We have no idea at what point this year Sony will ship its next-generation portable game console, or NGP, but the PSP is already looking stale.
That might explain why Sony is cutting the PSP’s price from $170 to $130 on February 27. Sony’s also dropping the price of PSP Entertainment Packs, which include a game, a memory stick and a unique hardware color scheme, to $150. A bunch of new “Greatest Hits” games will sell for $20, including Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and LittleBigPlanet.
I don’t know if my Twitter feed is a good indicator of something going viral, but right now it’s lit up with people talking about We Dare, a Wii and Playstation Move party game that Ubisoft describes as “fun and flirty” and “sometimes kinky.”
A trailer for the game lives up to the creepy concept: Two guys and two girls huddle in front of the TV and play a bunch of mini-games with a sexual bent. In one instance, two partners gnaw at the base of a dangling controller to mimic waterless bobbing for apples. In another, one of the girls bends over her partner’s lap for a spanking, Wii Remote tucked into the backside of her skirts. All the while, the actors giggle with convincing awkwardness. (The trailer is embedded after the jump to protect the innocent.)
But here’s the rub: We Dare was announced a month ago, and the Internet barely noticed. Ubisoft’s disaster of a trailer has brought far more attention to the game than the concept itself.
A year ago, Ubisoft started requiring a persistent Internet connection to play its latest PC games. If for any reason the connection dropped, the game would either freeze or quit. Offline play was out of the question.
Now, Ubisoft is backing away from this restrictive form of digital rights management for one of its blockbuster titles. Ubisoft confirmed to VG247 that the single-player portion of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will only require an initial login, and then will be playable offline.
What’s that? You say we haven’t celebrated today’s Legend of Zelda anniversary sufficiently yet? Oh, okay, watch this commercial:
(Thanks to Andrew Leal for finding this.)
The Legend of Zelda is…well, legendary–it’s one of the most famous game franchises of all time, and the second most famous Nintendo one after a certain series involving a plumber. And Zelda turns 25 today, having been launched on February 21st, 1986 in Japan with the release of the original Legend of Zelda in Japan.
As is his wont, tech historian Benj Edwards is celebrating the anniversary by remembering some of the stranger Zelda sidelights of the past quarter century, from versions in odd formats (an edition broadcast by satellite!) to the inside story on where the game got its name. Come along and explore its history with him in this slideshow.
Hold up your Triforce and sound the ocarina! The Legend of Zelda is 25 years old. On February 21st, 1986, Nintendo released the seminal game for the Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES). It arrived in the States 18 months later.
Zelda spawned a lucrative franchise that spans over 15 releases for nearly every one of Nintendo’s consoles. It also defined a genre of action-adventure RPGs that are popular to this day. I dove headfirst into the shady corners and back-alleys of the Zelda universe to pull out various oddities for your entertainment. You’ll encounter them as you adventure through the slides ahead.
A couple years ago, I predicted that Sony would launch a new home video game console in 2010, with Nintendo and Microsoft to follow in 2011.
Man, I was way off.
With 2011 well underway, console makers aren’t even talking about a new generation of hardware. And in an interview with PC Watch, translated by Kotaku, Sony Computer Entertainment head Kaz Hirai said the Playstation 3 is “not even at the halfway point.”
“That’s why,” he added, “we’re not deliberating on a PS4 or a next generation machine, whatever you call it.”
HTC’s $40 million investment in OnLive is already coming to fruition, with OnLive’s streaming video game service baked into HTC’s upcoming Flyer tablet.
OnLive games, which are processed on remote servers and streamed as compressed audio and video, will be playable on the tablet using touch screen controls. In a demonstration video posted by Slashgear, OnLive Chief Executive Steve Perlman plays through a version of Virtua Tennis 2009 whose controls have been retooled for the tablet. HTC’s press release says a “variety of games” will be available including Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, NBA 2K11 and Lego Harry Potter.
The Flyer can also plug into televisions via HDMI for big-screen play with the OnLive game controller, effectively turning the tablet into a MicroConsole set-top box.
The Xperia Play has been Sony Ericsson’s worst-kept secret since the PSP Go. The first rumors popped up in August, and photos and videos followed in December. Engadget got its hands on the Xperia Play before Sony Ericsson even acknowledged the phone’s existence.
But until this week’s official announcement, Sony Ericsson has managed to keep a lid on the most important aspect of all: the games that the Xperia Play will support. At launch, there will be 50 of them, but many won’t come from Sony or even fall under the Playstation brand. Instead, publishers such as Gameloft and Electronic Arts are retooling some of their existing Android games to work with the Xperia Play’s slide-out set of buttons and thumb pads. That was unexpected.
Having milked the music game genre with endless iterations on Guitar Hero, Activision is bailing out.
Activision announced that it has dissolved its Guitar Hero business unit and cancelled development on a Guitar Hero game that was supposed to launch this year. The publisher blamed declining sales in the music genre as a whole.
DJ Hero may also be in jeopardy, with Eurogamer reporting severe layoffs at the franchise’s developer, Freestyle Games. DJ Hero 2, which launched in October 2010, was considered a flop.
