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Madsen, Hamill Lend Voices to Sega’s Yakuza
Posted by Matt Haselton Categories: Action, Corporate News, PlayStation 2,
Michael Madsen and Mark Hamill headline the US vocal talent for the upcoming release of the PS2’s Yakuza, released last year in Japan as Ryo ga Gotoku. Joining them are fellow voice-acting veterans Michael Rosenbaum (Gladius, Justice League, and Smallville), Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer series and video game), and Rachel Leigh Cook (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts II, and She’s All That). In an interview with Gamespot, Yakuza’s US producer, Justin Lambros, explained that space constraints prevented the game from including both English and Japanese dialogue, but added that all of the American actors “put a piece of themselves into their character.”
The gritty, GTA-influenced game is due to ship in September.
Read More 
| Gamespot
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Mizuguchi Speaks on Lumines
Posted by George Hatzidimitriou Categories: Corporate News, PlayStation 2, Portable/Mobile, PSP, Strategy, Xbox Live Arcade,
Game Informer has put up an interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, founder of Q Entertainment and of Lumines and Rez fame. Mizuguchi speaks at length on the four(!) upcoming versions of Lumines in the works. First up, is Lumines Live, an Xbox Live Arcade version of the title in which a plethora of skins, music tracks and various other features such as online ranking and versus mode will be constantly added and made available via the Xbox Live marketplace. No exact details were given yet, but Mizugiuchi mentions seasonal skins/music and confirms Madonna as being on the soundtrack. Next is Lumines Mobile, which has been licensed to Buena Vista Games and is being developed by Gameloft. Also mentioned is Lumines Plus a more or less direct port of Lumines to the Playstation 2. While Lumines Plus will feature a few unspecified new additions, online play has yet to be determined. Finally, Mizuguchi divulges some new info on Lumines 2, the sequel to the original PSP Lumines. Lumines 2 is set to feature over 100 songs by artists of various genres, full motion video, and a brand new mission mode. He also mentions the development of a Disney themed version of Meteos, possibly with online play and muses about the possibility of Lumines on the Playstation 3. Overall, it looks as though we’ll have no shortage of Lumines titles in the coming summer/fall seasons.
Read More | Game Informer
Guitar-less Hero Games On The Way?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Rumors,
RedOctane President Kai Huang talked with Next-Generation.biz today and dropped more interesting hints about their plan for next generation consoles. According to the article, there’s a “very very high likelihood of additional Hero games”. Not all that surprising considering what a boon Guitar Hero has been for the company, but it’s still good to hear that they’re working on new ideas.
Huang also pointed to the online arena being the next big stage for the Hero titles:
“We will [utilize online features]. As far as games like Guitar Hero and other music games that we have in the pipeline are concerned, I think there are going to be significant changes to the gameplay.”
“Online is definitely going to be a huge component of what we’re planning, whether that’s downloading new music or characters or skins or online play features, those are the things that are really going to be the major changes for next-gen.”
Put the two pieces together, and you have another indication that RedOctane might be working on some sort of cooperative rock-band game with multiple instruments. Do we have to buy a peripheral for each though? And just how big is the “Drum Hero” controller going to be.
Read More | Next-Gen.biz
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GamePro’s Eleven Most Groundbreaking Controllers
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Hardware, Nintendo, PlayStation 2, Xbox,
GamePro has a list of what they feel to be the eleven most groundbreaking controllers of all time. Most of the controllers on the list aren’t that controversial, but we thought you might be interested, so here they are:
- The Zapper (NES)
- Dreamcast Controller
- Nintendo Wavebird (Gamecube)
- Super Nintendo Gamepad
- Atari 2600 Joystick
- Nintendo 64 Controller
- Wii Remote
- Xbox Controller Type S
- Playstation Dual Shock
- Keyboard and Mouse
- NES Controller
Its hard to argue with the likes of the Zapper and the Dreamcast controller. Even the Atari 2600 controller was groundbreaking in its own, breakable, hand-cramping way. But while the concepts behind the Wii controller are innovative, it remains to be seen whether this controller will really alter the industry in a meaningful way. It certainly pushed Sony to adopt motion-sensing, but it’s hard to consider this a real breakthrough until the console actually ships. Similarly, the Xbox Type S controller may be best known for being released in response to the horrible feedback that the original Xbox “Duke” controller got; while it is a well executed controller, there isn’t a whole lot new that it brings to the table. Its amazing to see how many of the controller breakthroughs come from Nintendo; they weren’t always the first to implement a control scheme, but they usually were the first to make such things usable and gamer friendly.
Read More | GamePro
Interview With Matt Lee, Xbox 360 Game Technology Group Developer
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360,
Ars Technica has a fairly in depth interview with one of the developers from Microsoft’s Game Technology Group, Matt Lee. In his words, his job “is to help game developers make better Xbox 360 games.” There are a ton of technical details in the interview, ranging from improvements in the Altivec units on the PowerPC cores, CPU multithreading issues, and procedural world generation.
Somewhat interesting are the perspectives on the video game market; as a developer, the marketshare statements might not hold a lot of weight. Bandied about is the 10 million unit head start, as if that were fact at this point. With the PS2 outselling the Xbox 360 in May, and an average of 250,000 Xbox 360 units sold by month, if Xbox 360 sales remain the same for the rest of the year, that targets an additional 1.5 to 2 million Xbox 360s in the United States; Europe might add a similar number, and Japan’s sales will be negligable. Add to this the fact that Wii and the Playstation 3 ship in November, and Sony’s marketing machine will be intense. So 10 million sounds good, but is probably as optimistic as Microsoft’s original holiday projections for the Xbox 360. Saying that “Both the Japanese and US markets are reaching saturation at this point” may have some weight in that there aren’t a lot of ways to incrementally add new gamers, but the existing core gamer demographic is still a battle to be fought every generation. Add to this the strong drives that Nintendo is making with its “Blue Ocean Strategy” in all three territories seems to indicate the opposite; that there are new opportunities, just not in the standard game development genres.
Lee also takes some time to discuss the PS3 architecture. Given that he probably doesn’t have a Sony NDA signed or a development kit, he’s probably working off much of the same information as the general public. There might be some insight he has talking with developers experienced on both platforms, so the commentary is interesting from that light. Porting from PS3 to Xbox 360 and vice-versa will be difficult, Lee predicts, but that’s hardly a revelation; the original PS2 and Xbox consoles saw some spectacularly bad cross-platform ports in their day, most notoriously with some of Midway’s releases. The Xbox 360’s unified memory architecture may be somewhat of an advantage, but its hard to tell at this point. It is, however, interesting to get a technical review through Microsoft-colored glasses.
Read More | ArsTechnica
Resolving HDTV Lag In Games
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360,
The Xbox 360 has sought to usher in the era of high definition gaming, and many gamers have purchased HDTV sets to go along with their new Xbox 360s. However, while HDTV offers spectacular pictures at stunning resolutions, there are some issues, the most vexxing of which is HDTV lag. IGN.com tries to dissect the problem, and offer up some solutions to the issue. There are basically two areas where HDTV lag can occur: first, when resolutions other than the native resolution of the television are used, the TV will have to alter the signal to display correctly on the set. This will sometimes require scaling the image up or down in resolution, and may also require converting the signal from an interlaced signal to progressive, or vice-versa, depending on the television type. This conversion takes a finite amount of time, and depending on the television, will either be so quick as to be unnoticeable in gaming, or can be long enough to affect the ability to play games at all.
The second issue occurs when there are additional filtering options offered by the TV. One of the more common is Samsung’s DNIe, but most of the high end HDTV manufacturers will have their own proprietary signal filter that will attempt to improve the picture seen by the user. This process again takes time. Usually it doesn’t take that long for signal processing to occur, but combined with the time taken to scale the image in the previous examples, this can again cripple gaming.
IGN proposes a few solutions to this problem. First, if the gamer hasn’t bought an HDTV set, try to test the set first with some timing intensive games in the store first. Obviously, it will be difficult to bring your dance pad in to work through some 10 foot Dance Dance Revolution tracks, but fighting games are notoriously twitch sensitive.
If you already have a set, try and set your HDTV to as close to native resolution as possible. With some consoles, this will be next to impossible. The Gamecube supports 480P resolution on some games, but most will be 480i. The Playstation 2 will have even fewer 480p games. Most original Xbox games are also 480p, but some will support 720p and higher resolutions. The Xbox 360 should offer native support for most resolutions, including 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Relying on the Xbox 360’s internal scaler should help resolve the issue in most circumstances.
They also recommend turning off any image enhancement filters on the TV. Some sets offer a “game” mode that passes the signal through without any additional filtering, and this may help as well. Finally, if none of these help, it may be necessary to purchase hardware that has a faster scaling engine than the one in the television set. IGN has a couple of recommendations, including the Micomsoft XRGB boxes that are usually available from import stores like Lik-Sang or NCSX.
Read More | IGN Gear
May Game Sales Fall
Posted by Thea Davis Categories: Corporate News, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360,
Video games sales for the month of May fell 10.2%, according to market research group NPD. (Data for May does not include PC game sales.) Nintendo held the top spot in sales with “New Super Mario Bros.” as well as the third spot with its “Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day” title. Square Enix’s “Kingdom Hearts II” held the second spot. The lag in video game sales is seen as a temporary blimp largely attributed to the fact that consumers are awaiting the debut of new gaming consoles in the fall. In related news, Nintendo has sold a reported 136,000 units of the new DS Lite system in the United States on Sunday and Monday, virtually matching the pace of the original DS unit.
Top Five Game Sales for May
- New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)
- Kingdom Hearts II (Square Enix)
- Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day (Nintendo)
- God of War (Sony)
- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Take-Two / Bethesda)
Read More | Washington Post
Test Drive Unlimited Beta Sign Up
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Internet, PlayStation 2,
Atari has opened a beta sign up form for United States Playstation 2 owners with a broadband connection to test their foray in the “massively open online racing” genre. Those users with a PS2 capable of connecting to the internet can sign up to give feedback on “tuning and balancing, assessing online stability, and general functionality testing” for the new game. Test Drive: Unlimited will be based in the real world location of Oahu, Hawaii, and according to Atari will feature over 1000 miles of roads, and numerous real-life cars and motorcycles for the user to race and upgrade. The retail game is currently scheduled for a September, 2006, release on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 platforms. Atari clearly wants to give the impression that the Playstation 2 game will have most of the Xbox Live functionality built-in, and how close they get will be seen first by gamers lucky enough to get into the closed beta.
Read More 
| Beta Signup Form
Bad Week For Gold Farmers
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Internet, MMORPG, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360,
This week proved to be a bad week for gold farmers. Blizzard first announced that they have closed over 30,000 accounts in their MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Along with these accounts, over 30 million in gold was removed from affected in game economies. Square Enix followed up with a statement saying that, following an in depth investigation, they have removed 250 accounts that were participating in what they call “Real Money Trading” or RMT in their online game Final Fantasy XI. Square’s instance was a little different, in that the traders in Final Fantasy were more heavily using item and gold duping hacks to gain vast amounts of the in-game currency, gil. Over 250 billion gil was removed from the Final Fantasy servers in this operation. Given the resources available to gold farmers, it is doubtful that these measures will have a lasting affect on the RPGs, but do make for a good show of faith from both Square and Blizzard.
Read More | World of Warcraft Forums
Read More | PlayOnline.com
Video Games Used In Minneapolis English Class
Posted by Josh Smith Categories: Culture, PlayStation 2,
An eighth grade English class in Minneapolis has started using video games to engage students in learning. The students are drawing parallels between the video games and other literature read in class as well as studying the plot of video games. Recently a student noted the similarity between Sonic the Hedgehog’s journey home and the plight of Odysseus. Brock Dubbel, the instructor, acquired the video game equipment on Craigslist as well as accumulating equipment from around the building. Mr. Dubbel also teaches a summer course to educators on using video games as a tool to educate their students. This is a prime example of how video games can be a positive experience for today’s youth. Somebody should copy Hillary Clinton on the article.
Read More | WCCO
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