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Halo 3 launches in the US - Bill Gates attends
2007-09-25 19:47:00
Halo 3 Midnight Madness Bellevue Best Buy 301, originally uploaded by gamerscoreblog. Above, Master Chief's boss, Bill Gates dishes out the first copies of Halo 3 at Best Buy. I'll post photos of the midnight launch at GAME in Brighton (UK) on Flickr later tonight.
More About: Halo , Halo 3

Another Xbox LIVE Arcade sale starts 12:01 GMT this Wednesday
2007-09-24 18:53:00
The catch? The three titles are far from essential, and one of them was so unjustifiably overpriced to start with, even its discounted price is an unappealing 900 Microsoft Points. The sale lasts for seven days - presumably hoping to catch the attention of Xbox 360 newcomers, during downtime between Halo 3 sessions. The titles are: Bankshot Billiards 2 - 900 MPs Frogger - 300 MPs Hardwood Spades - 300 MPs These sales aren't unwelcome, but more significant discounts on more significant titles are the only way these events could generate any real excitement. Do yourself and Jeff Minter a favour and pick up the extraordinary Space Giraffe instead. Update Along with some more Bomberman Live DLC, this sale takes the place of any new XBLA releases this week.
More About: Arcade , Xbox Live , Xbox Live Arcade , Sale

DualShock 3 revealed at the Tokyo Game Show
2007-09-20 23:08:00
Sony PlayStation DualShock 3, originally uploaded by PlayStation.Blog. Hands up who's looking forward to paying for the luxury of PlayStation 3 rumble?
More About: Game Show , Tokyo , Show , Game , Tokyo Game Show

Devil May Cry 4 at the Tokyo Game Show
2007-09-20 22:10:00
IMG_5220, originally uploaded by gamerscoreblog. There's a strange lack of hype for DMC 4. Personally, I can't wait. An end of March release on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is penciled in at the moment, although reports suggest the title could be ahead of schedule.
More About: Game Show , Tokyo , Show , Game , Devil

This week's Xbox LIVE Arcade title is... Geon: Emotions
2007-09-18 21:25:00
Available from tomorrow on XBLA is Strawdog Studios' Geon: Emotions . It's a team-based "abstract" sports game with an strategic emotional twist. How significant that last bit is, remains to be seen. Everyone wishing for a TGS-inspired, secret big name Japanese release tomorrow can only be disappointed.
More About: Xbox , Arcade , Xbox Live , Xbox Live Arcade

This week's XBLA title: Sonic The Hedgehog 2
2007-09-10 20:19:00
Available on Xbox LIVE Arcade from 09:00 GMT this Wednesday, is Sonic The Hedgehog 2. This game takes me back, I was on a school-sponsored work experience week at Worthing Computer Centre when the awkwardly-titled "Sonic Twosday" hit. Unbelievably, nearly fifteen years ago - November 24th, 1992. And one of the very first near-simultaneous worldwide console game launches.
More About: Title , XBLA , Sonic the Hedgehog

Courting the casual £: Brain Training 2 demo pod in Brighton
2007-07-27 16:45:00
It doesn't get much more mainstream than this; hassling busy shoppers, on their way back to the local multi-storey car park, to try out Brain Training 2 on DS. The promoters clearly weren't familiar with Dr Kawashima's oft-repeated mantra "Do not set up promotional booths round the back of a city centre pub, by the bins, three metres from where the tramps 'go'." At least is wasn't being staffed by Chris Tarrant.
More About: Brighton , Demo , Court

Heavenly Sword demo impressions
2007-07-26 21:57:00
Heavenly Sword is one of those rare, built-from-the-ground-up PlayStation 3-exclusive titles, and as such, great (graphical at least) feats are expected. The 996MB demo was released today for download over PlayStation Network, but does it deliver that elusive AAA experience? Kinda. Graphically, the detail impresses. Great lighting, draw distance and textures are all there, but... Screen tearing is very visible (I was playing at 720p) and the frame rate chugs. Combat animation is not quite as fluid as God of War and the dodge animation is particularly clunky. In the four minutes of gameplay, there are two separate Quick Time Events (QTEs) that serve to link the two featured combat arenas together. If this technique is copied and pasted throughout the whole game though, the experience could get very samey, very quickly. The combat is fun, satisfying, relatively deep and looks good. Several combos exist within the three interchangeable fighting styles, but even so, struggles to ma...
More About: Demo , Heavenly Sword , Impressions , Impress

Develop in Brighton: The Making of LocoRoco + "New LocoRoco" shown
2007-07-26 18:29:00
Tsutomu Kouno (lead designer, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan) gave the briefest but most likable presentation of this year's conference. And was ended by showing a minute of the new LocoRoco - no video or photography was allowed for that bit though. Tsutomu started his career at Sony as a level designer for The Legend of Dragoon and then moved on to Ico, "I designed places I wanted to visit." he said. Interestingly, he too wasn't quite sure how to pronounce Ico, but settled with 'Eeco' rather than 'Eye-co'. He showed a scribbled PDA doodle of what would later become LocoRoco, and talked through his design choices that would would preempt Nintendo's Touch Generation ethos by many months. "[there are] too many complex games so I wanted to make a simple game." The experience of playing LocoRoco was summed up perfectly in one Japlish PowerPoint bullet: "Jelly-like feeling created by physical calculation!" The visual design of LocoRoco is its calling card, and thi...
More About: Brighton , Maki , Develop , Locoroco , Makin

Develop in Brighton: The Rapidly Maturing Genre of Online Gaming
2007-07-25 18:08:00
Richard Garriott (NCsoft), son of a NASA astronaut, has been creating games since the mid 70s. A distribution deal in 1979 for his first game saw him earn $5 per copy sold. The game, Akalabath, soon sold 30,000 units, and cemented his career in gaming. As he now prepares his new game, Tabula Rasa for release, his lecture at Develop made it clear just how risky MMORPG development is, but also showed that if you get it right, "you're set for life." Garriott discussed how the continuous technological advancements of early home computers impacted on game design, and how disruptive hardware upheavals can cause game design to "periodically reset to [a] basic gameplay dynamic." Offline gaming, according to Garriott took twenty years to develop, and with the online gaming industry approaching just half that, he was critical of current design choices, "Basic game design has not changed in the last ten years." Players "obsess about damage over time"...
More About: Gaming , Brighton , Online , Genre

Develop in Brighton: Second Life: The Challenges & Opportunities of Use
2007-07-25 14:10:00
Second Life is four years old, has eight million residents and hosts six million $USD of peer-to-peer transactions every month. And the fact that 60% of its users contribute content to the Second Life world makes it quite unique (only 1% of Wikipedia users and 5% of eBay users actually generate any kind of content). Dr Jim Purbrick (Linden Lab) began by clarifying that "I'm aware that Second Life isn't a game." Despite that, users invest over 400,000 hours into the world of Second Life and into a user-edited virtual environment that now is currently 6.5 times the size of Manhattan. The theme of Develop so far has been the potential pitfalls and benefits of user-controlled/generated content and Dr Purbrick described the "infinite shelf space" that online, retail-focused worlds can offer when populated by essentially unlimited user generated content (UGC). The problem with opening up the online space to unpredictable creative forces is that Sturgeon's Law inevitably kicks i...
More About: Brighton , Opportunities , Econ

Develop - it begins
2007-07-25 09:22:00
It's going to be a long day. Five sessions to attend at Develop today - check for regular updates and live Twittering from 09:30.

Develop Conference & Expo starts in Brighton
2007-07-24 11:53:00
The sun came out in Brighton this morning to welcome hundreds of videogame professionals to the start of Develop 2007. I'll be covering the keynote speeches and everything in between during Wednesday and Thursday.
More About: Expo , Ferenc , Conference

This week's Xbox LIVE Arcade titles confirmed: Wing Commander Arena & S
2007-07-23 22:03:00
EA's Wing Commander Arena and Konami's Super Contra will be available from Wednesday morning for 800 and 400 Microsoft Points respectively. Difficult to get excited about either title really. Let's have some more contemporary arcade games like The Simpsons, Sunset Riders, Chase HQ or Outrunners appear on XBLA.
More About: Xbox , Arcade , Xbox Live , Xbox Live Arcade , Live

New Virtual Console titles for Friday May 25th
2007-05-25 08:59:00
Now available from the European Virtual Console service are: Super Mario Bros. 2 - NES, 500 Wii Points Mach Rider - NES, 500 Wii Points Blazing Lazers - PC Engine, 600 Wii Points Super Mario Bros. 2 history In late 1988, the hype for Super Mario Bros. 2 was huge, in America and Europe anyway. The proper Nintendo-developed Super Mario Bros. 2 had been released in Japan two years earlier but was deemed too similar, too dificult for a Western audience. So, years before Nintendo started outsourcing their brands on a significant scale, NES game K�j�: Doki Doki Panikku (Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic) had its original main characters replaced with Mario, Luigi, Toadstool and Princess Peach. The resulting game was unlike any Mario title before or since, but remains a unique if odd element of the Mario timeline. Shy Guy and Birdo featured in Doki Doki Panikku's original version, but were subsequently assimilated into the Mario Universe. Also, pictured, is ...
More About: Friday , Title

PlayStation 3's Home - the dullest-looking wannabe killer app ever?
2007-05-24 19:56:00
Home, the service that needs to simultaneously create PlayStation 3's online environment and prove that Sony's machine can do more than over-priced, under-polished Xbox 360 ports, looks just terrible. It's vision and proposed functionality are intriguing, potentially Xbox LIVE-beating, but its generic environments, uninspired avatar models and the sort-of realistic furniture of the world look so tedious I want to cry. Second Life has clearly been referenced heavily during the development of Home, but using that clunky, style-free, PC-powered world as inspiration has left Home looking like a bland, predictable, totally un-console like place to visit. Developed in London, Home is lacking any Japanese flair, mystery or eccentricity, which for me, is one of the main reasons I play videogames. Choosing the colour of my hoodie, or the real-world brand of white-soled trainers my avatar wears doesn't fill me with any excitement. At all. Let me live in...
More About: Playstation , Home , Killer , Playstation 3 , Plays

Lionhead reveal episodic video diary project
2007-05-24 14:33:00
Focusing on the Fable 2 team (and Peter Molyneux of course), Lionhead Studios today released episode one of a series of film diaries that "aren't overly produced marketing videos." The videos will be made available on Xbox LIVE and via Lionhead's official website, lionhead.com/diaries. The first episode looks at love and emotion in Fable 2, that dog, and Molyneux reviews his GDC 2007 presentation - well worth a look.
More About: Video , Diary , Project , Head

Keepin' it street - a glimpse into the world of UK independent videogame re
2007-05-22 15:57:00
Online content delivery, corporate oligopolies, stock shortages, FIFA-loving Chavs - the life of an independent videogame retailer is often a troubled and unenviable one. Adam is the manager of Games World in Bodmin, I asked him about his retail experiences. The Digital Gamer: What's the name of your shop, how long have you been in business, and what has been your most asked for product this year? Adam: My shop is called Games World (named after the TV show/magazine from the 90s) and I started trading on 3rd of May 2005. My most asked-for product would be Wii and DS consoles/games (which is great, being a Nintendo fan from birth, and them coming joint last in the console market in recent years - it's nice to see). What is your favourite format? Top three games ever? Favourite format at the moment would be 360, and ever would have to be N64, so many good memories. top games in no particular order: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (PS2)Paper Mario (N64)S...
More About: Street , The World , Independent , Videogame

Rush 'n Attack & Xevious coming to XBLA this Wednesday
2007-05-21 23:08:00
Just announced for Xbox Live Arcade are military platformer Rush 'n Attack and shoot 'em up Xevious. Both titles feature mandatory Xbox LIVE Arcade additions such as online play, leaderboards and Achievements. Each title will cost 400 Microsoft Points.Rush 'n Attack also boasts upgraded "fully rendered 3D models' - just look at that bridge below!
More About: Wednesday , XBLA , Ming

Four new Gears of War maps confirmed, 800 Microsoft Points though
2007-05-01 20:02:00
Four new multiplayer maps for Gear s of War will be available this Thursday from 09:00 GMT for 800 Microsoft Points, but won't be free like the previous set of maps. The Hidden Front map pack descriptions from the press release:...
More About: News , Xbox 360 , Maps

Three games this week for Xbox LIVE Arcade
2007-04-30 22:56:00
Just confirmed for release this Wednesday (09:00 GMT) are an unprecedented three titles for Xbox LIVE Arcade (XBLA). Catan from Big Huge Games is based on the popular European board game Settlers of Catan and will be available for 800...
More About: Xbox Live , Xbox Live Arcade

Review: Pinball FX (Xbox LIVE Arcade)
2007-04-27 14:37:00
Videogame incarnations of pinball have a chequered history at best, their success being so acutely dependent on the integrity of the ball physics and the quality of table design. Pinball FX gets the former just right and online play adds...
More About: Reviews , Xbox , Arcade , Xbox Live , Xbox Live Arcade

Euro Virtual Console titles for Friday 27th April
2007-04-27 09:02:00
Now available from the Euro pean Virtual Console service are: Final Fight - SNES, 800 Wii Points Super Lode Runner - PC Engine/TurboGrafx, 600 Wii Points Mighty Bomb Jack - NES, 500 Wii Points 500 Wii Points = £3.50600 Wii Points...
More About: April , Friday

EA boss defines best-fit game types for PlayStation 3, Wii & Xbox 360
2007-04-25 19:34:00
Speaking to gamesindustry.biz, EA executive Gerhard Florin summed up how EA view the now-current generation of games consoles. And his views fit well with how the three machines are already perceived at consumer level. Something like Harry Potter is a...
More About: News , Wii , Xbox , Playstation , Play