Latest Articles (Page 2921)

Microsoft has rejected claims by film director Michael Bay that it wants HD-DVD and Blu-ray to fail "so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads".

LittleBigPlanet hopefuls may have a new trailer of a pirate ship, but they won't be getting a demo this year despite previous comments to the contrary.

The expansion of the PlayStation Network, which will enable users to download games, movies and music for multiple devices, will propel Sony into a software powerhouse, said CEO Sir Howard Stringer, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Championship Gaming Series commissioner Andy Reif says that establishing pro gaming as sports entertainment is a long-term prospect.

Yeah, it works. Best to get that out of the way early. Because if you've been paying the slightest attention to Ubisoft Shanghai's ambitious and risky attempt to reinvent the real-time strategy genre on console, it really all boils down to one question. And that, in short, is the answer. Voice command in EndWar? It works. Really well, actually.

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I do know World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Ever wondered why you can only have 100 people on your Xbox Live Friends list? Probably not. You're not very popular, after all. But apparently there is a limit, and Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg says it will be lifted "in the future".

The Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack has gone up on Xbox Live Marketplace, offering three brand new battlegrounds for 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.30).

It's more than a little weird that, after sixteen years of being little more than a fond memory for those who came of age during the last gasp of the quaint "home computer" era, we're faced with two new Speedball games. In fact, the whole Amiga scene - so quickly trampled into the dust once those spanky 16-bit consoles bounced into view - has been undergoing an impressive resurgence of late thanks to the likes of Xbox Live Arcade and Steam. Spookily, as it's gone a bit nippy and I can't be arsed turning the heating on, I've just thrown on the nearest item of clothing and realised that it's an old plaid shirt. All I need to do is cue up some Sonic Youth, grow back my virginity and it could be 1991 all over again.

French developer F4's upcoming Empire of Sports MMORPG has gone into closed beta, allowing selected players to try out its various sporting simulations and the world around them.

Square Enix has won its legal battle with Korean entertainment company Fantom for plagiarising the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children videogame, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games has moved into the number one spot on the UK all formats chart according to data released by Chart-Track, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Was your Wii aglow with the blue throb of progress this morning? No, I couldn't be bothered to check mine either. Apparently it's the new gift feature Satoru Iwata talked about when he last said there would be no price cut.

Xbox Live Marketplace Video Store launches in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Canada today, offering a range of films as standard and high definition rentals, and Microsoft has popped up in our inboxes this morning to add that another 17 Warner Bros. films are on the way before 7th January.

Xbox Live Arcade will be alive with the roar of flying car engines and the steady rumble of subterranean thumping tomorrow when Sidhe Interactive's GripShift and Sierra Online's Arkadian Warriors announce themselves at 9am GMT.

Guerrilla Games has come under a bit of fire after admitting that screenshots of the Killzone 2 released last week had been retouched.

Last time we looked at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, it was in a somewhat lamentable state of affairs. Just after its launch nine months ago, the game was a mess of bugs, dropped features, broken quests, regular crashes and system requirements no mortal man could hope to achieve. It was, frankly, a disaster.

Rockstar's appeal against the BBFC's decision to reject a modified version of Manhunt 2 has been successful.

Majesco has announced that it will be bringing the creators of PaRappa the Rapper together again to develop an original music-based game for Nintendo Wii.

Bear with me for a bit, but Viking: Battle For Asgard could well end up being the game a lot of people wanted out of Fable. See, the cornerstone of Fable was this idea of letting the player step into the (massive clown) shoes of a 'Hero'. And you could decide what kind of hero you wanted to be, and what you did, and how you did it, but there was something so important missing. A real hero is a one in a million, stand-out kind of guy, yet Fable's world was tiny and quirky. At best you could be the champion of a dozen zany hayseeds, hick inbreds whose praise was irritating enough to make a lot of players abruptly turn to the dark side half way through the game after butchering the population of an entire city. So, about twelve people. You could be a protagonist, and you could become quick and beefy, but you never felt like a hero.

Fighting alongside hundreds of rampaging Vikings is the sort of thing PS3 and 360 are meant to let us do, and given Creative Assembly's Total War background it's no surprise to learn that Battle for Asgard - despite its third-person action premise - is focusing fairly heavily on that. What makes this particular deviation interesting though is the idea of influencing the battle rather than just managing it. In essence, gameplay is split between preparing the ground for war and then making sure the war goes to plan. A bit like Dynasty Warriors with funny hats. And dragon air-strikes.

Okay, ladies, here's the low-down. New game from Digital Extremes - the studio which was joined at the hip to Epic Games for years. It worked on Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and a bunch of other stuff with Unreal in the name. Following a successful operation to split the conjoined twins, the team struck out to make games without Unreal in the name.

EA Partners' Nick Button-Brown has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes European developers are more creative than US studios, as North American teams are focused on making money rather than taking chances.

London-based PC gamers who like to try before they buy can now do just that thanks to the launch of the first Gamerbase gaming zone - a Dell and Intel powered games centre located in HMV's Piccadilly Circus store.

Rising Star Games has confirmed reports that the European version of No More Heroes will be based on the censored Japanese version.

2K Australia has more awards for its display cabinet, as BioShock has been named game of the year in the Spike TV Video Game Awards, which took place in Las Vegas yesterday, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Sony has released a new trailer for LittleBigPlanet showing off a pirate ship level.

While no doubt some critics relish the chance to tear into a development team's latest creation with a firework display of cruel adjectives and poisonous put-downs, games journalists should always be reminded that behind every shoddy release there are many man years' worth of hard work, unpaid overtime and neglected families.

The IGF 2008 finalists have now been announced, but what of last year's winners? An excellent time to ask, actually, as Seamus McNally Grand Prize 2007 winner Aquaria has just been released. It's as if you knew!

Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert has been lending Level Up his perspective on the Japanese games market - about which he has an understanding somewhat more intimate than the average Westerner, having worked at Nintendo among other places - reflecting on the fact games aren't taken as "seriously" as they used to be, and revealing that the downloadable PlayStation Network service "really hasn't caught on".