Prince of Persia Producer Ben Mattes took the time to answer several interesting questions regarding everything from combat to the game’s new art style on PlayStation 3. Here are some of them as follows:
Charliesdad asked: Wondering how you addressed the balance issues from earlier entries in the series. For example, Sands of Time was amazing, but going back to it recently the combat wore thin after a while (especially in the first big group fight) to be followed by long stretches of almost no combat. Does the new game fall on one side or the other or is there a middle ground that you all shot for and hit? And Demo tomorrow? Maybe?
Mattes: First, one of our main goals in combat was to make every fight grandiose and meaningful, to make every encounter feel more epic. Thus, we decided to make the new combat system a duel mode in which every enemy has special attributes, a unique personality, cool moves, and his strengths and weaknesses. ... More »
Square Enix announced today it is bringing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes Of Time to North America in Spring 2009, an interesting cross-platform multiplayer action-RPG that is playable on the Nintendo DS and the Wii.
Press Release: Wii and Nintendo DS Owners Unite! Square Enix Announces FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Echoes of Time for North America
The Latest in the Franchise Breaks Down the Walls between Handheld and Console Platforms
LOS ANGELES (December 1, 2008) – Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square Enix® interactive entertainment products in North America, announced today that FINAL FANTASY® CRYSTAL CHRONICLES®: Echoes of Time™ will be released for both Wii™ and Nintendo DS™ in Spring 2009.
Players can choose to play alone or with friends, whenever and however they like in FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Echoes of Time. Arriving simultaneously on both Wii and DS, this latest entry in the FINAL FA... More »
The Toys are Back Town! It's Week 3 of our 6 week Burnout Paradise 2009 blow-out! If you missed out our last exciting announcements, you can see them all here, in our Coming Soon area.
This week, we're showing the Burnout cars as you've never imagined them - Toy cars are taking over Paradise City.
Below is a screenshot to get you in the mood.
Regular Burnout fans will recognise 5 Paradise City classics – the Carson GT Concept P12, the Kreiger Racing WTR, the Hunter Takedown 4x4 and the Hunter Manhatten, but there are 9 awesome vehicles in this range.
We promised we'd take you into uncharted territory! In 2009, Burnout Paradise is taking a journey into the unknown. If you want to join us, just pick up a copy of Burnout Paradise on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, take it online and take you pick from the year's downloadable packs.
While speaking with Variety, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser gave some disappointing news about the downloadable content that Xbox 360 user’s were promised to come out by the end of the year.
While its still on track to be released for Microsoft exclusively, he’s just not sure if we’ll see it by the end of the year.
“Me: On another topic, I have to ask you about the “GTA IV” downloadable content you’re doing. Do you still expect that to come out this year?”
“DH: I’m not sure. It’s going well. But we don’t know a date. We hope to be announcing that in the next few weeks. We’re still figuring out a few things. We’re more focused on quality than dates, always have been. But the development is going really good. It’s shaping up to be something we’re very proud of. That was our goal.”
French coders known as the BlackDevs Team (composed of Darkside, Zer01ne, and Spimort) have released an alpha version for their 0x584d42 XMB alternative project.
Note that this version is still in alpha, and was released to the public more as a proof-of-concept than anything else. For now though, the XMB's functionalities encompass Recovery, Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Game, and Network.
There are two versions released by the team, one for Time Machine v3.40 (Phat), and another for Despartar Cementerio 7 v4.01 (Phat, Slim). The readme in both archives are included.. enjoy!
Sony has already picked "loyal" European community members to join the PlayStation Home BETA, and will send them invites when version 1.0 of the virtual world goes live.
"Your next question is, 'How do you decide who gets picked?' and we had a couple of plans on how that was going to be done and my boss is away so I cant ask him which one he chose (yes, we've picked the names already and no, I'm not going to reveal the list)," said TedTheDog, Home community manager, on the European PlayStation forum.
"I'll let you know what I can, once I find out, but both were broadly based on the concept of loyalty. That's very vague I know, I'll firm up what I can, but don't expect too much detail, it was really complicated last time."
When Home version 1.0 will launch nobody knows, unfortunately, but with American PlayStation 3 owners ... More »
Yasu, the author of YSMenu, has posted a video on his YouTube account that claims to show the new Nintendo DSi running a simple homebrew proof of concept - the famous "Hello World!".
The video shows a bounding box on the upper screen showing the text "Yasu software Hello World!". The touch screen appears to be unused and shows just a white screen. There is no mention on how the hack has been performed, or from where the exploit is running (slot-1 flash cart? SD card? Wi-fi?), hopefully more information will follow soon.
If this is indeed real, it is surely fantastic news and means that the DSi has been exploited in just 3 days after retail release, with this hack hopefully being the stepping stone to greater things.
You may want to take this one with a grain of salt, and don't go jumping up and down until we hear more information on this hack and it's limitations. Stay tuned!
In the past 2-3 years the games industry has passed over the proverbial cusp that had prevented it from reaching mainstream appeal.
Games are being mentioned in the same breath as top tier films and books, being compared to art and various literature. It is set to take it’s place as a prominent form of entertainment.
There are however a few things that are holding it back, small hurdles that need to be overcome. I shall now suggest three changes that the Games Industry as a whole should make to cement it’s social acceptance and cultural relevance.
1 – Definitive media outlets
World news has the BBC, CNN and the New York Times. Film has Empire and IMDB, Music has Rolling Stone and NME. All of these are well established and respected sources for people outside of the subject they hold personal interest in. The games industry has Kotaku? Gamespot? Eurogamer? There isn’t one site or even a few out there who I would person... More »
(1) 
