Late Night Consoling
There wasn't an LNC last night, so if you missed it, here's the story we ran about Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. Although I'm a bit disappointed that the Onslaught mode won't be carried over from UT2004, it sounds like this is a really big step up from the original, both in terms of its single player and multiplayer content. One thing I'm not so sure I like are the plans for melee combat. While I'm certainly willing to give it a shot, it's always been my experience that melee combat, while sort of neat in a novelty kind of way, just isn't much fun when everyone else has ranged weapons. We've had a few Jedi Knights try and succeed with varying levels of success, but at the end of the day, I think everyone just prefers to have a giant gun to even the most badass of swords. But hey, if Epic can pull it off, it'll be really cool, and I'm definitely looking forward to checking this out at E3 in May.
| Xbox Price Drop Imminent? Reuters ran a story today reporting on an item in today's Wall Street Journal that Microsoft is going to drop the price of the Xbox to $149 next month. This is actually perfectly in line with what we've been hearing for months, so there's no real shockers here. What is news (somewhat) is that Microsoft will also market a $169 package that includes a limited-edition Xbox and Halo (this was rumored last week, but the price is new). |
| GameCube Price Drops Price (Sort of), Digial AV Port Apparently a new government regulation in Japan says that all retail prices have to include sales tax, so Nintendo has basically renumbered the cost of the GameCube over there, so that the retail price will stay the same even though it will now include the sales tax (so it's basically a price drop of about $6 over there). What's much more significant, is the news that they will soon begin shipping a new GameCube model, which loses the removable circular nameplate from the device as well as its digital AV port. In Japan this was accompanied by news that a new cable will be released to allow digital output from the regular port, but Planet GameCube has spoken with Nintendo of America and learned that there are no such plans for this country when that model becomes the de facto standard worldwide. Instead, they will allow buyers of the new model to trade it in for an older one. |
| FFXI Getting Big Push from Sony, Square Buys Mobile Developer Howabout that new Squeenix icon, huh? Sony has announced plans for a huge marketing and promotional blitz across television, print and online media to support Final Fantasy XI. While the launch of any new Final Fantasy is a big deal, this one needs more promotion than usual, as gamers will have to buy the game and hard drive bundle for $99, as well as the network adapter. In semi-related news, Square Enix has purchased UIEvolution, a wireless games developer located here in the US. |
| Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone Announced It's already been featured in some magazine previews, but nonetheless, Atari has finally gotten around to formally announcing Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone. Demon Stone is another in the increasingly-crowded genre of console-based action RPGs, and is from Stormfront Studios, the developers of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. For more check out GameSpot's first look at the game. |
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| Nina Gets a Real Name Namco has announced a real name for the game previously only known as Nina. The game will be known as Death by Degrees Tekken: Nina Williams. Yikes. PS2.IGN has posted some new details from this game, which has a very odd control scheme, and The Magic Box has some new shots. |
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| GT4 Prologue Confirmed for Europe As far as I know, no such thing has been confirmed for this country yet, but Computer and Video Games is reporting that they have confirmed with Sony Europe that Gran Turismo 4 Prologue will be releeased over there, possibly with special features not seen in the Japanese release. GT4 Prologue was the sort of consolation prize Japan received late last year after the most recent delay of the full game, and contained a little more gameplay than your average demo, but much less than a full game. |
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| Galleon Delayed One Last Time Also at CVG tonight is word that Galleon, the eternally-in-development title from Confounding Factor has been delayed one last time. While the game was originally supposed to come out in the spring (well "originally" is a relative term -- this was going to be a Dreamcast game at one point) it has now been confirmed for a June release in Europe. Until the next delay, that is (I kid, I kid). |
| Kirby Put on Hold Nintendo of Japan has announced a last-minute hold on Hoshi no Kirby: Kagami no Daimeikyuu, the latest Kirby game for GBA that was supposed to ship next week. Apparently a showstopping bug was discovered at the 11th hour, and it was significant enough that the game no longer has any release date scheduled. |
| On the Difficulties of Activating an N-Gage Most of the N-Gage's various defficiencies have been pretty well-documented at this point both here and elsewhere, but I thought this story deserved a mention nonetheless...game developer Greg Costik has posted a lengthy diatribe on his blog detailing the rediculously difficult process he ran into trying to activate an N-Gage he purchased from GameStop. It's quite funny. |
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| The North American HDD Examined PS2.IGN has gotten their hands on a final copy of Final Fantasy XI and the PS2 HDD drive that comes with it, and have posted an article looking at the device. They weren't allowed to post certain things (like talk about the new features of PlayOnline), but the article does talk about what comes with the thing, what you can do with the included utility disc, what other games will support the HDD and more. |
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| Weekly Halo Update It's a Friday, so therefore a new Weekly Update has been released by Bungie. This week's edition is up at Bungie.net, and contains tidbits about the Environment! Animation! Testing! Sound! and Other Stuff! from Halo 2. |
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| Ace Combat 5 Unveiled Next Week Good lord, they're finally going to do it...next week's issue of the Japanes magazine Famitsu will apparently at long last take the wraps off Ace Combat 5, a game that Namco has been rediculously secretive of until this point. Exactly how much will be revealed is unknown...I doubt it'll happen, but if it's a hands-on preview, I'm sure there are several Shacker heads that will explode. |
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| Misc. Interviews/Q&As Xbox.IGN has posted an interview with Tim Hess, the producer at Sammy Studios on their upcoming Xbox-exclusive title Iron Phoenix. Meanwhile CVG has an interview with Dan Blackstone, the producer of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (GC, PS2, Xbox) and an interview with Richard Teversham from Microsoft's European Xbox marketing team, and 1UP has a very brief Resident Evil 4 Q&A with Hiroyuki Kobayashi. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| New previews of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords are up at IGN, GameInformer and 1UP, Cube.IGN has some new shots from Resident Evil 4 and new movies from Pokemon Colosseum, and Capcom has updated their official Japanese-language Resident Evil 4 site. |
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| GameSpot has new media from Astro Boy and Final Fantasy XI, IGN has a hands-on look at Armored Core Nexus and new media from Destruction Derby Arenas and Rainbow Six 3, GameSpy previews Resident Evil Outbreak, The Magic Box links to a slew of PS2-related gameplay movies and 1UP reprints a feature on The Getaway 2 from Electronic Gaming Monthly. |
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| New shots from Halo 2 are up at Xbox.IGN and Team Xbox has new shots from Jade Empire. |
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| Pocket.IGN has new import reviews of Mappy, Pac-Man and Excitebike from the Pokemon Mini line, |
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| New previews of Mortal Kombat: Deception (PS2, Xbox) can be found at GameSpot and GameInformer, GameSpot has new media from Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku (GC, PS2) and DRIV3R (PS2, Xbox), Team Xbox has new footage from Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (PS2, Xbox), IGN has a new trailer from Red Dead Revolver (PS2, Xbox) and Rockstar has opened up their official site for the game. |
