EA: PS3 Orange Box not delayed

Videogamer.com is reporting that the Orange Box for the PS3 will be released in December as planned, according to an EA representative. The EA release schedule showed the Orange Box as to be released on Jan. 17 2008, but the representative said the game is still going to be released in 2007.

(Found through That Video Game Blog)

Ghostbusters to be on six platforms by two developers

Variety has revealed even more information about the game based on the unmade Ghostbusters sequel. Apparently, in addition to the talents of the original Ghostbusters, Ernie Hudson, who played Winston Zeddmore, and Annie Potts, who played Janine Melnitz, will also be lending their talents. The article also says the game will be available on all the major platforms, with the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions being developed by Terminal Reality aimed at the “core gamer demographic,” and another version being developed by Red Fly Studio will develop a version for “families and casual gamers” for the PS2, Wii and DS.Terminal Reality, in case you aren’t familiar with the name, developed Terminal Velocity (a great DOS game), the Aeon Flux game, Blood Rayne and the Metal Slug Anthology. Red Fly Studio has started developing only one other game, Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars (I shit you not), though their about page shows some pretty impressive credits, including Deus Ex, Anachronox and the aforementioned Blood Rayne.

More players from the movies does up the chance of Ghostbusters goodness, but with two developers working on games for a total of six platforms, the liklihood these games will be anything more than a “But you used to love Ghostbusters!” holiday bargain bin title plummets much farther than Winston or Janine could hope to reach. Still, gotta keep the faith. Mushroom Men looks just wacky enough to be actually interesting, so you never know. Just have to keep our fingers crossed and see what happens.

(Found via Kotaku).

Miracles do happen: Game Informer to reveal new Ghostbusters game based on never produced movie

Fans, and even Dan Akroyd, have been clamoring for a third installment in the Ghostbusters series since the second slightly-better-than mediocre movie came out. Akroyd even said he had written a script for it. One of the major elements keeping it back was Bill Murray’s desire to never make a Ghostbusters movie again.

Apparently hell has frozen over, though, and Kotaku is reporting that in the next issue of Game Informer they’re going to reveal the game that would’ve been the movie. Making hell in even better condition for snowmen is the news that the original Ghostbusters, Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, are working on the script and will be doing the voice overs as well.

Now, as a wee lad Ghostbusters was second only to Ninja Turtles in my eyes. I had the backpack, the trap and, I admit it, even the Stay Puft Marshmallow man stuffed toy thing. Since Ghostbusters II, though, the whole franchise has been on a steady decline. Will this return of the originals revive the franchise, or will it just continue to suck harder than a black hole? I sincerely hope the former because my nostalgia can’t take another 80s remake that epic fails.

Rock Band not just a game but a platform for music

In general, I don’t like the full on publication of interviews. Call it my journalism brainwashing telling me the reporter has to cull the good quotes from the interview. OXM’s interview with Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, actually has some rather enlightening dialog on what Harmonix really wants to achieve with Rock Band. (Found through 1up.com)

Among the many exciting things Rigopulos has to say, the most interesting for me was his vision of how we’re going to experience music in the near future.

In 3 to 5 years people are going to expect to be able to play with music as the normal way that they experience music that they love. If you have a favorite band that releases a new album, sure you’ll buy the CD but you’ll also want to go onto the Rock Band server the game levels based on those 15 new songs to experience them as an active participant in the music-making. But this is how people are going to come to expect to experience the music that they love.

He later said of music distribution through Rock Band:

In the same way that MTV has promoted artists through the video medium on their channels, we actually see Rock Band as a way to break and promote new artists to the audience of people that are playing the game. So that’s definitely something that’s part of our plans.

It’s nice to know that my thoughts on how to best utilize Guitar Hero turned out to be what they wanted to do all along.

Also exciting are plans to be able to export your character onto the Rock Band Web site and convert that into different kinds of merchandise, from t-shirts to bumper stickers. Figurines are mentioned by both OXM and 1up, but I don’t see it in the interview.

So, to get Rock Band or to not get Rock Band? That’s a lot of money to drop on one game, but if Rigopulos’ vision comes true it will be the future of music content delivery anyway.

Wii still leading consoles, but for how long?

Video Game Chartz has released the hardware sales chart for America for the week ending Nov. 10, and once again Nintendo’s Wii is first and Sony has come in last.

The Wii came in first for the week at 192, 482, followed by the Xbox 360 at 173,895 and the DS at 142,299. Sony’s PSP came in a distant fourth at 75, 954 and the Playstation 3 came in an even more distant fifth at 63, 788.

All three next-gen consoles saw a jump in sales, though: 31 percent for the Wii, 25 percent for the Xbox 360 and 15 percent for the PS3.

I once predicted the Wii was the future of video game consoles. I said, since the Wii changes how we play games instead of just how we view them, it would be able to over take the Xbox 360 and PS3, which certainly go farther in terms of hardware power but don’t fundamentally do anything different than the original Playstation.

I think a lot of the industry on the console production side is focused on better hardware power for consoles because that’s what has worked before. If you look at the jumps from system to system, what what you notice most in the slide show is the change in detail, from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit and the era of the Playstation, which by my estimation only ended with this generation. The real fundamental change, though, is the change in gameplay.

Indeed, much of Nintendo’s success comes from seeing where the next change in how we play games is going to come from. Likewise, their failure comes from not seeing these jumps. Sony won the last generation because all the other companies that got involved, Nintendo, Microsoft and to some extent Sega, were content to try to do more of the same, and the Playstation 2 just did it better, either because it was more powerful or more deeply embedded. If Nintendo, or anyone else for that matter, had figured out a new way to play games we probably wouldn’t have seen the Playstations dominate as heavily as they did, if they would have dominated at all.

Mario’s adventures across the consoles is a perfect example. Super Mario Bros. defined platforming in the 8-bit era. The next great change you notice is Super Mario 64 and the jump to 3D, which defined the 3D platforming genre. Where Mario failed most is Super Mario Sunshine, which didn’t do anything fundamentally different from Super Mario 64. It may be too soon to call Super Mario Galaxy yet another redefinition of platforming from a historical perspective, but that hasn’t stopped reviewers from doing so.

What really amazes me, however, is the public’s almost unquestioning acceptance of the Wii’s new terms of playing games. Usually people are very slow to accept change. Even though most of the games on the Wii are epic fail at fully utilizing the consoles innovations, the exceptions being first-party games, the console continues to sell out the day stores receive new shipments. Perhaps the public was already thirsty for something new after a prettier version of more of the same from last generation, even if the new doesn’t exactly work perfectly?

The real test for the Wii now is whether Nintendo will continue to string us along from one exceptional first-party game to the next, a third-party company will step in and finally get the motion controls as perfect as Nintendo does so the system can really show what it can do or the Wii slowly fades away into obscurity, something that could’ve been a revolutionary turning point in how we play games but turned into little more than a novelty for most people.

If nothing else, the Wii has shown there is serious money to be made in doing something differently. Hopefully console makers, and developers even more so, will take note.

“Xbox Originals” added to 360 dashboard update

Microsoft has confirmed that classic Xbox games such as Halo, Psychonauts, Fable and Burnout 3 would be available for about 1200 points on Xbox Live Marketplace starting with the Dec. 4 dashboard update, next-gen.biz reported Tuesday. It is unclear from the post whether some of the games Microsoft has confirmed to be released via these “Xbox Originals,” including Psychonauts and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, would be available with the update. Microsoft also said they’re trying to release as much of the original Xbox catalog as possible to the Marketplace.

“This new service will launch with an array of blockbuster titles spanning the most popular genres from action-adventure to classic role-playing games,” reads Microsoft’s statement.

Also in the update will be a movies-on-demand service for Europe similar to the one already available for U.S. gamers. Microsoft hasn’t confirmed when the service will begin, but next-gen.biz said users will download the movie to their hard drive and then have 14 days to watch the movie before it is automatically deleted. One they’ve begun watching, they have 24 hours to finish.

Mario left me a voicemail

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(Video found through Kotaku)

Those who pre-ordered Super Mario Galaxy got a nice surprise tonight. Instead of the usual message saying that your pre-order would be available the next day, some got a message from Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario! Martinet quickly starts talking as Mario and confirms the availability of your pre-order. He also describes how awesome the game is and the general synopsis of the story. I think my favorite part is when he says Princess Peach makes his heart go “badda bing badda boom.”

What an awesome little treat for loyal Nintendo fans to get a message from Mario. Whoever thought of this is definitely going to get a hefty bonus.

Mass Effect best game ever?

That’s a basically what The Official Xbox Magazine is saying, according to a scan of the holiday issue at N4G.com. Before giving the game a perfect 10, the reviwer, Paul Curthoys, said:

Still, that’s what’s remarkable about Mass Effect. If you separated the gameplay from the story, you could crap on the gameplay for a handful of different things. But in this game, story and gameplay are relentlessly intertwined, and the impact of that is so powerful that any irritation you feel is washed clean away.

More after the jump.

Full Story »

Bringing the arcade Joystick to the Wii console

The Shaft, an arcade-fighter style joystick complete with turbo for the Wii’s virtual console, is currently available for pre-orders. The site says you can customize it so only some of the buttons are turbo and a “Full 360 Degree range of motion that works with both digital and analog stick games,” though I would honestly be kind of worried if it didn’t. It comes in white, pink, and black and has a 10-year warranty, though no word on whether it’s limited or unlimited.

They’re only taking pre-orders at the moment, and plan to ship in mid-December, just in time for Christmas. If you want to get one you should probably jump on it now, as they say it will normally retail for $79.95, but they’re selling right now for $39.95 for one and $69.95 for two.

I’m not sure how much use gamers could get out of this, considering the primary game most people would use it for is Street Fighter II and the HD version isn’t coming out for the Wii, but I suppose for those who don’t have a Xbox 360 or a PS3 this could be a good option to bring the arcade home. There’s always Virtua Fighter 2…

Update: I talked with a representative of Overline Gaming, the company selling The Shaft, via e-mail.

If you look in the picture above you can’t see it, but in some of the other pictures on their Web site you can see a wire sticking out of the back. The Shaft is wired, but apparently this works better for fighting games.

The Shaft is a wired controller. In our experience, wireless controlles don’t give adequate response in fighting games, so we chose to make it wired.

Also, on the 10-year warranty:

Our 10-year warranty will cover anything except intentional damage (like stomping on it). We will replace any defective units with a new one for 10-years of the purchase date.

Mass Effect street date broken

Kotaku is reporting they’re receiving emails from readers who have been able to snag their copy of Mass Effect already. The offending (or godsent, depending on your point of view) party this time is Kmart, so if you hustle it’s possible you could get there in time to grab a copy for yourself.

Reports of broken street dates have become incredibly common in recent months. Halo 3, Bioshock, and even Super Mario Galaxy have reportedly had their street dates broken. I’m curious, though, as to whether this is a new phenomenon or if the interwebs is just getting better at reporting/ showing off the information. If developers and publishers have a problem with broken street dates, why wouldn’t they just make sure the game gets to the vendor on the released date, no sooner, no later? Do they just expect a certain number of broken street dates? Could they purposefully be allowing the street date to be broken to drum up pre-release excitement (like Mass Effect or Super Mario Galaxy need it)?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to figure where the local Kmart is.