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Rez Coming to Xbox Live Arcade
Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Action, Music, Third Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade,
There once was a game named Rez. Developed by Tetsuya Mizguchi’s division within Sega, Rez was a hybrid music-shooter for Dreamcast and PS2 that sputtered in sales but turned some heads in the process. Before long, the game was out of print and new copies were fetching a pretty penny on Ebay. Many gamers kicked themselves over that twenty-dollar copy that they didn’t pick up at the time, because now the chance to play the game was pretty much gone.
Well now we all get a second chance. Mizguchi, now of Q Entertainment (who brought us Lumines), has announced that Rez HD is coming to Xbox Live Arcade.
“We are excited to announce that Rez will be given a new life, this time in digital form. The game will be presented in hi-definition and will be accessible to those who did not have a chance to experience Rez the first time around,” said Mizuguchi. “Personally, Rez has been and will always be a lifelong concept. I hope to take what I learned from the experience of creating the original game and look forward to taking it to a whole new level in the future.”
Featuring 5.1 sound and the usual HD enhancements, Rez HD will hit XBLA early next year.
Read More 
| 1UP
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Guitar Hero III Announced for Mac and PC
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Activision, Downloadable Content, Music, PC,
It took several years but the marketability of the popular console series Guitar Hero couldn’t go unnoticed by the PC side of gaming for very long and today Aspyr Media announced that it will be bringing Activision‘s Guitar Hero III to PC and Mac in time for the holiday season.
Dusty Welch, head of publishing at Red Octane, said in a statement to GameDaily BIZ: “Providing the option for our fans to play Guitar Hero at their desk or on a laptop on the go is incredibly exciting, and we’re thrilled to now offer the ability to rock out literally anywhere and everywhere.”
The PC version will ship with a USB guitar controller based on an as-yet unannounced Gibson model. Aspyr is planning on offering some type of download service but declined to reveal any specific details of how that would be handled saying, “We hope to have a very exciting announcement soon.” At this stage Aspyr is still conducting compatibility tests and hasn’t solidified the system requirements but stressed that they were aiming to make the game accessible to the widest audience possible.
Read More | GameDaily BIZ via Evil Avatar
Castlevania Creator Talks About What’s Next For the Series
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Action, Adventure, Konami, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360,
Koji Igarashi, creator of the popular Castlevania franchise, is featured in an interview with Game Informer where he talks about what’s next for the series.
[Next,] I will be working on a DS version, but I am thinking of moving to the home consoles for the future. I will continue to use 2D for the DS version, but I’m still trying to figure out which console to do the home console versions. I think the Xbox 360 would be the best platform for the U.S. market.
Another DS Castlevania wasn’t really a bold prediction, but focusing on the 360 is a little unexpected. Igarashi goes on to clarify, “The U.S. market is the biggest market for the Castlevania series, so I will give the first priority to the U.S. market. The platform will be the Xbox 360, since the PS3 isn’t doing well everywhere in the world.” He does later suggest that he thinks Metal Gear Solid 4 could easily increase the PS3 base in the US which would make it more attractive as a target for a Castlevania game.
As for the Wii, which represents an even larger market than 360, Igarashi says he hasn’t quite figured out how to make the gesture controls work with the game saying that the motion for cracking a whip might be too hard on users but some kind of abstraction would be “not so good.” “I will have to think about a way to accomplish this,” he concludes.
Read More | Game Informer
First Ninja Gaiden 2 Screens!
Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Action, Fighting, Screenshots, Xbox 360,
Wow, these came out of nowhere. Xbox Japan has posted the first screens of the highly anticipated Xbox 360 action sequel. Things have been so quiet on the game’s development front that some of us were wondering if it was even happening. Well wonder no longer. Judging a game’s graphical finesse on a handful of still shots is always a fool’s errand, but I’ll bite anyway. Ninja Gaiden 2 is looking nice…really nice. The game doesn’t look like a monumental jump technically over Ninja Gaiden Sigma, but then remember the finesse and the still shots and the fool’s errand thing. Itagaki’s latest will surely be a thing of beauty in motion. For now, enjoy this little taste and expect to hear a lot more at this month’s Tokyo Game Show. Oh, and hit the link for the rest of the screens, and gallons of arterial spray.
Read More | NeoGAF
Inside Halo 3’s $10 Million Marketing Push
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Corporate News, First Person Shooters, Release Dates, Xbox 360,
Microsoft has known how important Halo 3 will be to their success this generation since before they even announced the Xbox 360. Halo 2 sold $125 million on the first day, but then the original Xbox was just struggling for recognition in the wake of the PS2 juggernaut. Now the 360 holds a tenuous lead in installed base and isn’t selling the way Microsoft may have hoped. If it’s possible Halo 3 may have become even more important to Microsoft’s strategy than they originally hoped. Fortunately, they’ve been planning ahead.
In an article released today on Brand Week, the calculated ten-month marketing efforts behind Bungie‘s trilogy finale is dissected starting from the Starry Nights TV spot launched last November through the public beta this spring/early summer. They talk about the Project Iris viral campaign and the efforts they’ve gone to secure strategic branding partners. This has included the Mountain Dew Game Fuel limited edition soft drink that comes plastered with Halo 3 imagery plus a total of $5 million from Pontiac to help push the launch of the game on September 25.
And they aren’t done yet. Microsoft will begin the full blitz with the new Believe campaign that will lead up to the launch taking place at midnight in over 10,000 stores to give Halo fans a chance to grab the game as soon as possible. It’s an interesting read about the science behind building a monster.
Read More | Brand Week via Kotaku
Harmonix Co-Founder Answers Questions About Rock Band
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Accessories, Downloadable Content, Features, Hardware, Microsoft, Music, PlayStation 3, Wireless, Xbox 360,
The Official Xbox Magazine’s podcast has an interview this week with Harmonix co-founder and president Alex Rigopulos about their upcoming game Rock Band. In the interview he talks about the game bundles, although light on concrete details he does confirm a band-in-a-box bundle that will include a guitar, drum kit and microphone. However, he goes on to say that the PlayStation 3 version will include a wireless guitar controller while the Xbox 360 version will have to include a wired guitar because Microsoft‘s wireless technology is too expensive to make the bundle reasonably priced. Since the 360 also has only two USB ports, the 360 Rock Band bundle will also be packed with a USB hub.
Rigopulos goes on to discuss the game’s career modes a little, saying there will be both solo career mode that progresses in a linear fashion similar to what Guitar Hero players are used to, but they are also including a less linear band career mode. In this mode you traverse to various venues trying to build up your fan base and in some cases return to previously played locations to maintain your fame there. Also it’s worth noting that the solo career mode will not include a bass career track so your options are vocals, guitar and drums in solo career mode. But Rigopulos did reveal that the finale songs for each career path (and therefore likely the difficulty distinctions throughout) will be different for each instrument, and he even said that at this point the drum finale will be The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
Click to continue reading Harmonix Co-Founder Answers Questions About Rock Band
Read More | KOXM Podcast
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground Demo Released Today
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Activision, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Sports, Wii, Xbox 360,
Following close behind EA‘s demo for new blood competitor Skate, Activision is dropping a demo of Tony Hawk‘s Proving Ground onto the Xbox Live Marketplace today.
Proving Ground is supposed to challenge Skate with enhanced customization features, especially centered around making videos, and plenty of refinements to the online experience like seamless solo to multiplayer transitions. They’re also throwing in a nail-the-grab feature to compliment the popular nail-the-trick mode from last year’s Project 8 entry and multiple career paths. There is no firm release date set, but the game is expected to hit store shelves for most current platforms sometime in October.
Read More | Team Xbox
Peter Moore Has Big Plans For EA Sports
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Corporate News, Electronic Arts, Sports,
Peter Moore, long known as the public face of Microsoft‘s Xbox division, stepped into his new digs as EA Sports president last week and started off saying he wants EA Sports’ brand to compete in a broader arena than just the video games market, facing off against general sports brands like Nike and ESPN.
Despite selling millions of copies of its flagship titles each year, EA Sports has struggled to expand effectively and EA seems to be banking on Moore to help them widen their reach. “That could mean broadcast sports, sports camps, the ability to license consumer products around the EA Sports brand,” he told the New York Times. Moore is also looking to leverage EA’s technology to create social networking and news sites, all centered around sports and of course the EA Sports name. “I think we have an opportunity to aggregate information and bring it to life with video technologies,” he said.
“If we look at this connected world we’re entering, sports is a sort of social and cultural glue that reaches across the globe,” Moore continues. “There is an opportunity for EA Sports to evolve beyond a games brand to become a true global sports and entertainment brand, and I think we can compete there.”
Read More | New York Times via Level Up
Silent Hill V Video and Developer Interviews
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: PlayStation 3, Survival Horror, Trailers, Xbox 360,
Check out the video featuring footage and interviews with developers of the upcoming spook-fest sequel, Silent Hill V. Development of the game has been handed off to The Collective, but they seem to be determined to return the game to territory more akin to Silent Hill 2 than the mixed reception of IV. They’ve got a pretty solid looking engine running that features a lot of the familiar effects now rendered in real-time plus they’ve worked to enhance the combat which was always kind of a series weak point.
Unfortunately the interview doesn’t dive too deeply into how well The Collective can manage to retain the creeping psychological unease Silent Hill is famous for (versus rival series Resident Evil‘s shock and gore approach).
Silent Hill V is due sometime in 2008 for PS3 and Xbox 360.
Click to continue reading Silent Hill V Video and Developer Interviews
PSP God of War Gets a Release Date and Demo Details
Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Action, Adventure, Portable/Mobile, PSP, Sony, Special Editions,
The next installment in the popular Sony franchise God of War, subtitled Chains of Olympus and a prequel to the original God of War, will be debuting on the PSP March 4, 2008. The news may be a little disappointing for some hoping to add the flagship first party title to Sony’s handheld this Christmas, but Sony has also announced that it will be putting out a demo at the end of this month. When the game’s official website launched back in April, Sony included the opportunity for North American gamers to sign up for a special UMD-based demo version prior to the game’s release.
The limited edition demo will include part of a playable level plus extra goodies including behind-the-scenes footage. A copy of the demo without the extras will be released later this year.
Read More | GameSpot
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