Microsoft showed off two more ways Project Natal could work with existing games at the Tokyo Game Show last week.

According to creative director Kudo Tsunoda, speaking during a demo presentation, Japanese firms such as Konami, Square Enix, Capcom and Namco Bandai are "all building games for project Natal". But to further illustrate the potential of the technology, Microsoft put together a special TGS demo featuring Beautiful Katamari.

"I think what this does really well is take a game that was super-hard to control, and make it super-easy and approachable," he said. "On 360 the controls in Katamari were really hard - it was hard to navigate around the world. Now, with Project Natal, it's very simple and easy to do. Anybody can get in and be able to play it right away. It makes it simple, fun and accessible while still keeping the depth and excitement this game has."

Eurogamer got to have a go and sure enough, the game was instinctively easy to play. You position your hands as if they're on top of a beach ball then move them as if rolling it around - left to go left, right to go right and so on. The game was responsive to our movements, with no lag between our gestures and the action on screen. It all felt fluid, natural and less fiddly than twiddling analogue sticks.

Next up was Space Invaders Extreme. To play the Natal version of this game, you stand in front of the screen with your arms out to the side and bent at the elbows. Stepping from side to side moves your ship left and right. You raise your arms to fire, keeping them bent. You look like C-3PO at a rave, having just discovered disco biscuits.

In practice, it's easier to control your ship by leaning from side to side rather than stepping. The game occasionally appeared to struggle to keep up with our firing motions, and twice had to be reset after it stopped responding altogether. But Space Invaders Natal-style was strangely good fun to play and apparently hilarious to watch, and overall it worked. Plus it's probably completely amazing if you've had disco biscuits for tea.

But is there any chance the Natal versions of these games will make it into the shops? Seems unlikely, as these were tech demos built specially for TGS. "We just wanted to make something Japanese consumers and publishers could identify with," said Tsunoda. Here's hoping someone sees the potential of Space Invaders Natal in time for our Christmas party, anyway.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ms...ri-natal-style ...

Tomorrow's Street Fighter announcement has spilled, and turned out to be no less than Super Street Fighter IV.

French website JV247 broke the news and offers a handful of screenshots, which feature old hand T Hawk and new fighter Juri, who's apparently an evil Asian girl working for Seth.

Those details come from various forums making unsubstantiated but convincing claims.

T Hawk, for example, is supposed to be protecting Juri, as she has been brainwashed by Shadowloo. The story apparently takes place a year after Street Fighter IV.

Other new characters rumoured are Dudley, Ibuki, Cody, Adon, Dee Jay, Makoto, Guy and Hakan (an Arabic fighter obsessed with oil).

Speculation also suggests fighters gain access to two Ultras now, one of which may be an Air Ultra. There is talk of the Bonus Stage returning too, and apparently engine changes that make Super Street Fighter IV feel very different to the core SFIV game\

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/su...er-iv-unveiled ...

Capcom R&D chief Keiji Inafune told journalists at a Dead Rising 2 event on Friday that his reaction to the Tokyo Game Show was despair at the state of the Japanese games industry.

"When I looked around all the different games at the TGS event floor, I said, 'Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished,'" Inafune said, in comments translated by Capcom's Ben Judd and captured by Destructoid.

"But, just so you all don't think that the game industry is finished, Capcom is doing our best. I wanted to [have] this party and show you there are still some kickass games out there coming from Japan."

Inafune is well known for his belief that Japanese developers need to think globally in order to match the success of their Western competitors, and he delivered a speech to that effect at Capcom's annual press event in Monaco earlier in the year.

He practices what he preaches, too, working with Canadian developer Blue Castle on the production of Dead Rising 2, and putting a lot of weight behind Dark Void, developed by Airtight Studios in the US. Even Capcom's Japanese-developed titles like Lost Planet 2, produced by Jun Takeuchi, now have a touch of the West about them on Inafune's watch.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/in...ry-is-finished ...

Halo 3: ODST has debuted at number one in the UK chart exactly two years after Halo 3 achieved the same feat.

The title, released on September 22, saw enough demand that 64 per cent of its week one sell-through was achieved in the first 24 hours. Its sales make it the twelfth biggest single format week one seller to date - although it's some way behind Helo 3, which is currently ranked at number four, after GTA: San Andreas on PS2, GTA IV on Xbox 360 and GTA IV on PlayStation 3 respectively.

Elsewhere in the chart, another new entry, Professor Layton and Pandora's Box, entered at number two, pushing last week's number one, Need for Speed: Shift, to number three, despite the EA title attaining a seven per cent sales rise.

Guitar Hero 5 dropped from second place to fourth, Wii Sports Resort held onto its number five position, and Batman: Arkham Asylum dropped two places to number six.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 dropped from number three to eight, Wet sunk to number nine and Wii Fit dropped one place to number 10.

In addition to the top two placing games, the chart saw a further three new entries to the top 20.

Activision Blizzard's Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 debuted at number seven, while NCSoft just missed out on the top ten with Aion, which entered at number 11. The final new release to enter the chart was EA's MySims Agents on DS and Wii, at number 16.

The full Chart-Track UK sales chart for the week ending September 26 is as follows:

01 Halo 3: ODST
02 Professor Layton and Pandora's Box
03 Need for Speed: Shift
04 Guitar Hero 5
05 Wii Sports Resort
06 Batman: Arkham Asylum
07 Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
08 Colin McRae: Dirt 2
09 Wet
10 Wii Fit

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-1-in-uk-chart ...

Nintendo is to support the annual Handheld Learning Conference for a third year it has confirmed, by running a Games for Learning workshop at the October event, held in London.

The conference will bring together a diverse group of thought leaders, including game designer David Braben and inventor Ray Kurzweil, who will join educational leaders from Ofsted, the MIT and London Schools.

Together they will discuss new ways to transform learning using technology already embedded in everyday lives, including mobile phones, mp3 players and social media platforms, as well as games consoles.

Children entering the schooling system today will almost certainly be facing non-keyboard based, gesture recognising, intelligent computing technologies by the time they leave full time education, said the conference's organisers.

"There couldn't be a better time to transform learning by pressing the reset switch on the Victorian past and looking at things in ways more suited to learners in the 21st century," added conference leader Graham Brown-Martin.

"We're delighted to once more be supporting this important conference that has become the de-facto meeting place for the convergence of education, entertainment and consumer electronics," commented David Yarnton, Nintendo UK's general manager.

"We have been consistently impressed and surprised at how leading educationalists have been adapting off the shelf videogames to engage their students in rich learning experiences."

Part of Nintendo's involvement in the event will be the support of a Games for Learning workshop, at which international education professionals will demonstrate how modern gaming technologies are currently being used in and out of the classroom.

It is an area in which Sony is also active in, with the launch of an education initiative for PSP and a distribution deal with ConnectED Services to bring its handheld to schools.

The Handheld Learning Conference will take place in Shoreditch, London between October 5-7. The event's first day is free to attend by the general public and anyone interested in how current technologies can be used for learning and teaching.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...onference-2009 ...

Kudo Tsunoda of Microsoft Game Studios has said it is unlikely to be possible for developers to patch their existing games to make them compatible with Natal.

While Microsoft is able to engineer other publishers' titles to work with the hardware, Tsunoda told Destructoid, a significant amount of code has to be altered first.

Microsoft has already used several older games to showcase Natal in action - including Burnout Paradise at E3, and, at Tokyo Game Show, the Xbox Live Arcade title Space Invaders Extreme and Namco Bandai's Beautiful Katamari.

However in practice, said Tsunoda, it is more likely a publisher will have to re-release the game in its entirely in order for it to be Natal compatible.

The information comes on the back of Sony's announcement that a number of reworked games will be compatible with the PlayStation 3 motion controller. Some, such as Resident Evil 5: Director's Cut, will be new releases, but others, including LittleBigPlanet, PAIN and Flower, are expected to work following patching.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ched-for-natal ...

UK mobile phone carrier Orange has announced that it will be offering Apple's iPhone on its network later this year, confirming a much-rumoured expansion from the handset's current exclusive O2 contract.

The move will open up opportunities for App Store developers to a much wider audience what will be seen as a key demographic market for casual spending, and follows a recent announcement by the carrier that it is to merge with the UK T-Mobile business to form the biggest network in the country.

Orange was estimated to have had around a 21 per cent market share at the end of 2008, while the link-up with T-Mobile UK will boost that figure to nearer 40 per cent. Adding that to the existing O2 user base will give the iPhone nearly 75 per cent of the UK's total mobile market to hook into.

The App Store has seen a whole new sector of the videogames industry rise up in the past year, with individual successes leading to what some industry figures have labelled a "gold rush" as developers hope to cash in on the growing handset audience and streamlined route to market.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...al-with-orange ...

Apple’s iPhone has, for the first time, hit first place in Superbrands’ annual list of the 500 coolest brands in the UK.
The hugely popular smartphone managed to knock Aston Martin off the top spot for the first time in three years, switching first and second place with the British sportscar manufacturer.
Apple’s dominance of the CoolBrands 500 continued beyond first place, as the Apple brand itself emerged once again in third place, while the iPod brand jumped 36 places to hit fourth.
The list of 500 cool brands is brought together by independent research from The Centre for Brand Analysis, surveying what the group terms as ‘influential opinion formers’, as well as the British public. The CoolBrands survey reached out to 2,500 respondents, and has been annually measuring brand trends since 2001.
Technology companies continue to dominate the CoolBrands list, as nine of the top ten remain technology or internet brands. BBC’s iPlayer, meanwhile, has entered the list for the first time in twentieth place.

Stephen Cheliotis, Chairman of the CoolBrands council, refuted the seemingly flippant nature of a cool-list.
“Aston Martin has finally lost its top spot in the rankings but only just,” he said. “In fact, considering cool is seen to be very fluid and changeable, the top twenty shows remarkable consistency with 15 of last year’s top twenty in there again.
“Equally, most of the category winners are the same,” he said. “So much for cool being a fleeting thing.”
Meanwhile in the console race, Nintendo climbed to fifth place; the company’s highest position yet, while PlayStation leapfrogged the Xbox brand, with both hitting tenth and eleventh place respectively.
1. iPhone (up one place)
2. Aston Martin (down one)
3. Apple (same position)
4. iPod (up 36 places)
5. Nintendo (up two places)
6. YouTube (down one place)
7. BlackBerry (up 16 places)
8. Google (down two places)
9. Bang & Olufsen (down five places)
10. PlayStation (up five places)
11. Xbox (up 28)
12. Tate Modern (down two)
13. Dom Perignon (down two places)
14. Virgin Atlantic (down two places)
15. Ferrari (down two places)
16. Sony (same position)
17. Mini (up 11 places)
18. Vivienne Westwood (up 23 places)
19. Rolex (down ten places)
20. BBC iPlayer (New entry)

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/32408...-coolest-brand ...

Sports Interactive explains why FM won’t be returning to the TV anytime soon
Sports Interactive studio head Miles Jacobson has revealed why its console strategy is currently “non-existent”, and why the studio is in no rush to create FM games for the Wii, 360 or PS3.
Between 2005 and 2007, Sports Interactive had released three Xbox 360 editions of Football Manager, before the studio abandoned its console plans entirely.
“We weren’t happy with the control methodology, we weren’t happy with the way the game transitioned onto console,” said Jacobson in an interview with Develop.
Though classic joypads are seen by the SI team as insufficient for navigating FM’s deep menu interface, Jacobson did imply that motion controllers such as Natal could open new possibilities for a console FM game.
“With the 360 and PS3, if we were going to release the game [using] the motion controllers, Natal and Sony’s thing would need to see a very high penetration rate of those peripherals,” he said.

However, the high penetration rate of motion controllers was not the only condition in which FM would return to consoles.
“Also, we have to make the game for standard definition TVs where the text suddenly has to be big, so essentially we’d have to redesign the game if we wanted to do it properly.

“Let’s wait to see how those things go. Let’s wait to see how high the penetration rate is for HDTVs and motion controllers.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/35945/Foot...shuns-consoles ...