News Headlines

It seems there’s a new title trying to grab this status every few years, whether it’s Halo 3, Harry Potter, the Dreamcast, or something else, the companies behind them are standing at the ready to announce that their product is the biggest selling entertainment-related doo-dad ever.

Now it’s GTA IV’s turn with the game having raked in about $500 million in its first week, which works out to be about 6 million copies of the game sold (with 3.6 million of those units selling on the first day).

It looks like Codemasters is working on a bunch of new MMOs (being developed in-house), with five titles in the works.

“We always had a five year plan and it was always in the middle of that five year plan that we would start developing our own games,” said Solari in an exclusive interview published today.

“We are looking at that and we have to think very carefully about what title is right, what will work in the future. These aren’t easy questions to answer and it’s very easy to fail in the MMO market so you’ve got to take your time, be careful and be sensible,” he added.

With the market so saturated with these games already, it’s interesting to see that Codemastes is making these games, but the company’s vice president for online gaming, David Solari, doesn’t deny that it’s going to take some hard work for these games to succeed.

“It’s one of the toughest areas of the videogames business. It’s the hardest space in which to make games, you see some really big, high-profile games that don’t end up coming out, there’s huge risks involved.

Do you think there are too many MMOGs being made?

The folks responsible for Portal: The Flash Version have released a map pack for Portal with 40 new maps that take levels from their 2D game and convert them into regular 3D Portal levels.  You can download them right here.

Based on Portal: The Flash Version, our very own Hen Mazolski brings us all the levels and concepts back to the original Portal version, in this huge mappack!

This time, experience Aperture Science from a different perspective, before the time of the original Portal, as a different test subject.

This mappack includes ALL 40 levels from WCS’s Flash version, additional bonus levels and features. All together, we’ve got here over three and a half hours of amazing gameplay.

Bethesda, the game publisher most well-known for their Elder Scrolls series, has just announced that their parent company, Zenimax, is setting up a new studio in Tokyo:

April 28, 2008 (Rockville, MD) – ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent company of Bethesda Softworks®, today announced it has begun direct publishing operations in Asia with the establishment of its Tokyo-based subsidiary, ZeniMax Asia K.K. ZeniMax Asia will be publishing titles throughout Asian territories under the Bethesda Softworks brand.

Bethesda Softworks has a successful history as a developer and publisher of award-winning titles, most recently with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion®, which won critical acclaim and countless Game of the Year awards. While continuing to work with strategic Asian distribution partners, ZeniMax Asia plans to deliver a range of compelling titles in the coming years, including the highly anticipated Fallout® 3.

“Establishing operations in Asia is very important to us as we continue to expand our presence in markets outside of North America,” said Robert Altman, CEO of ZeniMax Media Inc. “In addition to ZeniMax Europe Ltd., our direct relationships throughout Asia allow us to bring exciting titles like Fallout® 3 to gamers across the globe.”

The Asian operations of the Company will be headed by Tetsu Takahashi, General Manager, ZeniMax Asia KK. “We are happy to be part of the ZeniMax family,” said Tetsu. “Extending their direct reach throughout Asia is an exciting, new phase in the Company’s expansion and we look forward to building upon their excellent reputation.”

For more information on ZeniMax media visit www.zenimax.com. For more information about Bethesda Softworks visit www.bethsoft.com.

Hard to believe, but NCSoft’s MMO City of Heroes celebrates its 4th Anniversary today. To mark the occasion, they have created a downloadable 12-month calendar (which will be available later today). And Matt Miller hints at a mission creator:

“…I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in…”

Read The Armchair Empire’s review of City of Heroes and our Q&A from 2004.

It has been swirling around as rumor for the last little bit, so it’s good that Ubisoft has finally officially confirmed a new Prince of Persia game.  Many saw Ubisoft’s recent Assassin’s Creed as a testbed for an open world Prince of Persia game, and it seems the company plays this up a little in their news release this morning:

Montreal, CANADA –April 28, 2008 – Today Ubisoft, one of the world’s largest video game publishers, announced that a new Prince of Persia is scheduled to release Holiday 2008 for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION3 computer entertainment system and PC. This new Prince of Persia marks the debut of the critically acclaimed franchise on next-generation consoles. Developed by Ubisoft’s award winning Montreal studio that brought you Assassin’s Creed and the same all-star team that created the previously acclaimed Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy, Prince of Persia is opening a new chapter in the Prince of Persia universe, featuring a new breed of gameplay. The game is poised to rejuvenate the action-adventure genre in addition to introducing a brand-new illustrative art style.

Ubisoft will also release a Prince of Persia game specifically designed for the Nintendo DS system, featuring an entirely new storyline and new characters. More details to be unveiled in the future.

The note of a Holiday 2008 release bodes well for a grand showing at E3 in July.

Koei’s long-running, historical strategy game series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is about to make another appearance on the PC in July.  From the press release:

Burlingame, CA - April 23, 2008 - KOEI, recognized worldwide as the premier brand of strategy and action games, announced today that the Historical Simulation game, Romance of the Three Kingdoms®XI (RTK XI) is coming to Windows-based PCs for gamers throughout North America on July 29, 2008.

“Following KOEI’s successful launch of Warriors Orochi for Windows-based PC earlier this year, the response to bringing more of KOEI’s popular franchises to the platform has been overwhelming,” said Amos Ip, Senior Vice President at KOEI Corporation. “For PC releases, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series has always been at the top of our fans’ wish lists. We are looking forward to bringing Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI to Windows-based PC this summer.”

Curious what kind of rig you’ll need in order to play Funcom’s upcoming MMORPG, Age of Conan, then here are the system requirements announced today:

Minimum configuration (1024×768, detail reduced)

• OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
• RAM: 1GB Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better
• Video memory: 128MB
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
• HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB

Recommended configuration (Up to 1280X960, most features on)

• OS: Windows XP SP 2 or Windows Vista
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
• RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
• Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent
• Video memory: 512MB
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
• HARD DRIVE SPACE: 30GB

Online Gaming;

• Broadband connection required.

This morning, Bethesda announced that Fallout 3 will receive the “collector’s edition” treatment for all three platforms it will appear on (PC, PS3, 360).  Here are the details:

This premium Fallout 3 package, presented in a customized, metal Vault-Tec lunch box, includes the highly-anticipated game, a collectible 5” Vault-Tec Vault Boy Bobblehead, ‘The Art of Fallout 3’ hardcover book, featuring never-before-seen concept art and commentary from Bethesda Game Studios artists, and ‘The Making of Fallout 3’ DVD that includes an inside look at Bethesda Game Studios and the team behind the game.

The catch, if that’s what you want to call it, is that it’s only available through pre-order at participating retailers.

It looks like the source code for MMORPG Eve Online’s client software has been slapped up on the Net for all to see.  Despite this snafu, the game’s creators, CPP, have been doing some damage control by making a statement to Gameindustry.biz where they say things aren’t all that bad:

“CCP is aware that an individual claims to have access to the source code of the EVE client. This access is not a security risk to CCP in any way,” stated the developer.

“Access to the source code for the EVE client exposes no security vulnerabilities, has no privacy protection issues, and poses no threat to our customers’ billing information.

“The server-side interface used by the client is carefully protected to ensure that no abusive or unwanted information is transmitted to, or from the internal EVE server systems. Nothing the EVE client can do can affect the game state, no advantage can be gained by manipulating the EVE client, no advantageous or disadvantageous information can be transmitted to other EVE users by altering the EVE client,” added the company.

According to Next Gen, the Wii Fit now has a price tag for its North America release on May 19th of this year, with the thing clocking in at $89.99.  The device has already sold 1.4 million units in Japan since its release over there.

And it’s getting re-done in 3D.  Here’s the press release:

LOS ANGELES (April 10, 2008) – Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square Enix™ interactive entertainment products in North America, announced today that it will launch a completely re-envisioned FINAL FANTASY® IV for Nintendo DS™ on July 22, 2008. A new generation of gamers will now have the opportunity to experience a legend reborn. Read the rest of this entry »

EA has been hunting down, and shutting down private, stat buffing servers that were running a modded version of Battlefield.  From the official site:

With the help of our community and partners we have located and shut down a number of modified servers which were being used for sending inflated scores to the stats leaderboards. During this crackdown process we have also wiped over 1000 players of their stats to best protect the leaderboard integrity. Some players may have joined these modified servers during the time they were active and found their profiles reset. This reset can not be undone as all resets have been fully investigated by the Support team and proven to be invalid scores.

We are continuing to work with our server providers to prevent these servers appearing but be aware there are some servers that could inflate your scores artificially so we suggest trying to play on servers you trust and know.

Please report any servers or players you suspect of cheating and/or padding to EA Customer Support through the website at http://support.ea.com.

In what is great news for console gamers, it has been announced that Sam & Max Season One is on its way to Nintendo’s Wii!  It’s scheduled to land at retail this Fall, 2008.  Here’s a brief from the official press release:

As part of a continuing effort to extend episodic gaming to new audiences and platforms, Telltale is officially announcing that Sam & Max Season One will be coming to Nintendo’s Wii™ console. This collection of the first six Sam & Max episodes will introduce a brand new audience to the popular and critically-acclaimed game series. The Wii release is expected to ship to retail stores worldwide this fall, thanks to a partnership between Telltale and JoWooD/DreamCatcher.

Sam & Max’s journey to the Wii platform has been fueled by fan excitement. Just before the episodic series’ PC debut, fans launched an email campaign clamoring for a Wii version of the series. Continuous rumors and rampant speculation online led to developer and publisher enthusiasm for the title. With Telltale now focusing on console development in addition to PC, the company can finally bring Sam & Max to Wii in response to this overwhelming demand.

The Sam & Max episodes let players guide the Freelance Police through a series of bizarre—and often sidesplitting—mysteries. Sam & Max Season One has already experienced enormous success, both as an episodic series available for download through Telltale’s website and other services, and at retail. Honors include Adventure Game of the Year from GameSpy and IGN, and inclusion on Games for Windows’ list of Top 10 Games in 2007.

So the question this brings up, what other old school adventure games might we also see on the Wii?  How about a massive collection of Sierra titles?  LucasArts?

…and it’s EA’s soon-to-be-former COO, Darrell Rodriquez.  PR below!

San Francisco, Calif. (April 2, 2008) – Darrell Rodriguez has been named president of LucasArts, the videogame division of Lucasfilm Ltd., it was announced today by Lucasfilm President Micheline Chau. Read the rest of this entry »