Control Time In TimeShift Adventure

Sierra Entertainment has announced that the next generation of first-person shooters, 'TimeShift', is officially available at retail stores nationwide for the PC and Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system.

The game, one of the most talked about titles of 2007, will also be available on the PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system on November 19, 2007.

Developed by Saber Interactive and published by Sierra Entertainment, 'TimeShift' allows players to control time and use it as the ultimate weapon in a fierce battle against the neo-fascist regime of Dr Krone.

In 'TimeShift', the story revolves around a highly respected physicist with a mysterious past.

When your colleague Dr Krone goes rogue and uses an experimental time-manipulating suit to create an alternate time stream where he is a grim dictator in a dystopian alternate reality, players must chase after him and use time to overthrow his rule.

Armed with similar, yet less stable time-bending suit, players have the ability to slow, stop and reverse the flow of time, while being able to freely interact with the environment and enemies, a feat never before accomplished in video games.

Featuring ground-breaking artificial intelligence, powerfully realistic graphics and immersive sound and story, 'TimeShift' is proving to be one of the first truly next-gen games to come to market this holiday season.

"We are very excited to ship this highly anticipated title to retail," said Pascal Brochier, president, Global Retail for Vivendi Games.

"Players are going to see effects in this game like they never have before - the ability to control time is a very unique feature, which is a lot of fun to play in single or multiplayer mode."

With a comprehensive online 16-player multiplayer mode, featuring time controlling "chrono" grenades, 14 different maps and over 40 different customisable features, 'TimeShift', was developed for elite multiplayer gamers by drawing inspirations from the best FPS's and adapting itself to the players' unique style by incorporating highly customizable gameplay modifiers resulting in a frenetic and competitive multiplayer experience every game.

Source: Sky News

Nintendo Wii Knockoff at Wal-Mart

Sometimes you can get great products from Wal-Mart at good prices; other times, you find items that shouldn't ever be sold.

A few weeks ago, reports started showing up that Wal-Mart was selling a cheap LCD game that looked nearly identical to the Nintendo Wiimote.

When I went to my local Wal-Mart to see if it was true, they hadn't arrived yet.

I just checked again, and there they are - terrible, terrible little toys that have zero redeeming features aside from their resemblance to a much better brand. Produced by a company called ToyQuest out of Los Angeles, these toys are border-line unplayable, and shamelessly copy the Nintendo Wii's style.

They even include motion controls, which are absolutely worthless because you can't see the screen if you're moving the toy. ToyQuest should be ashamed for making these, and Wal-Mart should be ashamed of carrying them. It's a product blatantly designed to confuse the consumer and leech an undeserved sense of quality by emulating a better product only a couple isles away.

More images here

From: Nintendo About

The Art of Pac-Man

Spit & Polish was something all custom toy fans have been dreaming about for a very long time.

Doktor A finally got the solo show he deserves and boy did he live up to the expectation with some magnificent custom pieces.

The highlight of show for me is the custom Soopa Coin Op Bros titled “The Secret History of Video Games: Pac Gentleman”.

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Giant Donkey Kong Game

The Computer Game Museum in Berlin has accomplished two things to make fanboys, such as ourselves, very moist.

Firstly, they have created a museum dedicated to computer games and secondly, the institution has produced a mahoosive reconstruction of the classic Donkey Kong game using scaffolding.

That is large.

Lap it up fellow fanboys, lap it up.

Oh, imagine how burly that large cardboard Donkey Kong would be—I wish he'd pick me up and hold me in his muscular primate arms...

Atari may lose DragonBall game license

It looks like Atari is in trouble as they are in a dispute with FUNimation. FUNi terminated their partnership with Atari claiming that they voilated their contract. I did not think this would come so soon, especially since Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is finished and due out in stores very soon. If they don't get things worked out in time, Namco Bandai is around to take the license, since they publish Dragonball Z games in Japan. I hope they do, because they do a good job in promoting the Naruto video games, in my opinion. Plus, Namco is my third favorite game publisher in the world, with Sega being the first, and Square-Enix second.

'Zheng Tu' game going online in Malaysia

Malaysian video game fans will soon be able to join the more than 1 million online users of the increasingly popular Chinese video game, "Zheng Tu."

The Malaysian company, iG-Interactive Sdn Bhd, has announced that it has reached an agreement with China's Lager Network Technologies Inc. to create a regional online server for the popular video game, China's official Xinhua news agency said Saturday.

"Game mission can teach gamers Chinese philosophy," iG-Interactive Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Tan Teck Seng said Friday.

The Malaysian executive said that the server's official launch would take place on Wednesday, adding that the game's quizzes would also be localized for users in the capital of Kuala Lumpur.

"Zheng Tu" is currently one of only three video games with online capabilities that have more than 1 million concurrent users.

Xinhua said that Chinese online games have been especially successful in other Asian countries such as Malaysia, where nearly one quarter of the country's population are Chinese.

Limited Edition PSP

If the regular black PlayStation Portable and current offering of Darth Vader-inspired PSP versions don’t do it for you, then you might consider opening your import wallet in December. The sweet looking limited edition Star Ocean PSP you see above will go on sale in Japan on December 27 and will pack in a metallic case and a copy of Star Ocean.

Aside from the game looking terrific in terms of visuals, I’m really digging the look of that PSP.

Source: File Front

Why Nintendo Should've Held Off a Little Longer On Announcing Sonic in Smash Bros. Brawl

By now, Smash Bros. Brawl fans have all heard the news that Sonic the Hedgehog, one of video games’ more venerable, classic characters, will be appearing as a playable character in the game. As exciting as this news is, it was a pretty obvious attempt by Nintendo to soften the blow that the game would be delayed until February of next year. That’s not a bad motive for revealing the big secret when they did, but I can think of one very good reason that Nintendo maybe should’ve kept the lid on that bit of information just a little while longer. Seven words: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games.

When Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games was first announced, it caused a huge stir for one simple reason: Mario and Sonic finally in a game together. It was something fans of both characters had been requesting for years. It didn’t matter that it would be based around the upcoming Olympics, which has shown a history of not making good game material. At best, it looks like another Wii Sports; at worst, it’s another collection of mini-games on the Wii. But still, gamers the world over would be willing to shell out the money just for the simple fact that Sonic and Mario were finally together under one title.

Now, why bother? If you hold out for just a few more months, you can own what’s sure to be one of the best games for the Wii, with Sonic as just icing on the cake. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is already facing enough competition just from its November 6 release date, which has Call of Duty 4 dropping at the same time. It’s not even the only Wii game being released that day, since Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, and The Bee Movie Game are all hitting store shelves around that time. Now though, it’s competing against itself being “that other game with Mario and Sonic.” Of course, the game is being published by Sega, but I doubt Nintendo would want to intentionally hurt a Wii-exclusive title.

The game may still turn out to sell fairly well, but I’d wager not as much as it would if no one knew that Sonic was definitely going to be in Smash Bros. Brawl. The main thing it had going for it was the novelty of two of gaming history’s most iconic characters bundled in the same package. With Sonic appearing in Brawl though, that novelty has worn off. Why play a game putting Sonic through some random sporting events, when you can have him actually using his powers in another game? Mostly, I just now realized how little I care about this game now that Sonic is joining the Smash Bros. group.

Source: FileFront

Hard drive? Wii don’t need no steenking hard drive!

By any measure the Nintendo Wii has been a tremendous success. Thanks to its low price and innovative design the Wii continues to outsell all other next generation consoles. It’s fast, quiet, and cool. So why mess with success?

That’s why I’m always puzzled when people request Nintendo put a hard drive on the Wii. ComputerAndVideoGames.com writes “Have you filled up your Wii’s internal memory yet? We have and it’s bloody annoying.” Well I haven’t and I’ve been playing it hard since buying one from a scalper ebayer last Christmas. CVG writer Mike Jackson takes Nintendo to task for the omission. But he fails to mention that the latest XBox 360 Arcade version doesn’t have a hard drive either. The PS2, probably the most popular game machine ever, doesn’t have a hard drive.

With “storage in the cloud” of the Internet, and with solid state options like flash memory, hard drives are completely unnecessary. Suppose the Wii did have a hard drive. You know what the next complaint would be: “The Wii hard drive isn’t big enough,” or maybe “It’s too noisy,” or “It’s too expensive”. There’s no pleasing some people.

More from ZDNet

EA post loss and shed 350 jobs

Video-game software publisher Electronic Arts Inc. swung to a fiscal second-quarter net loss, hurt by an accounting change, but shares climbed almost 3 percent after the company outlined a promising product lineup and said it expected to see a "great" holiday season.

Shares of Redwood City-based EA, the world's largest independent video game publisher, rose $1.72, or 2.9 percent, to close at $60.46 Friday, a day after it posted the loss.

EA also said Thursday it would shut down one of its development studios in England and trim its work force by about 4 percent, laying off about 350 employees.

"They've made tons of progress," said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. "They appear to have costs under control and revenue growth is solid. They made all the right comments about cost-cutting."
The company has been criticized this year for not investing enough in games for the Nintendo Wii, which has become a runaway best-seller among the three major game consoles.

EA's chief financial officer, Warren Jenson, said the company has worked to change its lineup and will have seven titles for the Wii in time for the holidays, as well as five titles for the popular Nintendo DS gaming handheld — and more are planned.
"We were late to the Wii, but this year, we plan to launch 10 to 15 games for the Wii and DS," Jenson said in an interview. Currently, EA is the biggest third-party developer for the Wii, he said, but the company knows there is stiff competition in the arena. "So we're still building on that and we know we have a long way to go," he said.

In its fiscal second quarter, which ended Sept. 30, new editions of EA's popular sports franchises remained a key revenue driver, the company said. Gamers bought 4.5 million copies of "Madden NFL 08" and 2.9 million copies of "FIFA 08" during the period.

Some new titles also made solid debuts. "MySims," a game made for the Nintendo DS and Wii, sold over 1 million copies while "Skate" sold more than 500,000 units.

For the quarter, EA posted a net loss of $195 million, or 62 cents per share, compared with a profit of $22 million, or 7 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

The company attributed part of the loss to a change in how it accounts for sales of online-enabled games, now recognizing the sales on a deferred basis over an estimated service period.

Adjusted earnings, excluding the change in revenue recognition and other items, were $87 million or 27 cents per share, up from $65 million or 21 cents per share a year earlier. On that basis, EA beat Wall Street's earnings expectations of 20 cents per share, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.

Revenue, however, fell 18 percent to $640 million from $784 million a year ago. But EA said it booked $296 million in sales of online-related products that will be accounted for in future periods. If it had included the deferred revenue, sales would have been $936 million, an increase of 19 percent from the year-ago period, the company said.

For the fiscal third quarter, EA forecast adjusted earnings of 75 cents to 95 cents per share on sales of $1.33 billion to $1.58 billion.

Analysts were predicting earnings of 94 cents per share.

For its fiscal year, which ends in March, the company predicted sales between $3.35 billion and $3.65 billion, up $150 million from its previous guidance. Adjusted earnings are expected to fall between 85 cents per share and $1.15 per share, reflecting a decrease of 5 cents per share stemming from the impact of its proposed acquisition of BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios.
Analysts were projecting adjusted earnings of $1.15 per share on sales of $3.77 billion.

EA said the restructuring plan will save it $25 million to $30 million a year on a pretax basis.

Electronic Arts sheds 350 jobs

Electronic Arts, the US computer games giant, is to close one of its offices in the UK as it sheds 350 jobs worldwide.

The company, whose products include The Simpsons Game and FIFA 08, said it would close its development site in Chertsey, Surrey, in an effort to cut costs.

EA, the world's biggest independent video games maker, said it made a loss of $195m (£94m) in the quarter to the end of September, against a $22m profit a year ago.

Accounting changes and production costs hit the bottom line. Marketing expenses rose 52pc, while research and development costs grew 9pc.