Rebellion’s Aliens vs Predator has been doing well on the digital distribution front. After debuting at the top of UK’s retail sales chart last week, the game has now managed a similar feat on Steam where it’s topped the weekly sales charts for the past seven days, leaving behind the Limited Edition of next week’s release Battlefield: Bad Company 2 as well as Modern Warfare 2.
As Rebellion co-founder and CEO Jason Kingsley said yesterday, the game appears to be a financial success then. And that won’t hurt the talks over that possible sequel, we’re sure.
Warner Bros. has picked up a majority stake in Rocksteady Studios, the UK-based developer that stepped into the limelight with their last year’s critical and commercial hit Batman: Arhkam Asylum.
The studio has “demonstrated its professionalism and extraordinary development abilities,” WB Home Entertainment Group president Kevin Tsujihara says, making the arrangement “a great strategic fit.”
“The Rocksteady team is very much looking forward to creating more great games based on widely recognized Warner Bros. brands like Batman,” Rocksteady’s games director Sefton Hill added, making it sound like they could be getting their hands on more than just the Batman property.
Avalanche’s tropical open-world actioner Just Cause 2 will not support Windows XP, the studio has confirmed. Following the game’s WinXP-excluding system requirements appearing (below) on Steam, publisher Square Enix’s community manager Mike Oldma has confirmed the news.
“Yes that is true… there is no XP support for Just Cause 2. This is because the game has been written to take advantage of the extra performance offered by Direct X10 and sadly Windows XP does not support that application,” he explains.
EA is determined to take back the shooter crown from Activision, so much so that they’re releasing two high-profile modern shooters roughly six months apart from each other. And they’re not worried about the two games in question — the modern day Medal of Honor (pictured) reboot and next week’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 — coming off as too similar.
“I think there’s enough separation between Medal of Honor and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, both in time and in tone,” EA Los Angeles’ — MoH’s Unreal Engine 3-powered single-player campaigndeveloper — studio head Sean Decker said in a recent interview. “Having worked on both franchises and seen and worked with both teams, they have different ideas of first-person shooters, especially in the tone and how you play, and also the pacing of the game.”
“Medal of Honor is really more of a… I’d put it as a CNN type of feel. It’s much more, again, about authenticity, and about today. Bad Company and the Battlefield franchise has never really tried to take itself too seriously, and has built itself – Bad Company especially – around a completely fictionalised world. At the same time, it tries to be hard-edge when it comes to the actual combat in the game.”
“I think there’s some good separation between the two,” he says.
Borderlands‘ The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC is out today on Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft Points. And here to give it that final push is a launch trailer which shows off some of the new weapons, enemies, locales etc it has to offer. Check it out below.
PS3 and PC users will get a piece of the General this Thursday, for $9.99.
Jason VandenBerghe, creative director of Red Steel 2 for Ubisoft Paris, believes that his game can help bring core gamers back to the Wii.
VandenBerghe told CVG, “If any game can do it, we can. I think we’ve got a great chance of bringing people back to Wii. If you haven’t played on your Wii for a while we’ve got the game for you.
“Personally, I call this the great hardcore Wii Jihad,” he added. “I don’t really care about the religious war! Some developers who are making hardcore games for the Wii made a big deal about the separation of church and state, saying (puts on deep voice) ‘there’s hardcore and there’s family friendly.’
“Fuck those guys! I don’t feel that way. I think there are gamers and there are gamers of different opinions and different tastes so the goal was to create games that gamers want and to see how many people like it.”
Similarly, VandenBerghe believes that the MadWorld approach to attracting a core audience is also flawed. “If you make an ultra violent game where you’re shoving signposts through people’s heads as a core mechanic,” said VanderBerghe, “you’re going to sell 10%. You’re cutting out 90% of your sales because that offends 90% of gamers.
Red Steel 2 is scheduled for release on Mar. 23 in North America and Mar. 26 in Europe.
Bungie may yet return to Halo; In parallel with the development of Halo: Reach the studio is already working on a new secret project, so it may be a while until another Halo game comes bearing the Bungie name. But it’s not ruled out as a possibility.
“You know, it might be premature to say we’ll never ever, ever make a Halo game again,” community director Brian Jarrard has told CVG. “We sort of have a little special place for Halo in our hearts. But for the foreseeable future, [Reach] is it.”
“If we don’t ever come back to Halo again, we better damn well make sure that our last game is the best one ever. Let’s set that bar really high and at least leave our fans something really special.”
Reach is later in the year with the multiplayer beta for ODST owners beginning in early May.
Call of Duty: World at War’s Nazi-zombie mode took a lot of people by surprise in 2008. It made for some top notch co-op action and the targets definitely had it coming (they’re Nazis and zombies, that’s naught but pure malevolence). Many were eager to see such a scenario return in Modern Warfare 2, but Infinity Ward were quick to point out last year that they would not be indulging in a zombie-based last stand mode.
Those hoping that this might change through the addition of DLC, prepare to be disappointed; speaking at this year’s worldwide Call of Duty finals tournament, Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowlingstated that “there will be no Nazis or zombies in any piece of Modern Warfare 2 downloadable content.”
Looks as though the slaying of the undead will remain well within Treyarch’s territory then, which I can’t say I’m too fussed about if I do in fact get to take them on ‘Nam style this year.
The Worms series is getting reinforcements in the form of a new 2D addition to the franchise. Worms Reloaded (not pictured), a new PC-bound title in the series, is on its way, Team 17’s studio director Martyn Brown has tweeted. Details about the title will have to wait though. Beyond saying that it’ll be released through Steam, no information was offered up.
“We are pleased to announce a new edition of 2D Worms for PC! “Worms Reloaded” is coming soon via Steam. Details & features to follow…” — that’s the extent of the news for now I’m afraid.
1 comment:
Alien vs predator was not that good....tear.
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