news via cubed3

Eidos have released a selection of shots from the upcoming Touch the Dead first person shooter for DS, as players go head to head with sinister zombie creatures in a bid for freedom.

Touch the dead is an interactive FPS designed for the DS, and follows a similar concept to other survival horror titles in the genre. Rob Steiner, a sole survivor in a zombie-filled jail equips himself with some weaponry and attempts to break out by rekilling everything in his path.

A few gruesome shots that'll bound to give you a nightmare or two...



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news via nintendojo

According to the latest Friday sales figures from Media Create Co., the Nintendo DS Lite was the top selling hardware in Japan for the week of February 12-18. The sales number was 136,846 units sold but was lower than the previous week's 201,177 units. Still, this fared better than other consoles including 63,600 Wii units, 20,600 PlayStation 3 units, and 5,200 Xbox 360 units. The DS also landed six of the top ten weekly software sales including Layton, Beach DS, and Picross DS.

So far, Nintendo has sold 35 million DS units worldwide.

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news via kotaku



Jaime, from the Kotaku Reader Hall of Fame, was the lucky winner of the MTV sponsored trip to play a Nintendo DS under zero gravity conditions. We said, "Send photos." So Jaime did! He even recounted the weightless adventure of trying to play the Americanized version of Ouendan without vomiting all over his Star Fox playing buddies.

The goods:

I won the contest and was able to attend the flight a few weeks ago, and the awesome folks over at MTV got the whole thing on tape and finally put it on their website. I'm not going to lie, playing a touch screen based game in zero gravity is extremely difficult (I had to set Elite Beat Agents down to easy in order to get anywhere) and my friend had an equally hard time with Star Fox Command. If anything, the trip should have been a testimony as to how many beatings the DS lite can take, as it was stepped on and knocked out of my hands countless times and still works perfectly. One interesting note was how our flight instructor, Steve Steiner, actually brings his DS with him on these trips to kill some time.

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news via teamxbox

Boy, the guys at Bizarre Creations sure do know a thing or two about crafting flashy, addictive casual games, huh? While the company is best known as the developer of the stellar Project Gotham Racing series, we’d be willing to bet that more people have played their “other” title, a little game called Geometry Wars. Although it could be unlocked in PGR3, the game was still one of the most downloaded Xbox Live Arcade titles, developing a rabid following of fans. Now the Liverpool-based team is hard at work on their follow-up, which will be published by Electronic Arts and should be hitting XBLA sometime this spring.

Boom Boom Rocket is a rhythm game that tasks players with setting off fireworks in time to the beat of a song. Like so many rhythm games before it (most notably Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero), you’ll have to hit your cues at the right time to earn points. The fireworks will move upward from the bottom of the screen, and each of them will be colored to correspond with one of the four face buttons. All you’ve got to do is hit that button just as the cue hits the line near the top of the screen, at which point your performance will be rated and you’ll earn some points.

Sounds pretty simple, huh? At first glance, the gameplay looks fairly straightforward, but there are a number of elements that will force you to strategize a bit. When the action kicks off, the points you score will only be multiplied by one, but the more you score the higher your multiplier becomes. This is reflected in the gauge on the top of the screen, and you’ll notice it start to sparkle once you fill it up for the fourth time (the gauge also acts as a life bar of sorts, since the game ends once it is empty). At that point, you can hit one of the triggers to enter the bonus mode, during which any points you score will be multiplied by sixteen. However, it pays to think before you enter the bonus mode, as it’ll run out quickly, particularly if there’s a lull in the music.

Boom Boom Rocket features some very interesting musical selections, each of which is based on a famous classical tune. They’ve all been remixed with a hip techno beat, but you’ll likely instantly recognize many of them. This makes playing the game quite a bit easier, and the game’s producer said that they wanted to make it accessible to just about anyone. The titles have been changed a bit, too, sporting names like “1812 Overdrive,” “Hall of the Mountain Dude,” and “Rave New World.” Alas, you won’t be able to add your own tunes, but there will be some downloadable content available sometime after the game is released.

In addition to the straight-up single player mode, there are quite a few other gametypes to keep you busy. Endurance finds the same song playing over and over, and you’ve got to complete the requisite number of “laps” in order to survive. Naturally, the music speeds up from one lap to the next, so you’ll be furiously hitting buttons by the end. There are also a few head-to-head multiplayer games which are a lot of fun, although we were a bit saddened to hear that they won’t be playable over Xbox Live. The game will also ship with a visualizer of some sort, as well as a mode that allows anyone to just hit buttons and set off as many fireworks as they want. Perfect for the kiddies!

We had a great time playing Boom Boom Rocket, even on the hardest difficulty level (trust me, it’s frustratingly tough). The game adeptly combines beautiful visuals, interesting music, and accessible gameplay to create one of the year’s most intriguing Xbox Live Arcade titles. It’s a blast to play with friends, and the fact that they’ve included a number of cool extras helps to make it one game you won’t want to miss. We’ll be bringing you more information on Boom Boom Rocket in the coming months!

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news via scoop

First 4,000 New Zealand PS3 Registrants on PLAYSTATION®Network to be Rewarded with Casino Royale on Blu-ray

23rd February 2007 – Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand (SCE NZ) confirmed today that, in addition to the extensive line-up of games, the first 4,000 purchasers of PLAYSTATION®3 who registered on the PLAYSTATION®Network will receive a Blu-ray disc movie of Casino Royale, starring James Bond newcomer Daniel Craig.

Casino Royale, which has already grossed more than US$560 million at the box office worldwide, and has established itself as the most successful Bond film of all time will debut on a 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc encoded in MPEG-4 AVC. With a ground breaking collection of added-value features in 1080P High Definition visual quality, and with uncompressed audio features for the best possible audio experience, Casino Royale not only demonstrates the exceptional visual quality of Full 1080P High Definition movies on Blu-ray disc, but is the perfect vehicle to highlight the broader entertainment credentials of the PLAYSTATION 3 system.

Explaining the offer, Warwick Light, General Manager of Sales and Marketing said, “The PLAYSTATION®Network unlocks the broad range of interactive entertainment features of PLAYSTATION 3. It’s a simple set up, it offers free online gaming, has an array of tools for staying in touch with friends and family, and includes a wide variety of content for download through the PLAYSTATION®Store.”

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news via psu

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe today announced that the PlayStation 3 to be launched in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Australasia on 23rd March 2007 would utilize a new hardware specification.

The European PS3 will feature the Cell Broadband Engine, 60 GB hard disc drive, Blu-ray Disc player, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, SIXAXIS wireless controller (as with the US and Japanese PS3 units). It also embodies a new combination of hardware and software emulation which will enable the PS3 to be compatible with a broad range of original PlayStation titles and a limited range of PlayStation 2 titles.

This means we won’t be seeing the 100% backwards compatibility feature that Sony promised we’d all have sometime ago, although Sony did say that additional PS2 games will become compatible on the PS3 system through regular downloadable firmware updates.

“PS3 is first and foremost a system that excels in playing games specifically designed to exploit the power and potential of the PS3 system,” said David Reeves, President of SCEE. “Games designed for PS3 offer incredible graphics quality, stunning gameplay and massively improved audio and video fidelity that is simply not achievable with PS and PS2 games. Rather than concentrate on PS2 backwards compatibility, in the future, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3, truly taking advantage of this exciting technology.”

You’ll be able to check which games work by visiting this website: http://faq.eu.playstation.com/bc.

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news via clickz

Video game enthusiasts can be a fairly loyal and at times a very snarky bunch, so I wasn't too surprised when a few game developer friends of mine tipped me off to this video floating around the Internet about Sony's PS3 sales woes verses the Microsoft Xbox 360.

But as the song repeats its chorus of "How You Killed Your Brand" intermixed with samples of Phil Harrison, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, supposedly hemming and hawing over answers to questions, and even several shots of PS3 declining sales charts, I was hard pressed not to chuckle at things as well.

A brief search on my part failed to uncover where the video came from, aside from the fact that it was recorded by someone named Doc Adams, but it's hard not to smell some of Microsoft's hand in things. If viral marketing is all the rage, was viral mudslinging not too far behind? Or perhaps some viral dancing on graves?

Still, it's a catchy tune!

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news via psu

The PlayStation 3 version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will not have downloadable content available when it is released, even though the Xbox 360 and PC versions did.

Pete Hines, PR Vice President of Bethesda said: “You could point to any number of factors for why that is. Although it's impossible to say which is the better between [Xbox Live, PS Network], Xbox Live is easier to implement because we've had a much better sense of it at an earlier stage than with PS3”.

The company did say that it’ll be releasing extra content for the PS3 version of Oblivion at a later date.

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news via newtech

When the PS3 is out in Europe and Australia this March, the units sold will have no Emotion Engine like the ones sold in Japan and US. Instead Sony will use emulation software to play back PS2 and PS1 games.

Sony is doing this to cut manufacturing costs but also functionality, as the new version will play fewer games developed for the PlayStation and PS2 than the U.S. and Japanese version. This is an utter disgrace especially the unit sold in Europe and Australia is more costly.

It is time to boycott Sony products. Go buy a Nintendo Wii and/or a XBox 360 instead!

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