This And That: Wednesday News Roundup
(Updated throughout the day.) Amazon Japan lists PlayStation 3 for the first time, Fable goes gold, Obscure demo released, Stronghold 2 unveiled.
It may have no photos, concrete details or links for pre-ordering, but that hasn't stopped Amazon's Japanese arm from posting a product page for the PlayStation 3 this week. What it does have, amusingly, is a few of the usual speculative reader reviews - five stars each, if you're wondering. We admire their optimism. As it stands though, Sony has yet to announce any concrete details of the machine, other than the fact that it plans to unveil it by the end of this year. We'll be sure to let you know when that happens...
Big Blue Box's ambitious Xbox RPG Fable has gone gold, according to reports. Microsoft is expected to announce the project's completion very soon, but in the meantime employees at the studio have peppered forums with the news and a testing centre webcam photo popped up yesterday with a disc marked "Fable Gold!" slap-bang in the middle of it. Fable should be on store shelves in Europe in the middle of October by current estimates.
Ubisoft has apparently released a demo of its forthcoming third-person survival-horror title Obscure, which it announced plans to publish earlier this month. You can get hold of the 320MB demo from here if you fancy a slice of teenage high school horror, and you can find more details and screenshots of the game in our previous write-up.
Take-Two label Global Star has announced that Firefly Studios is working on Stronghold 2, funnily enough the sequel to Stronghold: Crusader, and has released a couple of screenshots to mark the occasion. Due out in early 2005, Stronghold 2 will be another siege-warfare RTS title, but this time Firefly is doing the whole thing in 3D. "We decided to steer away from the typical RTS mold when we developed the original Stronghold," says Firefly's Simon Bradbury. "Now, with a 3D engine that can render tens of thousands of animated characters on-screen simultaneously, we can explore the intricacies of castle-life and the machinations of siege-warfare like never before in Stronghold 2. Once again we will take the Stronghold franchise into new and exciting territory."