Late Night Consoling
| Game Prices Going Up? This article over at MSNBC quotes one analyst who thinks the cost of major titles will actually be going up in the near future. The reasons cited are all logical ones, such as the increased cost of development and so on, but don't start worrying just yet. As is pointed out in that same article, sales have been climbing steadily, allowing publishers to charge less for these games, not more. And while SOCOM did indeed retail for $60, that "cheap headset" it comes with is the same one Logitech is charging $40 for by itself, so that's actually quite a bargain. |
| A Sony handheld in 2000? According to a Nikkei report (relayed at GamePro), Sony apparently had a handheld system, roughly the size of the original Game Boy Advance, set to go three years ago. The system played games stored on Memory Sticks, and the idea was that people would pay to download games off in-store kiosks. This was developed by Sony proper, not SCE like the regular PlayStation systems (the PSX being the new exception), and was canned after it was decided to focus all of their efforts on the PS2. Apparently Capcom and Square were already developing software. |
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| PSP Game Pricing Revealed? GameSpot is reporting that at the ELSPA Games Summit in London today, SCEE president Chris Deering gave a keynote in which he mentioned some possible pricing for games for the upcoming PSP handheld system. He says that the majority of games will be in the $24 - $35 range, with some going as high as $70, and that since the UMD format is cheaper to produce than DVDs, movies could go for as little as $12. He also says that while there won't be any territorial lockout for games (yay!), there will be region encoding for movies, just like DVDs. |
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| More Downloadable Stuff for MechAssault After making users wait months and months for the first batch of downloadable goodies, Microsoft has wisely decided to speed things up a bit, and so they have already released another content download for MechAssault. A full list of the new stuff was posted to the comments last night by CA_Flynn, and to get this stuff all you need to o is log in to Xbox Live. |
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| Unreal II for Xbox? Both EBGames and GameStop have started listing an Xbox port of Unreal II: The Awakening. While that's not an official announcement, usually when both of those sites start taking pre-orders the game's definitely on the way. Also adding some weight to this story is the fact that both sites list a release date of 12/9. |
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| No Experience in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? This was actually posted last week, but I only just stumbled across it today...a handful of details from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles can be found at RPGamer, and among them is a description of the differences between the solo and multiplayer modes (playing solo is literally solo -- no AI party members) and the news that the game has no experience points. You'll get money, items and magic for defeating monsters, but that's it. Jeez, this game just keeps sounding less and less like a game I'd have any interest in playing. |
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| Policenauts Re-Released in Japan Here's a pleasant surprise...Slashdot Games points to this French-language story that showcases a PSOne re-release of Hideo Kojima's Policenauts, a little-seen but oft-mentioned Saturn game from the creator of Metal Gear Solid. The original was never released in North America (or even officially translated into English!) so hopefully we'll get a shot at finally seeing this game over here. |
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| Upgrade Your GameShark MadCatz, the new owners of the GameShark franchise, have announced an upgrade program for owners of an Action Replay, CodeBreaker or GameShark2 for the PS2 to their newly released GameShark2 Version 3. The upgrade costs $19.99 and is only available through their website. |
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| Futurama Interview Computer and Video Games has conducted an interview with Klaude Thomas, the producer on the upcoming Futurama game. Klaude talks about its authenticity and the level of involvement the people behind the show have had, which is apparently quite a bit, as the show's writers wrote the script and all the voice actors are in the game. |
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| Hulk Codes Already Found Well that figures...as a few people pointed out last night, some enterprising gamers have already found the codes for the Hulk game that will be hidden in the movie opening on Friday. I still think this is a cool idea, even if GameSharks make it easy to find this stuff. |
| New Releases This Week Last week was totally dead, but this week's a bit better...new in stores this week is DragonBall Z: Legacy of Goku II and Rock n' Roll Racing for GBA, MegaMan Network Transmission for GameCube , Resident Evil: Dead Aim, Big Mutha Truckers, Unlimited SaGa and RTX Red Rock for PS2 and Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, Midtown Madness 3 and Soldier of Fortune 2 for Xbox. |
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| Misc. Media/Previews |
Console Game of the Evening: Battle of Olympus for the NES. "It was very similar to Zelda, except based solely on greek mythology. Full of greek gods, cyclops, three-headed dogs, minotaurs, sirens, and a trip down to hades leaves memories that I shall never forget." (submitted by lord cecil).
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Maarten Goldstein
replyThat PSP pricing,
Not that 60 euros is a pretty standard price for console games here in Europe. Even though the current conversion rate works out to $71 dollars, we all know that console games dont cost $71 in the U.S. So I wouldnt worry about that type of pricing, instead the upper limit will be $49 probably.-
Not = note
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From what I've read, somewhere between $250 and $300. Which, umm.... is stupid. I'm pretty damned content with my GBASP.
One question I have tho, is how is a portable cd system going to work? When I play f-zero on my GBA, I shake the thing like mad. Won't games like this be non-playable on the PSP due to the disc format and skipping?-
Depends on how they design it. Sony's minidisc players are like rocks; you can shake one of those things for like 40 seconds, and I mean hard, before it starts skipping. I imagine they'll take care to make it a solid performer. Sony's consumer electronics are usually pretty reliable and well-designed. To this day I won't touch any kind of portable CD player other than a discman. Even those don't skip when I shake them for a while.
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Where did you read this? Because they are lying to you.
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