Microsoft may have officially taken the wraps off of Halo 3: Recon at the Tokyo Game Show last month, but information beyond what GameSpot sleuthed out shortly before this year’s E3 2008 has been in short supply. As reported then, the game will be a spin-off that resembles “a cross between Ghost Recon and Gears of War,” one that reportedly tells a “less cartoony” and “more bloody, violent, and grim” tale of a battle between UNSC forces and the pan-racial religious empire known as the Covenant.
That information was corroborated in part by Microsoft’s reveal at TGS, where the publisher said the game would feature a new hero and campaign. The game will apparently serve as a prologue of sorts, seen from the eyes of a UNSC shock trooper marine who has crash-landed behind enemy lines.
Now, the next wave of substantive information appears to be on the way, courtesy of the December issue of Game Informer. As reported by fan site Halo.Bungie.org, the magazine, which will hit newsstands shortly, has a 10-page spread devoted to the game.
While devoid of actual gameplay footage, the cover story does shed a bit more light on Microsoft’s carefully worded billing of a “new Halo 3 campaign experience.” Namely, Bungie design lead Joe Bertone says the game is “a three to five-hour expansion pack,” with cinematic director Joe Staten saying “we do not view this as a $60 title.” The article also claims that the limited-release Recon Armor will also be available to anyone who completes the Vidmaster Challenge achievement series.
Halo 3: Recon is currently slated to arrive exclusively on the Xbox 360 in fall 2009. For more on the game, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.
Well I promised a follow up and here it is. Following the server rebound I signed in to make sure everything was on the up and up for tomorrow’s release of the expansion. Imagine my surprise when I found out that several of my Auction House posts had disappeared. If anyone plays WoW the way I do, they know that farming is an important part of making the gold you need to purchase those must needed armor pieces and weapons for raiding and questing. Well, when I started a ticket with the game masters for Blizzard, I was hoping to have a sure and swift resolution to this is headache. What I got was a deleted ticket and six hours of hard work lost. I have since sent a second ticket in to hopefully obtain some sort of justice. Whether or not this happens still remains to be seen. I CANNOT stand by and let these so called “game masters” ignore what is a genuine problem because they think maybe this guy is just looking for a gold handout. The truth of the matter is, I would be more than happy to receive the stacks of herbs back to resell on the Auction House. One can only hope that Blizzard, after realizing that their update has messed with countless WoWheads, will do the right thing and send not just me, but all those members that were screwed after this insanity, their deserved payday.
As every WoW player knows, Tuesdays are the bane of our existence. Each Tuesday, the servers go down for their weekly maintenance, usually taking between six and seven hours. This Tuesday, however, when the servers went down, they never came back up. That’s right folks. With less than 13 hours before the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, World of Warcraft has been plagued by server issues no doubt relating to preparing for the launch. According to the in-game message system, the problems began with the mail system and then spread to the PvP system. As of right now, there is no estimated time for the servers to be up again. One can only hope that once these bugs have been alleviated, tonight’s launch will go off without a hitch. Should these problems persist, more updates will come as the information is made public.
Last month, Midway revised its estimated earnings for the July-September quarter, predicting its losses would almost double. Today, the company submitted its final earnings report–which revealed a shortfall even worse than last October’s grim estimate.
For the three months ended September 30, the company posted a deficit of $75.9 million, or $0.83 per share, on revenues of $36.7 million. That’s more than twice the $33.5 million, or $0.37 per share, the Mortal Kombat maker bled out during the same period a year ago. The larger loss includes undisclosed charges related to the cancellation of several unnamed but underperforming games based on licensed IPs.
Matt Booty, the troubled publisher’s recently installed permanent president and CEO, exuded determination in a statement. “During the quarter we executed on a series of strategic and financial moves that reinforce our commitment to developing games that meet clear profitability and scheduling goals. While some of those steps negatively impacted earnings, they were necessary to ensure we are better positioned for long-term success,” he said. “More importantly, we launched three high quality games, and completed the final touches on our highly anticipated fourth quarter releases.”
Midway believes its holiday lineup will slow its financial hemorrhaging. The company expects a per-share loss of $0.20 on $105 million in annual revenue. For the year, that figure increases to a whopping $1.78 per share on $210 million in revenue. If accurate, that annual per-share shortfall will be more than four times the current value of Midway stock, which ended the day at $0.43 on the NASDAQ.
One person who won’t be around to see Midway’s annual report is Shari Redstone. The daughter of medial mogul Sumner Redstone (who partially owns GameSpot parent CBS) resigned on Friday from her position as chairperson of the publisher’s board. She was appointed to the board in 2004, after her father’s company, National Amusements Inc., bought a controlling stake in the publisher.
When Halo 3 arrived in stores last year, Microsoft went all out with the collector’s editions. The publisher prepared three different packages for the game, the most extravagant of which cost $130 and came packed with a scaled-down replica of the Master Chief’s Mjolnir Mark VI helmet.
Microsoft today announced the details of its Halo Wars launch–including a February release window–and the Xbox 360 exclusive’s rollout is planned to be a bit low-key by comparison. The real-time strategy prequel to the first-person shooter franchise will arrive in standard and limited collector’s edition packs that cost $59.99 and $79.99, respectively.
For the extra $20, gamers who pick up the collector’s edition bundle will also get the upcoming Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack add-on of three new multiplayer levels, an extra in-game vehicle (the Honor Guard Wraith), six cards describing the game’s leaders, a “Spirit of Fire” crewmember patch, and the Halo Wars: Genesis graphic novel. Featuring the talents of Phil Noto, Graeme Devine, and Eric Nylund, the graphic novel tells the story of one of the earliest confrontations between humankind and the alien Covenant. Those who preorder either version of the game at select retailers will also receive a code for a downloadable in-game Warthog vehicle sporting flame decals.
Halo Wars is being developed by Age of Empires outfit Ensemble Studios. In September, Microsoft announced that it would be closing the studio after the completion of the project. Some of the core team members will go on to form their own independent studio, the first project of which will be to support Halo Wars after its launch.
Barack Obama to be America’s first black president
Historic victory for African-American senator as networks call election after record turnout at the polls
* Ewen MacAskill and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Mark Tran
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday November 05 2008 04.12 GMT
* Article history
Crowds gathered in Grant Park, Chicago, to await Obama’s speech
Link to this video
Americans tonight entrusted their fate for at least the next four years to Barack Obama, who made history by becoming the first African-American to win the US presidency.
Scenes of jubilation broke out among Democratic supporters as the US TV networks declared that the inexperienced but inspirational Democratic candidate had been elected president at around 4am GMT, after a momentous day that saw voters turn out in huge numbers.
As one state after another fell into the Democratic column, Obama clinched a transformational election, comparable to Franklin D Roosevelt’s in 1932, John F Kennedy’s in 1960 and Bill Clinton’s in 1992.
In an early blow to John McCain’s hopes, US television networks projected that Obama would win Pennsylvania, where the Republican badly needed to win to stand a chance of capturing the White House.
In another big setback for McCain, the Fox News network projected that Obama would win Ohio, the state that ultimately decided the 2004 race between George Bush and John Kerry.
No Republican has won the White House without Ohio. With Ohio and Pennsylvania in his pocket, Obama would be well on his way towards an overall majority.
Piling on the humiliation for the Republicans, Obama was projected to win Virginia by Fox News, the first time the state has voted for a Democrat in a presidential race since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson took the state.
Obama was projected to hold on to all the states the Democrats took in 2004, and win half a dozen or more of the battleground states that had been held by the Republicans.
The Democrat was also projected to win New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington DC, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey.
McCain was projected to win Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and South Carolina.
Despite the encouraging early results, the Obama campaign team urged caution, fearful that a late surge of voters casting their ballots on their way home might yet cause upsets in key states, as happened to the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, in 2004.
Fears that many white voters would fail, in the privacy of the polling booth, to vote for a black candidate appeared to be unfounded, suggesting that race is becoming less of an issue in the US.
Americans voted in record numbers throughout the day as they finally got the chance to turn their backs on eight years of George Bush and choose a new president after America’s longest and costliest election campaign.
From the eastern shores of Virginia, across the industrial heartland of Ohio, and on to the Rocky mountain states of Colorado and New Mexico and beyond, poll workers and voters reported long lines and waits of several hours in the most eagerly anticipated US election for half a century.
Turnout was at levels not seen since women were first given the vote in 1920. Election officials predicted turnout would come close to 90% in Virginia and Colorado, and 80% in Ohio and Missouri.
Exit polls gave Obama double-digit leads in states that had been bitterly contested, and on which the outcome depended. The odds had been stacked against McCain from the start, linked, as he was, to President George Bush, with his near-record low popularity ratings, hostility towards the Iraq war and an impending recession.
But McCain managed to hold his own until mid-September, when the Wall Street crash saw Obama open up a commanding lead.
The next president will inherit horrendous economic problems that will limit the scope of his ambitions. Obama, in his final rallies, was already tempering his early promise of change with warnings about how he would have to curb some of his more ambitious plans, trying to lower expectations that he would be able to move quickly on health care and education reform.
The stock market experienced its biggest election day rally in 24 years on expectation of an Obama victory as the Dow Jones industrial averages surged 300 points, or 3%, to close at 9,625.28 points.
Exit polls nationwide provided an early suggestion that it was going to be Obama’s night showing that the top concern of 62% of voters was the economy, the issue on which voters said they trusted him more than McCain and blame much of the financial crisis on the Bush administration.
Other early exit poll figures also appeared to be good indicators for Obama, with 57% saying they felt Obama was more in touch with them than the 40% who said the same about McCain.
Reflecting the intensity of the campaign, Obama and McCain put in a final burst of campaigning after casting their own votes. Obama made a final dash from his home in Chicago to neighbouring Indiana, which was Republican in 2004.
Reporters travelling with him reported that the candidate was in a subdued rather than celebratory mood, perhaps reflecting the news of the death of his grandmother on Monday. Obama told them that whatever happened, the campaign, the costliest in US history at over $1bn (£629m) as well as the longest, had been “extraordinary”.
Early expectations were of record turnout levels, with the morning bringing long lines at polling stations. However, exit polls later in the day saw voters under 30, the target demographic of the Obama camp, voting at about the same levels as in 2004.
That would be a disappointment for the Obama camp which had been hoping that young voters would buck the tradition of showing enthusiasm for a candidate and then failing to turn out on the day.
Exit polls did chart a rise in African-American turn-out.
CNN, based on the exit polls, projected that Obama would win Vermont, no great surprise as it is traditionally Democrat
Independent election monitors reported sporadic instances of delayed openings of polling stations, broken voting machines, ballot shortages, voter confusion and occasional abuse in a number of battleground states including Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The McCain camp raised separate its own charges of irregularities accusing Black Panther activists holding night sticks of standing outside Philadelphia polling stations in an attempt to intimidate white voters.
McCain also accused out-of-state Obama volunteers of casting votes in Florida, and of voters casting multiple ballots in Florida.
In the battle for Congress, the Democrats picked up four seats to increase their majority in the Senate to 55 out of 100 seats. Democrats were hoping to win a Senate majority of 60, the magic number to override blocking tactics by Republicans. In the House, the Democrats were looking to tighten their majority to 261-174, from 235-199.
This November, the Xbox 360 will turn three. So far, it’s been a profitable and successful system for Microsoft, capturing the attention of developers, snatching exclusives away from the PlayStation 3 and gaining lots of street cred from hardcore gamers.
But in spite of this success, Microsoft has chosen to make an aggressive, totally unprecedented step. They’re completely overhauling the Xbox 360 firmware with a free update called the New Xbox Experience (NXE) that hits consoles on November 19th. Functionally, it’s hiding at least one killer app. Visually, it’s a bigger jump than Windows XP to Windows Vista. Given that NXE is a mandatory update for anyone on Xbox Live, it’s a good thing we really, really liked it.
Navigation
The NXE Dashboard looks entirely different from the old sliding blade system. In fact, it looks a lot more Apple than Microsoft, with sharp image-based navigation and a subtle icon reflection on the Cover Flow-esque surface where 360 content sits.
And you’ll notice immediately, it’s fast. Animations are very smooth as you flick through content, with little to no noticeable caching. Those occasional hiccups from the old blade interface have been burped out.
You might not understand how to get around NXE at first glance, but after a moment the system sinks in. Despite all those pretty icons on the right, the primary folder navigation can be seen on the upper left. It’s a simple vertical list. Up and down changes your folder. Right and left selects the content from that folder.
• My Xbox is your home base, leading to your games, profiles, media libraries and settings.
• Friends shows all of your friends and their avatars.
• Inside Xbox links you to Microsoft-sponsored 360 videos, games and previews, from gaming tips to movie trailers.
• Events houses all of the scheduled 360 online events, like family play nights, “Gamerchix” girl nights and game-specific marathon play fests.
• Welcome introduces you to the main features of NXE, and it can be removed when you’re done with it. It’s the only folder that can be removed on NXE.
• Spotlight is sort of a mix of My Xbox and Inside Xbox. It’s actually completely superfluous given the other categories, as well as misleading because it looks so much like My Xbox with your avatar there. And yes, icon two is a Subway commercial—or any ad Team Xbox wants to serve up.
Get ready to once again plunge into the world of Azeroth with the soon to arrive second expansion for World of Warcraft! The improvements as appear in the beta are massive. Here are a couple of quick points:
The most famous weapon in Azeroth, the Ashbringer, has its story continue in the Death Knight opening sequence. Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come.
Most agree that certain key elements of the Burning Crusade lore were at times, fairly ludicrous. Based on the beta, putting the action back into Azeroth’s backstory has been instrumental in adding to the lore that was sadly lacking. Further exploring the mysteries surrounding the Kirin Tor, Dalaran, the fallen Nerubian empire, avenging blue dragon Malygos, and Ner’zhul himself is a lot more captivating than killing eels for mushroom men in a purple swamp!
Changes in itemization include the merging of spell critical and haste boosts with their physical counterparts. A lot of nice options are now available for the few classes capable of meaningful actions in both catagories. Death Knights, Shamans, and Paladins have the increased ability to take advantage of all of their class features now that focusing on one aspect of their abilities in talents and gear is less damaging to their other facets. This, however, could have PvP balance implications at higher levels.
Developers say they intend for Warriors, Druids, Paladins, and Death Knights to be fully capable to be main tanks, with only minor advantages among them for certain encounters. This helps raiders, as only the highest-end guilds have the ability to precisely pick their class loadout for any given raid.
Healers and offensive spellcasters will be taking a second look at their gear due to the consolidation of the attirbutes that grant additional spell damage and healing into a single bonus. With this change, playstyles for healing classes have opened up. Dedicated healers will have a much easier time soloing and assisting the damage-dealers in PvP combat. Now a healing-capable player can choose to focus on firepower with his talents and gear in order to throw down some reasonably effective heals in a pinch. The danger in this, however, is that hybrids like elemental Shaman and balance Druids could get a little bit too powerful in PvP. Its a little too early to tell, but for now it is a great boon to primary healers in that soloing and farming is vastly less painful.
Blizzard Entertainment is just over two weeks away from releasing the second expansion pack to its genre-dominating massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. And despite increased competition this year from the likes of Funcom’s Age of Conan and EA Mythic’s Warhammer Online, Blizzard has managed to continue to stave off WOW fatigue to usher in that expansion’s arrival.
Today, the Irvine-based developer said that its worldwide subscriber base had exceeded 11 million. Adding a little color to that number, WOW’s citizenship would rank just higher than the total population of Greece, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book.
As revealed in Blizzard parent company Vivendi SA’s recent financial reports, World of Warcraft has been on the cusp of hitting 11 million subscribers since July. Today’s milestone comes just over 10 months since Blizzard touted WOW’s 10 millionth subscriber in January.
As Blizzard uses a variety of payment plans in different countries, the publisher defines “subscriber” thusly: “World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last 30 days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.”
World of Warcraft subscribers hail from a number of countries and regions, including North America, Europe, China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Chile, Argentina, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Most recently, WOW was launched in Russia and Latin America.
Fallout 3 begins with your character’s literal birth and ends with…well, that’s up to you. It might never end, should you opt to hit the (metaphorical) pause button on the role-playing game’s main quest.
What happens in between, from your formative years in the shelter of Vault 101 and well beyond your eventual escape into the irradiated, postapocalyptic Wild West outside, evolves via a nice mix of guided narrative and player choice. Help a townsperson kick his drug habit and you’ll earn good karma; feast on the corpses of your enemies in broad daylight, on the other hand, and people might think you’re a little weird. How you deal with the challenges of the Capital Wasteland affects what nonplayer characters will fight by your side, where your early quest-hub town is, and also some details about the game’s final chapter.
But it’s not just wanderlust and the search for your on-the-run scientist dad that compels you forward in Fallout. Like any RPG, character advancement is both a means and an end. While the leveling system in developer Bethesda’s previous game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, was built on an arcane combination of attributes, skills, skill perks, specializations, and multiple class templates, Fallout 3’s mechanics are far simpler and far improved. You allot your attribute points at the beginning of the game, and when you gain a level, you earn a certain amount of points to spend on skills (Speech, Lockpick, Energy Weapons, etc.) and one perk of your choice. Perks range from practical stuff such as Life Giver (+30 hit points) to oddly whimsical abilities. Mysterious Stranger, for example, occasionally summons a trenchcoated, .44 Magnum-armed dude who kills your target and disappears, spaghetti Western guitar riff resonating in his wake. Spend skill points and pick perks accordingly and it’s easy to create anything from a plasma-rifle-slinging do-gooder to a computer-whiz cannibal.
Whatever path you take, peace and love have no place in the Fallout universe; a whole lot of mutants are gonna die. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) — pause time, target specific body parts — is fun and works well despite the severed limbs and decapitations served up in horror-porn slow-mo (and that’s without the aptly named Bloody Mess perk). And of course, assuming you don’t sink all of your skill points into Science and Barter, you’ll see real improvement in weapon accuracy and effectiveness as you level up.
You can only carry out so many actions at once in V.A.T.S., though, so some real-time combat in between V.A.T.S. attacks is inevitable. Here, Fallout 3 feels very much like Oblivion; it’s less precise and polished than a dedicated first-person shooter such as Call of Duty 4. Distractingly bad character animations — I’m talking man-on-the-moon jumps and running that looks suspiciously like ice skating — and occasional camera problems, especially when you have an A.I. companion, make third-person view an option for Fallout series-nostalgia fetishists only (of which exist plenty).
Fallout’s heavy emphasis on wholesale slaughter combined with a relatively small variety of enemies makes for combat that can get a wee bit predictable at times. The ubiquitous Super Mutants and Feral Ghouls both suffer from the same brand of chemo brain and love to charge into melee range. Until I picked up a plasma rifle and became a one-shot headshot machine, I’d start most indoor battles with some long-range plinking and then duck down a corridor, kicking in V.A.T.S. again for a point-blank shotgun blast or three at whatever bumbled around the corner. But then it does depend on who’s holding the controller, too — I watched other players around our office adopt a more Rambo-esque attitude, and while they lived and died from health pack to health pack, at least their finishing moves were more varied than my signature shotgun-to-the-face.
But it’s best not to get too hung up on the intricacies of gunslinging. It’s the world of Fallout that sticks in your mind when you turn off the game. The Atomic Age educational film iconography and paranoia-humor (see also: BioShock). Your first step into the big world, that seminal Oblivion moment when your irises adjust to the glare and you look out to the horizon and understand that you can go there, or there, or over there. And especially the quests, which sometimes push against the “that’s just too f***ed up; I’m not doing that” boundary and can shock and surprise you with unexpected or uncomfortable outcomes.
Fallout 3’s world can be a lonely world, too — and not just when you crest a hill and look out over a shattered, hardscrabble vista of sun-baked rock and burned-out cars. Sometimes you feel it when you’re the one pushing the boundaries and get an unwanted glimpse behind the curtain, like when I headshotted an NPC not just to watch him die but also to see what his bodyguard would do. The bodyguard continued standing there as though nothing happened. I had to shoot him, too.
If you seek to break the world, you’ll occasionally find a way — which is understandable, given the limits of time and tech — but it does pull you out of the otherwise broad and engrossing experience. Faults be damned, though; this is the kind of hugely ambitious game that doesn’t come around very often, and when it does, you’d be a fool not to play it and enjoy the hell out of it and look forward to the day (next-next-gen?) when the fidelity of open-world RPGs takes another big step closer to the uncanny valley’s far side.
Wii Fit has already sold more than 8.7 million units worldwide and has maintained a shockingly high sales run rate of about 225,000 units per week for the last few months.
At the same time, Take-Two Interactive Software’s Grand Theft Auto IV has dropped off the best seller lists with about 10.6 million copies sold, which means that Nintendo’s Wii Fit should surpass it in sales.
What’s driving this? Women. Nintendo realized that there was an untapped audience of “women and moms” (their words, not mine) that would allow it to expand the brand. This is counter to the traditionally male-dominated world of video games.
A blockbuster franchise for nearly a decade, Grand Theft Auto’s fantasy world of antisocial behavior has helped solidify a stereotype of gamers as 18-34 males, but the market has expanded far beyond that sector. Wii Fit’s success is the most prominent, emblematic example of that shift. And an ironic one at that: Every edition of GTA has aroused complaints over its portrayal of women. Yet this year, it’s women consumers who will help steal Grand Theft Auto IV’s thunder.
A number of casual game makers I have spoken with told me that their audience is primarily women. Maybe Nintendo has cracked the code for an emerging market.
Reports are popping up on 2K Sports’ NBA 2K9 forums that customers who have bought NBA 2K9 for the PC are having trouble because the Steam codes that are needed to activate the game were not included in the packaging. Our news guys are currently looking into the story but, if it turns out to be true, this is pretty much a disaster for the inagural PC version of 2K9. We’ll keep you posted as more information becomes available, as well as a news of any work-arounds or fixes from the 2K Sports side of things. Stay tuned…
[UPDATE] According to a post on the 2K Sports Web site, they’re aware of the problem:
If you recently purchased the NBA 2K9 PC title in North America, 2K Sports is aware of the issues with the Product Keys and is working hard on a solution.
Check back here for answers by end of day today. We appreciate your patience.
Stay tuned for more as it becomes available.
[UPDATE 2] According to the above posting, a solution is on its way:
If you are having issues installing NBA 2K9 for the PC, please know that a solution is forthcoming within the next 24 hours - likely much sooner - to alleviate any installation issues involving a Product Key. This solution will be downloaded automatically and seamlessly when you install your product.
Sony’s Little Big Planet is one of the most high-profile releases of this holiday season. Developer Media Molecule has seen its game go from indie darling to AAA system-seller in the past year, thanks to the many appearances that the game has made at trade shows and events.
However, fans of the game are going to have to wait slightly longer to get it. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that it is recalling the game from retailers after it learned that the soundtrack featured some Arabic-language lines from the Qur’an backed with music. A SCEE representative also confirmed to GameSpot that this recall would be global, and could not confirm when the game would now actually hit shelves with the offending music removed.
The confirmation follows rumours that that Singing Safari level of the game features a song with two expressions found in Islam’s central holy text, the Qur’an. Cached pages on the official PlayStation forum claim that the two phrases are (literally translated from the original Arabic): “Every soul shall have the taste of death” and “All that is on earth will perish.”
Although Sony’s press release does not confirm that the above lines are in the game, they do claim that “one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an.” Independent translation done for GameSpot confirmed that the lines linked from the original post are indeed from the Qur’an.
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s press release continues, “We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologise for any offence that this may have caused.” It ends by saying that the company will confirm the new launch date shortly.
Microsoft’s third-party strategy in staying competitive in the console race has been clear: Identify the highest-profile games and find some way for them to be better on the Xbox 360. For MTV Games and Harmonix’s hit rhythm game Rock Band 2, the publisher was able to finagle a “first on 360″ deal, whereby the game would see a timed exclusivity window making it available for purchase only on Microsoft’s console.
That period is now rapidly drawing to a close. Confirming retailers’ expectations, MTV Games said today that Rock Band 2 will be available for the PlayStation 3 beginning October 19, with the Wii and PlayStation 2 releases following in December.
Beginning Sunday, gamers can pick up the Xbox 360 and PS3 stand-alone software for $59.99. The game will also be available on both consoles as part of a $189.99 special-edition bundle that includes the newly designed drum set, guitar, and mic. MTV Games will also be offering an $89.99 stand-alone drum kit and $69.99 solo guitar package for the PS3 and PlayStation 2.
MTV Games also revealed more details on the Wii version of Rock Band 2. Along with the PS2 edition, the Wii game will retail for $49.99, with a special-edition bundle and stand-alone instruments following the same pricing outlined above. The game will include the same 84 tracks included in other versions of the game, and Wii owners will also qualify for MTV’s previously promised bonus song downloads, for which registration is currently available.
Source: A poster on the NeoGAF forums reported seeing an Entertainment Software Rating Board listing for Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
What we heard: Standing at a synergistic crossroads of fan service and fighting acumen, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was one of Capcom’s last 2D arcade brawlers. Boasting a beefy roster of more than 50 fighters, the game might not have been the most balanced of Capcom’s offerings, but it was certainly the flashiest.
But flashy as it might have been, it wasn’t online. It was ported to the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and original Xbox, but none of those versions allowed for online multiplayer matches. So when NeoGAF poster Shard noticed the ESRB listing for the game had expanded to include the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the message board population rejoiced (if the quantity of animated .gif response posts is any indicator of enthusiasm).
The initial posting lacked any evidence of the listing, which is nowhere to be found on the ESRB Web site at the time of this writing. However, Shard has long been a news-sifting member of the community, and his account was backed by another poster with an apparent screen grab of the ratings site from when the listing was still active. Further into the thread, more posters added to the pile of evidence with screenshots apparently showing listings of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on menus for PartnerNet, a sort of Bizarro Xbox Live Marketplace where game journalists under non-disclosure agreements can pull down previewable builds of upcoming Live Arcade games.
Interestingly, when GameSpot checked the ESRB database to verify the post, no such listing was found; not for Xbox 360 and PS3, not even for the PS2 and Xbox. The lack of rating for a previously released game well within the ESRB archive’s time frame suggests that the game had been listed, and rather than being amended to have the Xbox 360 and PS3 mentions removed, it was taken down entirely.
;)
