C’mon… you can’t treat a gamer like that! While the PlayStation Vita is set to be released in North America either this week or next week depending on which version you chose to purchase, we’ve been taunted by one game that has had a fluctuating release date over the past few months.
That title of course is Gravity Rush, a title which has been rumored to be a launch title from various documents and even Sony themselves at one point. However it seems that may not be the case anymore as both Amazon and GameStop have updated their listings for the title which are now showing a May 29th release date. Very disappointing news as Gravity Rush is likely the second most wanted title on the Vita behind Uncharted.
This may come as a bit of a surprise to some, but there is in fact a Dragon Age CG anime film being created in Japan. Plus, you won’t even have to wait that long in North America to see it, as FUNimation has already revealed that they will be releasing the film in North America on May 29th.
The film is called Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker and it will serve as a prologue to Dragon Age II. Today the Japanese studio in charge of creating the film, T.O. Entertainment, revealed the below commercial which shows us a bit of what we can expect to see when the film is released, including the theme song sung “Until the Last Day” performed by Gackt. While the commercial is quite short, it contains plenty of action and at least one Dragon so fans of the series should keep their hopes up about the quality of this movie.
Mystery writer and amateur detective, Jessica Fletcher, has been around for decades. Her stardom started in September 30, 1984 when Jessica, portrayed by legendary actress Angela Lansbury, graced our television sets and solved her first mystery in “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes”. Since then, she has solved more than 260 mysteries and has written over 80 mystery novels. Now after starring in the video game, Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher will be back again to solve another mystery in Murder, She Wrote 2. Thanks to Legacy Interactive, developer and publisher of games based on hit TV shows such as Psych, Ghost Whisperer and House M.D., Murder, She Wrote 2, will be available at retail stores and online in Spring 2012.
Murder, She Wrote 2 is licensed by Universal Partnerships & Licensing on behalf of the NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products Group.
Konami has revealed the Japanese release date of New Little King’s Story for the Playstation Vita. The game will be set in a world parallel to that of the Wii game, Little King’s Story. The Vita version will take advantage of Vita-specific features, including its touch controls. The retail version will be sold at ¥6,480(US$83.43/AU$77.53), while the digital version will be sold at ¥5,980 (US$76.99/AU$71.55). It will also require a memory card.
In New Little King’s Story, players will control King Corobo, a 14-year-old royal, who presides over a Kingdom threatened by an entity known as The Nightmare. As King, it is the player’s job to raise an army and expel this threat from the Kingdom. So that is basically how the game plays. The players must traverse through the Kingdom and recruit soldiers in order to fight a great evil.
New Little King’s Story will also be released in Europe during this year. You can check out the Japanese box art below, which reveals that the game will require a memory stick for save data.
It will come to nobody’s surprise that there will be another iteration of the WWE series of video games this year. Last year, the focus was on the console versions, which meant no portable iteration for either the Playstation Portable or 3DS. However, with the Playstation Vita having similar features to current generation consoles, it is worth asking whether the game will head to Sony’s next portable.
Well, one fan decided to ask that question on Twitter. The question was asked on the Twitter feed of THQ Tank, which is the official Twitter feed for the THQ Community Manager who takes care of the WWE and UFC games. This was the exchange
Q: are thq planning to make wwe 13 for the psvita?
A: no we are not
For those who wanted the WWE experience on the go, your best bet would be purchasing the PSP (or DS) and buying those games as the Vita will not see a WWE game this year.
In an interview with Game Informer, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed that he would prefer to release fewer first party games in the future so that each of them gets a stronger focus in terms of advertising and marketing. Sony are well-known for releasing an abundance of first party games, but it seems that most have not reached the sales numbers the company had expected. Meanwhile, a Microsoft second party exclusive, Gears of War 3, sold more copies than some of the Sony first party exclusives combined.
This is what Yoshida said when asked about the low sales of Sony first party games:
“It’s a combination of many things. First, we have to be very honest about our games’ quality as well. We love our games, but we can point out many issues when you look at the titles individually.
“Another thing is focus. When you have ten games coming out in a year compared to two or three, how much focus you get from our business and marketing side is very hard. From a portfolio side, we were very excited about the games we had last year, but we probably diluted support for each title.”
Yoshida does have a point. For all of the games that Sony pushed out last year, how many of them received great focus? Uncharted 3 was pushed heavily in 2011, but what about Resistance 3, which failed to pass the one million mark, despite being an excellent game. How about LittleBigPlanet 2? The Move received its second wave of games, but were they pushed to the moon? But is a smaller output of games the solution? Yoshida thinks so to a certain degree:
“It’s easy to say, “Yeah, let’s make three games a year.” But game development is dynamic. You cannot plan to do that. You already have to have a certain number of games in the pipeline hoping they hit in a certain year. We love working on new IPs. It’s really hard to predict when these games get finished.
“It’s a challenge, but I think we could and probably should be focused on a smaller number of titles so each one gets the best support.”
It seems that Sony Computer Entertainment is at a crossroad. They want to increase sales, which means a bigger presence in the field of marketing, which Sony lacks right now. With the amount of games released, that is near impossible, so fewer games would be the path taken. However, if there is a smaller output of games, then games that are considered a big risk (usually more innovative or unique) will never reach production. Take, for example, Heavy Rain. The interactive drama would have never reached the production stage under Microsoft or even Nintendo. Only Sony would take the risk to develop the game. Heavy Rain is now considered a milestone in interactive storytelling.
With that in mind, should Sony produce and develop fewer games or should they continue with their current strategy? Write down your thoughts below. You can also check out what Yoshida said about Demon Souls, The Last Guardian and the Playstation Vita right here.
Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed a few things about the handling of Demon Souls, The Last Guardian and his thoughts on the Japanese Playstation Vita launch in an interview conducted by Game Informer. Yoshida’s answers are quite honest and thought provoking, bringing an insight rarely seen in the video game world. Plus, it seems that what he has said is pretty much what everyone is thinking.
First up, he talks about the Playstation Vita launch in Japan. He revealed that, despite the drop in sales after the first two days on the market, where 325,000 units were sold, sales are still within expectations. But, compared to their higher expectation, they are disappointed. He identifies two reasons, which he explains below:
There are two major differences. One is the type of lineup that we had for the launch. Games like Uncharted are not a big name in Japan. Hopefully it’s growing in awareness like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. It’s not like this game will sell a million units. Gamers in Japan want games catered to their tastes. From that standpoint we didn’t have a strong lineup for the Japanese market.
The second is the PSP. We’re advertising PSP on TV while advertising Vita. So it’s three portables in Japan.
Yes, they are two valid reasons why the Playstation Vita isn’t selling in higher numbers. However, he does manage to avoid a third reason: price. With both the PSP and Nintendo’s 3DS selling at a lower price point (and with Monster Hunter by their side), consumers won’t fork out for a system with games they do not want to play. Add in the extra cost of said game/s and the memory stick and it becomes a turn off. Digital sales were also discussed. Yoshida revealed that digital sales are growing, but didn’t give a specific number. He also believes that the digital platform will be the number one choice for games over retail if there are smaller games coming out for the system
The Last Guardian and its director, Fumito Ueda, also came up in the interview. Yoshida revealed that “Ueda-san has never left the team. It’s a change of his work status from being an employee to working as a contract.” So he hasn’t left Team Ico, he just works on a contract basis. Team Ico is part of Sony’s Japan Studios, who are behind the upcoming Playstation Vita game Gravity Rush. They have a new head in the form of Allan Becker. He helped found the Santa Monica Studio, who are behind the God of War series, so he knows his way around the Playstation brand. Yoshida added,
“I asked him to move to Japan to instill his philosophy of making games. He’s also bringing these two different cultures together. He started in April last year as the head of the Japan studio and has already made a big impact.”
So, what about The Last Guardian? Yoshida reveals its current progress:
“It’s making progress. There have been technical issues and the engineering team is reworking it. It’s playable, but not to the level of when we can say it’s coming.”
The interview then shifts to Demon Souls. Sony owns the IP, while From Software developed the game. However, both Atlus and Namco Bandai took care of the publishing in North America and Europe respectively. Why did Sony pass up on the publishing duties. Yoshida reveals his thoughts:
“For my personal experience with Demon’s Souls, when it was close to final I spent close to two hours playing it and after two hours I was still standing at the beginning at the game. I said, “This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.” So I put it aside.
“Luckily, third party publishers, Atlus in North America and Namco in Europe [stepped in], and it really became a great hit outside of Japan.
“We definitely dropped the ball from a publishing standpoint, including studio management side. We were not able to see the value of the product we were making.”
So an interesting insight with Yoshida. He makes some valid points, but he does avoid the pricing issue with the Vita. However, considering the tech behind it, I do not know why people would want Sony to drop it even further. Even then, he recognises some problems and wants to rectify the situation. Yoshida also commented on the amount of games Sony puts out and how he believes that it may harm each game. You can check it out here.
Kaz Hirai will take over the reigns over at Sony as head honcho on April 1 after being announced as Howard Stringer’s successor last month. He will inherit a a massive problem as Sony continues to post losses year after year. Sony forecasts a US$2.9 billion loss for this financial year. With problems within the company, including their television division, which is sinking faster than the Titanic, Hirai needs to come up with a strategy. It seems that he will use the Playstation strategy, where both hardware and software is linked via online services, to rescue the Japanese electronics giant.
In a group interview at Sony HQ in Tokyo, Hirai described the Sony Computer Entertainment model as “a bigger concept we can grow into a bigger space.” He also adds that “hardware drives software and software drives hardware,” an idea one learns in the game industry. Profits from a system is usually made on the software side. Without the games to back up a system, how does the system sell? If Hirai can manage such a strategy with Sony’s other divisions, it may pull them out of this downward spiral of red ink.
However, before Hirai can even implement the strategy, he will have to go through the books and make some tough cost-cutting measures, which will affect the company as a whole. Their television division may be the hardest hit, losing US$11 billion dollars over the last eight years. However, the Japanese TV manufacturing industry is in free fall at the moment with the emergence of foreign competition (Samsung and LG) as well as a decline of global TV intake, which is due to on-demand entertainment available on the go.
We have a few codes to give away for BrainJewel on iOS (iPAD Only) courtesy of Tribe Play. To win simply leave a comment on MasterAbbott’s iOS Suggestions #6 and we’ll pick a few lucky winners.
We’ll pick the lucky winners once we have a few entries. Make sure you leave a valid email when you post your comment so we can send you your code via email if you win.
As many experts in information technology will be able to tell you, Cloudflare is a system designed to protect servers from attacks, as well as displaying a cached version of a website whenever it is down.
Some of you may have noticed that we were down for maintenance over the weekend. During our maintenance period, we had cleaned up our database, as well as integrated this solution into our systems. What this means for you is that our site should be mostly available to you while ever the main server is down or overwhelmed.
Now then, as some of you may have noticed, there will be an occasional Cloudflare error that appears. These are caused by a few factors, such as the Cloudflare server not having a cached version of the page you’re looking for, or some other reason. From what I know about the system, it will automatically add pages to the system as well as do a snapshot of the site every four hours or so.
So basically, how to fix this error? It is pretty easy. You can press the refresh button to see if the live version of the site is back up, this will also check Cloudflare to see if a cached version is available. Ultimately, this should bring up some kind of webpage that you can view. If this still does not work, you can go into your internet options and clear your offline files / cache. This should kill the local version of the webpage that you’re trying to view, which could be the Cloudflare error page, and it should try and pull a new version of the site on your next refresh.
Ultimately, if the site is still unresponsive, you can be patient and try back later. We are taking steps to increase the stability of our site and this Cloudflare solution is one of those steps.
