Starting today through August 11th, Sony will be inviting 10,000 users to be a part of a new round of Beta testing for Playstation Home. Playstation Home is basically Sony’s reply to Xbox Live, featuring both more flair and more eye candy. You are given your own avatar, which is effectively a character model, that you are then allowed to dress as you want, purchase different homes, watch movies with. Although Sony recently said that Playstation Home is not a social network, I definitely feel that it will be with all the types of customization and chances for public interaction. The news of this beta round was found on a Japanese site, so I’m not sure how it will affect our American readers, but I suppose you should give it a try.
Update: Behemoth confirmed today that no official price has been set on their game Castle Crashers and that they are working with Microsoft to set a ‘reasonable’ price for it.
Ever since Behemoth, the makers of Alien Hominid, announced their new game Castle Crashers for the arcade, everyone has been excited. It features 4 player co-up, unrelenting humor, and crazy difficult levels. But the official Japanese Xbox website posted the prices for Castle Crashers and other summer arcade releases today and some people might be considerably less excited. The website reports that Castle Crashers should cost 1800 MS points or for humans, 22.50 dollars. If the game costs that much in the US, it will be the most expensive arcade release in the history of Xbox Live. The game is set to release August 27th, 2008, at least that gives us some time to start saving up our MS points. Here is the full list of the other games releases dates and prices.
Microsoft has finally decided to cut their Xbox Live Silver Members some slack by allowing them to play any cross-platform Xbox 360 games online for free. This announcement comes right after Microsoft decision to make GFW a free service altogether. Microsoft didn’t indicate how long this offer would last, but they indicated that it would only be active until sometime during the fall. This could be a move in the right direction for Microsoft because many people feel that paying for playing games online is really an ill-conceived concept regardless of the services provided. But if you have over 10 million subscribers, why change, right?
When we reported earlier that Dead Rising Wii had been announced by Famitsu, it had not yet been officially revealed by Capcom. The official announcement came through a press release sent out by Capcom today, which provided us with a few new details, some screens, a ‘Winter ‘08′ release window, and a new title: Dead Rising: Chop ‘Til You Drop.
Chop ‘Til You Drop will run on the same engine as Resident Evil 4 Wii, while still keeping the games open world environment in tact. The Wii’s motion controls will be on full display in this version of Dead Rising, as players will be able to aim guns, swing and throw other weapons, and shake off zombies by performing the appropriate actions with the controller. As far as Zombies are concerned, capcom is still flaunting “Hoards of enemies on screen at once resulting in non-stop, pulse-pounding action”, but from the looks of things, the number of undead foes that will be attempting to make a snack out of your brain has been significantly cut down from that of the original. To be fair, we can’t expect the Wii to throw hundreds of Zombies on screen at once like the 360 did, but that was all part of what made the game different from other Zombie shooters. Can this game retain its Dead Rising identity when ported to the Wii?
Check out the full Press Release and some screens after the jump.
When Portal: Still Alive was teased during Microsoft’s E3 press briefing last week, fans of Valve’s 2007 GOTY were understandably hungry for more details. Luckily, Doug Lombardi sat down with GameSetWatch recently to clear a few things up about the upcoming title.
First of all, Still Alive will not be a sequel to the first game. According to Lombardi, the newly announced game will simply be a re-release of Portal with some extra content thrown in (think GOTY edition). The extra content will come in the form of new maps and puzzles taken from the Portal: The Flash Game map pack, which is currently available for download to PC players free of charge. There will not be any extra storyline or GlaDOS content thrown in with these maps, so don’t expect any more of the unique Portal style comedic charm and sarcasm that we have all come to know and love.
No pricing information has been revealed as of yet, but I’m guessing that this version of the game will retail for around $20 in the U.S.
Here’s a one of those lower key annoucnements that always get overshadowed by the huge reveals at E3 (I’m looking at you FF XIII for 360). Fans of Capcom’s Zombie panic simulator Dead Rising will be interested to know that a modified version of the game will be hitting the Nintendo Wii sometime in the future. Yeah, were talking about some heavy wii-ification here folks.
Dead Rising: Zombie Sacrifice will be changing quite a few of the things that made the original game, well, the original game. First of all, players can forget all about the photo mode which was a primary focus alongside zombie killing in the Xbox 360 version. The camera angles have also been completely tossed and replaced by a Resident Evil 4 esque perspective, as the old views would likely never work out with the Wii’s unique controls set. The story missions have undergone massive changes as well. The openish main questline has been replaced with a more straightforeward linear approach to the same story, and Otis’ side resque missions have been scrapped altogether. Is this starting to sound like something other than Dead Rising to anyone other than me?
Now that we know what is being altered, lets take a look at the kind of stuff that is being added to the Wii version of the game. As far as we know, there will be new Zombified enemies to blast and a bunch of new weapons with which to blast them. There will also be a short side mission set which will take place before the main quest, and a new control scheme which will take full advantage of the Wii’s motion controls.
As a big time Dead Rising fan, I was honestly hoping for more of a “Dead Rising 2″ kind of announcement. I’m not exactly sure what to think of this one.
Everyone loves blasting zombies! If you love seeing Zombies getting blasted just as much, then this heap of Resident Evil 5 gameplay videos and demos that have come out of E3 should make you happy. Hit the jump for the rest of the vids. Continue reading ‘E3 ‘08: Resident Evil 5 Gameplay Footage Galore’
During Microsoft E3 presser, Cliff Bleszinski stepped on stage to show a nice 6 minute chunk of Gears of War 2’s co-op mode in action. The demonstration, shown above, really flaunted both the titles new weapons and the massive graphical improvements over the first game. All in all, Gears of War is not only looking sharp, but very finished as well. How many more months do we have to wait again?
As online multiplayer is becoming more and more important to gamers, devs are focusing more and more on creating unique online experiences for consoles as well as PC. While MMORPGs are extremely prevalent in the gaming world, large scale multiplayer action games have been largely absent up until now. Enter Massive Action Game, an upcoming PS3 title which will bring the feel of a gigantic battle to your living room by allowing for up to 256 player online multiplayer shott out sessions. Interested yet?
MAG will depend on squad based combat, with 8 player units making up the gigantic teams in play. Each squad will have its own leader, who will be decided by a ranking system based on skill and experience in previous games. The groups will each have their own small scale goals to carry out which will help their team’s completion of the overall objective. Think SOCOM on a HUGE scale.
The above trailer is pretty much all we have right now, but we are all eagerly awaiting more details about this game.
In keeping with the tradition of ending Press Briefings with a bang, Sony announced God of War III with the above reveal trailer in the final minutes of their E3 event yesterday. The teaser doesn’t really show us anything other than pre-rendered Kratos goodness, but just knowing that te game is under development will surely be enough to push GOW fans to the edge of their seats. We will keep you updated as we learn more.
During Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference, John Shappert, Director of Live Software and Services jumped on stage to show off how the Xbox 360’s dashboard will be completely revamped later this year. First and foremost, Shappert showed the completely reinvented user interface which does away with the sliding cross sections that we have come to know and love and replaces them with a sleeker media center-esque scrolling menu. Next we were introduced to Avatars, the uber-customizable mii-like mini characters that will be replacing the gamer picture that currently adorns player’s gamercards. Members will be able to purchase various clothing items and hairstyles for their Avatars, which will be integrated into various Xbox 360 games in the future (much like Nintendo’s miis).
Along with these design changes, the Xbox 360 will also be receiving the Xbox Live Party System, which will allow up to 8 Xbox Live members to interact all together in various different ways. The Party System will allow for things such as a large chat, a simultaneous XBLVM content viewing experience among friends, automatic 8 player gaming experiences in certain games, and many more virtual hang out activities.
In another attempt to bring a richer social aspect to Xbox Live, the New Xbox Live Experience will also include a new ‘Primetime’ channel, which will allow players and parties to take part in online versions of various popular game shows directly from their dashboard. In games such as 1 vs. 100, players will be able to play for real prizes while communicating with everyone involved.
These major changes to the Xbox 360’s UI are aimed at completely reinventing the user experience and taking it to more of a social level. Images will go up as soon as we get our hands on some clear ones.
Microsoft’s long rumored answer to Sony’s SingStar was finally made official today during Mr Softie’s E3 Press Conference. Lips, developed by Elite Beat Agent’s dev iNiS, will be released this holiday season exclusively for the Xbox 360. The title will come packaged with a wireless mic controller which will be sesitive to motion as well as the player’s voice. Light’s in the shaft of the peripheral will flash on and off in an equalizer type effect depending on how the player is singing at the time, and special percussion effects such as tambourine hits can apparently be activated at any time.
The innovative mic controller isn’t the only unique thing that Lips will bring to the table however, as it will be the first rhythm title in history to allow players to import their own music from an iPod or Zune for use in the game. Don Mattrick seems pretty confident that this title will be a big hit this holiday season, and with music games being all the rage recently
During Microsoft’s E3 Press Briefing this morning, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada stepped on stage to discuss some details of the RPGs that his company will be releasing on the Xbox 360 later this year. Among all of the standard Last Remnant and Star Ocean fare however, a surprising announcement was made involving the next installment of the all star Final Fantasy series. In dramatic fashion, Wada revealed that former Playstation exclusive FFXIII will be hitting the Xbox 360 on the same date that the PS3 version is released. A visibly enthusiastic Don Mattrick commented,
“Final Fantasy joins the growing list of former Playstation exclusives that have found a new home on the Xbox 360″
Now all we need is a solid release date for this game.
There may be more to that Xbox 360 Price Drop story then we first realized. According to a ‘trustworthy Microsoft Insider’ who leaked information to Ars Technica, not only will the 20GB 360 be getting a $50 price cut, but a new 60GB SKU will be hitting store shelves to replace it once its supplies are diminished. The leak says that the afformentioned bundle will be announced by Microsoft at E3 and will be going on sale sometime this month. The (soon to be) $299 20GB version would then be discontinued, effectively making the new price a mere clearance of sorts.
This one seems pretty plausible, but there is still the question of the 60GB SKU’s price point. My prediction is that, if this whole thing does turn out to be true, the 60GB model will launch with a $349 price tag while its lesser equipped sister SKU fades away at $299.
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Microsoft has finally decided to cut their Xbox Live Silver Members some slack by allowing them to play any cross-platform Xbox 360 games online for free. This announcement comes right after Microsoft decision to make GFW a free service altogether. Microsoft didn’t indicate how long this offer would last, but they indicated that it would only be active until sometime during the fall. This could be a move in the right direction for Microsoft because many people feel that paying for playing games online is really an ill-conceived concept regardless of the services provided. But if you have over 10 million subscribers, why change, right?
