the Xbox 360 when it’s released worldwide at the end of November/ start of December.
Quake4Game.com – Quake 4 to be available by mid-October

Primotech Interview Peter Moore

Primotech have posted up an interview with XBox executive Peter Moore. The interview is fairly short, is in video format and was taken at the recent Digital Life Technology expo in New York. Peter Moore talks about Xbox 360 launch titles, Backwards compatibility with Xbox games, Xbox peripheral compatibility, Online distribution via Xbox Live, larger or external hard drives, and connectivity with Windows PC’s.

Larger or External USB Drives?

The compatibility with a Windows Media Center system means, theoretically, you can have 200GB+ of space for your new 360. However, there are currently no plans to have an XBOX 360 hard drive that’s bigger than 20GB. It may be implemented several years from now, if such an upgrade is warranted, but for now the team believes that 20GB is more than ample. Files can be transferred and deleted and added just like on a regular PC.

Interesting to hear that they have no plans to release a larger hard drive in the very near future, although not alot of space will be taken by music since you can stream your music from your PC or portable music devices.

You can view the full transcript of the interview, or watch the video interview over at the Primotech website.

Kojima Working On A Revolution Title?

Nintendo Revolution According to French Gaming site Jeux France, the father of the Metal Gear Solid series, Kojima is hard at work with the team behind Metal Gear Acid for the PSP, to bring a title to Nintendo’s next generation console the Revolution.

We are aware that Kojima is an admirer of Nintendo’s Innovation driven Revolution and its unique controller so it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise. This is great news for Nintendo fans globally if it does turn out to be true.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong PC Demo Available

Peter Jackson's King Kong Peter Jackson’s King Kong game is due for a massive, multi-platform release next month, but PC gamers can get an early taste with the release of the first demo.
The single-player demo comes in at 277MB and features two missions, one from the perspective of the hero Jack Driscol, and one from the perspective of King Kong himself.

The game proper is scheduled for release on most platforms on the 17th of November, with an Xbox 360 version following as a launch title for the console.
The movie itself will hit the cinemas on the 14th of December.

Download the demo on Eurogamer – Teaser site for the game

Hotline Reveals Revolution Release Date Info

Infendo a Nintendo Community blog has posted some interesting news about the Nintendo Revolution’s North American release date, while it doesnt provide an exact date it does slightly narrow down the possibilities. The source? the Nintendo Power Line (425-885-7529). When you choose to hear more about the Nintendo Revolution you are given this message.

“As the company with the strongest heritage of innovation, Nintendo moves the bar for all next-gen systems by employing a wide-ranging strategy that will attract more kinds of gamers to more kinds of games. When Nintendo’s new console, codenamed Revolution, arrives in the later half of 2006, everyone will discover the meaning of all-access gaming.”

So Nintendo expect the Revolution to launch in Japan in Spring of 2006, in the second half of 2006 in North America, following this pattern would i be right to expect a European launch as late as Spring 2007?

Seatle PI Interview J Allard

Seatle PI have posted an interview with Microsoft Executive J Allard. In the interview J Allard discusses alot of topics, including the recent RealNetworks discussion, Halo 3, the Xbox 360 pricing aswell as the PlayStation 3.

Q: There were listings by some online retailers citing a spring release date for “Halo 3″ among their pre-orders. What can you say about that?

Allard: Well, maybe they know more than I do. (Laughing.) You know, Bungie is definitely working on an Xbox 360 title right now. The thing that’s made Bungie games special, always, is they don’t rush it. They don’t hold themselves to an artificial date. They preserve quality and the depth of the experience above all else.

The original “Halo” was 4-and-a half years in development. The next “Halo,” people gave us a lot of heat for slipping it, what, six months from the originally anticipated date. But it was the most successful title on the Xbox platform, one of the most influential titles of the entire last generation. And so we’re glad we waited. The next Bungie title, I think you can expect not more of the same, but rather a title that holds itself to that same kind of bar.

The interview proves an interesting read, although it doesnt offer to much that we didnt already know.

You can read the interview in full over at the Seatle PI Website.

New World of Outlaws Sprint Racing Game Announced

RYL publisher Planetwide Games has secured the license to produce a new game based on DIRT MotorSports World of Outlaws Sprint Series.

The dirt-track racing game is due for release next year on PC and unspecified consoles, and will feature an online competition aspect which will be powered by Planetwide’s MOG engine.

In addition, Planetwide will use the game to showcase a new next-generation “reality engine” that immerses the player in the race and allows each car to be customized:

This engine will give the gamer the unique opportunity to experience game play that is truly the World of Outlaw Racing. Our reality engine will also allow the gamer to customize their sprint cars, view the race from the racers perspective, and experience dirt track racing from the starting line all the way to checkered flag directly from the driver’s perspective.

[...]

Online players will be able to test their skills as they create a customized sprint car designed to outperform and outlast the competition from local racers across the country and worldwide. Even drivers who smoke the track one weekend will still have to spend long hours in the garage to stay on top of their game.

DIRTMotorSports.com

No further details are available on the game at this point, except that it will be the first in a series from the DIRT/Planetwide partnership.

Nintendo to attempt simultaneous launch

Nintendo Revolution In a recent interview with Nikkei Business Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has revealed some fresh new details on the Revolution. In the interview Iwata revealed that Nintendo will be aiming to make the launch “as simultaneous as possible” similar to that of the Xbox 360.

Iwata also revealed how the Revolution will make it out after March 2006 but will be out before the end of the calendar year.

“I can only say that it’s coming out during 2006, but it will be after the current fiscal year. We hope to make it a simultaneous worldwide release as much as it’s possible.”

Nikkei Business asked Iwata about initial sales target for the Revolution, Iwata told Nikkei Business that if the Revolution was to sell less than the GameCube, currently around 18 million, it would be a complete failure.

“It [the Revolution] would be a complete failure if we didn’t sell more units than the Nintendo GameCube,” said Iwata.

So if the Revolution was a “complete failure” where would that leave Nintendo in the home console market?

Black & White 2 Gets Patched

Black & White 2 Just days after Lionhead shipped their highly anticipated sequel to Black & White, they have released a huge patch for the game.

The non-vital patch weighs in at a hefty 106 MB and contains a long list of fixes for crashes as well as some balance fixes. Gamers who have just picked up the game are advised to first apply the 1.1 patch before playing – the patch will erase all of your save games from version 1.0:

A known issue with this patch is with the save system. Save games from the retail version of Black & White 2 (i.e. Version 1.0), are not compatible with the v1.1 patch. If you have old save games, it is recommended that they are removed from your ‘My Documents’->’Black & White 2′->’Profiles’ folder before starting a new game with the patch. This will then prevent any conflicting problems between the two sets of save games. The above procedure isn’t vital, it is just advised. The patch is not vital either.

Download the patch – via Pro-G

PlayStation 3 to Launch at $400?

PS3 As the PlayStation 3 launch draws nearer and nearer, and the information gets drier and drier, more and more rumours spread across the internet like wild fire.

This time it’s a more significant apparently, Japanese gaming blog CoolGamer posted up an interesting article claiming that the PlayStation 3 will launch at under 40000 yen in Japan.

Why is this so significant? CoolGamer is yet to be wrong about anything it’s posted, although there is a first time for everything. It was posted that an “important person” at Sony recently spoke in Famitsu gaming magazine, saying;

“In the latest Famitsu, a very important person mentioned that the PS3 price would not be over 40000yen”

Although this is still classed as a rumour, can we take this one more seriously? Well no not really although it might be worth noting that Ken Kuturagi has previously mentioned that the PlayStation 3 will be fairly pricey.

Live Service Downtime

Seems Microsoft is gearing up to the launch of the Xbox 360 as the days draw nearer. Microsoft today announced service downtime for Xbox Live and the Xbox.com website for some servicing although the launch is over a month away Microsoft just wants to get ready for launch.

Maintenance will take place over the course of a 2 day period of October 24th and 25th although no specific times where given. So if you’re like me and your going to miss your Xbox Live experience over the 2 days may we recommend you go and enjoy the wonderful outdoors?

XBox.com and Live Back Up

Earlier last week we reported that Microsoft was taking down Xbox.com and Xbox Live in preparation of the Xbox 360 when it launches on November 22nd.

The new Xbox.com features a brand new design, extremely slick and has a bunch of cool new features although the main feature, My Xbox, is yet to be added, as well as the new Xbox official forums, both are set to be up within the next few days or weeks.

At the moment there are no notable changes to the Xbox Live service as it was all servicing for the Xbox 360 to allow it to connect to the Xbox Live service when you pick up your console.

Mystery Bungie Announcement Coming Soon

Bungie Bungie’s latest Weekly Update features the tantalisingly vague news that a “surprising, cool” announcement related to the company is coming sometime this week, most likely at the X05 event in Amsterdam.

The developer dashed hopes of an official unveiling of Halo 3 ahead of time by stating the announcement won’t be about the game, and neither will it be the unveiling of their next project.

That doesn’t leave much to go on, but regular readers of Bungie.net are probably the best placed to guess what the news will be about – apparently the developer has dropped hints in previous Updates:

Oh. Keep your eyes peeled next week for a surprising, cool, awesome Bungie-related announcement. No it is not Halo 3, nor is it the surprise revelation of our next project (whatever that may be) but it’s sweet. It’s something I’ve hinted at in the past. And you’ll probably like it. More than that I can’t say. Which even I know is aggravating. But it ain’t up to me. So just be patient.

What’s that you say? You want to see what Mr. Chief looked like when he was a baby? Who am I to deny you that wish?
Bungie Weekly Update via PlanetXbox360

Cyan Worlds Comes Back From The Brink

Some good news for fans of MYST and Cyan Worlds – the company has somehow managed to claw its way back from the brink of death after the news hit last month that most of its workforce was to be laid off.

Just before MYST V: End of Ages was released, reports appeared on the blogs of Cyan employees that the company had been reduced to just two members of staff, co-founder Rand Miller and president Tony Fryman.

The reason given for the dramatic news was that the company had failed to secure financial backing for their future projects. Presumably a backer has come through for them at the last minute however, as Rand Miller has told The Mercury News that Cyan has been given a “reprieve” and that most of its employees have been re-hired:

But Cyan isn’t dead yet. I sent an e-mail off to Rand and he answered, “We’ve had a reprieve. Managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat (that I can’t give details about yet), so we rehired almost everybody. Crazy industry. It’s giving me whiplash!”

Cyan, After 12 Million Myst Games Sold, Has A Narrow Escape With Death via Gamespot