New from Play Asia



Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is the sequel to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for Gamecube™. The game takes advantage of both the local wireless and Wi-Fi capabilities of the system.

The new installment of Crystal Chronicles uses a similar control scheme to the Gamecube™ version, with A to use Commands; Y to pick up items (and allegedly enemies); and the B button to jump (which adds a layer to strategy, with multitiered levels in the 3D environment).

Most of the gameplay takes place on the top screen. The touch screen shows maps, as well as stylus access for different weapon attacks. Special attacks are performed by pressing the right trigger button, the screens will swap allowing enemies to be attacked just by touching them with the stylus. If done correctly, chained attacks can be performed.

In multiplayer mode, the player's class greatly influences lifespan. Five character classes can be picked including Warrior, Archer, White Mage, Black Mage, and a support class. Each has specific roles to be fulfilled in the multiplayer mode. ...

New from Play Asia



Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is the sequel to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for Gamecube™. The game takes advantage of both the local wireless and Wi-Fi capabilities of the system.

The new installment of Crystal Chronicles uses a similar control scheme to the Gamecube™ version, with A to use Commands; Y to pick up items (and allegedly enemies); and the B button to jump (which adds a layer to strategy, with multitiered levels in the 3D environment).

Most of the gameplay takes place on the top screen. The touch screen shows maps, as well as stylus access for different weapon attacks. Special attacks are performed by pressing the right trigger button, the screens will swap allowing enemies to be attacked just by touching them with the stylus. If done correctly, chained attacks can be performed.

In multiplayer mode, the player's class greatly influences lifespan. Five character classes can be picked including Warrior, Archer, White Mage, Black Mage, and a support class. Each has specific roles to be fulfilled in the multiplayer mode. ...

New from Play Asia



Heroes of Mana breathes new life into the vaunted Mana franchise, taking the beloved series into an entirely new dimension. Generals plan, plot, and strategize their way to victory on the battlefield. Command an army of heroes, creatures, and rabites with the Nintendo DS touch screen and experience an all-new perspective on the ever-evolving battle for the Mana Tree.

Heroes of Mana goes much farther than a traditional RTS with incredibly rich and detailed characters on the battlefied, each with histories and a relationship to the overall story of the Mana franchise that is deep and complex. In fact, there's a story recap feature to help you get to know everyone and their place in the story. ...

New weekly special offer from Play Asia



When Wario sees a television series about a thieving master of disguises, he dives through the TV screen, steals the theif's quick-change wand and takes over the whole show. Episode after episode, he breaks into exotic locations, like a luxury liner, watery ruins and an Egyptian pyramid!

Nintendo's Kaitou Wario the Seven (aka. Wario: Master of Disguise) for Nintendo DS™ is now available at discounted US$ 19.90 only.

Game features:

Draw Wario's eight disguises: By sketching a symbol on Wario, the player puts Wario in outfits that give him powers, such as Thief Wario's tackles and Cosmic Wario's laster blasts. The player also uses the stylus to wield powers.
Explore environments: Wario travels the globe in ten missions that span nine exotic locations. The player must attack many enemies found in each location and also use Wario's disguises to get past puzzling obstacles.
Play mini-games to unlock chests: To pick the lock of each chest, the player must play one of eight stylus-driven mini-games that grow more difficult as the game progresses. ...

Activision's Transformers: The Game celebrates its third week at the top of the all-formats charts this week, despite a drop in sales of 15 per cent.

Nintendo's Wii Play has climbed back up the charts to number two as has Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training which this week is at number three in the charts.

More DS titles make up the rest of the top five, with Pokemon Diamond and More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima at four and five, respectively.

Movie tie-in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is at six this week, with Pokemon Pearl at seven and Ubisoft's Surf's Up at eight.

Completing the top ten is 505 Games' Cooking Mama at nine and New Super Mario Bros. at ten.

The only new entry in the top forty for the week ended August 18 is THQ's Purr Pals at number 18.

via gibiz ...

via gibiz

Games consoles will be the main drivers for digital content in the home by 2012, according to a new report from ABI Research.

The firm expects that 184 million household devices will provide digital content in homes by 2012, with games machines accounting for 85 per cent of delivery.

"The manufacturers are aiming to make their consoles more like media centre devices, rather than just being for gaming," commented Steve Wilson, analyst at the New York firm.

"The advantage they have is market share: their products ship in large volumes. The big question is whether gamers will actually make use of this added functionality built into their consoles," he added.

Computer and gaming manufacturers are leading the pack when it comes to providing digital content to home users says the report.

"The opportunity is there for consumer electronics manufacturers to embed this technology, although so far it is largely the computer network manufacturers who are embracing the concept," said ABI Research. ...

Outspoken developer Denis Dyack outlined his vision of a one-console future in a speech at GCDC yesterday, arguing that the history of commoditization in other industries meant the standardisation of gaming hardware was an inevitability - and something we might see as soon as the next cycle of console hardware.

Dyack, president of Too Human developer Silicon Knights, believes that a "unified gaming standard" is on the horizon - and that "just like a DVD, just like a camera, everyone would know what those specs are". It's an argument Dyack has made in public before now, and with an hour of GCDC to fill he seized the opportunity to expand on what he admitted was a contentious point of view. "If you talk about commodification to a hardware manufacturer, they usually turn white," he joked.

In the future, companies like Sony, Microsoft, Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp and Dell would line up to deliver gaming systems of comparable power that supported all gaming software, Dyack predicted. In the rare case of a game that didn't work, "it would be the hardware manufacturer's fault", he said, removing a number of burdens from software developers' shoulders.

This standardisation, as he put it, would mean better hardware at lower prices, the abolition of a first-party product approval service, cheaper development due to the loss of multiple SKUs, resultant lower game prices, and a 100 percent market share for developers to target rather than a range of big fractions marked Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, which is the current model.

Remarking that he wished he'd "gone back to back" with Stormfront's Don Daglow - because he firmly rejected the idea that the predictable console cycle Daglow identified would recur ad infinitum - Dyack said that the increased difficulty of working within the current business model was symptomatic of "performance over supply" - a strong indicator that commodification is in the offing.

"We've got a bunch of pressures that are now starting to push us to a certain direction," he said of games development. He argued that things like the rising costs of development and staffing needs, a more even split of market share between three platform holders, and the reality that a successful game needs to sell a "frightening" number of units to make back investments, meant that it was "increasingly difficult to be successful".

Equally important, he said, was how little distinction there was between PS3 and Xbox 360 graphics. "We're starting to reach a perceptual threshold where the average consumer can not tell the difference between the next-generation consoles," he argued. "I think this trend's going to continue."

Citing renowned polymath Ray Kurzweil's belief that technological growth will not slow down according to Moore's Law - the belief that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every 24 months, and that this cannot go on forever - he said other divergent technologies would take over to compensate and that gaming consoles would grow closer still in technical capacity.

But perhaps most importantly, he said, there are simply too many games. "A couple of years ago in November there were 250 games released. There's not enough consumers to play all those games," he told the room, remarking almost exasperatedly that a "normal market" would never produce a situation where Resistance: Fall of Man - Insomniac's PS3 launch shooter - and Epic Games' Gears of War for 360 were not actually competing for the same buyer.

He also challenged the belief that Nintendo Wii will continue its meteoric rise. "With the Wii adoption rate, Nintendo's come out of the gate much faster than anyone expected," he admitted. "Short term, I think everyone agrees Nintendo's doing great - long term, they might not take that bet."

Nor is he convinced that PC gaming has much life left in it. "I think the PC is the ultimate 'no standard', which is the opposite of where I think we're going," he said. "That whole market's going in circles and it's going to go nowhere...Unless there's some kind of standardisation there it's going to get worse and worse."

In a Q&A session following his talk, Dyack said that services like Xbox Live would be able to endure in this one-console future - perhaps akin to the way Blockbuster serves film and television.

Admitting that the interface for a unified console would be a sticking point, he nonetheless said he felt we were "there" with current efforts, and that changes would still be possible.

He also admitted his concern that the commoditization of film pointed to a future where developers were brought together for projects contractually, rather than given full-time positions - something he said that Silicon Knights "would fight" because it was "dehumanising".

Concluding that a one-console future - the title of his talk - was inevitable, he said that the current model would endure for as long as people could afford it, but that once developers and publishers started ...

via engadget

So by now you've heard that Paramount has dropped support for Blu-ray right? Good, so has a notable Hollywood director. Michael Bay -- the man behind "Transformers," "Bad Boys," "Pear Harbor," etc. -- just threw down with Paramount in his personal blog. In a forum post titled "Paramount pisses me off!", he states, "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!" That's right Mike, aim your PS3 right at their coffers! ...

Nervegas has released a new version of his Nes Emulator for the iPhone:


Download Here ...