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If you only play games with Ryu Hayabusa in them, then Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce is likely to be your first experience with Koei’s historical-ish brawler franchise. If you only play games with the ancient Chinese ruler Fu Xi in them, however, you’re likely to be much better versed in the series. In either case, there’s a Strikeforce for you: as reported, Fu Xi (and other characters from the Warriors Orochi series) appear in the Xbox 360 version, and Ryu in the PS3 version, both with exclusive missions that grant you the use of their “signature weapon” when completed.

New galleries give you a look at Fu Xi and the extra-beefy crossover ninja. And a new trailer (above) does what it can to get you pumped about Strikeforce, the Dynasty Warriors game with not only characters from other franchises, but giant tigers in it!

More Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce media than you can shake a Dragon Sword at originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Army of Two: The 40th Day’s Salem and Rios are no strangers to the modern world. Sure, they may have acted a bit … out of place during previous visits to EA Montreal and EA Headquarters, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fit for retail life. Take, for instance, the video above of the two trying their best to lend a hand to the fine folks at GameStop.

They might be a bit rough around the edges, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t get the most magazine upsells for the month of December (they did!) or that they aren’t capable of re-alphabetizing the used PS2 section six or seven hundred times a day (they are!). Give them a chance, folks. Under the inhuman terror mask and bullet-proof chestpadding beats the heart of a human being.

The Army of Two infiltrate GameStop originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And here we thought Tetris DS was the best blend of the Russian puzzler and Nintendo’s classic platforming game Super Mario Bros., but Tuper Tario Tros. is a quite imaginative combination of the two. In fact, we haven’t seen Tetris go so well with something since we were introduced to the conflict resolution capabilities of Tresling.

Already the culprit behind a sharp downturn in Joystiq productivity today, we now offer it to you. Just, uh, don’t play it as much as we did. We can get away with it since, y’know, it’s kinda our job.

[Via digg]

Mario plus Tetris equals one fun game originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer gave the keynote address at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, speaking a bit about the future of the Xbox 360.

As anyone with a single functioning brain cell could have already told you, Project Natal, Microsoft’s new camera-based motion controller, will be released during the 2010 holiday season.

During the keynote, another one of those funny little sentences popped up again: Engadget reported that executive Robbie Bach said that Natal will “work with your existing console.” We heard the same weird phrasing at E3, and that was quickly followed up with a story from 1up that spelled out their take on why Microsoft would be saying such strange things: A new Xbox may be in the works.

Game Room for the Xbox 360 will let you build your own virtual arcade by buying classic games like Atari’s Tempest.
Image courtesy Microsoft

One more big announcement: Microsoft will debut a new service called Game Room. Like Nintendo’s Virtual Console for Wii and Sony’s PlayStation Archives, it’ll let you download classic games. Unlike those services, you can access those games through a 3-D virtual world interface, using your Xbox 360 Avatar.

You can buy games for $5 each, which will let you play them on your Xbox 360 and Windows PC. Or you can pay $3 to play the game on a single platform. $3 per game, every game? That’s a pretty awesome deal, considering that classic arcade games on Wii cost anywhere from $5 to $10.

There’s also a pay-per-play option in which you can pay 50 cents to demo a game once. Microsoft says you can invite your Xbox friends over to check out the games in your Game Room, although the press release doesn’t quite make it clear exactly how much access they’ll have to your virtual goods.

Here’s the best part. Although the service will launch this spring with 30 games from the arcade, Atari 2600, and Intellivision, Microsoft says that within three years the number of games will be up to 1,000. That’s thousand. That’s awesome.

Remedy’s Xbox 360-exclusive Alan Wake, described as “the TV show Lost, as written by Stephen King, and filmed by David Lynch,” by Microsoft Entertainment & Devices head Robbie Bach will — much like Fable II — be expanded upon via additional downloadable episodes. Bach made the announcement concerning the long-in-development title during the company’s CES 2010 keynote this evening, saying, “story-driven like a TV series, Alan Wake will be told in episodes with even more episodes available on Xbox Live after its launch this year.”

Let’s just hope Remedy isn’t taking cues from The Sopranos when deciding how long it will be between the release of the game’s episodes.

Alan Wake will stay up late with post-launch DLC ‘episodes’ originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Microsoft’s CES announcement that Xbox Live “is now an active community of over 20 million people” is somewhat blunted by Sony’s claim of 38 million PlayStation Network accounts (though if our dozens of collective PSN accounts are any indication, some of us have more than one), Redmond did have some other numbers to share regarding Xbox and Xbox Live during tonight’s CES keynote. First, “Nearly 10 million people have logged into Xbox Live’s nongaming applications” including “Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm, Sky, Canal and Zune.” We’ll do the math for you: that’s 50% of the Xbox Live audience, and those are all paying Gold users.

More numbers: “Between Christmas and New Years Day, Xbox Live experienced its busiest week ever, adding a new member every second and a record of more than 2.2 million concurrent members online.” And not a network failure in sight! Congrats, Microsoft! Lastly, “there are now over 39 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world,” “more than 500 million games have been sold” and “$20 billion spent in retail.” Feel free to bookmark this post for frequent consultation in your comment debates.

Xbox by the numbers: 20m Xbox Live users, 10m nongaming, 39m Xbox 360 consoles worldwide originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just like Sony earlier this evening, we’re not going to be detailing all of Steve Ballmer’s 2010 CES press conference, that’s really Engadget’s thang. Instead, we’ll be bringing more details on all things gaming (think: leaked Xbox Game Room and Project Natal deets, anyone?) right back here. If you want the total experience, including lots of non-gaming stuff, venture forth, dear reader.

Microsoft 2010 CES press conference, live at Engadget originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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David Perry’s “It’s not OnLive” service, Gaikai, recently gained $5 million in venture capital, a Security and Exchanges Commission filing shows. For the uninitiated, basically Perry wants to beam games directly into your house. We imagine the tech behind it is kinda like that crazy set-up the Riddler had running all over Gotham, hence the need for such a large sum of money.

All kidding aside, Perry’s been very tight-lipped about Gaikai, offering up little via his Twitter account and the usual channels. However, back in July, he did offer the first sneak peek at the game streaming service, which looks like it’s coming along nicely.

[Via Big Download and Venture Beat]

Score $5 million in funding for Gaikai originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though we’ve yet to see official numbers on November’s Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Capcom France head Antoine Seux told Gamekult in a recent interview that sales of the game were “below what we had hoped.” The English translation of the interview indicates that just 16,000 units were sold worldwide as of December 23, something that has Seux feeling “concerned” as Capcom continues to develop for Nintendo’s consoles.

“Indeed, the Wii is becoming complex,” he says. Seux believes that high-profile games like Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games and New Super Mario Bros. Wii — games that were “strongly supported” by “massive advertising campaigns” — are the only ones that stand a chance. “For us, Capcom, the future is the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360,” he finishes up with, couching that in his belief that “This will be a difficult year for the handheld in general, DS or PSP.” Perhaps he’s been borrowing Pachter’s sorcery ball?

[Via Nintendo Everything]

Capcom France head wary of Wii, says 2010 will be a ‘difficult year’ for DS and PSP originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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