GG Weekly Videogame News 
![[amazon.com]](/cache/favicons/amazon.com.ico "amazon.com")
Punch-Out Australian Release Details
Comes Out in August, exclusively at JB Hi-Fi
kotaku.com.au
darthhomer
Display:
Order by:
No HDMI.......... so it's the same old regular weaksauce chipset?
So now I have a replacement console does the warranty 3 year cover for the E74 and RROD apply from today? Or does it count from when I bought my original broken model?
Mon 13 Jul 10:46 AM
Enlarge Photo
A man found naked at a casino claimed he was a Terminator sent from the future.
19-year-old Sean Stanley Smith was arrested on the Nevada border after he was spotted by a motorist wondering around the highway nude. He was ordered by police to stop but proceeded into a nearby casino - where he was then tasered in front of a group of children.
ADVERTISEMENT
Smith claims he was a Terminator sent back in time from the future - a reference to the film character made popular by Arnold Schwarznegger in the sci-fi franchise. The films usually start with a naked man being transported to the past.
However, it turned out that Smith was not a time-travelling Terminator but was in fact suffering from the side effects of LSD and marijuana. He was charged with indecent exposure and resisting a police officer.
What difficulty setting are you playing at?
The Agent mode is a joke. You're better off playing the game on Secret Agent or, preferably, Perfect Agent mode. The A.I. and mission objectives are a LOT better on those modes.
NPD preview:
EEDAR expects software sales for June 2009 to come in at $697 million, a 20% decrease over last year. The lack of a sales increase was primarily driven by the next-generation home and portable software titles. Unit sales are likely to decrease by 15% over last year with a 5% decrease in the average selling price (ASP). EEDAR believes the weak retail environment is the primary cause for the year-over-year decrease in ASPs.
June Sales and the State of the Industry
EEDAR has rerun its regression analysis for full-year software growth. Unfortunately, due to a slowdown in gaming sales, an increasingly aggressive retail environment and some delays from major titles, EEDAR is lowering full-year software growth estimates for 2009 from 7% down to 5%. On the upper-end, EEDAR estimates software sales for the full-year of 2009 will not exceed 7% growth (down from a previous 10%). The upper-end estimate assumes a picture perfect scenario in terms of release schedule, quality scores, and retail environment. EEDAR’s low-end estimate for software growth in 2009 is at least 2%.
Hardware Sales
EEDAR expects hardware unit sales for the next-generation systems to decrease by 33% over last year for the month of June, with all platforms, except the Xbox 360, posting a year-over-year decline. Another cause for the decline is due to the successful launch of both a PSP and PS3 software bundle in June 2008 that included God of War and Metal Gear Solid 4, respectively.
Quick Facts:
· June 2009 is expected to have 20 titles exceed 100,000 units compared to over 23 in June 2008.
· No titles are expected to sell over 1 million units in June 2009 (combined multi-platform) compared to none in June 2008.
· The top ten titles for June 2009 are expected to sell 2.9 million units combined compared to 3.7+ million in June 2008.
Motion Plus with Tiger Off to a Good Start
EEDAR estimates that Tiger Woods 2010, the motion plus bundle and stand-alone title for the Wii, will sell over 180,000 units combined in the United States, nearly a 100% increase over last year’s title, Tiger Woods 2009, on the same week-to-week comparison (Note that EEDAR tracks the motion plus bundle and stand-alone Wii title separately). For reference, Tiger Woods 2009 for the Wii eventually went on to exceed 1 million units worldwide. Interestingly enough, EEDAR’s first week retail channel checks indicated that the $49.99 Wii SKU, sans the motion plus bundle, outsold the motion plus bundle by 30%. Sequential weeks put the Motion Plus bundle ahead of the regular SKU. It should be noted, however, that the Motion Plus bundle is a limited 500,000 unit product partnership between Nintendo and EA for Tiger Woods 2010 and Grand Slam Tennis. Statements from these companies to date indicate that once these have sold out they will not be replenished.
Infamous vs. Prototype
Based upon EEDAR estimates, Infamous is currently on track to sell 35% more than Prototype for the PlayStation 3 in North America. Lifetime sales could outpace Infamous over Prototype by as much as 50% due to the longer sales curve exclusive titles receive. Due to near identical game play and quality scores, the Infamous vs. Prototype case study presents interesting data to publishers when considering the sales bump a title could receive by choosing exclusivity over a multiplatform release. It should be mentioned that Prototype is expected to outsell Infamous by over 90% when combining both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sales; however since EEDAR does not have details regarding the additional costs Activision accumulated to make Prototype a multiplatform release, overall ROI comparisons are not possible at this time.
UFC Greener than Expected
Originally, EEDAR and many other Analysts expected THQ to sell at least 2 million units of UFC 2009 Undisputed. Upon a very successful release, however, most increased their estimates to 2.5 million. Now that EEDAR has seen 8 weeks of retail sales, EEDAR is confident that THQ will ship out at least 3 million units of UFC 2009 Undisputed by the end of their fiscal year in March 2010. EEDAR believes UFC 2009 Undisputed is experiencing a longer and healthier retail sales curve over other AAA video game titles due to the continued promotion of the UFC brand for their upcoming UFC 100 Pay-Per-View event. Further driving these sales is the lack of competition in the fighting genre, continued television marketing of the UFC 2009 Undisputed video game, and the explosive increase in UFC’s fan base in 2009.
It counts from when you bought your original model.
That sucks.
EEDAR predictions:
No, that's Mico$ucks!
That's the model they should've sold in the first place.
That looks slick.
I know. It was called Albatross 18 or something like that in the states and it's a free-to-play PC Golf MMO, right? It's big in Korea and the servers are still going in the states too.
I meant new for the PSP. I knew it was based off of a old PC golf series.
But I'm hearing bad news about people feeling disappointed with the game. There was this recent article on Kotaku where Japanese Amazon users are tearing the game apart saying things like it should never have been on the DS. Was there ever a Famitsu review for this?
Anyway, hopefully it's not that bad.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
Spearfishing for XBLA? Awesome! I've always loved the idea of an underwater game, just casually exploring the depths of the oceans with the gorgeous scenery and exotic inhabitants. Finally a game to fill that void. Day 1 purchase confirmed.
I'm not real worried about about it being a bad game. The series has had its missteps, DQ VII was painful at times, but even that had some strong qualities that kept it playable. The Japanese fans are just fearful of change. Remember, the uproar when they originally showed off a RT battle system? Shit blew up, and SE went back and changed it.
It's going to be a very different game from DQVIII so there will inevtiably be some unfavorable comparison because of that. But the devs have been very vocal about how the game was modeled in some extent after DQ III which was legendary (and was not long ago voted the #3 game of all time by Famitsu readers). I'm sure it's an excellent game.
Well I'm glad someone found my joke amusing.Red Steel 2 really impressed me. The look and style of the game is really quite impressive, with hints of cel-shading in there. It reminds me a lot of XIII, and you could argue that this is the sequel that the game should've deserved. Though the CG cutscenes peppered between segments? Not as good looking.
As for the gameplay, the shooting/sword swinging looks like it works well. Though I'm not too convinced on the fact that the gun and sword are always equipped. What I mean is that you shoot normally, but you can swing the Wiimote to swing the sword or hit the A button to block at any time. It takes a little gettng used to, but that's because I'm more used to standard FPS's. Though it was a bit of a pain to accurately set up the MotionPlus, it definitely added to the game some.
TMNT Smash Up didn't impress me as much, but still fun. The first thing that gets you is just how similar it is to Smash Bros, from character/stage selection, fight intros, everything. Yet there are some cool aspects - there's quite a bit of interactivity within each stage, and some multi-tiering on some stages as well.
Getting used to having a life bar was interesting, though this isn't the only way to beat people. One stage that we played had a pit you could knock people into, costing them a life. That's really it - there wasn't much to the demo (seven characters, four stages). I was kinda hoping to play as the Rabbids...
Speaking of which, Rabbids Go Home was the last game we played. It's actually not too bad. There was quite a bit to the demo, and it all was pretty decent. Controlling the trolley actually is quite unique, and the collection aspect to the game was intriguing. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of the point to it, or any long reaching results or whatever. Though it feels kinda Katamari like in practice.
Though the one cool aspect that I really dug about the game was the customization elements to it. For instance, there's a mode known as "Inside the Wii Remote", where you suck a Rabbid into the inside of the Wii remote, and proceed to mess about, as you can hit buttons and move it about to get a reaction from the Rabbid. From here, you can customize the rabbid by warping his body; one instace we saw was putting his head in a vice and tightening it to make his head thin and neck longer, and you could put random stuff on him, though we didn't see much of that.
Lastly, I got to quickly play the new Soul Calibur game, the PSP's Broken Destiny. There really wasn't much to say about the demo - it was a singleplayer fight between only a handful of characters. Arena wise, it seems that Namco have taken a whole bunch of them from previous Soul Calibur games - the one I played on was from SC3, but the gameplay is very much like Soul Calibur IV, from the instant kills and the armor degredation. And it actually works quite well on the PSP.
The downside? They had two of the newer characters (Danphemier and Kratos) actually on the character select screen, but not playable. I would've loved the chance to try either of them out. Furthermore, they also claimed to have Dissidia there...but I didn't get to see it.
Though the biggest bummer of all was that two of the bigger Ubisoft titles - Assassins Creed II and Splinter Cell Conviction were at the event...yet were not playable to anyone there whom wasn't from Ubisoft.
Overall, the games were quite good. Rabbids surprised me as a fun platformer, TMNT as a fighter and Red Steel as a shooter.
Again, if there's any more you guys wanna know, hit me up.