via Eurogamer


Uncharted: Drake's Fortune will be released on 20th November in the US and is still down for release this Christmas in Europe.

That's according to game director Amy Hennig, addressing the world (well, Ellie) earlier today in Croatia, and confirms the date carried by US retailers.

Uncharted, which is developed by the Jak & Daxter scribes at Naughty Dog, puts players on the path of the fabled treasure of El Dorado, and is seen as one of Sony's key PS3 exclusives in the run-up to Christmas.

Hennig also told journalists that the game is "about a week" away from going beta internally, which bodes well for its prospect of getting out the door in two months' time. ...

via Games Industry


Epic's Mark Rein has clarified rumours regarding Unreal Tournament 3's release date on PlayStation 3.


Addressing forum comments which were reported on earlier, Rein said the point was "not to cast doubt on our plans but rather to debunk the countdown timer on a German fan site that listed a specific release date."


Last week, Midway invited the consumer press to play UT3 multiplayer on PS3 at a New York event, and Rein reports that thousands of gamers played the game on two 16-player PC LANs at Leipzig. Rein said that he will also be at the Tokyo Game Show to demonstrate UT3 at a Sony press reception. ...

via Games Industry


Sweden and Iceland are leading the uptake of online services for the PlayStation 3 in Europe, with eight out of ten PS3 consumers signing up for Sony's service, according to data from Dataspelsbranschen.

At Game Convention in Germany last month, David Reeves said that the average uptake of the PlayStation Network was just under 5 out of every 10 users, with 645,000 of the 1.3 million consoles sold in Europe registered for the service.

And according to Nordisk Film Interactive, the official distributor of PlayStation products in the Nordic region, sales of the console have been "incredible" since the recent introduction of Starter Pack bundles.


Dataspelsbranschen has also revealed software sales figures for Sweden for the first six months of the year, showing that the PC is still the most popular platform, with 1.3 million games sold accounting for EUR 21.1 million.

The PlayStation 2 is still the most popular console, generating EUR 18.2 million in software sales for the first six months of 2007, or 530,819 units.

Software for Microsoft's Xbox 360 is still selling strong in the region, with 146,273 units generating sales of EUR 6.2 million.

PlayStation 3 software has sold just over 93,000 units or EUR 5.4 million, while Wii titles have moved over 82,000 units or EUR 4.1 million.

In the battle of the handhelds, 173,103 games have been sold for the Nintendo DS, generating EUR 5.7 million, and 76,113 titles have been sold for the PSP, making EUR 1.5 million.

Total software sales on all formats in Sweden during the first six months reached EUR 64.3 million, with the market expected to grow 20 per cent during 2007. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Next-gen consoles have been banned from UK jails following concerns they could be used to coordinate terror attacks

The Sun reports that games consoles that can be used by inmates to send and receive radio signals have been deemed too much of a threat to the peace. Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's DS consoles have reportedly been banned from jails as a result.

As reported previously, UK home secretary John Reid said in March, "Advice was issued to all prisons in December 2005 that the Sony PlayStation 3 was barred from the prison estate because of the equipment's ability to send and receive radio signals." The banning of games consoles in UK prisons has now seemingly been extended to Microsoft and Nintendo systems.

A source told the UK tabloid, "The technology in the new generation of computer games makes them a security risk.


A secret security report obtained by the paper suggests that fears extend beyond the communication capabilities offered by next-gen consoles, with the banning of all games consoles in prisons still a possibility. ...

via Kotaku




The original Xbox? Loads of good times, but it wasn't exactly pleasing on the eye. Oh, it also took up too much space; you couldn't even put other console/DVD player things on top of it since they curved the roof. Gah! Thankfully, those two shortcomings have been rectified by this case mod, the Xbox Mini, which chucks out the old DVD drive in favour of an 80GB HDD and comes in a oh-that's-much-better, smaller case. It's not quite finished, but it's getting there. ...

via Kotaku




A PS2 died for this pen to be born. That's really all we know about these pens that are "made from recycled Playstation 2 plastic." Apparently from China, we're not so certain we believe that the pens are constructed from actual PS2 plastic. We're talking about a place that practically invented the knockoff—a place where you could probably find your own clone made from day-old KFC if you looked hard enough.

So yeah. Even though this pen is real, there's almost no way it's actually "real." Or should I switch those quotes around? ...

via Eurogamer


Developer Ready at Dawn has said God of War: Chains of Olympus will be out in North America on 4th March, 2008.

It also revealed to Gamespot that a UMD demo will be sent out later this month - for those of you across the pond who signed up for it on the official site earlier in the year. On it will be a playable level from the PSP game, as well as some other bits and pieces like behind-the-scenes footage.

Ready at Dawn expects everyone else in the US will get their hands on this before the end of the year.

But unfortunately we're none the wiser over what this means for Europe, with Sony unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

God of War: Chains of Olympus is the PSP version of the popular PS2 action romp. Ready at Dawn is creating it under the supervision of the original team, and has already scooped numerous plaudits for its efforts - like a best of show award from the Leipzig Games Convention 2007 panel. ...

The current hardware sales situation in Japan is listed below.


DS Lite: 94,339
Wii: 39,371
PSP: 22,196
PS3: 18,068
PS2: 14,280
Xbox 360: 1,635
Game Boy Micro: 263
Game Boy Advance SP: 195
Gamecube: 73
Game Boy Advance: 16
DS original: 0


Nintendo is on the top as usual but with reduced sales on all consoles compared to the last weeks' reading. PSP, PS2 and the Xbox 360 has also experienced a slight drop too. Only the PS3 has seen a slight increase roughly by some 1,600 units. ...

via Eurogamer


Another week, another three for the Virtual Console... Wait, no, what? There's five! All Mega Drive?

True, there they are, with Sonic The Hedgehog 3 out in front. This one was bigger and faster than the rest, and introduced lots of bits and pieces like musical snippets and cut-scenes that we now associate with the series.

Next up is the fantastic but fiendishly difficult Ghouls 'n' Ghosts. It's a 2D platform game which pops you in the metallic boots of King Arthur, who just so happens to be on a quest to rescue the princess from a horde of nasty zombie enemies. It's had loads of ports over time, including the most recent version on PSP, which reviewed pretty well.

But perhaps you want to liberate a city from a plague of crime, because we all know it never pays. If you do, then you'll want ESWAT: City Under Siege. Just hop into your futuristic police costume and get to it, upgrading your weapons and eventually turning into a cyborg as you go.

Or how about a dungeon crawling role-playing game. It just so happens that Shining in the Darkness fits that bill. Here you'll have to save the world from an evil fellow by trawling the dank and dark caves of the world and battling fantasy creatures. And did you know that Shining was also one of the very first games to use 3D turn-based battles? No, nor did we. Thank you Wikipedia.

Or, if none of that takes your fancy, then maybe something with a little more strategy is your thing. Oh look, there's Crack Down, just the thing - and not related in any way to the excellent 360 game you might have seen in shops. Your charge is to save the world from evil cyborgs by infiltrating and destroying their facilities by carefully placing bombs, as well as blasting cannons and shooting firearms to help you wipe the pseudo-robots from the Earth.

All of these former Mega Drive classics will cost you 800 points each (GBP 5.60 / EUR 8) in the Wii Store. ...