Following Capcom France head Antoine Seux’s uncertainty about the Wii as a profitable platform for the company going into 2010, it would appear that the Capcom mothership would like to carefully rephrase the sentiment. As such, HQ has issued a statement reconfirming the Japanese publisher’s “commitment as a multiplatform developer and publisher of interactive software.”
There’s no word on just how many lashes Mr. Seux is to receive.
Capcom backpedals from unfavorable Wii comments originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: antoine-seux, capcom, corporate, days-ago, destructoid, Joystiq, joystiq-nintendo, joystiq-playstation, mister-bradster, nintendo, super mario, twee-nintendo-is-dooomed, weekly-releases, xbox
An online fact sheet has detailed the pricing structure for Microsoft’s newly announced Avatar-occupied Game Room, and we’d suggest gamers stock up on Microsoft funny money. Players have three options: 400
($5) grants a dual-platform license (for unlimited play on Xbox 360 and PC), 240 ($3) gets you the virtual arcade cabinet on one platform (Xbox 360 or PC), or, for the old-fashioned types, 40 ($0.50) is just “two quarters” worth of playtime — for an authentic arcade experience, minus the sticky floors. Additionally, when visiting friends’ game rooms, you can “try” their games before you pump in Microsoft Points of your own.
The Game Room itself — developed by third-party outfit Krome Studios (Viva Piñata: Party Animals, Star Wars: Republic Heroes) — will be free for users to download. Customization options are mentioned in the fact sheet, but pricing for these features is not addressed. At launch the service will include 30 original arcade titles — with “over 1000″ planned for the future — from multiple publishers, including Atari, Activision, Intellivision, and Konami. (A list of 31 confirmed titles is posted after the break.)
Games will be presented in 1080p (because that’s why you bought that HD set) and will support multiplayer for up to two players, as well as cross-platform leaderboards and Achievements. Microsoft’s Home Game Room is slated to launch this spring.
Source – “Game Room” Fact Sheet [.doc]
Continue reading Xbox Game Room pricing, partners detailed
Xbox Game Room pricing, partners detailed originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Quantic Dream has revealed a new trailer for its big PS3 exclusive, Heavy Rain. Despite featuring the Japanese voiceovers, this new footage does not skimp on the epic, and makes the game look pretty bloody amazing. Drama, throat-slitting and women in tight vests are the order of the day. Oh, and shouting. Lots of shouting.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what Quantic does with this game. It could be a huge triumph for story-driven gaming, or a spectacular failure, but it’s going to be fun finding out either way. This video’s got me pretty pumped, in any case.
Atlus sure does love the PSP, announcing two games for Sony’s handheld in just as many days. Hexyz Force is a new RPG from Sting, creator of Riviera: The Promised Land and Yggdra Union. This classically-styled JRPG features two different adventures, each about (what else?) the end of the world. Atlus promises each adventure will take about 25 hours, totaling 50 hours of dungeon crawling and grinding for RPG fans.
PSP owners are all too familiar with the lengthy load times for many of the system’s RPGs. Thankfully, Atlus is promising “virtually no load times” for Hexyz Force. Like a console JRPG, the game will also feature twenty minutes of anime cutscenes. The UMD version is scheduled for release on May 25th, while a PSN version should follow shortly thereafter. Check out a video preview after the break.
Continue reading Atlus uses the Hexyz Force on PSP
Atlus uses the Hexyz Force on PSP originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve seen
educational video games show up in the classroom before, and it looks like one school district is coming back for more. The Austin Independent School District has
ordered up another set of edu-games from a company called
Tabula Digita that provides 3D, first-person action-based games to teach students how to do basic math and algebra. One sample scenario in the games has students calculating the location of an in-game weather station on a graph, and then using the data found there to make charts and track down alien creatures.
The press release doesn’t mention costs, but according to its website, 15 single-user licenses to the games cost the school $1049.25 each, making up a cost of just over $24,000 for the entire 350 student program. The students, who were part of a 10-day JumpStart program and had previously failed a math retest, were allowed to play the games for 30 minutes a day, and, afterwards, 82% of the kids said they had improved their understanding of the concepts. No word on how their k/d ratio came out.
Austin Independent School District makes deal to buy more video games for classrooms originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:45:00 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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Just three short years after the CES 2007 announcement that Microsoft’s Mediaroom software would turn your Xbox 360 into an IPTV set-top box, Microsoft is finally ready to deliver on that promise (and no, the 2008 BT rollout doesn’t count). “I’m happy to announce that later this year AT&T will also enable subscribers to U-verse to enjoy [the new Mediaroom 2.0] service on their Xbox 360 consoles,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told his keynote audience. This was in addition to U-verse support for Windows 7 and Windows Mobile, though the details on all three platforms end there.
We’ll be digging for more details at CES this week, but this is certainly promising news for the country’s 2 million U-verse subscribers (and the “more than 20 million living units” that the service is purportedly available in).
Xbox 360 getting Mediaroom IPTV ‘later this year’ via AT&T U-verse … just three years late originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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On the heels of its CES 2010 keynote speech, Sony released a chest-pounding press release declaring worldwide sales “exceeding 3.8 million” of the PlayStation 3 during the 2009 holiday season. According to the company, “during the five weeks following the last week of November 2009″ (ending on January 3, 2010), the console sold more than during any previous holiday season — a 76 percent increase over last year’s numbers.
Alas, the PSP and the PSP Go were neglected a mention in the presser, though Sony did reiterate the 38 million PSN user number we’d heard a bit earlier. We’ll have a clearer picture of what exactly the sales shook out to for North America when the latest NPD numbers arrive next week.
Sony PlayStation 3 sales ‘exceed 3.8 million’ worldwide over the holidays originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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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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Every now and then, we need somebody to tell us something we already knew, and that somebody right now is Bob Jacob, Cinemaware co-founder. Jacob blames the business model of a licensed game, wherein it has to be rushed to coincide with the release of the film. Well, duh.
“As far as games and movies, there are inherent problems. The basic reason why so many bad games have been made on film licenses is simply because of a business reality that no one has been able to overcome yet,” explains Jacob. “That reality is that the time it takes a film to [hit theaters after being green-lit] is never more than a year. What kind of a game can you do in a year? Generally a piece of crap.
“EA can get around that a little bit by throwing a few hundred guys at a project. But for the most part, it’s been a pretty sorry history, and until we can solve the basic timing issues it’s going to be tough.”
Jacob is obviously correct when he says that you can’t expect many games to be of AAA quality with less than a year of development. However, when I look at slapdash garbage like Avatar: The Game, there really is no excuse. Even in a year, you can at least borrow game engines and mechanics to create a serviceable, if generic, title. The quality of licensed games should be better with the wealth of resources available. However, there is one major problem that Jacob didn’t hit upon that I feel will never be overcome.
The fact that developers don’t give a sh*t.
Interview: Bob Jacob On The Cinemaware Era [Gamasutra via CVG]
