Late Night Consoling

Two games in Square's long running Mana series have been confirmed for North American release, publisher Square Enix announced today. Dawn of Mana, released late last year in Japan for PlayStation 2, and Heroes of Mana, released this month in Japan for Nintendo DS, will both be localized and released this year.

Like past games in the series, Square Enix's Dawn of Mana is an action RPG, though it is the first Mana title to feature fully 3D gameplay. The publisher noted that the game features a main title theme composed by acclaimed musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. Square Enix sent along some new Dawn of Mana screenshots.

Brownie Brown's Heroes of Mana veers away from the franchise's gameplay traditions to deliver a real-time strategy RPG. It includes online leaderboards via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. We've got some new Heroes of Mana screenshots available.

Square Enix plans to ship Dawn of Mana for PlayStation 2 in North America on May 22, 2007. Heroes of Mana is expected to ship for Nintendo DS in North America late this summer.

According to industry sales tracking firm Chart-Track, PlayStation 3 last week set the United Kingdom's record for the top selling home console within the first two days after launch with 165,000 units. The overall record for both home and portable consoles rests with Sony's own PSP and its 185,000 launch sales.

PS3's launch beat out the launches of both Wii and Xbox 360, which sold 105,000 units and 70,000 units respectively. The discrepancy is likely due in large part to Sony's plentiful supply relative to its competitors, a benefit conferred upon the PS3 thanks to its staggered worldwide release which gave Sony an additional four months to prepare for the system's European and Australian launches this month. By contrast, both Nintendo's and Microsoft's machines launched in additional major territories relatively simultaneously, and were widely reported to have been supply limited.

PlayStation 3 was released in the UK on March 23, 2007 for GBP 425. Only the 60GB model is available in the UK market.

Sony's PlayStation Store is the channel through which PlayStation 3 owners can purchase PlayStation Network games and PSP-enabled PlayStation games, download game and movie trailers, and obtain game demos. The service went live in Japan and North America upon being released in those territories, but now Sony has revealed that the store will not necessarily be available worldwide.

The day of the console's release, posts from frustrated PS3 customers worldwide began appearing on the official PlayStation forums. Users from territories including Greece, Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Slovenia, Iceland, Turkey, Cyprus, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic claimed that they were unable to access the full range of PlayStation Store features or simply given a message that "The Playstation Store is not available at your location."

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe corporate communications director confirmed that some territories do not currently have access to the store. "There are more than 102 territories in the region, and each Store has to be made unique for each territory due to different currencies and languages," he said. "Stores will reach some territories in due course." Sharples went on to note that some territories, such as Azerbaijan, may never gain access to the PlayStation Store.

This week sees but a single addition to the Wii's Virtual Console, Koei's Super NES turn-based tactics title Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire. Originally released in 1994, the game is part of a series that is still going strong after more than two decades, with Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI released last month for PlayStation 2. Wall of Fire, available for 800 Wii Points ($8), supports an uncommonly high eight players locally.

Check back tomorrow for Shack's official review of this week's Virtual Console offering.

Last week, Capcom dropped a bomb when it announced that its highly anticipated PlayStation 3 action game Devil May Cry 4 is also in development for Xbox 360. Surprisingly, the inclusive move was met with a high degree of protest from a small but very vocal segment of fans who felt that the company was spurning the PlayStation platform. One Derrick Hall 89 started an always effective internet petition threatening to boycott the publisher's products in response to the multiplatform strategy. At time of writing, the petition is approaching 10,000 signatures, though a great number of them are tongue-in-cheek jabs at the more earnest Undersigned.

Days later, a complaint thread was created on the official Capcom forums, finally prompting official response from the company. "We are certainly moved that people are so passionate about our products that they would go to such extremes," said Capcom senior strategic planning and research director Christian Svensson. "At the same time we feel that allowing more people access to our content pleases far more people than it displeases (after all, we're not denying DMC4 to anyone that was already going to get it). It really is the best decision for the company and for consumers."

Yesterday, Svensson closed the thread after debating whether it was worth keeping alive. He astutely observed that "it seems to have run its course, gone off course, rolled down a cliff, hit a cow and then exploded."

Internet. Serious business.