via gibiz

Takao Yuhara, senior vice president of Sony Corporation, has hinted that a PS3 price cut could be announced by April next year as the company attempts to reduce its losses.

As reported earlier this week, Sony's games division lost EUR 343 million in the quarter ending December 31.

Speaking to the New York Times, Yuhara said the company plans to ensure that the division is no longer making a loss by the financial year ending March 2008. He went on to add that "such factors, including price cuts to some extent, are factored in" Sony's strategy for breaking even.

However, Yuhara declined to offer any further confirmation or details of when a price drop may occur, simply stating: "We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the time is right."

He warned that Sony's operating loss for this financial year could exceed the forecast of YEN 200 billion (EUR 1.23 million), blaming higher than expected costs for advertising and cargo transport after the company was forced to air freight rather than ship stock. ...

Blitz: The League will hope to take the European Xbox 360 crowd by storm when it crashes into stores on 23rd February, by using all the tact of a fart in a church.

Far from being a snide remark about the game [or funny - Ed], it actually sums up the premise. You see, it's American Football on steroids, with features like a wacky "unleash meter" that lets you slow down time and pull-off impossible plays; it's unlicensed, uncensored, and proud of it.

The campaign mode lets you explore the on-field violence, off-field fallout and front-office politics that the media feeds on, whilst its adrenaline fuelled head-to-heads can be enjoyed both in single-player and multiplayer via Xbox Live.

"Blitz: The League is free of the constraints that an official league license levies against games in this sporting genre," said Martin Spiess, Midway Europe MD. "The result is about as far removed from a clean, fair, sporting experience as it's possible to get."

With over one million units sold in the US, Blitz: The League is clearly a success. Apparently it's not just Americans that want a piece of the action either, with European hunger forcing Midway's hand in bringing the game to PAL territories.

"There's been quite strong demand for it in Europe," a spokesperson from Midway added. "People have said for a while: why aren't you releasing these titles over here? So we're going to give it a go and see what happens."

via eurogamer ...

Atari has announced that it will distribute Mobile Suit Gundam: Target in Sight for publisher Namco Bandai in Europe, and it will be a PlayStation 3 launch title.

Target in Sight puts you in the role of Federation or Zeon forces as you stomp your robotic way around battlefields of the future.

It did alright critically in Japan, but took a bit of a hammering in some of the Western press. We sort of liked it in the end, despite its sluggishness and the slightly ham-fisted way it wields the PS3.

Finally, it's worth noting that it's already out in the States under a different name - Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire.

via eurogamer ...

New from Divineo China



A Super Mario Bros. characted with a stand that play music from the series. 3 different characters are available which are shipped randomly. ...

New from Divineo China



Headphones 100% compatible with Nintendo DS Lite. Just plug & use! ...

SCE's UK managing director Ray Maguire has been speaking to The Guardian about the company's reasoning behind the £425 RRP of PlayStation 3.

"There's a compulsion within the media to look at everything as a snapshot, and do a calculation, normally based on just the RRP in somewhere like the US and just do the RRP in the UK. What you should do with the RRP from the US is add sales tax," he said.

Maguire argues that comparing RRPs is too simplistic an approach, due to exchange rate considerations: "When business trade, they hedge. It depends what currency you're buying against. We don't buy anything in dollars, so the dollar can go up and down.

"If it were $1.40 to the pound as it as a while ago, then the PS3 would be a bargain compared to the US; if it's anything more than that, the UK price appears to be comparatively expensive. But we're dealing with Euros and Yen - it's about the relationship between those currencies."

Any plans for a lower price at some point? "Of course, I would dearly love to have the PlayStation 3 RRP under £400, and at such time as we can afford to do so, we will."

Answering the question of why there aren't any 20GB PS3s at the UK launch, Maguire said it was a consumer led decision, "They want to put their own media on it from day one. So a big preference has been shown towards the 60GB model. And when we look at the sales figures from both Japan and the US, that's reflected at retail. You can either have not enough of both in the marketplace for day one, or you can have round about the right amount of one."

via cvg ...

Those looking forward to EA Japan's promising DS remake of strategy classic Theme Park can enjoy a nice surprise in the CVG video player today, as we offer you an exclusive first look at the handheld game's debut trailer, roller coasters and all.

If that's not enough we've also got a large batch of screenshots that you'll only find on CVG, and an interview with Theme Park's Japanese designer Toshiyuki Nagahara - the only thing we're missing is a competition to go to a real theme park, eat dinner at a giant French fry shop and then sweep up the sick of the over-run punters, but we're working on it.

You can find the trailer over to the right, but for the screens you're going to have to head over to our Theme Park interview.

Screens and Trailer at CVG ...

Dell is focusing its beady eye on the handheld gaming scene, with a potential view to entering the handheld hardware market it's being reported.

"You know, that's definitely one that's on the radar screen, but we have no plans to talk about anything today", Dell's gaming boss Abizar Vakharia told PCPlus.co.uk at a recent press event when quizzed about future plans for a handheld.

It's speculated that, should Dell go ahead with plans for a handheld games device, it could be an Ultra-Mobile PC as opposed to a dedicated gaming platform. We doubt Nintendo - or Sony - are quaking in their boots though.

via cvg ...

Is there a publisher scrap going on in the corridors of power over The Elder Scrolls IV expansion Shivering Isles?

In the red corner: 2K Games, who published the original game on PC and Xbox 360 and is publishing the expansion for the same platforms.

In the blue corner: Ubisoft, which co-published Oblivion PC retail pack Knights of the Nine with developer Bethesda in Europe and is doing the same with Oblivion on PS3 and PSP outing The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion.

So, with Bethesda recently confirming that Shivering Isles is coming to PS3, which company is going to land publishing - or co-publishing - rights on PS3?

We've heard that 2K Games wasn't too happy that they did the PR for Oblivion and now co-publishing rights for the PS3 and PSP titles have been given to Ubisoft. But with lucrative sales of Shivering Isles virtually a dead cert, 2K surely wouldn't pass up publishing opportunities for the expansion on PS3.

And has Ubisoft been fighting to get publishing rights to Shivering Isles on all three platforms?

Putting on the CVG detectiv hat, we've done a bit of snooping around and, while UK sources close to both publishers couldn't shed any real light on the publishing split over Shivering Isles and know little about publishing plans for Shivering Isles on PS3 at this stage, they did describe the whole Oblivion publishing situation as "slightly complicated". We'd say that's an understatement.

A source told us that the publishing situation with Oblivion is actually "more down to the way Bethesda works", and spoke of a surprise that Ubisoft hasn't had complete publishing rights with Oblivion as it handled The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Big dollar signs will have been twirling around eyeballs where Oblivion publishing is concerned, and boy would we love to have been a fly on the wall when deals were thrashed out and struck.

At the end of the day though, we're just happy that we can sit back and let the big boys fight it out; after all, whatever happens - or has happened already - in the higher echelons of Bethesda, 2K and Ubisoft, Shivering Isles is still going to be awesome.

via cvg ...