Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait until February to get our hands on the game. Joost van Dongen of Ronimo Games has confirmed that Swords and Soldiers has been bumped back to February 2009. At least we can be sure that they are working on upping the quality of what already looks to be a fantastic title. Thanks to AtomicOctopus for the heads up!

Link

C3: Considering the strong sales of Shadow Dragon in Japan, will you be trying to bring more of the ‘classic’ Fire Emblem games to a larger audience by remaking them on DS or Wii (such as Thracia 776)?

Horikawa: First of all, our priority is to ensure that this title is favoured by enough many customers all around the world, achieving a great final sales figure. This is a message to every game player out there - please give Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon a try!

C3: Now that development of Fire Emblem on DS has been completed, can fans expect a new Wii version from the team or will development continue on DS?

Horikawa: As for sequels, I think time is not ripe yet to disclose such information, either what our exact plans are or what platform we will focus on next. However, hopefully I will be able to announce something in the near future that will make all fans very excited…

Full interview here

If you’re looking to get your hands on Diablo III sometime soon, well, don’t hold your breath. Many people thought the game might be nearing completion after Blizzard VP, Rob Pardo, mentioned at the developer’s World Wide Invitational that all the different classes and the first act were finished. Sadly, that isn’t exactly the case, mostly since their definition of “playable” doesn’t mean “done.” Bashiok, a Diablo CM with Blizzard, explains:

Just to clarify this was an interview with Rob at the announcement of the game at WWI, and just to avoid any conclusions drawn without watching the video here’s the quote:

“I think most of the other classes are actually playable back at the home office, but I’m not going to tell you about them today. And most of, kind of the first act, is also pretty playable, but we still have a long ways to go.”

So you’re quite a bit off from “all classes” and “all of act one” being finished. It’s really insubstantial information though, because anyone that understands the Blizzard development process and core values we’re all about iterating. It’s not done until it’s done.

As far as information releases go and current development everyone on the team is working really hard on the game, and it’s progressing really well, but we’re just kind of in a weird spot as far as new information releases go right now.

Most likely, Pardo’s comments were partly accurate: the first act can be played, but there’s still a lot of work needed to be done. They probably still need to do a lot of work on the graphics and animation before they can call it “done.” And since they’re working so hard on getting those sorts of kinks ironed out, we probably won’t be hearing much about the game itself anytime soon. In other word, I wouldn’t go adding Diablo III to your 2009 Christmas list just yet.

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One of Nintendo’s major reasons for not supporting HD and keeping the Wii’s specifications conservative was to make it a viable platform for original IPs. The argument was that developing games on machines with multi-core processors and complex architectures was increasing development costs to such a degree, that the appetite for risk was rapidly diminishing within the industry resulting in endless sequels and me-too titles. Two years have passed since the Wii was released and it has since gained many original IPs that allow us to see if Nintendo’s decision has borne fruit, or whether it was just an excuse to limit R&D expenses.

Be sure to also check out Part 1 of this series.

De Blob

VGChartz estimated worldwide sales:300,000

Originally created as a free downloadable pc game, De Blob first came to life in the hands of 8 students from Utrecht University, Netherlands. Publishing giants THQ were so impressed by what they saw, they bought the rights to the game and handed over development to Australian outfit Blue Tongue Entertainment. Despite slow initial sales in Europe and the U.S., THQ has come to regard De Blob as a critical and commercial success. Its sales are likely to close in on the important 400,000 mark through the holidays, and should easily exceed half a million going into next year. LittleBigPlanet and De Blob show that the platformer isn’t dead just yet.

No More Heroes

VGChartz estimated worldwide sales:360,000

The strongest indicator that No More Heroes is a sales success is that a sequel is on its way - Desperate Struggle. It also serves as the strongest lesson on why sales for Wii games should not be judged solely on their opening week, something Suda himself learned much to his relief. Even now, judging No More Heroes is difficult to say the least: how much should an ultra-violent, cel shaded, censored (in Europe), technically challenged, flawed masterpiece sell exactly? Enough to warrant a sequel and keep its developer in business, that’s how much.

Okami

VGChartz estimated worldwide sales:130,000

While obviously a port of a PS2 game, Okami’s inclusion on this list is justified by its sad legacy. This was the game that may have finally caused Capcom to terminate Clover Studios, despite their work on some of the finest games of the previous generation. Okami was to be Capcom’s attempt to take Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series head on. Critically the game succeeded beyond all expectations, with many reviewers rating it higher than Nintendo’s epic. At retail however Okami didn’t even begin to approach the sales of Twilight Princess, selling a total of 270,00 copies in the U.S.

Capcom handed over the reigns to the talented Ready at Dawn for the Wii port, but with a limited budget and schedule that ultimately did not allow the developer to add any additional content. Despite this, Capcom revealed that the game had sold 280,000 copies worldwide a mere 4 months after its release, bringing it approximately in line with PS2 sales. While it could be argued that the PS2 version of Okami had a greater amount of competition at the time, it also strongly confirms the existence of Wii gamers hungry for high quality, original content. Overall though, the case for a game like Okami is not strengthened even with the additional Wii sales - a port got the go ahead, but a sequel never will.

WiiWare

While there have been reports of some WiiWare games selling only in their hundreds, two of the best original games released on the platform have found success. LostWinds, released in May ‘08, has sold over 268,000 copies - significant success for a game developed by a small team in a matter of months. Frontier boss Braben has spoken in glowing terms about the project and has confirmed a sequel is on the way. World of Goo, despite piracy rates of 90% on the PC, has found an audience on WiiWare with sales of 44,000 in th U.S. after only being on sale a month. Arguably the best game WiiWare has to offer, World of Goo should go on to match LostWinds success after its European release and holiday sales. Encouragingly for 3rd Parties, Nintendo doesn’t have the stranglehold on the WiiWare market that it does on traditional software.

The Future

So where does this leave developers when it comes to original IPs on the Wii? The only million seller on the list is Red Steel - a big-budget game that was heavily advertised and most likely needed its large sales to cover its development costs. The rest have sold (or look likely to sell) between 400,000 - 750,000 across their lifetime, figures that neatly match up to the benchmark that Reggie used during E3 ‘08 when taking about successful 3rd party Wii games. WiiWare has also proved to be a strong platform for original content and not just a crutch for shovelware as many had feared.

The ability to turn a profit from original Wii games is evident, the biggest hurdle seems to be the runaway success of ports and mini-game collections that require fewer development resources and time to create. Why put enormous effort into a sequel to Zack & Wiki when a Zombie-lite port of Dead Rising from the 360 will likely make more money? Despite this looming question, a large number of developers have taken up the gautlet with titles like Little King’s Story, The Conduit, MadWord, Deadly Creatures and Arc Rise Fantasia.

So Rusty wanted me to write a little blog post about Everyday Shooter for PSP. I don’t really know what to talk about so I guess I’ll start chronological and see where that goes.

I actually tried porting Everyday Shooter to PSP way back around December 20th, 2007, and stopped around December 27th, 2007. Here’s an old video I found from back then:

WHAT!!??!? WHY DIDN’T YOU RELEASE IT!?!?? WHY DID YOU SIT ON IT FOR 239846921487 MONTHS YOU SON OF SO MANY UNMENTIONABLE THINGS!!!!!!!

I thought the same thing until I remembered that it crashed every eight seconds, had a ridiculously low frame rate, was missing graphics and effects, and generally blew.

Yeah, Everyday Shooter PSP really worried me at the time. I was convinced to get the game running properly it needed to be hacked to shreds - reducing the number of enemies, changing all the
backgrounds, changing the enemy graphics - ugh, this is going to SUCK.

So I dropped the idea until Rusty contacted my agent, Warren, and I, saying Sony was interested in putting Everyday Shooter on PSP. Immediately, the floodgates opened to the stress of so many potential problems sweeping my soul to the faraway depths of darkness where it was then beaten repeatedly at three frames per second before crashing…

But Rusty said (paraphrased): “Jon, this is how it’s going to go down. We’re going to hire this developer [Backbone], and I know this guy, he is one of the best programmers I know. And the deal is going to be this: if they even hint at a suggestion of messing with your vision, we are going to fire them and find a new developer. This is going to be a straight port, we are not going to mess with your vision.”

Skeptically, I replied “and the boobies?” To which he answered “no boobies.”

Honestly, I was still skeptical.

I was also told that the original QA team for ES-PS3 was brought in to test the PSP version too, so I’m quite confident that it was left in good hands.

I’m amazed at the job Backbone did:

They actually ported it without altering any of the graphics, effects, or gameplay! How!?? No seriously, how did you do that!? Like, even the backgrounds? I was expecting to have to do this whole back and forth about what graphics needed to be changed and redesigned, what enemies needed to be reduced, gimping the game just for the sake of performance… NO! Not at all! They just somehow made it work. What is this sweet juice of hexadecimal that you drink from and where do I get it?

Then again, I’m not technically a great programmer, so maybe there’s some simple secret I’m not aware of. I generally just multiply things by negative one if they don’t work because in math, to get the opposite of something you just multiply it by negative one. Since the opposite of “doesn’t work” is “it works,” multiplying numbers by negative one should yield a correct result. Unfortunately, when
applying this strategy to Everyday Shooter PSP it still didn’t work.

Thus, and clearly thus, there was no solution.

Of course Backbone proved me wrong.

I think this is a pretty accurate port of the game. I mean, I played it till my hands cramped, jotting down every subtle problem, some bordering on imaginary, but yet still fixed. For example, the first
few builds I played, everything looked great and seemed to be in working order but something was weird. I kept getting beaned by the game! I mean, I couldn’t even get to level 4! Suspecting my own
skill level, I busted out the PS3 version just to make sure and to my surprise, I was still able reach the final stage with just three starting lives. It’s got to be the port.

Okay, so how do you convince someone that this is actually a bug and not because of some lack of skill on my part? I mean, otherwise, the game felt exactly like the PS3 version, so there was no factual information to draw from except for “well, Jon thinks it’s too hard now.” For weeks, I kept thinking they were going to ignore it, and it’ll get released, and the internet will swallow me whole, and then it will hurt a lot.

But amazingly, the bug was found. Apparently (and from what I recall — I might be wrong), it had something to do with timing issues since Everyday Shooter PSP runs at a much lower simulation rate given that the PSP isn’t as powerful as the PS3.

To this day, I’m still not sure if anyone believed me on this, and I’m not even sure if I believed myself (I’m quite positive it was way harder, though), and I totally see that the whole thing just sounded nuts and imaginary, but either way, Backbone was gracious enough to give me the benefit of the doubt and make this change. I know some people who paid a silver dollar only to have their ports birched by shoddy developers, so I’m very grateful for the amount of effort and attention Backbone gave to the project.

Anyway, we tried to make this as accurate as possible. Warren called me a few weeks before the final build asking whether I played the PSP port yet and what I thought of it. I replied, “I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s basically Everyday Shooter PS3, except it’s running on a PSP.”
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Forza Motorsport 2 experts drift into gear originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“It’s been a great high for the last couple of weeks,” Daniel Suarez, Activision’s executive producer for “Call of Duty: World At War” told me in an interview last week. Happy is any man whose game has launched so well that it topped — his words — the “bajillion pound gorilla” that is “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King” in sales in the U.K in its launch week.

Suarez and I talked about a number of things during out interview, some of which I’ve covered here on Multiplayer this week — plans for upcoming DLC for the game and where the game’s surprising Nazi Zombie mode came from.

The first topic of my interview, however, was how the development team at Treyarch dealt with making a game in the shadow of “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.” That was the bajillion-pound gorilla as far as I was concerned.

It’s not every year that a development team puts out a game that so many critics don’t expect to be better than last year’s installment. How do you deal with that pressure?

“If you look at what was done for ‘Call of Duty 3,’ everybody goes, ‘Treyarch’s not very good’…Well they only had a year to do it.”

Suarez said his team was “100% aware” of the main knock on “World At War” going in, the reason some gaming critics were expecting a stinker. The “Call of Duty” franchise had been threatening to veer into “Star Trek” movie or “Splinter Cell” gaming territory, flip-flopping in quality with each installment.

Last year’s “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” as well as “Call of Duty 2” two years before that were seen as good “Call of Duty” games. The one in between, “CoD 3,” was a critical disappointment. The even number ones were made by Infinity Ward. But installment #3 and this new one, “World at War,” were developed by Treyarch. “If you look at what was done for ‘Call of Duty 3,’ everybody goes, ‘Treyarch’s not very good. “Call of Duty 3″ wasn’t as good as the other ones.’” You have to look at the detail of it. Why was “Call of Duty 3″ rated only a mid-80 game? Well they only had a year to do it in a year that they were also doing PS3 for the first time on a launch year and also the Wii on a launch year.” The new game, “World At War,” he said, benefited from a two-year development cycle and an embrace of some new priorities like improving the voice-acting and pushing an M rating.

“Everybody wants to say it’s a competition,” Suarez said when I pressed him about “World At War”’s airplane level, which seemed to me to be an attempt to one-up “Modern Warfare”’s airplane level. I wasn’t buying his explanation that there wasn’t competition. Didn’t these teams have heat? I persisted that there had to be some sort of competitive urge there to prove that “World at War” could top its predecessor. “It’s not like that,” Suarez said. As Suarez tells it, Treyarch started with historical inspiration and then amped up the drama for reasons other than competing with Infinity Ward. “From our perspective it’s never about how we can one-up the previous game. It’s: ‘What do we think is going to make a great game? What do we think is fun? What do we think is going to make people’s jaws drop when they play it?’”

Suarez said there were three levels in Treyarch that is most proud of. Judge Treyarch by them: 1) The flight level Black Cats, for its sheer Michael Bay bombastic spectacle. 2) The street scene in Eviction, a level in Berlin that culminates in a fight in the metro. 3) The Hard Landing level that ends with a massive Pacific island firefight.

At the time of our interview I believed that one of the best measures of “World At War”’s appeal — and one of the best ways to see if Activision had been overzealous in releasing a sequel in the franchise this year — was Xbox Live activity. A year after its release, “Modern Warfare” consistently ranks at or near the top of the chart for most online activity on Microsoft’s console. I suggested to Suarez that some people, maybe many people, just wouldn’t migrate away from the “Modern Warfare” experience they love so much.

“Other iterations to ‘Counter-Strike’ occurred after that first one came out, but a lot of people still liked the core of what [the original] ‘Counter-Strike’ was. I think it’s the same with ‘Call of Duty’ multiplayer.”

“I think there’s going to be a longstanding group of people that play “Modern Warfare.” I think “Modern Warfare,” to me, at least when I play it today, it’s very much how ‘Counter-Strike‘ was. Other iterations to ‘Counter-Strike’ occurred after that first one came out, but a lot of people still liked the core of what [the original] ‘Counter-Strike’ was. I think it’s the same with ‘Call of Duty’ multiplayer. A lot of people come over to play ‘World At War” that kind of like the setting. They like that it’s a little different. It’s got new maps. They like the vehicles and different perks. They may go back. They may come back to “World At War.” From our perspective, all we want to deliver is a great game. It’s not a competition, like ‘Who’s got more volume online today vs. [Modern Warfare]?’”

Typically a game developer can assume that their online-enabled sequel will eventually have more players competing in it than the previous iteration. See “Halo 3“’s online activity currently surpassing “Halo 2“’s. The prospect of the same thing happening with the “Call of Duty” franchise isn’t guaranteed. I asked Suarez if he thought that online usage of “World at War” would eventually exceed that of “Modern Warfare.” Shouldn’t that just be a matter of time? “We’ll see how the sales go,” he said. “There’s 10 million copies sold of ‘Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’. The hope is that if we can get close to that number… again it’s not “Do we hope it exceeds the number of users online?’ Look, I’d love to be number one on Xbox Live and hold that crown for a while.”

Well, today Suarez may be an even happier man. The latest popularity ranking for Xbox Live usage shows that last week, “Call of Duty: World At War” was played more online than “Modern Warfare.”

Victory? It’s not a competition.

Riddick debut trailer is dark, gravelly originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It is once again GameTap Thursday, and what a great week it is! Not only is a new episode of American McGee’s Grimm Volume 2 now available to play free for the first 24-hours, but subscribers can also download Gothic 3 and Kingpin. Metal Slug fans who have signed up on GameTap are in for a treat because Metal Slug X is the latest free game to be added to the growing roster (145 free games total).

Here are the details for each game added this week:

• Grimm Volume 2, Episode 14: Iron John: A strange iron man living in the forest befriends a young man hoping an act of kindness will free him from his iron curse. With Iron John’s help the boy marries the princess and lives happily ever after—well, not really because Grimm hates that sort of thing.

• Gothic 3: Piranha Bytes’ third in the series of fantasy-themed role-playing games. In this installment, The Nameless Hero arrives on a continent overrun with orcs, who have enslaved most of the humans in the area. The Gothic series thrives on choices and reputation, and this installment is no different - players can side with the orcs, save the humans, or both. Gothic 3 also boasts a beautifully-rendered open world, with lush jungles, deserts and intricately detailed icy tundras.

• Kingpin: Life of Crime: Publisher Interplay and Redneck Rampage developer Grey Matter Interactive present Kingpin: Life of Crime, a first-person shooter set in a gritty, crime-ridden city. Players enact their revenge against drug kingpin Nikko Blanco using whatever weapons are available. Gameplay includes weapon modification, interactive conversations with non-playable characters, and the ability to hire gang members to join in the fight.

• Metal Slug X: (Free to play for one week only) Morden’s Army is at it again, and only the Metal Slug team can stand in its way. But taking down Morden and his troops won’t be easy. Fortunately what the team lacks in wits, it makes up for with ordnance: they’ve got about ten zillion bullets and grenades, plus the ultra-advanced (and stylish) Metal Slug super vehicles. Released in 1999, it is something of a remixed, upgraded, “director’s cut” version of Metal Slug 2. Gentlemen, start your war.

December 11 will see the release of Grimm Volume 2, Episode 15: The Pied Piper which like all Grimm episodes, will be free to play for the first 24-hours. In it, the Piped Piper uses his siren call (or flute if you will) to lure a kingdom’s children to a watery grave. Just how much more horrible can Grimm make such a tale? Tune in next week to find out.

In the meantime, to play Metal Slug X for free or any of the other games in GameTap’s wide variety of free titles, head on over to the website and sign up. While you are there, if you decide to become a subscriber, you can sign up for that too.

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