Oh Japan, why must you make Miyamoto sad? The legendary game designer recently spoke to MTV Multiplayer about his disappointment with the performance of the Star Fox series in his native land.

While the majority of Shigeru Miyamoto's works enjoy huge success in Japan, there is one franchise that has been steadily declining in popularity. Miyamoto spoke to Multiplayer about the sad decline of the Star Fox series.

I'm a big fan of the 'Star Fox' games. Every time we make a 'Star Fox' game I'm hoping people will enjoy it as much as I do. Of course the goal every time is to try and make it more and more fun but, at least in Japan, the people that purchase the 'Star Fox' games has decreased over the years. But we still try to make them more fun and hopefully people will see the appeal in those games.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that there hasn't been a full-on flying Star Fox console title since 1997's Star Fox 64? Star Fox Adventures for the Gamecube was a rather huge deviation from the winning formula, and while Star Fox: Assault did have ship combat, it was watered down with sloppy on-foot missions. Give Japan an all-flying, all-shooting Star Fox title for the Wii and the fans will come.

http://kotaku.com/5391791/miyamoto-w...-star-fox-love ...

Sony is pushing back the release of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 for the PSP until January, when the global marketing team gets finished telling the world about it.

The third entry in the Fireteam Bravo series of PSP games was originally scheduled for a release next month, but the rest of the world wasn't quite prepared. According to a post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony's global marketing team only recently acquired new assets for the game that they will use, I am assuming, to market the game globally. Apparently the game will be sufficiently marketed by January 10th, at which point it will be released into the wild. The SOCOM team's Mark Rogers tries to make fans feel better:

I understand that this move is disappointing to some in the community, however as a result, you will be seeing a lot more of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 in the following weeks! – stay tuned.

In essence, they are sorry you won't be actually playing the game, but hey - there'll be plenty of advertising and marketing available in the coming weeks to help you remember that you aren't playing it! See? Everybody wins.

http://kotaku.com/5392061/socom-fire...e-to-marketing ...

Lord Peter Mandelson has carefully ignored the Gowers Report and the Carter Report, instead taking the advice of his good friend David Geffen and announcing that 'three strikes and you're out' will become law in Britain. The Open Rights Group has, of course, hit the roof. Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities. Still, worth it to stop a few Lily Allen tracks being shared, right?"

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/...ead-In-Britain ...

'There was a lot of talk yesterday about an article in the Japanese publication Nikkei which claimed that Nintendo was readying a new iteration of its DS line of handheld gaming systems,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The report claims the new unit will have 4" screens (the current unit has 3.25" screens) and is designed for older gamers who have trouble seeing the small screens of the current DSi. This new model is otherwise identical to the existing DSi and will ship by end of year in Japan.' As an 'older gamer' himself, Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative for a change, and he calls on gamers to put some pressure on Nintendo and not buy the new DS

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/1...her-DS-Variant ...

The best thing about the Motorola Droid might just be Android 2.0. It got official yesterday, and Google showed off some highlights, but here's a walkthrough if you wanna get a little closer. (You should, it's pretty great.)

http://gizmodo.com/5392059/android-20-a-visual-guide ...

Microsoft reckons we'll be waiting a while before streaming services like Gaikai and OnLive are the norm. The good old DVD-plus-DLC model, said European Xbox Live boss Jerry Johnson, will continue for "the foreseeable future".

"Streaming technology is something that the industry is betting on longer term," he told a BAFTA audience at the London Games Conference, reported by TechRadar (via VG247). "Right now I don't believe that technology can scale out against the experience we can offer on a local machine."

"The technology will continue to improve. As an industry we'll have to accept that and move with it - but I don't think it's on an accelerated timeline for the foreseeable future."

Cloud services like Gaikai and OnLive use 'clouds' of computers to power games that you can control remotely over the internet. This does away with the need to keep up with the PC and perhaps console hardware rat-race - hence Microsoft's interest.

We delved into David Perry's Gaikai - now in public beta - earlier this year. OnLive, a more balls-out, gaming-focused platform, is also open for the public to test.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/xb...-gaikai-onlive ...

A video of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has leaked onto the internet, showing the player participating in the massacre of innocent civilians in an airport.

The video, which is poor quality but appears genuine, first appeared on YouTube yesterday but has been removed "due to a copyright claim by Activision". It can still be seen at LiveLeak (via Kotaku). GameSpot reckons it's from the same source as the first footage of the game's third-person mode.

The footage shows the fourth level in the game's first act. The level begins with the player emerging from a lift in an airport with four other men, dressed in suits and Kevlar vests and carrying machine guns. After a short pause, the men open fire, mowing down crowds of civilians and causing panic and screaming. The player joins in, and is seen shooting wounded people as they crawl for freedom.

The airport scenes are familiar from the official trailers released so far, although this is the first indication the player would take the side of the terrorists.

The pre-mission briefing (which is in French) suggests that the player is an undercover agent, infiltrating the terrorist organisation of a man called Makarov.

"Yesterday you were a solider on the front, but today the front is a thing of the past. Uniforms are too. War is everywhere, and there will be victims," says the voiceover.

"Makarov... obeys no law. He has no limits and stops at nothing: torture, human traffic, or genocide. He's guided by no ideals, respects no rights, no countries. He trades blood for money. He is our new friend."

It ends with dire warnings about how much it will cost the player to "get close to" Makarov.

The first Modern Warfare tackled some politically sensitive themes and imagery head-on, and it seems Infinity Ward is looking to top that in the sequel. It has guaranteed itself some sensationalist headlines in the process. But has it gone a step too far?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/sh...footage-leaked ...

A video of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has leaked onto the internet, showing the player participating in the massacre of innocent civilians in an airport.

The video, which is poor quality but appears genuine, first appeared on YouTube yesterday but has been removed "due to a copyright claim by Activision". It can still be seen at LiveLeak (via Kotaku). GameSpot reckons it's from the same source as the first footage of the game's third-person mode.

The footage shows the fourth level in the game's first act. The level begins with the player emerging from a lift in an airport with four other men, dressed in suits and Kevlar vests and carrying machine guns. After a short pause, the men open fire, mowing down crowds of civilians and causing panic and screaming. The player joins in, and is seen shooting wounded people as they crawl for freedom.

The airport scenes are familiar from the official trailers released so far, although this is the first indication the player would take the side of the terrorists.

The pre-mission briefing (which is in French) suggests that the player is an undercover agent, infiltrating the terrorist organisation of a man called Makarov.

"Yesterday you were a solider on the front, but today the front is a thing of the past. Uniforms are too. War is everywhere, and there will be victims," says the voiceover.

"Makarov... obeys no law. He has no limits and stops at nothing: torture, human traffic, or genocide. He's guided by no ideals, respects no rights, no countries. He trades blood for money. He is our new friend."

It ends with dire warnings about how much it will cost the player to "get close to" Makarov.

The first Modern Warfare tackled some politically sensitive themes and imagery head-on, and it seems Infinity Ward is looking to top that in the sequel. It has guaranteed itself some sensationalist headlines in the process. But has it gone a step too far?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/sh...footage-leaked ...

Sony may surprise industry watchers and consumers when it eventually comes to making an announcement about the PSP's next major evolution.


While the platform holder released its latest PSP model, the UMD-free PSPgo on October 1, developer talk on the Tokyo Game Show floor in late September was of the system's next iteration, PSP-4000, which it is claimed will support Sony's proprietary UMD format when it launches in 2010.

Sony has come in for some criticism regarding its handling of the PSPgo since it was officially announced at E3 in June. Multiple retailers and consumers have complained about the system's hefty price tag. Some in the former camp remain unconvinced about the benefit of stocking the system due to its inability to support physical media and hence game trade-ins and second hand sales. Others in the latter camp have been unimpressed by Sony's UMD-to-digital solution for upgraders. In Europe only, a "PSPgo UMD rewards scheme" offered those who upgraded from older models to the PSPgo a choice of three free titles from a select list as compensation for the fact that they couldn't play their old games on their new handheld.

Perhaps more interesting is what we don't know - what's going on behind the scenes at Sony. While the company stressed at the time of the PSPgo's announcement that it intended to support "a shared strategy" between physical media and downloadable content, many assumed its focus would inevitably shift to the latter as time went by and that the new handheld represented the platform holder finally breaking away from its much criticised UMD format. After all, the firm said in July that it had "planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning" and that it had simply been waiting for the digital distribution market to mature.

Sony has claimed that PSPgo's introduction has bumped up PSP platform sales in the US, the UK and Australia, but there's been no publicly released sales data to support this yet. In fact, the system sold just 1,000 units in Australia in its first week, with Sony acknowledging that the numbers weren't "massive" but claiming it was unconcerned "because there are still some issues that we need to work through".

So has a potentially disappointing commercial start forced Sony to take a step back from pursuing a digital-only strategy, or was that never the company's intention in the first place? Nothing's clear at the moment, but just days ahead of the PSPgo's Japanese launch on November 1, some members of the country's development community appear convinced that physical media will play a major role in the platform's future.

Sony Computer Entertainment UK declined to comment on this report.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...