Archive for June, 2009
Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick says they ‘might have to stop supporting Sony’.
Bobby Kotick has warned that Sony risks losing support of the mega publisher unless it decides to issue a price cut for the PlayStation 3.
“They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates [the number of games each console owner buys] are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony,” Kotick told the Times Online.
When prompted as to when the firm may consider dropping support for Sony, the executive added: “When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP [portable] too.”
“Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation,” he said.
Kotick went on to say that his company forked out $500 million to Sony in royalties and other goods back in 2008, which he said “probably still worked out at 400 percent of the profit they made”.
Shortly after this statement their stock drop 1.18% costing them over a billion dollars. Hmm..
For the first quarter ’09 Ubisoft posted 15% of sales were for 360 and PS3. Namco reportedly made more on Sony’s systems combined than the Xbox for fiscal year ’08-’09.
Playstation 3 – 3.273 million, Playstation 2 – 4.630 million units sold,PSP – 4.202 million units sold ,Xbox 360 – 2.704 million units sold) .
Sales of MGS4 boosted Konami’s profits for 2 quarters on a system that was the highest priced and boosted the sales of the PS3 over the 360 for 2 months. So is the XBox brand really more profitable than the Playstation at this point? I don’t think so.
Tekken 6 gets CLAMPed.
I think this will be the only outfit I play Jin in. 
For those like me who’re clueless to who/what CLAMP is, they’re an all-female mangaka group known for titles like Cardcaptor Sakura and X/1999. They’ll be designing extra outfits like this one for the PS3 version of Tekken 6.
Meet the Women of Uncharted 2 Among Thieves
Posted by Eddie in PS3, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on June 18th, 2009
A nice interview following the Nathan Drake interview with Emily Rose and Claudia Black, aka Elena Fisher and Chloe Frazier. Both have a pretty long list of movies they have been in so they may look familiar to some.
They do kind of resemble their in game roles.
Meet the voice of Nathan Drake – Uncharted 2
Posted by Tosh in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on June 17th, 2009
I’ve always liked the comedy they added to the game, makes it fun. He seems like a nice guy. He should have done the interview in Nathan Drakes voice 
I forget that he did the voice for deadpool too, he did a great job with that!
Joost on Sony PlayStation 3
Joost made a friendly PS3 version. Just access it on your web browser. More info available here.
Uncharted 2 Roof Top Trailer
Posted by Eddie in PS3, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on June 17th, 2009
Simply amazing. I can not wait to get my hands on this game and spend countless hours running down all of the trophies. Judging by the last 5 seconds….Nathan Drake hasn’t lost his comedic value at all.
Myth: Game Development Budgets
CNBC reiterates a common development budget myth during an interview with Ubisoft:
Games for the Wii typically cost much less to create, due to the system’s less than cutting-edge components
Wrong. Games for the Wii generally require smaller budgets because they are simpler games.
God of War 2 used a huge development budget on the PS2, which is even older, lower-spec technology than the Wii, but the game used massive quantities of high quality art and animation assets. Something like Mario Party of Wii Play use far less art and animation assets and far simpler game logic despite the fact that the Wii can handle more complex art assets and game logic than the PS2.
Secondly, PS3/360/Wii cross platform titles like Guitar Hero or Call of Duty, probably share most of the man hours of development effort across the different platforms. The PS3/360 versions probably require slightly more because they have richer feature sets and the higher quality art assets do require more labor to create, but overall I suspect that most of the development efforts are well shared.
The audiences that buy fancier hardware generally demand fancier software, but the fancier hardware itself doesn’t generally require more man hours of development given that the complexity of the game is held constant.
MGS4 Surprise Week / Metal Gear Online Updates & Free Bikinis
Posted by Tosh in Metal Gear Online, Metal Gear Solid 4 on June 16th, 2009
MGO has been updated to 1.33, it has a lot of bug fixes you can see the whole list here. It says “Damage for direct throws has been tuned.” Wonder if that means you can’t knock them out with one throw anymore with CQC-EX. Then the automatic CQC counter will only work if CQC’ed from the front. I prefer that actually, CQC-EX was to overpowered.
All this week Konami will have surprises for the one year anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. First surprise is free bikinis for those that have purchased the GENE expansion pack. Video of that in action below.
Another new surprise is a new stage, called the Icebound Inferno, which is also known as the “MGS4′s windy blizzard Shadow Moses stage.” Sounds like a great stage, I gotta try that. Then it seems like Snake will be selectable in more ways.
Wonder what other surprises Konami will have this week.
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