Even though Assassin’s Creed: Altair Chronicles is set to come out on February 5, 2008, the details have always been a little scarce for the game. We just confirmed the game even being in existence a few months ago and there has been little news since, except when the subtitle was announced for the game. But IGN has posted some screens of the Nintendo DS version of Assassin’s Creed which confirm a few things. Some of them are that the bottom screen will be used for a map and that the game is an action game and not a the type of game with card moves, like Metal Gear Acid. The game doesn’t look half bad on the DS, but I can see that it will probably disappoint people who don’t normally play the DS. Let’s just check out the reviews because the game could get a little annoying or buggy on the DS. Check out more screens after the jump.
I guess we should have seen this one coming after a couple of months went by without any news on this game. While there have been a few rumors floating around lately which pointed to a delay for Mercs 2, EA has been quiet on the subject until today, when their quarterly report revealed that the game had been pushed back from February to the gigantic release window of fiscal year 2009. In the same call, the company announced a Battlefield: Bad Company delay which placed it in the same launch bracket.
Being delayed until the next fiscal year means that these games could come out anytime between April 2008 and March 2009. Hopefully, we will get some more precise dates than this in the not so distant future, so stay tuned for more info.
Yesterday we posted a rumor about a possible confirmation of a PC version of Halo Wars by an alleged Microsoft insider, who claimed that the game would feature cross-platform multiplayer between Xbox 360 and PC gamers. This ‘news’ was no doubt exciting for PC RTS playing Halo Wars fans who did not want to have to adjust to a console setup in order to jump in on the Halo action, but Microsoft stepped in today and crushed these players dreams by busting this rumor with a statement made to IGN. A rep told the gaming megasite:
“Halo Wars is being developed from the bottom up for the Xbox 360 and its control scheme to ensure that we deliver a groundbreaking console RTS experience. Given that, we have no plans to develop ‘Halo Wars’ for Windows Vista at this time”
At least we got some reassurance that the control scheme wont suck on the 360, but I’m sure this rumor smash will disappoint a ton of PC gamers who had their hopes up about getting their hands on this title. Hey, maybe its time to finally invest in that 360 after all…
Official Xbox Magazine has revealed all of the Rock Band DLC Songs to be released in March. There are some favorites there like Message in a Bottle, Supernaut, a whole heap of NIN songs, and many more. Here is the full list of songs:
Week One:
Blinded By Fear - At The Gates
Thrasher – Evile
Shadow World – Haunted
Week Two:
Shooting Star – Bad Company *Cover*
Simple Man – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Message In A Bottle – Police
Week Three: Nine Inch Nails Pack
March Of The Pigs
The Collector
The Perfect Drug
Week Four:
Wrathchild – Ironmaiden *Cover*
Supernaut – Black Sabbath *Cover*
Fuel – Metallica
You can probably except the same price 160 MS points per song and 440 MS points for the entire packs.
The PS3 Home, Sony’s “response” to Xbox Live, Beta was receiving mixed reviews last year. Some testers were giving it rave reviews, while the others saw it as complicated and somewhat tedious. But, Sony seems to have taken the testers opinions and performed some major changes to Home when they showed the service at Imagina 08. The common area has now been changed to a large, outdoor space with picnic tables and such. They have also added little mini-games like chess and such to this area for online play. Some of the walk-times from location to location have also been reduced as to make moving through Home more enjoyable rather than tedious.
Along with the changes, some launch details were annouced like there will be 8-10 apartment styles available at launch which will be in Spring 2008. They plan to add more as the service grows in size. But, we are looking forward to see the full-implementation fof the service and finally see a competitor to Xbox Live.
With all the consoles moving towards an online approach focused heavily on social gaming, it only makes sense that such a system should develop for the PC as well. Currently Microsoft’s Live for Windows, Gamespy, and Steam all are slowly stepping into the social zone, but none of them have fully made it in. Valve plans to change that by making their application the standard connectivity tool for all major PC games. To get a general idea, try to imagine Xbox Live working with games like Counter-Strike and Crysis.
Valve’s name for this project is Steamworks, and their plan is to give it freely to developers and publishers. They hope to dominate online PC gaming by working directly with the source. Besides social networking, Steamworks will feature server browsing, which Steam is already known best for, and copy protection, to appeal especially to game-makers. Honestly, this move could have been expected by most average users of Steam: in such a short time it has gone from a simple application to organize and connect to Valve games, to a multi-faceted, not to mention stylish, program that heavily features games from a plethora of companies. With the recent release of the Steam Community, it delved even further into the world of social gaming. Check after the jump for more details on the tools Steamworks will support, and some quotes from Valve.
WoW. Thanks largely to World of Warcraft’s complete dominance over the intraweb, Vivendi posted a $1.5 billion profit in 2007. Yeah, that’s billion with a B. Just in case you were wondering what Blizzard contributed to that total, I can let you know that they brought in $1.3 billion alone. That’s 58% more than the division made back in 2006.
No, this isn’t necessarily an announcement of a console version of Crysis, but it does add some more fuel to the fire of possibility.
With GDC just around the corner, CVG has revealed that Crytek will be showing off CryEngine 2, the Engine behind their uber-realistic game Crysis, running on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 at the conference. While only a small, elite group will be able to witness the showing, just knowing that CryEngine 2 exists in some form on consoles is enough to send us into a ‘Crysis for 360/PS3′ speculation frenzy. I mean why else would they need to bring their technology console-side? Right? Right?
Pertaining to Crysis on consoles, this is either solid evidence or just a tease, but nothing in between. That’s one of the things I love about this business though: There’s always something to hope for.
After the great success of the Eee mobility laptop, Taiwan based PC manufacturer Asus is planning to take the concept to the desktop platform. The company intends to come out with a machine integrated into a 19″-20″ monitor as well as a model built into a 42″ LCD display. The integrated model is targeted towards someone who prefers the simplicity of the integrated iMac, but has a smaller budget. These models are projected to run around $500 with the integrated monitor setup and a few less Benjamins for a base system. In the future, Asus plans to use the Intel Shelton platform as soon as it becomes available for mass production.
Viral advertising for video games seems to be the latest fad and Rockstar has jumped on the bandwagon for Grand Theft Auto 4. Their viral advertising features wanted posters with a mug shot of Niki Bellic, the main character of the game, that sadly hang only in New York City. This is probably fitting however, as the game’s setting is heavily based on NYC. The report is issued under the ‘Liberty City Police Department’ and asks for the arrest of Niko for assault with a deadly weapon. The report also says to shoot Niko on sight. This is some pretty cool viral advertising, but at the same time, it is a little blunt.
[Update]: Looks like Microsoft has decided to step in and officially smash this rumor. Read the full story here.
This little gem of a rumor recently popped up from the writers at gaming site The Angry Pixel, who claim that a Microsoft insider has leaked some juicy info regarding Ensemble’s upcoming RTS, Halo Wars. According to the source, Halo Wars will, in fact, be hitting the PC at some point in time, which on its own is not all that surprising. The good part comes later on in the article however, when the insider also claims that gamers on separate platforms will be able to play each other online.
Although this isn’t the first time that an Xbox 360 game has featured cross platform multiplayer, it will be interesting to see how the Xbox 360 controls stack up against classic PC RTS configurations (assuming this all turns out to be true). Perhaps we will hear more about this at GDC, eh?
After years of waiting for this moment, many gamers can now rejoice. The much awaited GT5 Prologue will soon reach the United States on April 17. It will be available as a PSN download, or traditionally as a Blu-ray disc in stores. The inconvenience of driving to a store might be well worth it, as the solid copy of the game will contain a behind the scenes video, “Beyond the Apex.” The Prologue will contain 60 vehicles, 16-person online racing, and full-out 1080p HD support. In addition to all of the stated features, the game will also launch with Gran Turismo TV, which is basically a channel on the PSN that contains motorsport programming. Prologue will be sold for $40.
If you are a science fiction lover like me, you will certainly be excited to hear that Orson Scott Card has agreed to partner with Chair Entertainment in order to create a video game based on his award-winning novel. Chair, known best for its production of Undertow, plans to release the game on all platforms: next-generation consoles, handheld consoles, and the PC. The gameplay will center around the Battle Room aspect of the novel, in which Ender and his fellow prodigies practiced fighting simulations in a zero-gravity environment. In the novel, strategic use of the opposing platoons was vital to succeeding in the exercise, and hopefully this element will carry over effectively to the game. We don’t know if the video game will also feature the engaging plot of Ender’s Game, in which humanity is faced with the might of the devastating and hostile alien race known as the “Buggers.” If it does, expect some real-time space strategy as well. Check out the press release after the jump.
Lots of stuff happened this week, and just in case you missed it, TWIR is here to deliver all of the best of it to you in one big ball of gaming related links. From the DMC 4 demo to SSBM Kiosk videos, here is This Week in Rotpod.
ATI released the Radeon HD X3870 X2 today which they were touting at CES as being the fastest graphics card on the market– even faster than some super-computers. The card will begin retail for $450 dollars and is a dual-GPU card with two 3870 GPUs working with ATI’s Crossfire X technology.
This is the first card to have the ability to do 1 Teraflop of operations in a second and it even has the ability to go farther…if you get two. If you are crazy enough to buy two, you can use Crossfire X to basically create a Quad-GPU machine that will probably handle every game that you throw at it…all at once. Nvidia is rumored to be releasing their 9-series in March and they will definitely have a response to this. The card has full 1080p support and has support for DirectX 10 and 10.1. The entire press release is after the jump.
Sure the Super Smash Bros. Dojo might be keeping you updated daily, but if you cant get enough SSBM footage and are itching to see all the characters in action, YouTube member ITP123 has got you covered. This Japanese gamer is spending what seems to be all of his free time at the SSBB demo kiosk in his local game shop filming (and uploading) all of the matches that he can. As a result, we are getting some footage which shows us just what we want to see, real gameplay.
Gametrailers posted a new video of the Adventure mode, dubbed Supspace Emissary, on their site. The video reveals some new information about the campaign, like there could be some co-op elements and that this time around their seems to be an actual storyline, unlike Melee.
Sakurai’s interview with Iwata also revealed some interesting news about Subspace Emissary. Kazushige Nojima-san actually wrote the Subspace Emissary storyline. Nojima-san also wrote the Final Fantasy VII storyline, one of the best storylines in gaming history, so this has to be great. I’m really excited to see how all the different characters end up tieing into each other.
With 5 days left till Brawl’s release in Japan, the Smash Bros. DOJO!! blog has had some interesting updates and rumors are spreading around like crazy about a final roster. Let’s get started with the major DOJO!! updates:
VC Game Demos
There are many people that have never played the games some characters featured in Brawl were originally in. This feature is for them. Brawl will allow you to unlock demos for games called Masterpieces. These are basically just demos for the VC versions of the game and is a very market-driven part of the game, in my opinion. But, it sounds fun and a very nice feature that just keeps on adding to the value of this game.
Mushroomy Kingdom
This is one of the coolest stages to hit Brawl. This stage is reminiscent of World 1-1 from Super Mario Bros., but with an added touch of age. It’s as if you were dropped into the stage 20 years later. Very cool side-scrolling stage that doesn’t seem to effect combat as much as some of the other side-scrolling stages. At times the stage also changes from World 1-1 to World 1-2. So, get excited to relive all those fun times with Super Mario Bros. Continue reading ‘This Week In Brawl: VC Game Demos, Mushroomy Kingdom, Rumored Roster, and More’
Although, the purposed storyline makes Star Wars fans nervous, the physics for the game for the game impresses everyone. This video focuses on the three physics and AI engines that came together to make the greatness that is the Force Unleashed. The game features the Havok physics, Digital Molecular Matter, and Euphoria. These engines together will hopefully make your time as Darth Vader’s apprentice the best.
via[Kotaku]
Microsoft is a smart company that believes in making forays into new industries and it has helped them become one of the most profitable companies in the world. But, they have also spent a lot of money that they will never get back and I’m sure their were some at Microsoft that thought the Xbox was going to be one of those ventures. But, they should shut up now because Microsoft has turned a profit on the Xbox for the first time in this half of the fiscal year. To be fair the division of Microsoft is called the “Xbox’s Entertainment and Devices Division” which means it includes the Zune. But, Microsoft also said that it was the Xbox 360 and Halo 3’s game sales that helped turn the profit and really how many people buy Zunes.
It’s simple as the Xbox 360’s parts get cheaper and awareness of the Xbox 360 gets higher, manufacturing costs and advertising costs go down and it is easier to turn a profit. impressive sales. Let’s just hope they can continue to make a profit even after the holiday season and without Halo 3. Congratulations, Microsoft.
Loading ...
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
With all the consoles moving towards an online approach focused heavily on social gaming, it only makes sense that such a system should develop for the PC as well. Currently Microsoft’s Live for Windows, Gamespy, and Steam all are slowly stepping into the social zone, but none of them have fully made it in. Valve plans to change that by making their application the standard connectivity tool for all major PC games. To get a general idea, try to imagine Xbox Live working with games like Counter-Strike and Crysis.
Viral advertising for video games seems to be the latest fad and Rockstar has jumped on the bandwagon for Grand Theft Auto 4. Their viral advertising features wanted posters with a mug shot of Niki Bellic, the main character of the game, that sadly hang only in New York City. This is probably fitting however, as the game’s setting is heavily based on NYC. The report is issued under the ‘Liberty City Police Department’ and asks for the arrest of Niko for assault with a deadly weapon. The report also says to shoot Niko on sight. This is some pretty cool viral advertising, but at the same time, it is a little blunt.
(8 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
