Late Night Consoling
Morph8 and ease_one both posted in the comments pointing out that Metal Arms: Glitch in the System has dropped down to $30. I reviewed the game recently, and I really do heartily recommend the game. I'm playing through Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time right now, and I wish I were having as much fun with it as I did playing Metal Arms. Considering how many mediocre games are out for full price right now, $30 for Metal Arms is quite a deal. This news, along with a couple of other ones that slid across my desk today have led me to start a new subsection to LNC: Deals This Week. I'll only post these when I have at least two items to mention, but it seems like a good place to stick price drops, pre-order bonuses and other things that might otherwise get passed over entirely. So in the future, keep an eye out for things like this. Post them in the comments if you find anything worthwhile, and I'll compile them all into a semi-regular post.
| EA Conference Call: Price Drops, Next-Gen Announcements Soon? Today was Electronic Arts' conference call to investors, and a few interesting tidbits were mentioned. EA reiterated their belief that the current generation of consoles will see a price drop this year, but they speculated a full drop to $129 "by late spring, possibly around E3, or Labor Day at the latest, in time for the 2004 holiday shopping season." Also of note was word that they expect either Microsoft or Sony to announce their next-generation console within the next 3-5 months (I'd say both will). |
| EA on PSP Support, Pricing Also mentioned in EA's conference call was Sony's upcoming PSP handheld system, which they pledged full support for, saying that they intend to release between 8 and 12 titles in the fiscal year ending in March 2005. Regarding the price of the system, they speculate that it will go for between $199 and $249, with games selling for around $39. EA is confident that this new system will be big: they say it will become "another meaningful platform" in 2005. |
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| New Battlefield Rumors 1UP has posted a rumor suggesting that there are three new Battlefield titles in the works (aside from Battlefield Vietnam), all of which deal with a modern combat setting and will be released for PC, PS2 and Xbox respectively. According to 1UP's source, these games will all include the multiplayer support the series is known for, including the Xbox version of the game, which would mark EA's first support of Xbox Live. |
| Sega-AM2 Interview GameSpy has posted an interview with Makoto Osaki of Sega-AM2, talking with him about the various past, present and future games from the studio. It's a must-read for any Sega fan, and Osaki-san comments on things like the possibility of an Xbox port of OutRun 2, the inevitable Virtua Fighter 5, the kooky Virtua Fighter: Cyber Generation and even his thoughts on various Western-developed games (look for a great quote on the last page regarding Duke Nukem Forever). |
| Sega's 2004 Lineup Speaking of Sega, the company held a press event yesterday in San Francisco, where they unveiled their 2004 lineup. A good report from the event can be found at IGN, where you can find details about the two (PS2 and GBA) Astro Boy games that will be coming out soon, Blood Will Tell (the PS2 game known as Dororo in Japan), Nightshade (PS2) Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku (GC, PS2, Xbox) and the news that Headhunter 2 is delayed, but still in development. Also of note is a Samurai Jack preview at 1UP and an interview at GameInformer with the producer of the game. |
| New Minor DS Detail This is a fairly small revelation, but GameSpot has translated the Japanese press release for Nintendo's DS system, and in it they discovered a mention that the system's two screens "can be used as one large screen." |
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| DRIV3R Delay3d Just when the game was starting to get some buzz behind it, Atari announced a delay today for DRIV3R, pushing the game back from its late-March release date to June 1st. Oddly, the reason doesn't sound gameplay-related, but instead there's this quote from Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell: "We believe that this additional time will give our marketing team the ability to exploit DRIV3R’s full potential, meeting the high expectations of gamers, media and shareholders." And the developers will use that time to polish the game, right? Right? |
| CELL Q&A GamePro (which is the only site that can do so legally), has translated a Q&A with Nobuichi Okamoto, a technology consultant who is working on Sony's CELL project. He hints about the future of networked games (which is sort of what I have mentioned a few times, where networking is completely transparent to the user), and also gives a 2006 timeframe for completion of the project. |
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| An End to Online Cheats? Fire International, which makes the Xploder cheat devices and provides the systems for MadCatz' GameShark line, has announced plans to stop releasing cheat codes for online games like SOCOM: US Navy SEALs. Regardless of what prompted this sudden change of heart (I'm guessing the CEO got pwned by an invisible player) it's certainly nice to hear, although there's nothing preventing GameShark.com from continuing to release codes on their own (as they already do). |
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| Fight Night Interview Computer and Video Games has conducted an interview with Kudo Tsunoda, the senior producer of Fight Night 2004, the first boxing game from EA Sports since the last Knockout Kings two years ago. |
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| Psi-Ops Q&A A new Q&A with Mike Eddy of Midway Games is up at HomeLAN tonight, talking with the producer about their upcoming title Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. |
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| Deals This Week Aside from the price drop in Metal Arms mentioned above, this week marks the addition of Brute Force to Microsoft's Platinum Hits line of Xbox titles, and I happened to notice that both GameStop and EBGames are offering free copies of the awesome Midway Arcade Treasures as a pre-order bonus for The Suffering. The jury's still out on that game, but hey, that's a pretty cool pre-order bonus. |
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| New Releases This Week It's a pretty slim list again this week: for PS2 is Mafia, for Xbox is Sega GT Online (budget priced, nonetheless) and for both PS2 and Xbox is Sonic Heroes. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| IGN has new details and screenshots from The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords +, a hands-on look at Donkey Konga and shots from Custom Robo Battle Revolution. |
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| New shots from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 are up at GameSpot tonight, GameSpy has a new preview of Samurai Warriors, The Magic Box has new shots from SD Gundam G Generation Seed and GameInformer is the latest site to post a preview of R-Type: Final. |
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| GameSpot is the latest site to post a preview of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (which is the first time I've seen that name associated with the game) and IGN has posted the first screenshots from the Xbox version of Men of Valor: Vietnam. |
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| GameSpot and IGN both have new previews of Fight Night 2004 (PS2, Xbox), GameSpy has posted a video showing the making of the DRIV3R (PS2, Xbox) launch event (yeah, you read that right) and GameInformer has GameInformer and IGN both have previews of Juiced (GC, PS2, Xbox). |
