Archive for May 23rd, 2008
May 23, 2008
Tomonobu Itagaki
Itagaki talks Ninja Gaiden II and more.
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Tomonobu Itagaki’s redux of the Ninja Gaiden series received a lot of praise and attention when Ninja Gaiden first appeared on the Xbox back in 2004. It also spurred a number of follow-ups, including Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox and the recent appearance of Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword on the Nintendo DS.
Team Ninja also released a PlayStation 3 revamp of the game in the form of Ninja Gaiden Sigma, although Itagaki had no hands-on involvement with this port due to his focus on Ninja Gaiden II. As for how he felt about it, Itagaki’s distaste is such that he has refused to sign copies of the game.
Itagaki-san was in London on Friday, promoting the upcoming June 6 launch of Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360. If Its Games sat down with the enigmatic developer for an exclusive interview. Among the topics discussed, Itagaki reiterated that NGII would be easier than its notoriously difficult predecessor, following the complaints of fans and in consideration of his daughter, who is now old enough to play the game.
He also revealed what’s in store for NGII’s downloadable content (in addition to variants of lead character Ryu Hayabusa’s costume), as well as whether he’s likely to develop for the DS or Wii in the future.
When asked about future projects, Itagaki said, “I’m planning to make an announcement about what I’m going to be doing in the future around July,” which hints that he could possibly be attending E3 2008. He also said he has no plans to revisit any other classic Tecmo properties, such as Rygar or Mighty Bomb Jack.
Watch the full interview, above, to find out what Itagaki-san has in store for Ninja Gaiden fans, why he wants to make a game about World War II’s Pacific theatre, if there’s a Master Ninja Tournament coming for NGII, and what he really thinks of the state of Japanese development.
May 23, 2008
Last week, Nintendo of America said it would be adding metallic pink to the Nintendo DS’s regularly available color palette later this year. With America Ferrera and Carrie Underwood signed on to promote the newest pink DS, Nintendo seems to be targeting the female-gamer sect with its latest hue. Today, Disney Interactive Studios said it, too, had the girls in mind, announcing Disney Fairies: Tinker Bell will be available on the DS this holiday.
As the name suggests, Tinker Bell of Peter Pan fame will be the focus of the game, and it will feature “dozens” of other fairies from the Disney universe, including Silvermist, Iridessa, and Fawn. Players will be able to explore the fantasy world of Pixie Hollow, and gameplay will revolve around time-based challenges and minigames. Players will also be afforded a range of clothing and other customization options, and the title will support Disney’s DS networking service DGamer.
Also for the casual-gaming crowd, Sega today announced PictoImage will arrive on the DS this August. Billed as a “pick-up-and-play puzzle game,” PictoImage lets up to eight players compete in drawing challenges across eight different modes. While the game will primarily have a party-game focus, it will also include single- and two-player modes, where players take turns guessing an image from a selection of more than 300 drawings.
May 23, 2008
Kane’s Wrath
See the console interface for Kane’s Wrath in motion.
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Do you like crushing your enemies? Sure, we all do. The Command & Conquer real-time strategy series has been all about this fun and exciting activity since the get-go, focusing on quickly harvesting resources, spending the resources to construct a base and an army of tanks and other heavy artillery, and then squashing your opponents flat on futuristic battlefields. The latest game in the series to come to consoles, Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath, will include all of the content from the PC expansion pack of the same name, aside from the Global Conquest mode, which is being replaced by a console-exclusive set of single-player missions known as Kane’s Challenge. The Xbox 360 version will also have a new interface and new control scheme designed to let you quickly select, build, and control your forces as you bring them into battle, and we just got our hands on it.
Command & Conquer 3 returns to consoles with a new interface.
We had a chance to try out one of the more basic missions from Kane’s Challenge, which will offer about 30 minutes of new full-motion video sequences as the commander of the forces of Nod, Kane himself (played by actor Joe Kucan), briefs you. This mode will offer 10 skirmishes per subfaction. The game has nine subfactions (three for each side: the Global Defense Initiative, Nod, and the Scrin aliens), and you’ll play certain missions from the perspective of one or more of these subfactions. In our mission, we played as the GDI with the goal of annihilating our Nod foes on a relatively compact map on which we were separated by a large deposit of Tiberium, the game’s main resource.
We immediately got started building up a base by deploying our construction vehicle, and then started on some power plants and a refinery. Building just about anything–structures, foot soldiers, tanks, or planes–can be done in one of two ways. First, you can follow the standard real-time strategy method of selecting your construction site. In this case you hover your controller’s cursor over your selection and then press the A button, at which point you press and hold the right trigger to pull up the radial menu. This radial menu lets you choose which unit to build from 12 different options, arranged in a ring like the hours on a clock. You just move your control stick to highlight it.
You can also, at any time, choose a secondary radial menu (without anything selected) by pressing the right trigger, which pulls up a more general menu with 12 different options, including build orders for infantry or vehicles. Choosing one of these options will jump to the specific radial menu for that action, such as creating infantry or vehicles, and will automatically queue them up at any barracks or factories that you control, anywhere on the map. The idea is apparently to get you used to the idea of the 12 o’clock radial menu until it becomes second nature.
The game’s interface also seems to have plenty of other quickie amenities that should help you get into the action quickly, such as an option that lets you assign specific units or buildings to a control group, similar to how they work in real-time strategy games (control groups let you assign a shortcut to a specific unit or group of units to select them–you can then use that shortcut anytime to jump back to control of them). Here, you can use the D pad to quickly jump between assigned control groups. In one case, you might be giving different group-movement orders to separate squads of units. In another, you might assign one of your buildings to a control group so you can hop from the action on the battlefield to keeping track of the home front.
Is this the face of a man who would lie to you? Expect a console-exclusive single-player mode from Kane himself.
You can also select units by pressing and holding the A button and moving your cursor to “paint” any nearby units for selection, and when push comes to shove, you can press and hold the trigger and tap the A button twice to select all of your units if you need to call in an all-out attack or base defense. We found this option handy several times as we acclimated ourselves to the interface, and eventually we churned out enough GDI units to crush the Nod base on the other side of the map in the single-player level we tried. Though we didn’t get a chance to try out the multiplayer, we’re told that the Xbox 360 version will offer more than 50 different maps to play, including maps from Kane’s Wrath for the PC as well as additional maps that have been released for the PC in various patch updates.
From what we can tell, Kane’s Wrath for the Xbox 360 otherwise offers the exact same experience and content as the PC game. It’s clear that EALA is confident that the control scheme is up to snuff and will let console players compete at the same level and with the same speed as PC players. It seems like it’ll take some getting used to, but the control scheme should eventually let console players dive into this fast-paced and visually attractive strategy sequel and start blowing up stuff when the game is released in June.
-If Its Games
May 23, 2008
Backtrack Action
Check out this footage of Madden NFL 09.
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EA Sports recently held its 2008 NFL Rookie Madden Challenge in Los Angeles, hosting a number of rookie NFL players in an eight-player tournament to determine which future NFL star has the most skill on the sticks. Newly minted Washington Redskins wide receiver Devin Thomas took home the trophy during the tournament, beating up on former Appalachian State (and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers) wideout Dexter Jackson to take the win. However, before all of the Madden madness began, we got a chance to check out the upcoming Madden NFL 09 for the first time.
After booting up the game, our first step was to establish our Madden IQ, a new feature in the game that will automatically gauge your skill through a series of minigames presented in a futuristic hologram style. There are four drills to run through–run offense, pass offense, run defense, and pass defense–and, despite the sci-fi visuals, the minigames themselves will be familiar to Madden players straightaway. For the running drills, your goal will be to beat individual defenders on your way toward a touchdown, whereas in the passing tests, you’ll be judged on the number of passes you can complete against a variety of coverages.
Neither rain, nor snow, nor the Cleveland Browns can stop Marshawn Lynch.
As you might expect, you’ll be asked to stop the CPU from moving the ball during the defensive run and passing drills. We assumed that the defensive running drills would be fairly easy, but they actually proved to be tougher than the passing defense drills. This was partially because of the difficulty of making open-field tackles one-on-one, and partially because the CPU seemed a bit too adept at busting out of tackles. Similarly, on the surface the passing defensive drills seemed like they might be the most difficult, given that staying tight with a receiver in Madden has traditionally been an advanced skill. However, that fact is mitigated a bit in the drill because time slows down a little when the virtual quarterback puts the ball up in the air, giving you a chance to get a hand up in the air and break up the play.
At the end of each of the drills, we got a score in each category, ranging from rookie to all-Madden. The final Madden IQ is a mixture of those different scores, and that score is used to dynamically control your game’s difficulty as you play through it. When you start a game, you’ll be able to pick from a variety of difficulty levels, including the standards such as rookie or all-pro, or choose the “My Skill” difficulty to play the game with your custom difficulty sliders. As your skills improve (or if they degrade), the game will then automatically adjust difficulty aspects to compensate for your rising (or falling) Madden IQ.
There’s one other aspect of difficulty in Madden NFL 09: game style. There are a number of different game styles you can choose from before you begin a game, and each presents information to you in a slightly different way once the game begins. On the beginner game style, the game is simplified to a great degree; for example, when in the huddle, the game will give you only one play to call. As you move up through the more advanced game-style options, you’ll get more play-call options available to you, until you reach the hardcore level, which is a presentation level designed for the most faithful Madden fans. At the hardcore level, superfluous features such as instant replays and the backtrack feature (which breaks down your busted plays in exacting details) are turned off so that you can get to the next play as quickly as possible.
The dynamic game difficulty and the different game styles are EA’s attempt at leveling the playing field a bit between Madden players who might be of wildly different skill levels. When playing against an opponent, both players will be able to choose their individual game style and see just as much (or as little) information about the game as they want.
No, it’s not the new Tron game, it’s the virtual reality trainer in Madden NFL 09.
On the field, Madden 09 has lots of little features that set it apart from the previous year’s game. Things such as brand-new camera angles before plays are immediately noticeable, but there are also more substantial improvements that just feel right on the field. At its spring press event in Vancouver, EA talked a lot about the improvements to the character-animation systems from previous years and, even though it’s not a night-and-day transition from last year’s game, it is noticeable. Players seem more responsive than ever, able to switch directions quicker and, though we weren’t able to see it in action ourselves, we understand that the ability to spin out of tackles will help improve the running game. The improved animations won’t benefit only the offense; producers told us that the ball-strip animations will be improved to make it slightly easier to pull off.
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May 23, 2008
The gaming industry may not be completely sold on year-round high-profile releases yet, but GameStop certainly seems to be enjoying the extra business. Following a banner 2007 year in which the gaming-focused retailer posted its largest gains yet–$288.3 million profit on $7.1 billion in revenue–GameStop said today that it has once again bested its previous year’s performance for its first fiscal quarter ended May 3.
Unsurprisingly, GameStop’s results have been buoyed in no small part by the unseasonal influx of high-profile releases. Revenues for the world’s largest specialty retailer of games spiked 41.8 percent for the period, rising to $1.8 billion from $1.3 billion in 2007. More importantly for GameStop brass, the retailer’s net earnings rocketed 151 percent to $62.1 million for the quarter.
Similarly unsurprising were the top titles for the three-month period, as reported by GameStop. With Take-Two reporting first-week sales of Grand Theft Auto IV hitting $500 million, GameStop said that Rockstar’s latest scored top billing on its sales charts. No easy feat, considering that Rockstar’s latest was only on store shelves for five days before the end of GameStop’s reporting period. The remainder of the top five in descending order were Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and Electronic Arts’ Army of Two.
“We are very bullish on the future as three major metrics are transforming the business and accelerating the potential for GameStop growth,” said GameStop chairman and CEO R. Richard Fontaine. “The installed base of video game consoles grew 34 percent in 2007, or nearly 31 million units, the highest incremental growth in the history of the business, and we are forecasting that hardware unit sell-thru will match these levels in 2008. And behind the huge hardware growth is the fact that the demographic for video gaming is expanding dramatically as industry figures indicate that 38 percent of game players are female.”
Of equal importance to console adoption rates and an expanding audience are publishers’ upcoming lineups, and the rest of the year is looking quite good in Fontaine’s eyes. “We have an outstanding lineup of new games coming during the rest of the year, including Nintendo’s Wii Fit, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4, Microsoft’s Gears of War 2, and Activision’s Guitar Hero IV,” he said. To further feed growth, GameStop said it had opened a record 210 stores in its first quarter and was on track to cut the ribbon on 550 to 600 new stores in 2008.
GameStop also said today that it was revising its guidance for its second quarter and full year. GameStop is narrowing its second-quarter guidance to 12 to 14 percent sales growth. Thanks to its strong first-quarter start, the retailer also said it would be raising its earnings per share guidance for the full year to $2.30 to $2.39, a 28 to 33 percent uptick.
May 23, 2008
Echochrome is a puzzle game available through the PlayStation Network where you toy with reality and attempt to navigate optical illusions that are reminiscent of the works of M. C. Escher. Your only influence on the environment takes place by manipulating the camera with the analog stick, which alters the layout of the level according to the current perspective. Regardless of whether you opt for the PlayStation 3 or the PSP version–each of which feature an exclusive set of 56 levels–there is nothing quite like echochrome, and its unique gameplay is well worth the experience.
Echochrome is made significantly more challenging by the fact that it’s played against the clock.
The goal in each of echochrome’s stages is to guide your mannequin through the environment, collecting four echoes scattered throughout the stage. If two distinct pathways appear to be touching when you rotate the camera angle, then they are, in fact, touching. If your mannequin falls through a hole, it will land on whatever appears beneath it. With three minutes to complete each level, echochrome’s challenge lies not only in deducing the correct path for the mannequin to follow, but also in thinking and executing quickly. The mannequin never stops moving unless you press the triangle button to pause the action and think, but even then, the clock doesn’t stop. To compensate for the fact that the camera angle doesn’t turn as quickly as you’d like on some occasions, pressing the square button quickly aligns any adjacent paths so that pixel-perfect accuracy is not a necessity for success. Although the challenge can occasionally become frustrating, the short time requirements make echochrome ideal for quick play sessions.
One of echochrome’s distinguishing features is its striking, minimalist visual style. Although simple black-and-white graphics certainly don’t compare with most modern games that push the limits of their hardware, echochrome’s perfunctory visuals are unique. They are also appropriate in a game that relies on your perception of distance and a constantly changing perspective. The game’s music is similarly subdued, and sound effects are limited to the mannequin’s footsteps along with a calm female voice that tells you when to begin each stage. The voice also lets out a conciliatory “uh oh” when the mannequin falls through a hole. It is this distinctive presentation that gives echochrome its charm.
The level editor increases replay value and stimulates creativity.
The robust level creator extends echochrome’s longevity beyond the included levels. In Canvas mode, you have access to the same tools used by the developer to create new levels or modify existing ones. Both the PSP and PS3 versions provide excellent tools to edit and share your creations. However, only the PS3 version lets you upload your levels to the PlayStation Network to share with friends, as well as developers, who may choose to include your stages in future free updates. Setting your preferences to download new stages as they become available automatically incorporates them into Freeform mode. You can also share your PSP levels with friends via a local ad hoc network, but the home-console options are clearly superior.
Echochrome is a unique experience that’s easy to recommend. The PS3 game is superior by virtue of its additional online features and sharper visuals, but no matter which version you choose, you won’t be disappointed.
May 23, 2008
The rumours are all true: The cat’s officially out of the bag for the fourth Guitar Hero. The new game will be called Guitar Hero World Tour, and will feature a microphone and a “genuine” electronic drum kit, along with a redesigned guitar peripheral.
Guitar Hero World Tour’s drum kit.
Activision also boasts that Guitar Hero World Tour will have “the biggest on-disc selection” of music, and that all of the tunes available to take on will be master tracks. So far, no particular songs have been named, but the company has promised that offerings from artists Van Halen, Linkin Park, Sublime, and the Eagles will be included.
Localised content will also be available to download on all of the next-generation consoles–including the Wii. Of the three instruments, Activision is particularly touting its drum kit, which will have three drum pads, two raised cymbals, and a bass kick pedal. Apparently, it will have “velocity-sensitive drum heads with soft rubber construction to deliver authentic bounce back.”
Rock on!
The first official trailer for Guitar Hero World Tour, showing off the new peripherals.
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There will also be a new Battle of the Bands gameplay mode, in which eight players (two bands of four players each) will be able to play each other to see who’s best. In the Band modes, four players can jam locally or online.
Also included will be Music Studio, a music-creation software suite with which wannabe songwriters can create digital music “from scratch.” Those budding artists will then be able to share their recordings with chums online via GHTunes.
Rock Band, Harmonix’s rhythm game, also features microphone and drum peripherals, and is due out in Europe tomorrow for the Xbox 360 only–other platforms will be released later this summer. Unlike Rock Band, all three peripherals in the latest Guitar Hero game will be wireless.
Guitar Hero World Tour is being developed by Neversoft for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The Wii version will be coming from Vicarious Visions, and the PlayStation 2 version from Budcat. All four versions are slated for release this autumn, although they have not yet been rated, and there are no pricing details.
May 23, 2008
At the end of March, Ubisoft revised its annual earnings projections for the third time to €920 million ($1.44 billion), following better-than-expected sales of Assassin’s Creed and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Today, the Paris-based publisher released its final full-year earnings, which revealed that its massive estimate was conservative.
For the 12 months ended March 31, Ubisoft saw €928.3 million ($1.46 billion) in earnings, a hefty 36 percent increase over the €680.3 million ($1.06 billion) it took in the year prior. Even more impressive was that the company almost tripled its profits, from €40.5 million ($63.59 million) to €109.8 million ($172.34 million).
The profits came despite Ubisoft dropping €48 million ($75.37 million) on acquisitions of “tangible and intangible assets,” including the outright purchase of a new studio in Pune, India. (The company also started up three other internal shops in Singapore, Kiev, and the recently earthquake-ravaged Chinese city of Chengdu.) A further €18 million ($28.26 million) was expended to obtain the Sunflowers, Anno, and Digital Kids licenses.
According to the company’s report, the €48 million ($75.37 million) acquisition expenditure includes the first of four payments to author Tom Clancy, whose brand name Ubisoft bought in March. Though the publisher did not specify how much of the amount went to Clancy, the steep price appears to be worth it. News of the deal sent Ubisoft’s shares soaring, and the company estimates that owning the Clancy name will save it €5 million ($7.85 million) in royalty payments even after paying the author. For the year ended March 31, Ubisoft spent €25.3 million ($39.75 million) in royalties on its licensed-game portfolio, which, though dominated by Clancy, also included the movie tie-in TMNT and Xbox 360 Naruto games.
With a few exceptions, the Clancy deal gives Ubisoft ownership of all Clancy-branded book, film, comic, merchandising, and “ancillary products.” Naturally, it also includes full ownership of all games bearing the Hunt for Red October author’s name–and Ubisoft praised the “strength” of Clancy franchises Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six as keys to its record year. Other franchises that Ubisoft singled out were Rayman, Settlers, and (again) Assassin’s Creed, which has sold over 6 million units on all platforms. Casual games were also big, with the Petz games topping 8 million units, and the Imagine line surpassing 4 million units sold.
Today’s report also revealed that Ubisoft has several all-new games up its sleeve. “Going forward, 2008-09 is set to be another record year for Ubisoft,” CEO Yves Guillemot said in a statement. “We now have 14 multimillion-unit-selling franchises and will be launching 5 new IPs during the period as well as new brands in the casual games segment.” (Emphasis added.)
A slide presentation that accompanyied the report named four of the all-new IPs–H.A.W.X., EndWar, Shaun White Snowboarding, and the recently launched Haze–with the fifth being identified only as an “unannounced title.” The same slide also revealed that two as-yet-untitled installments in existing franchises will also be released during the year, alongside Far Cry 2, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Splinter Cell: Conviction, the just-announced new Prince of Persia, and a new Anno game.
For the coming 2008-2009 fiscal year, Ubisoft is forecasting revenues of €1 billion ($1.57 billion), with €154 million ($241.78 million) in sales during the current quarter. Today’s report was released after trading ended on the EuroNext market, on which Ubisoft shares closed at €68.47 ($107.51). According to the Associated Press, that gives the publisher a market capitalization of around €3.2 billion ($5 billion)–around 20 percent of which is still owned by Electronic Arts.
May 23, 2008
With Activision enlisting others to create the upcoming console editions of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, original developer Splash Damage hasn’t had an announced project to work on since October. However, gamers today learned a little bit more about the company’s upcoming projects when Bethesda Softworks announced a long-term development partnership with Splash Damage.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Bethesda said details about Splash Damage’s next project would arrive in the coming months.
Founded in 2001, Splash Damage was made up of members of the PC mod-making community. The studio has been closely tied to id Software’s projects, rising to prominence with the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory multiplayer add-on and contributing multiplayer maps to Doom 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein as well.
Bethesda most recently had a hit with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but the publisher has a variety of other projects in the works. In addition to the upcoming postapocalyptic role-playing game Fallout 3, Bethesda is working on the tactical shooter Rogue Warrior and has recently produced a handful of games in the Star Trek universe.
May 23, 2008
The writing has been on the wall for some time that Take-Two would be releasing its award-winning BioShock on Sony’s PlayStation 3. Speculation that 2K Boston/Australia’s praised dystopian shooter based on the literary stylings of Ayn Rand would land on both current-generation consoles was sparked by the game’s initial announcement for “PCs and next-generation consoles.” However, tangible evidence didn’t come until the game’s launch in August, when a reference to BioShock on the PS3 turned up in a demo for the PC game.
The possibility of BioShock zapping PS3s was further fueled in April, when BioShock 2 developer 2K Marin indicated that it was hiring level designers that had experience developing for Sony’s flagship console. Today, confirmation of the game’s PS3 debut has finally arrived by way of the cover of the July issue of UK-based gaming magazine PSM3. (The news on the cover was spotted by Computer & Video Games.)
Although details on the PS3 edition of BioShock have yet to surface, the cover of the PlayStation-centric magazine states, “Proof why Xbox’s best shooter is better on PS3,” indicating that some content additions will be made. Thus far, the only updates to the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game were new gene-therapy-induced plasmid powers and stat-enhancing tonics, which arrived in December.
In March, embattled Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick officially confirmed that BioShock 2 was in development at the publisher’s newly formed 2K Marin studio. No platforms for the sequel to last year’s hit have been announced, but Take-Two expects the game to arrive during the fourth quarter of its 2009 fiscal year, which runs from August 1 to October 31, 2009.
May 23, 2008
TechWeb - InformationWeek - Previous Internet reports have suggested Microsoft is working on a Nintendo Wii-style controller for the Xbox 360 under a project code-named Newton.
May 23, 2008
NewsFactor - While Michael Hollick, the actor who played the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV, complains that he didn’t earn enough cash, fans of Guitar Hero are getting all the glory for themselves in the privacy of their own living rooms — and Activision is giving them new gaming software to further the fantasy.
May 23, 2008
Reuters - Activision Inc is adding drums, bass guitar, and microphone to its popular “Guitar Hero”video game, a move aimed at winning away fans of MTV’s rival musical title “Rock Band.”
May 23, 2008
According to Nintendo, around 50 million Wii games were sold during its first 18 months on sale, beating the PS2\’s record of 42 million in its first 18 months. In comparison the Xbox 360 sold around $30 million and the PS3 about $20 million.
May 23, 2008
Below is the debut trailer for Samba de Amigo Wii.
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