CVG News Roundup 2/1/13 - 2/8/13

The following is summarized news from articles we published between 02/01/2013 and 02/08/2013 on CVGames. The original links can be found at the bottom of the article.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the next PlayStation will be revealed on February 20, 2013 and be launched this holiday season.   They also state that Microsoft will reveal their next console this Spring--months after the PlayStation announcement, and will be launched this holiday season as well. 

Word today is that it will be running on a brand new engine called REDengine 3.

"If we look at RPGs nowadays we find two approaches, one which emphasizes the story but limits the game world and one that builds a vast open-world but hampers and simplifies the story.   With the REDengine 3 we combine the positive aspects of both approaches for the first time, creating an open environment with a complex, multi-thread story.   Together with believable characters, a captivating tale and a world where players can roam freely without loading times, we will be able to move gaming to a new level with a realistic feel and full player immersion."

The feedback from the Kickstarter community has been invaluable in shaping the final product and we will continue to seek input from those that supported us to ensure continued innovation ahead of a global retail launch."

In fact, if you haven't played it since early on in release, you will experience a much better experience with the latest patches.

As with the original, up to four will be able to play and level up their respected wizard with all the crazy magic spells you loved from the original.

Due to some concern about security, all players will be required to update their Guild Wars 2 passwords to be compatible with new security standards at AreaNet.

Also, Guild Wars 2 will be unveiling new content in February called The Living Story.

Each portion of the Living Story narrative will only be available for a certain period of time, yet it will have repercussions in the world and upon the people living in it.

The story arcs introduced through The Living Story will play out over time and will be woven into the game's plot so that it isn't jarring or obvious.

An unnamed "Microsoft Insider" has a comment in regard to Sony getting to debut the PlayStation 4 first: "Victory will go not to those who make the most noise, but those who make the most impact.

Sounds like Sony has really scared people at Microsoft and they will be scrambling to recover from Sony debuting their system first.

The Xbox 360, on the other hand, has worldwide sales of 73.9 Million with Sony trailing with worldwide PS3 sales of 72.3 Million.

Now, I am excited to review this title and equally excited that such an awesome looking Japanese RPG made its way to North American shores.   Unless someone is a hardcore RPG nut, who in their right mind is going to go to the store and ask for Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch?

In news I never thought I would write, Bethesda is FINALLY releasing DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the PlayStation 3.   Dragonborn, Dawnguard, and Hearthfire will be available in the coming weeks--along with a 1.8 Title Update.   Each DLC pack will be 50% off for the first week of availability as a good gesture for patient PS3 fans.

Republique, the Kickstarter funded iOS and PC title, has released an update with what they have been working on for the last six months.

Sources say that News Corp is busy completing a transaction that will sell the rights to IGN over to Ziff Davis and its parent company J2 Global.

If this is true, will EA stick with this naming system in the future or will it go back to Madden NFL 15 next year?

He learned today that Toys R Us and Activision will be giving away a select number of the unreleased figure on February 5, 2013, at the flagship store in Times Square.   Despite this, Activision still will not give a specific release date for the new Giant figure and is only providing the "2013 release date" line.

In other news, my son is trying to figure out a way to convince me to fly out to New York for the Toys R Us event on the 5th…

Activision and Microsoft are teaming up for a 1 Million Dollar Call of Duty Black Ops II tournament in Hollywood, CA on April 5-7, 2013.   They are teaming up with MLG and the Electronic Sports League to bring 32 teams to participate in the event for the cash prize.

Starting now, you can register for a free Call of Duty Elite Account and take your team of four online to fight for a spot in the tournament by competing in events during the February season of League Play on Xbox Live.

Also, teams competing in the March 15-17, 2013, MLG event in Dallas, Texas will take the top eight teams along with the top eight teams from the Electronic Sports League's March 16-17, 2013, event in Cologne, Germany.

Starting today, you can get your little grubby hands on the biggest 3DS handheld Strategy RPG--Fire Emblem Awakening.   Nintendo is making the game available on their eShop as a full downloadable title or at retail as a cartridge. 

In addition to the game, Nintendo is selling a limited edition Fire Emblem Awakening 3DS Bundle that includes a special Blue 3DS with Fire Emblem artwork, a 4 GB Memory Card, and a download voucher for Fire Emblem Awakening.

In other Strategy news, Mode7 is bringing Frozen Synapse, a popular PC Strategy Game to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2013.

"Our vision is to reinvent the game's aesthetics and interactivity in the same way that Mode7 reinvented strategy gaming with this title."

3DS gamers will be pleased to know that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will be coming on the platform later this week on 2/12/13.

We realize how challenging this game is to make, but we have the ability and technology with the Unreal Engine 4 to deliver it.    Project Awakened is a game that virtually every publisher loved, but was afraid to make, so we are taking our idea to core gamers through Kickstarter and asking the community to become our publisher.”

In other Kickstarter news, Vivax is needing your help in its last eight days to deliver a briefcase, for your notebook, that can withstand even a car driving over it!

Moving away from Kickstarter, Sony Online Entertainment has announced new updates to their Free to Play Planetside 2.

We spoke last week about IGN being sold to Ziff Davis and its parent company J2 Global.   News Corp wanted at least 100 Million for IGN and reports say they didn't get nearly that much.

Game Informer Digital has spilled the beans on an announcement that was supposed to take place on February 5, 2013.   The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is well into development for next-generation platforms and PC.   The Witcher 3 is said to have a world more than 20% larger than Skyrim and be completely open world using the REDengine 3, announced last week.   The world is so large, it will take around 40 minutes to go from one side of the world to the other on horseback!

This evening, we learned a few more details about the new console and how you can get your hands on it.   The first units will be shipping out to the Kickstarter backers in March, After these are sent out, retailers like Best Buy, Target, Amazon, and Gamestop will be offering the console around the June 2013 timeframe.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy, Square-Enix and Sony will be discounting some of their titles on the PlayStation Network for the next two weeks.

Could one or all of these titles lead us to the future of the Skylanders franchise?

We are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work on with Sony on PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale, and are extremely proud of the work we have done.

SuperBot Entertainment will continue working on projects that reflect our passion for games and our commitment to creating award winning titles.   We are very excited about beginning the next chapter of our future and invite all of our fans and supporters to follow our journey."

Zen Studios has been pumping out some excellent pinball games in recent years and today leaked word, videos, and images of Star Wars tables set to include Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.   In addition, they are working on seven other tables set in the Star Wars Universe that will all be revealed during 2013!

Right now, the Wii U is getting drenches as the console was revealed to be lagging behind in sales.   Plantinum Games has sais that there is virtually no chance for a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance port on the Wii U due to lack of demand for the console.

With the new game consoles expecting to include some type of anti-used game technology in them, could this be the beginning of the end for the videogame retailer?

As we speculated last night, Activision has revealed the next Skylanders game at the New York Toy Fair.   Skylanders: SWAP Force is the new title that will introduce a new type of Skylander character that you can mix and match parts to create your own unique style of play. 
 
The new SWAP Force Skylanders will come in 16 different characters that have detachable lower and upper bodies, held together by magnets.   No word on if the Giants will work in the new SWAP force game but there will be non-swap characters coming in the third installment of Skylanders.   Skylanders: SWAP Force will be coming to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, and 3DS this fall and will come with two SWAP characters to get your kids addicted.   No word on if it will also be on the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is now available at retail for both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita platforms.   The PS3 version will retail for $39.99 and come with a digital Vita copy while the Vita only version will retail for $29.99.

Hopefully this is a trend we can expect from Sony in the future to help boost sales of the Vita platform.

This is the 22nd anniversary of the franchise and should prove for some fun with cloud saves to continue your game on either Vita or PS3.

In the first step at bringing the fun part of PlayStation Home on the Vita, Sony is releasing the PlayStation Home Arcade App today.   The rest of the titles will be available for $1.49 each and once purchased will be unlocked in both the Vita Home Arcade App and in the PS3 PlayStation Home.

Today is the long-awaited day that En Masse Entertainment re-launches TERA into TERA: Rising with new content and makes it Free to Play complete with more servers.

“TERA: Rising ushers in a new era in Action MMO gaming where players can dive into a deep MMO with the best action combat in the genre without having to pay a dime.   The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive and our community is eager to greet a new wave of gamers checking out TERA for the first time.   The brand new content is going to be engaging for both the new and existing players alike – creating a fun and dynamic environment we haven’t seen before in TERA.”
 
TERA is a lot of fun and we can't wait to journey back into the world.

Sadly, no demo is available but since this is one of the best Mega Man titles ever made, you shouldn't need one.

Hopefully this will lead to the rest of the Mega Man titles coming soon to the eShop as promised by Capcom late last year.

The service will run $8 per month for DVD or $9 per month for Blu-ray and offers 4 one night movie rentals at the Kiosk of your choice and unlimited streaming.

That news was confirmed today and we also learned that this will be the end of Geralt of Rivia's story.

Technology has progressed to where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined.   This will be the ultimate fantasy RPG experience, and while we're hardly out of stories to tell, we believe it's time for us to look to new worlds and new horizons to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can create.   Imagine playing a dark fantasy game with the same great nonlinear story as in the previous Witcher titles, but now told in a world you can explore freely with no artificial boundaries.

Another RPG, coming from CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 still currently does not have a release date.

However, I am confident that we did manage to develop software that, once people have played it, does communicate its value very well.   We have not yet launched many titles, but Nintendo has been striving to sell its software for as long as three years in an industry where a typical software title has only a few weeks of product life.

These were confirmed to us today with a February 2013 release for the first three that includes, as we reported, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

“It’s been over 30 years since Star Wars, videogames, and solid state pinball all burst onto the entertainment scene, and their popularity endures today.   Our designers are huge Star Wars fans, and you can expect every detail in every table to reflect their passion for the Star Wars universe.”

Star Wars Pinball will be available as downloadable content for Pinball FX2 on Xbox LIVE and Windows 8, Zen Pinball 2 on PSN for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, Zen Pinball 2 on the Mac App Store, and Zen Pinball on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

News is surfacing about the upcoming Xbox 720, from Microsoft, that isn't likely to sit well with users.   Sources are confirming that the new console will require a constant Broadband connection and games, though sold as a physical disk, will include a one-time activation code that will not allow the use of any used games.

Microsoft is apparently not sure what size Hard Drive the new console will have except that it will be the biggest they have ever put in an Xbox before.

Other features of the new console will have a built in Kinect Version 2 that can track up to four full bodies while standing up or sitting down.   In addition, the console specs are supposed to be a little less than the new PlayStation with an 8 core AMD 64 Bit running at 1.66, a Direct X11 Graphics card, and 8 GB of RAM.

With 40 to 45% of the current Xbox 360 consoles that don't ever connect to Xbox Live and the inability to buy, sell, rent, or loan games is the kiss of death.

Though pricing was not given, owners of the PS3 version will receive special bonuses and a cheaper price for the Vita version.

"In this game, you’ll take control of Hardboiled Chicken, the original Cock of War (a chicken so tough, he survived being boiled as a fetus), to lead the rebellion against the draconian penguin oppressors to overthrow their hold on Albatropolis!

Ubisoft has confirmed three new DLC packs to expand the single player content for Assassin's Creed III in The Tyranny of King Washington.

The First DLC in the trilogy, Assassin’s Creed III – The Tyranny of King Washington: The Infamy, will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PCs on February 19

The Second installment, Assassin’s Creed III – The Tyranny of King Washington: The Betrayal, will release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PCs on March 19

The Final in the Trilogy of DLC, Assassin’s Creed III – The Tyranny of King Washington: The Redemption, will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PCs on April 23

DLC will be available individually for 800 Microsoft Points or $9.99 each and the 3 pack will be available for 2400 Microsoft Points or $29.99.

For pete's sake, can Microsoft get rid of their "Space Points" in the next generation and just use Dollars????

Finally, Tecmo Koei has revealed a European release date of Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge for the Xbox 360 and PS3 on April 5, 2013.

Razor's Edge is the Wii U version of Ninja Gaiden that is much improved over the poor selling title.

Reports are coming out, in Japan, that Sony's PlayStation 4 will be retailing over ¥40,000.   Does this mean we will see the PlayStation 4 coming out at $399.99 in North America for a 2013 release?   With the PS3 running at $499.99 and $599.99 at launch, $399.99 would probably be the most expensive they could get away with.

The PS4 is also said to use Gaikai--the cloud service they purchased last year--and come with one redesigned controller.

Today we learned that it has been transformed into a cheaper 7" version that will run $249 for the Wikipad and controller.

“We wanted to get Wikipad into our community’s hands and what we found was that the smaller 7” form factor just seemed right.

The Ninja Turtles are coming back to home consoles courtesy of Activision and a new deal with Nickelodeon.

"We are confident that these upcoming games will take gamers through interactive environments and action-packed adventures that truly capture the essence, tone and exciting elements of the Turtles."

It appears the delay Ubisoft put on the Wii U launch was to also develop PS3 and X360 versions.   Ubisoft Montpellier is handling development for all 3 console versions that are due out in September 2013.

"We heard from many Xbox & PlayStation owners and Rayman fans who told us they really wanted to play Rayman Legends on their current system.

The real question we have to ask is: Was this planned all along or is this due to the low sales of the Wii U?

We also learned that Ouya will receive annual hardware upgrades, codenamed Ouya 2, Ouya 3, etc, that will include faster processors and more memory to run the latest titles.   So when you switch consoles, all your old games you purchased will still be there to play.

Some Sumo Digital LinkedIn profiles state that they are working on a PS3 exclusive for release in 2013.

While the news of a LittleBigPlanet sequel is exciting, I would rather see the title come as a next-generation PlayStation 4 game.

Guild Wars 2 is getting ready for their next event: Flame and Frost, which is part of The Gathering Storm storyline taking place over the next few months.

Bioware Montreal, who is handling the development of the new Mass Effect title, is also stating that the sequel will probably take place after Mass Effect 3.

"Thinking of the next Mass Effect game as Mass Effect 4 would imply a certain linearity, a straight evolution of the gameplay and story of the first three games.   That doesn't mean that events of the first three games and the choices you made won't get recognized, but they likely won't be what this new story will focus on.

You likely would have to recognize how the events of the first war influenced the ones of the second, but you would not necessarily think of it as a sequel," he added.   "Again, the analogy is not great, but what I'm trying to say is that the ME universe is so rich that we are not limited to a single track when coming up with a new story."

Like Steam, Origin will feature the ability to buy a game once and play it on all compatible platforms.

"Our vision with Origin is to connect your gaming universe online, and today we're taking a major step in expanding our service to reach Mac-based gamers worldwide.   In delivering great game content, connecting the Origin service across PC, Mac and iOS devices, and offering great value to gamers with dual-platform play on select EA titles, Origin is making it easier than ever before for gamers to connect and play anytime, anywhere."

Nintendo is releasing a new bundle Wii U, in North America, that has been popular in the UK.

While I understand Nintendo not wanting to drop the price of the console, it would have been great if they made this the new $349 Deluxe Set to give added value.

"We know the desire to purchase a next-generation console would be significantly diminished if new consoles were to prohibit playing pre-owned games, limit portability or not play new physical games."

Translation: Microsoft, we won't be doing you any favors in the next-generation if you go this route.

"As you know, we were somewhat disappointed with the launch of the Wii U, and I think it's a challenging environment this year.   One of the things we are concerned about is what the installed base of hardware will be like for 6- to 11-year-olds.

Of course, he is trying to sell Skylanders and it isn't looking like anyone, including kids, are hopping on the Wii U train at the moment.

In other Activision news, World of WarCraft subscribers have been fluctuating from 9 Million to 10 Million and have settled around 9.6 Million.

Finally, on Activision, would you believe that a new Call of Duty title is coming in 2013?   But Activision doesn't expect this one to sell as well as past titles.

We spoke last week about Insomniac being a bit frustrated about the lack of Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault on the Vita.   Sony has finally revealed that the title will receive its second delay until "Spring 2013" after originally scheduled for release alongside the PS3 version on November 27, 2013.

"Our friends at Tin Giant have been working night and day to bring Insomniac's PS3 game to the PS Vita system and to provide our fans with a great game.   While the original delay has helped us make the game better, we still need more time to bring the game up to the standards expected by our fans."

Sony will give a free download of Ratchet and Clank: Deadlocked, for PS3, to everyone who has purchased Full Frontal Assault.

On the subject of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, he said that 600,000 units have been shipped to retail.   Though this doesn't equate to 600,000 sales, this has to be the biggest selling Vita 3rd party software in the system's life.

We will also be hearing more about the next generation of Assassn's Creed as the next version will be introducing a new hero and a new time for the franchise.   The new Assassin's Creed game title will be revealed, at the latest, by E3 2013.

At DICE this week, Gabe Newell talked about the upcoming Steam Boxes and how he feels this will disrupt a the console business with pricing starting at $100 and promising that it could drop to zero dollars at some point.

In new game news, the founders of People Can Fly left to form The Astronauts and their first game is The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

"What we care about the most is that the players feel like they're really there.   We're not abandoning the gameplay - on the contrary: We're trying to strip it down to the bone and make sure it's always meaningful and truly makes the experience better."

The original articles, with full text can be read here:
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-ps4-xbox-720-confirmed...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/n3-nightly-news-narration-ms-scared-ps4-ni-n...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-fire-emblem-launches-k...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/n3-nightly-news-narration-witcher-3-coming-o...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-skylanders-swap-force-...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/n3-nightly-news-narration-borderlands-2-proj...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-xbox-720-online-only-n...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-ps4-price-wikipad-7-ou...
http://www.cvgames.com/news/m3-my-morning-musings-origin-mac-gamestop-us...