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Telltale Offers Adventure Game Pack for Charity

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:40:16 GMT

Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island and Strong Bad developer Telltale Games has partnered with a number of adventure game publishers to offer a gaming bundle that benefits charities.
Called The Great Adventure Bundle 2010, the $19.95 collection includes Daedalic Entertainment's The Whispered World, Deck13's Jack Keane, Sierra's The King's Quest Collection (which contains the first six games in the series), the first episode of Hothead's Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, and two of Telltale's own games -- the recently-released Puzzle Agent and the five-episode second season of Sam & Max.

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Microsoft Suspends Gamer from Fort ***, Apologizes

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:50:11 GMT

Microsoft is wiping some egg from its face today, after mistakenly suspending a player account from Xbox Live for stating he lived in "Fort ***." The Associated Press reports that Josh Moore, a 26-year-old from the small town of Fort ***, West Virginia, was suspended last week. Moore had to convince Xbox Live enforcement that it was a real location -- a problem which could have been solved by simply Googling it.
Stephen Toulouse, chief enforcement manager for Xbox Live, apologized for the agent's mistake and said that training has been updated. To err is human, but this latest issue stands in stark contrast to Microsoft's recent policy update. The new Xbox Live policy allows racial and sexual identifiers in profiles, after the company was criticized for taking action against *** and lesbian players. The policy was and still is intended to prevent harassment. Apparently the word "***" is still a red flag, and the agent may have thought Moore was mocking homosexuals. Hopefully the new training involves using an atlas before banning gamers.
[Image courtesy of Google Maps.]

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Second Madden Title Update Brings Madden Moments Live

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:50:11 GMT

The second title update for Madden NFL 11 has been released on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. PS3 gamers will be prompted to download the update next time they start the game, as will 360 owners, though 360 owners will have to manually download the patch's biggest addition -- Madden Moments Live -- from the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Madden Moments Live is a new, free game mode that drops you into specific situations and asks you to recreate moments that will take place throughout the upcoming NFL season. For the time being, there are a number of moments to currently play through from last year's New Orleans Saints team. Two to four moments will be added each week throughout the season. In return for Madden coins, you'll be able to buy future moments either individually, or you'll be able to buy the entire season's worth at once.
Other additions in the title update include altered pre-play functionality that will let you alter hot routes, make line shifts, and so on with the same buttons used in Madden NFL 10. Either by selecting it from the Play Now menu or during October (the in-game month) in franchise mode, a Breast Cancer Awareness Month mode will alter the game's theme to help support the cause. Additionally, you can now scout opponents in Online Franchise games, your opponent's lineup can now be seen in Ultimate Team mode, and various balancing issues have been fixed.

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PAX Prime Attendance Reaches Record High of 67,600

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:50:11 GMT

As he just recently said himself, Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins often refers to the Penny Arcade Expo as a "nation," and it looks like they're slowly reaching toward attendance numbers to justify it. With PAX Prime having come and gone in Seattle over the weekend, Big Download reports the attendance reached 67,600, making this the biggest PAX yet.
It's a big increase over the attendance of PAX East (held in Boston) earlier this year, which was tallied at 52,290. However, there are already plans to move PAX East into a larger venue, so attendance for the east coast expo could soon balloon as well.
And what's more, it looks like there could possibly be a third event added down the line -- and it may be international. Gamasutra reports that while speaking to the Penny Arcade team -- Hokins and artist Mike Krahulik -- they hinted that a third event may be held in another country.

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Microsoft Reveals 250GB Xbox 360 Bundled with Kinect

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:10:37 GMT

In addition to the already-revealed 4GB Kinect bundle, Microsoft just announced a 250GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle for the holidays.
The package is set to include a 250GB console, the Kinect motion-control device, and a copy of Kinect Adventures. It'll set you back $399.99 when it releases on November 4.
Purchased individually, Kinect and the 250GB Xbox 360 would cost $149.99 and $299.99, respectively. Just like the 4GB bundle, that's a savings of about $50 should you choose to go with the pack-in deal.

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Kaz Hirai: PSP Go's Market Just Wasn't "as Big as the PSP-3000"

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:30:08 GMT

When the PSP Go launched last year, it was widely maligned for losing the UMD drive of the original PSP, and yet at $250 still costing more than the latest PSP-3000 model. Sales were and remained weak since its launch, but according to SCE CEO Kaz Hirai, that's mostly because the PSP Go was simply catering to a smaller audience.
"I think we did cater for a market, albeit not as big as the traditional PSP-3000 market," Hirai said in an interview with MCV. "It is the first time we have done that with any of our devices, and we did get a lot of feedback, both good and bad. I think we need to make sure we have as many titles available to download as possible, to make the experience as easy as possible."
On that end, there are already signs of third-parties ditching the PSP Go, as Square Enix recently revealed Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep would only be released on UMD. And as for the Go's high price at launch, Hirai admitted it was "perhaps an issue," but insisted there were good reasons for it.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam Expansion to Debut at TGS

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:50:06 GMT

Apart from the all-too-brief trailer that debuted back at E3, we still don't know a whole lot about Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam. That'll all change at the Tokyo Game Show next week, however, as the developers at DICE just announced plans to show off Bad Company 2's Vietnam expansion at the Japanese gaming expo.
This will mark the very first time DICE has given public demonstrations of Bad Company 2 Vietnam. The expansion is said to include four entirely new maps, along with scads of Vietnam-specific weapons, vehicles, and unlocks.
Look for plenty of coverage as we inch closer to TGS 2010, beginning next Thursday, September 16.

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Transformers DLC Adds Zeta Prime, Dead End

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:50:06 GMT

With heavy-hitters like Halo Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops on the horizon, High Moon is releasing another multiplayer DLC pack to keep players invested in Transformers: War for Cybertron for a little while longer. The pack is available now for 800 Microsoft Points or $9.99 on PSN, and includes two new characters with five new maps.
Dead End of the Decepticon camp joins the fray, and Optimus' (SPOILER!) doomed predecessor Zeta Prime fills the new Autobot slot. Pulse and Static are Escalation maps that take place inside Trypticon and a trap-filled building, respectively. The new competitive multiplayer maps include Horizon, Sector, and Metropolis.

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Capcom Collaborating With CyberConnect2 on New Action Game

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:50:06 GMT

CyberConnect2, the Fukuoka, Japan-based developers of the .hack series and most of the Naruto games released for PlayStation consoles, is working on an original action game for home consoles -- and they just picked up Capcom as their publisher.
The news was revealed in a roundtable discussion published in this week's issue of Famitsu magazine, where CC2 president Hiroshi Matsuyama and Capcom producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya discussed how the collaboration came about. According to Tsuchiya, the two outfits began talking to each other soon after the 2008 Tokyo Game Show. "Capcom has always had a sort of affinity for CyberConnect2," he said. "It was like they were making the sort of games that we ought to be doing, something which occasionally became a source of frustration!"
"From the second half of 2008 through 2009, we visited each other's offices and got to gradually spend more and more time with each other," Matsuyama added. "The one thing that really struck home was that the more we got to know each other, the more plain it was how similar our two companies are. The creative people on both sides are totally immersed in the development process -- we both have a common outlook on that."

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NBA Jam's Eastern Conference Rosters Revealed

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:50:06 GMT

The new NBA Jam is less than a month away and, before now, we still didn't have any idea of who would actually be in the game. The obvious choices -- Kobe, LeBron, Dwyane Wade, and so on -- are undoubtedly going to make the rosters for their respective teams, but what about the teams without such standout stars?
ESPN has revealed the full rosters for the 15 Eastern Conference teams, with the Western Conference set to be revealed next Tuedsay, September 14. A total of nine teams from the league have four current players as opposed to three due to fan voting being too close to make a cut. Each team (with the exception of the New York Knicks) has no more than two legends, with those players who were in the original arcade NBA Jam being favored over others.
Due to contractural issues, certain legends you'd expect to be in the game, like Reggie Miller -- and much more notably, NBA 2K11 cover man Michael Jordan -- aren't in the game. Besides those issues, as a result of having to lock down the roster before certain moves were made, some players are on the wrong team. For instance, Al Harrington is still on the Knicks and Courtney Lee is still on the New Jersey Nets. According to ESPN, that will only be fixable on the PS3 and Xbox 360 version of NBA Jam, which is included with NBA Elite 11.

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Dead Rising 2: Case Zero Sells 300K in First Week

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:10:19 GMT

Dead Rising: Case Zero was nothing if not an experiment in cheap, pre-release DLC. The prologue gave a taste of Dead Rising 2 without repeating content from the full game, and it was priced to move. GamerBytes reports that it paid off in a big way, to the tune of over 300,000 sold in the first week. The report speculates that Capcom could have made over a million in revenue from the downloadable title in its first seven days.
Though Case Zero gives a sampling of Dead Rising 2, it smartly differentiated itself by consisting of entirely separate content, including story beats not found in the main game. Capcom also priced it at a mere $5, which is unheard of for most Xbox Live Arcade games, especially after Microsoft's yearly Summer of Arcade promotion laid down $15 as the new standard. A $5 price point made the investment small enough for consumers to bite on, and a generally positive reception means most gamers probably weren't disappointed.
EA is attempting a similar tactic with Dead Space Ignition, the downloadable prequel to Dead Space 2. But we don't know the price of Ignition, and the gameplay is significantly different from the game proper. With the success of Case Zero, Capcom may have unintentionally set the pre-game DLC price and quality standard in the minds of gamers.

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Japan Review Check: Pokemon Black/White, Front Mission

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:10:19 GMT

"Catching monsters and building up a catalog of them is exactly like collecting baseball or trading cards," wrote Famitsu magazine. "Both raising and collecting them is fun, and the way different monsters are more likely to appear in the different-colored cartridges satisfies the collector's itch all the more. I wish there was more story to enjoy, though."
Was Famitsu writing about the new Pokemon up there? No! It's actually a clip from their review of the original Pokemon Red/Green, released on the black-and-white Game Boy and reviewed in a February 1996 issue of Japan's leading game magazine. The score that first set of games received? One 8 and three 7's for a total of 29 points, not enough to earn it an editor's reward.
Oh, how times change! There's no denying that Famitsu's rating scores have inched upwards over the years -- something that's generated some controversy in Japan, especially considering how the president of the mag's publisher showed up in ads recently for a game that later received a perfect score. That scoring trend seems to be continuing, because Pokemon Black/White became the fifteenth game in Famitsu's history this week (and the sixth since the start of 2009) to earn four 10's from the review crew.

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Katamari Creator Takahashi Leaves Namco Bandai

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:10:19 GMT

The director of the original Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, Keita Takahashi, has parted ways with Namco Bandai Games. His departure was confirmed by Play.tm (via Develop) with a spokesperson and comes after a series of recent comments from Takahashi expressing a lack of interest in the direction of the games industry, and specifically what was shown at E3.
In an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine U.K., he said (via CVG), "At E3 I saw people putting on speeches but I thought the future seemed a bit dark." He added that he wasn't particularly interested in 3D games and said, "I think motion control's a bit old now, I don't think those games are the future. It all seemed a bit dull."
More recently, Takahashi was interviewed by The Setup. He knocked Namco Bandai, answering a question about what he does by saying that he makes games "for the so-so company Namco Bandai Games" and described himself as inefficient for having "only made 4 games in 11 years." He noted that he's currently working on "a project to redesign an old park in Nottingham, U.K." Way back in 2005, he told the BBC about how he'd eventually like to create a playground for children and predicted that he wouldn't be making games anymore within 10 years.

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Little Big Planet 2 Beta Invites Going to "Really Active" LBP Users

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:10:19 GMT

Are you excited to try out Little Big Planet 2 before anyone else? Then you better have been playing the **** out of the first Little Big Planet, as Sony Europe has revealed beta invites are going out this week but only to Little Big Planet super-fans.
"We will be sending out invitations to the Little Big Planet 2 beta during this week to users who've been really active in Little Big Planet," read a post on the PlayStation Europe forums. "So if you have been a busy Sackboy or girl then an invite might be coming your way. This decision has now been made; unfortunately we are not able to recruit any further Beta Testers at present."
So in other words, if it's been a while since you last loaded up Little Big Planet, then probably don't make any plans to try out the LPB2 beta. There are a few other standard requirements to take part as well, including having to be 18 years old, sign a Beta Trial Agreement, and, of course, own a PlayStation 3 or PSP with broadband Internet connection and PlayStation Network account.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam Expansion to Debut at TGS

XploderBot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:10:19 GMT