This week’s PlayStation Store update is heaps better than the last two weeks combined as we finally have touchdown on the PSOne Classic Final Fantasy VI! Reported weeks ago as a coming soon addition from the Square Enix library, FFVI will run you $10 and, like all other PSOne Classics, can be played on PS3 or PSP.
PlayStation Plus subscribers get some super goodies (all of them free) this week starting with a free digital download of Tomb Raider: Underworld (the actual PS3/360 version) as well as PSOne Classics of all 3 Spyro The Dragon games (Spyro The Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon) from Insomniac Games — the group responsible for the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance: Fall of Man series.
The December issue of the interactive online magazine Qore is also available for download and sees the arrival of new host Jesse Blaze Snider and new field correspondent Tiffany Smith and features scoops on upcoming titles Final Fantasy XIII-2, Soul Calibur V and The Darkness II. While you’re there, grab yourself a free copy of the I Am Alive Dynamic Theme and PS3 Mini Orbit (which is an early exclusive for PS+ members).
Make sure to take advantage of the offers on these freebies because nothing on PSN stays free for long!
If you’ve been patiently waiting for the update to the Xbox 360 Dashboard (which was due today), you’ll have to wait just a little longer.
Following announcements that several new services (Comcast’s Xfinity, Verizon’s Fios live-tv and HBO GO to name a few) wouldn’t be making the December 6 launch window, it now appears that the update itself is missing in action. Taking to Twitter, Major Nelson tweeted the announcement that ”the timing for the Xbox 360 dashboard update has been slightly delayed” and that he’d issue updates later on today.
Microsoft issued a press release this morning announcing the “Game Changing Xbox Experience” so for the moment, we’ll speculate that this delay shouldn’t last more than a few hours (we hope).
There’s a bit of a stir going on over at NeoGAF concerning the highly sought-after Wii title Xenoblade Chronicles.
If the indications are to be believed, Xenoblade Chronicles will finally come to North America despite Nintendo of America’s outright rejection of the recent Operation Rainfall petition for 3 J-RPG’s to cross the pond to the States. If the rumor is true, April 2012 will see the game hitting US systems (without need to import) and be carried as a GameStop exclusive product.
If GameStop is indeed getting this game as an exclusive, this spells out a very limited product release turning the game into a true cult-hit title. Let’s not get hopes up yet, though. Nintendo is still not saying anything about a planned USA release for Xenoblade Chronicles as of yet. Since releasing in 2010 in Japan, Xenoblade Chronicles received rave reviews from publications like Famitsu and scored European and Australian releases this past summer.
We’ll keep you posted as new details develop.
[UPDATE: Xenoblade Chronicles has been confirmed by NOA. GameStop will sell the game exclusively for $49.99 MSRP.]
Patrons of Operation: Rainfall, there’s your silver lining! Xenoblade Chronicles did better than expected after sales numbers from Europe and Australia came in, so America gets it’s shot. Now, to ensure this is a success, make sure you go out and buy a copy of the damned game and prove to Nintendo that this game actually had a chance for sales in a Western Market that sometimes acts like it doesn’t care about J-RPG’s.
“All I’m saying is I saw this at a local game developer event worn by a Valve employee.”
That was the tweet from Chandana Ekanayake (@Ekanaut), a marketing rep at Monday Night Combat dev UberEnt, after spotting this being worn by a Valve employee at a “local game developer event”.
We’ll go ahead and file this as a “rumor” for the moment… Enjoy your weekend!
GamePro Magazine sees its final issue hitting the shelves with the quarterly October 2011.
Over the summer GamePro, which carried a 20-plus year run, announced that it’s publication strategy was changing from one of monthly publishing to that of quarterly issues. The change in their printing time table was indicative of the overall change in the print business as a whole (where tons of magazines and publications have either closed down or shifted to online-only publishing) starting with the Winter 2011 edition hitting newsstands on November 8. Aiming to make the magazine a more interesting and relevant “coffee style” publication that provides readers valuable content beyond what most gamers are getting nowadays online. The newly stylized GamePro was set to offer “a visually stunning, tactile experience and rich, engaging editorial.” The magazine would have been beefier — as far as number of pages as well as print size — carrying more than 50 pages of additional content compared to the monthly editions.
GamePro started as a monthly magazine April 1989 and first appeared online in May 1996. Speaking with IndustryGamers, an IDG spokesman told IndustryGamers that the ad dollars just weren’t there, and unfortunately layoffs of staff are being implemented and declining to tell how many were being let go. The current November quarterly issue will be the last issue and the GamePro website will close down as well (as of December 5).
If there’s one thing that Black Friday is good for, it’s moving electronics. Microsoft became the king of the heavyweights over Thanksgiving week with Black Friday being its biggest sales day in history and went on record saying that this is “biggest sales week in the history of Xbox.”
The company went on report saying that more than 960,000 consoles sold during the week of Black Friday. Over 800,000 of those systems were sold within one 24-hour period — the day after Thanksgiving. With more than 750,000 sensors moved, Kinect also did rather well during Black Friday week via both 360 bundles or stand-alone sales.
Concrete numbers haven’t come in yet from Sony (they’re reporting good sales over the week) and Nintendo is estimating half a million sales on the Wii for the week. [We'll update this article when numbers are officially in.]
The Xbox 360 is currently in the seventh year of its life cycle and, with another round of Holiday shopping around the corner, this could turn out be the year of Microsoft and the 360!
In the world of First-Person Shooters (and most dominantly, PC Games), there are games that define not only a generation, but also the genre itself. One such game is Valve’s Half-Life.
The science fiction first-person shooter and debut title by Valve Corporation started one of the most revered franchises in video game history and has sold over 8 million copies (to date) and seeing the franchise as a whole selling over 20M units.
Graphic Designer and movie maker Brian Curtin, known better on YouTube as Infectious Designer has delivered up an homage to the game that has spawned 3 sequels (Half-Life 2, Half-Life: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two) as well as a spin-off series (Portal) and this one seriously takes you back to 1998. The Project is titled Half-Life: Originsand it’s fast approaching 100k hits since launching on YouTube November 28th. “After 10+ years since it’s release,” Brain notes, “if you ever go back and replay the original Half-Life, it doesn’t look anything like you remember. The graphics are horrible compared to present day games, but years ago it blew my mind. This video plays with that contrast. I incorporated a fusion of live action and CG environments that give it a semi-realistic look, but also not realistic at the same time. Hope you enjoy it!”
We know you will…
To get more on Infectious Designer, you can follow him on Facebook and subscribe to his YouTube channel.
From the same folks who brought us Bricks Of War, comes the Lego trailer for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. You can check out the video below, as well as the behind-the-scenes featurette at the end.
Electronics Arts and owners of Battlefield 3 on PlayStation 3 have been fighting some serious battles (in every sense of the word) lately and now, following the recent class action lawsuit launched against the publisher, the missing Battlefield 1943 game promised to players back at E3 has become one serious elephant in the room.
Following all of the developments since the October 25th launch of Battlefield 3, EA has confirmed it will give PS3 Battlefield 3 customers the promised copy of Battlefield 1943 after all and has conveyed their thoughts over the “misunderstandings around Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield 3” on a webpage that explains how to get your free copy of the game.
Over on the webpage, a timeline has been given for when the content is going live. Be sure to follow the instructions!
