GG Weekly Videogame News 
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Aussie Endless Ocean 2 bundles
Availible at Kmart and Target - offer ends 3rd March
aussie-nintendo.com news
gamingeek
Japans Votes: Subs Vs Dubs
How do Japanese gamers like their western games?
andriasang.com news
aspro
1up preview Forgotten Sands Wii
"you won't be getting the short end of the stick; Forgotten Sands for Wii is shaping up to be a worthy Prince of Persia sequel."
1up.com impressions
gamingeek
Pachter talks Natal, Dsi XL and 3rd Party Wii
I continue to believe that the Wii audience will buy good games, and think that third parties have done a poor job of making them for the Wii.
gamedaily.com editorial
gamingeek
Endless Ocean Blue World 9/10 review
One of Wii’s deepest, most surprisingly enjoyable games.
n-europe.com impressions
gamingeek
New WiiWare Title Threatens Endless Ocean
Aquarium simulator for 800 points.
andriasang.com news
aspro
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The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds
while the pessimist fears this is true.
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You mean this page? You can submit news stories above, and down here we have a rolling forum to discuss the news, or anything else -- basically a conversation pit.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileI can see a bundle (at a higher price), but not with every SKU. Packing it in with every SKU would be the only way this thing is going to get any inertia though.
If they sold a 360 that had it built in, kind of a premiere unit, that came with a 5 year hardware warantee I'd be all over it. But then, I'd happily pay $600-$700 USD for a regular 360 that had reliable hardware.
I thought this was already set. Though with Pachter saying it will be they probably changed their minds.
Also, I got my free Red Faction game from the Darksiders thing! Will get in four weeks. I was about to get this game last year too. Good thing I waited!
Been checking out some Rainbow Six Vegas. It's really good! It feels slightly dated but I think it's a pretty cool tactical shooter.
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
I know you want it now!
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
Your
smiley confuses me. Do you want to lick my manass? Well do you?
Now that's service
I think the napkin's a dead giveaway
Updating now.
Nice to see 1up give Endless Ocean 2 an A.
And its generally got positive reviews, except for IGN US. Which truly sucks now Boze and Matt are gone.
Kotaku:
Endless Ocean Blue World is a huge surprise. Not only does it provide a vast expansion of the interactive nature film format of video game that any of the older members of your family could enjoy, but it offers the depth of adventure and goals that make it one of the best role-playing games I've encountered on the Wii.
Famitsu scores
Nobunaga no Yabou Tendou (PS3/Xbox 360, Koei): 9 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
Bioshock 2 (PS3/Xbox 360, D3): 9 / 9 / 9 / 8 - (35/40)
The Eye of Judgment: Shintaku no Wizard (PSP, Sony): 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
.hack//LINK (PSP, Cyberconnect 2): 9 / 8 / 8 / 7 - (32/40)
Armored Core: Last Raven Portable (PSP, From Software): 7 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (26/40)
Pokemon Ranger: Hikari no Kiseki (NDS, Nintendo): 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 - (36/40)
Keroro RPG: Kishi to Musha to Densetsu no Kaizoku (NDS, Bandai Namco): 8 / 8 / 8 / 7 - (31/40)
Speaking in our just-published Red Steel 2 interview, Vandenberghe said, "If any game can do it, we can.
"I think we've got a great chance of bringing people back to Wii," he said. "If you haven't played on your Wii for a while we've got the game for you.
"Personally, I call this the great hardcore Wii Jihad," he added. "I don't really care about the religious war! Some developers who are making hardcore games for the Wii made a big deal about the separation of church and state, saying (puts on deep voice) 'there's hardcore and there's family friendly.'
"F*** those guys! I don't feel that way. I think there are gamers and there are gamers of different opinions and different tastes so the goal was to create games that gamers want and to see how many people like it."
Of course there have already been plenty of core games on Wii, including Sega's Conduit and Madworld, but on the latter Vandenberghe reckons: "if you make an ultra violent game where you're shoving signposts through people's heads as a core mechanic... you're cutting out 90% of your sales because that offends 90% of gamers."
Videogamer Full interview here
"Now, Red Steel 2 is a Wii exclusive and we're not going anywhere with it. This is going to stay Wii exclusive."
Red Steel 2 InterviewThis guy rocks.
Creative director Jason Vandenberghe talks Project Natal, Sony’s wand, mature gaming on the Wii and cutting the grass in Zelda.
I don’t treat gaming as a religion, I treat it as sort of a way of life, and my main passion. So when I see people trying to outflame each other about whether you’re hardcore or not to play on the Wii, or whether real gamers can play on it, I just don’t care. The questions I have are: is the game fun, and does it have something interesting that I can’t do on another console.
Point-and-click gunplay is entertaining, but katanas are cooler.
I mean, that’s the reason I’ve bought every game that I’ve ever purchased, it was something I wanted to play and it wasn’t available on any of the other consoles I have. This is a Wii game, so if you want to play it you have to have a Wii – but you know, I bet you probably do have a Wii. Because there’s a lot of Wiis out there! Even if it’s unplugged and in the closet collecting dust.
The thing that I think has been scary for people is to watch these kinds of games come out and fail – MadWorld, Conduit, Dead Space: Extraction, all these games – but I think in each of those cases there are other circumstances, different in each case, that make it really tough to draw a real conclusion.
It is easy to make a self-fulfilling prophecy of this and say, ‘oh, hardcore gamers don’t exist on the Wii, so I won’t buy one or I won’t make games for the Wii’. That’s completely possible, the games industry could decide to do that. But I’m not doing that! I’m making a game for gamers on the Wii, pretty much. And I’m offering, I think, a completely new experience that you can’t get on any other title, and hopefully one that’s fun.
To me, that’s the magic combination: it’s got to be fun, I can’t get it somewhere else, and I want to play it.
VGD: Good mix. I think the other side of the coin is that the ‘death’ of mature gaming on Wii is somewhat exaggerated. I haven’t got the sales figures in front of me, but some of the titles you mentioned performed quite well. MadWorld, for instance…
Vandenberghe: MadWorld did fine. You’re the only dude I’ve ever met who knows that! Exactly! If you paid attention to Sega’s press release, you would know that Sega understands what apparently no-one else in the gaming community understands, and that is if you put that kind of ultra-violence in a game, you’re going to sell 10 per cent. Period.
So Sega did what any responsible publisher would do and they moderated their marketing budget accordingly. They didn’t have to make commercials for MadWorld because everybody who wanted the game already knew it existed, because they had been marketing the crap out of it on the internet, where all of the hardcore players are who wanted to play it. It’s not an accessible game. But it sold like 200,000 units, which was quite satisfying to Sega! The Conduit was… I already have Halo, so why am I going to play that? The game was great, but yeah.
And with Dead Space: Extraction – again, fantastic, but a lightgun game? On a platform that has Umbrella Chronicles and House of the Dead? In the same year? I mean, already available on the same shelf? That’s tough, that’s a tough sale. How many lightgun on-rail games do you really want to buy?
VGD: It’s not quite FIFA or Pro Evo, is it?
Vandenberghe: No! It’s a shallow genre. Then again, are those the limiting factors? I don’t know. I’m no genius, I don’t have the final word on the market in these cases. But I think that it is a leap to take the performance of those examples and say ‘ergo, there are no gamers on the Wii’. I’m a gamer and I’m on the Wii, you’re a gamer and you’re on the Wii – you’re here, talking to me, playing my Wii game! I’ve been talking to gamers for months and months and months who are playing on the Wii, who are excited to play this game on the Wii. I don’t think it’s worth getting all fired up about.
VGD: Most Wii developers are rather sick of the topic, I imagine.
Vandenberghe: Well, no I don’t get sick of it. If you’re in this business you’d better get used to being asked the same question twice. But I just don’t have any patience for the argument. I don’t have any patience for arguments that create sides in the games industry. I’m not on anybody’s side in the industry. I’m on the side of good quality games. And everyone on every platform can make good quality games.
Duplicate update, but nice to see details here.
$5 million bucks for nothing? For sitting an old NES game on a server? Wowee.
I thought the most interesting thing here was seeing the World of Goo numbers. According to this it sold 320,000 copies last year. I know it very quickly sold 250,000 so I guess it's safe to say it's done over half a million copies. I really expected it to sell more. But I suppose that's nothing to sneeze at all the same.
So are the WOG guys millionaires now?