Joystiq [Playstation]

Sony's Japan Studio urged to create more PS3 games

by Andrew Yoon { 6 days ago }

Japan Studios has had little impact on the PlayStation software library this generation. The platform's greatest hits so far have, instead, come from America and Europe. Titles like Uncharted, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, God of War, and WipEout all come from various studios at SCEA and SCEE. But what has Japan Studio created thus far? Siren, Trash Panic, and The Eye of Judgment -- noteworthy games perhaps, but hardly a collection of system-selling blockbusters.

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida explained to Gamasutra that "their focus was shifted onto the PSP, which reflects the success of the PSP as a platform in Japan ... It's completely opposite of the way how US and European teams moved onto working on the PS3 and we see the fruits of those efforts, while Japan studios shifted their focus onto the PSP." Of course, handheld owners have much to be thankful for: system-defining hits like Patapon and LocoRoco were created out of Japan Studio's dedication to the platform.

However, the next year (and beyond) should be very different for Sony's Japanese developers. With The Last Guardian and Gran Turismo 5 coming from Sony's other Japanese studios, the pressure is on for other developers to follow suit. "We are now re-energizing teams and coming up with new ideas for PS3 development," Yoshida said. "We'll be able to show fruits of this work sometime next year."

Soccer reigns supreme once again in UK sales chart; DJ Hero breaks in at 20

by Griffin McElroy { 6 days ago }

Another football game came out in the UK last week and, once again, it came in first place in the region's weekly software sales charts. This time around, the game was Football Manager 2010, in which soccer isn't played, but rather, managed. That's far too boring a concept to discuss further, so instead, let's move to the other big debuts: Wii Fit Plus, for instance, came in second place for the week, which is -- wait a minute. Doesn't Wii Fit Plus have a "Soccer Heading" minigame? Oh, Nintendo. You know exactly what you're doing.

Episodes From Liberty City and Tekken 6 also made a splash during their launch week, garnering sixth and eighth place finishes, respectively. However, DJ Hero seems to be following its expected, slow-starting sales trajectory, debuting at twentieth place in last week's chart. We've got a small suggestion for FreeStyle Games to improve the rhythm title's performance in the UK: Needs moar Dizzee Rascal.

Source -- Sega's FM 2010 Kicks Off at No1 [Chart Track]
Source -- All formats chart [Chart Track]

Killzone 2 CG intro wins Roses Design award

by Andrew Yoon { 6 days ago }

The Roses Design Awards have recognized Killzone 2 with six nominations and one award, according to a report by GI.biz. This is the first time games have been allowed to compete alongside graphical, visual design and architecture categories.

Axis Animation won a gold award for "Best Use of Animation" for its work on the Killzone 2 CG intro (embedded above). Described as one of the studio's "most ambitious projects," the intro features over three minutes of footage from Vekta to Helghan in one seamless sequence that's free of cuts until the final climatic shot. Director Stuart Aitken is certainly deserving of high praise for setting the stage for one of the PS3's most visually involving games to date.

God of War Collection porting 'lasted 15 weeks'

by Andrew Yoon { 6 days ago }

"At E3, we got a lot of positive buzz for God of War III. We read the blog posts, forums and editorials, and it was clear that fans really wanted to see God of War 1 & 2 on PlayStation 3," Santa Monica Studios director John Hight recently told Game Hunters. We're not entirely sure why this would come as a surprise to anyone at Sony, considering the franchise is arguably the most beloved first-party property for the PlayStation brand. But apparently, it was only after the fan response to God of War's E3 showing that someone at Sony thought, "Hey, that's a really good idea."

"Bluepoint used our PlayStation 2 game code and data and their own rendering pipeline," Hight explained of the porting process, which only "lasted 15 weeks" and "went into manufacturing two days ahead of schedule with no issues." With a scheduled November 17 release, that means porting for the God of War Collection started in late July or early August, verifying Hight's claims that the project began only after the conclusion of this year's E3.

While the God of War Collection's financial success is pretty much guaranteed, it'll probably take a while before a certain Sony executive realizes, "Hey, we should do more of these." Sure, there are a lot of PS2 games worthy of an HD remix, but it should be very clear what the next collection should be.

Gallery: God of War Collection

Deal of the week: 50% off CoD 4's Variety Map Pack

by David Hinkle { 6 days ago }

This week, Xbox 360 and PS3 gamers will be able to snag Call of Duty 4's Variety Map Pack for half off, Activision announced. We've seen this with car dealers a million times. With next year's model -- Modern Warfare 2 -- about to hit the show floor soon, Activision is looking to get as much as it can out of the older model.

Still, if you're happy fragging folks in the older model, then you may want to check out the Variety Map Pack -- which has been discounted by half to 400

($5) on Xbox Live and $4.99 on PSN, culminating in a double XP event for both consoles this coming weekend. Though odds are, if you care about this dinosaur of a game still, you and a majority of the other 13 million or so players probably already own this content.

Gallery: Call of Duty 4: Variety Map Pack

PSP Go sells 28K units on Japanese launch day

by Griffin McElroy { 6 days ago }

While most of you probably spent your Sunday relaxing with a chilled beverage, watching some sporting event and relishing in the extra hour of life that had recently been bequeathed to you, the hard-working folks at Enterbrain were ... well, they were working hard. See, the PSP Go launched in Japan yesterday, and Enterbrain's sales statistics gatherers took it upon themselves to gather the sales data from the launch. Here's what they found: Sunday is a pretty terrible day to release a new handheld device.

According to Enterbrain, retailers moved 28,275 units of the PSP Go system during its first day of availability. While that's still a fairly sizable amount of hardware, Japanese gaming blog Andriasang points out that the DSi, which went on sale on Saturday, November 1 (2008), moved 170,770 units during its first two days on the market. We guess that just goes to show, if you want your handhelds to launch with a bang, launch them on Saturday. Also, put two cameras in them. Sounds silly, we know, but it works.

Spicy Horse teasing Alice sequel for 2011 release

by Justin McElroy { 6 days ago }

We were surprised earlier this year to learn Spicy Horse was creating a follow-up to American McGee's dark take on Alice in Wonderland, which itself seemed like a concept so common and benign in today's market as to almost be kind of adorable. But consider us officially shocked after watching this video on the game's teaser site. It actually has us interested in the project -- apparently due in 2011.

If the creepy stop-motion animation is indicative of the final product's look we'll be more than a little intrigued; a notion surprising enough to make us wonder if we've been hitting the Caterpillar's hookah just a bit too hard.

[Via Videogamer.com]

Ubisoft not planning to release Assassin's Creed 2 demo

by Griffin McElroy { 6 days ago }

Much like that other highly anticipated Q4 blockbuster, it seems Assassin's Creed 2 won't receive a pre-launch playable preview. According to Connected Consoles, a Ubisoft representative recently confirmed at the Eurogamer Expo that the company has no plans for a demo. We've contacted Ubisoft to try and corroborate this report, and to see if the company has a good reason for not putting out a sneak preview of the title. You know, a reason better than "you guys already know what stabbing people is like."

[Via Kotaku]

Gallery: Assassin's Creed 2

Infinity Ward pulls 'Fight Against Grenade Spam' ad in light of backlash

by Griffin McElroy { 6 days ago }

After having their game leaked to the planet's pirating populace and catching flak for some of the controversial secrets revealed therein, one could say that the folks at Infinity Ward are having a fairly rough week. However, they brought their latest batch of hardships upon themselves. A recent viral video for Modern Warfare 2, which featured Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels delivering a PSA (video NSFW) about overzealous grenade use, drew the ire of many of its viewers.

This wasn't due to the light swearing featured in the video, but rather, because of the name of the PSA's sponsor: Fight Against Grenade Spam, which, when acronym-ized, spells out an offensive slur. Following the inevitable backlash which occurred when the gaming community realized the slur's inclusion, Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling responded by Tweeting, "I think the core gag is great, the end is a bit too far from the intent of the joke & can appreciate the concerns. Pulled." True to his word, the video was soon yanked from the developer's YouTube channel.

The complaints from those who viewed the offending ad were two-fold: First, they didn't like that the slur (even in its spelled-out state) was used at all. However, the bigger complaint seemed to be that Infinity Ward was catering to the sensibilities of the foul, hateful underbelly of the online gaming community. What did you think of the video, dear readers? Let us know in the comments section, but please -- keep it civil.

Capcom expects Lost Planet 2 to sell 3.7 million units in second half of fiscal year

by Griffin McElroy { 7 days ago }

Capcom's recently published financial report for the first half of the current fiscal year contains some fairly gutsy estimates for sales expectations of the developer's upcoming titles -- for instance, the report anticipates selling 300,000 copies of Resident Evil 5 Alternative Edition by March 31, 2010. However, the company expects one game to be its biggest blockbuster by a fairly enormous sales margin: Lost Planet 2, which, according to the report, will sell 3.7 million copies in the second half of FY 2010.

That's a fairly monumental increase compared to the sales statistics for the original Lost Planet, which has sold 2.28 million units life-to-date according to VGChartz. Don't get us wrong -- we've enjoyed what we've seen from the game thus far. However, if Capcom's hoping to approach that target, it may want to consider tossing some Pokémon in there. Perhaps a cameo by Master Chief, too, for good measure.

Read: Capcom Results of Operations and Strategies report (.PDF)

Final Fantasy XIII character progression system explained

by Griffin McElroy { 7 days ago }

Though the effeminate hairstyles have managed to stay in tact as the Final Fantasy franchise has evolved, one element seems to change from game to game: The character progression system. From Materia to Guardian Forces to the Sphere Grid and plain ol' leveling up, the series has introduced some novel forms of strengthening your characters. It sounds like Final Fantasy XIII will be no different -- according to the latest issue of Shonen Jump, the RPG introduces a new progression system called "Crystalium."

Andriasang laid out the gist of how the system operates -- instead of gaining experience from battles, players earn "Crystal Points," which they can then spend on new abilities and stat boosts which are arranged on a circular chart. As you progress down one of the chart's specialization trees, you unlock stronger abilities; Fire leads to Fira, and so on. Sounds a lot like the aforementioned Sphere Grid -- but we suppose we'll have to wait until we get our hands on the game before we can make a more insightful assessment.

Hungary spanks America in Dragon Age: Origins contest

by Griffin McElroy { 7 days ago }

The dust from the 24-hour Dragon Age: Origins Warden's Quest tournament has begun to settle, and the sleep-deprived, blood-soaked winner has been declared: The team representing the nation of Hungary. The Hungarians trailed in the rankings until the fourth round of the contest, when they rallied to pass the BioWare Community team (who finished in second place). We guess you could say they were just Hungarier for victory than everyone else.

America, however, must have only been slightly peckish, ending up with a disappointing ninth place (or next-to-last place) finish, and getting eliminated in the third round of the competition. This might be a small blow to our egos, but hey -- at least we're still better at dragon slaying than the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Booyah!

[Via Kotaku]

Namco announces 2.5 million shipped copies of Tekken 6

by JC Fletcher { 8 days ago }

Namco Bandai sent out a press release today boasting that it has shipped over 2.5 million copies of Tekken 6 worldwide. Now, we don't want to tell Namco how to do its job, but these shipment numbers tend to be more impressive when you give the game a week or so in stores, so we can more readily infer a connection between shipped copies and sold copies.

The portion of those 2.5 million earmarked for Europe, for example, just got there today, and it's only been in stores for around two days in North America. All we know based on this is that Namco expects to sell a ton of copies, not that it is selling a ton. Although we're sure it will.

Maybe that's the idea -- to build excitement about Tekken 6 by showing how confident the publisher is. To print up 2.5 million of the things (some of which come in totally huge boxes), Namco must really believe it's on to something!

Gallery: Tekken 6 (GamesCom 2009)

JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 26 - October 30, Horror Edition!

by Kevin Kelly { 8 days ago }

We can't be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we'll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix's Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.

Halloween looms right around the corner! In preparation for a spook-tacular weekend full of fun and frights, we present you with an all-horror edition of Joystiq Box Office. Although in all honesty, nothing tops Trick 'r Treat from a couple of weeks ago. You owe it to Halloween to check that out. Of course, being the geeks that we are, we'd also like to remind you that Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is now out on Blu-ray, DVD, PSN, and the Xbox Marketplace. It's not their best work, but hey ... it's more Battlestar Galactica!

Recommendation of the Week:

Monsturd (Netflix Watch Instantly)
Yes, this is seriously a movie. A fugitive on the run accidentally falls into a sewage tunnel, which is also where a chemical company has been dumping their toxic waste. As a result, he becomes Monsturd: half-man, half-poop. I kid you not. There have been poop monsters in movies before, like the transformed Chet in Weird Science and the Golgathan from Kevin Smith's Dogma, but nothing compares to Monsturd. It's actually not a bad send-up of the classic 50s frightfilms, and the tagline for the movie is "Don't get caught with your pants down!" How can you go wrong?

A lot of you have been asking about the pricing on certain Xbox releases. For instance Red Cliff is 800

($10) to rent in standard definition, as opposed to the normal rental price of 320

($4) for SD. The reason for this is that it has not yet been released in theaters, and is exclusive to the Xbox 360, Amazon, and certain VOD outlets. The film actually opens on November 18, so the added price is for the benefit of seeing it early.

As usual, we'll see you at the popcorn sta -- well, actually, we won't see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you'll be watching, or what you've seen recently that bowled you over.

Continued →

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing around the House of the Dead

by JC Fletcher { 8 days ago }

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is slowly absorbing the entire Sega catalog into one mascot racing universe. The latest franchise to be co-opted is The House of the Dead, whose Curien Mansion is revealed as a track in a new, spooky Halloween trailer (after the break). We can't be sure, but we think we also caught glimpses of a zombie appearing both as a driver and a vehicle.

This zombie is the second appearance of the walking dead in All-Stars Racing. The first, of course, is the Shenmue franchise.

Continued →

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