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 »
It's no secret that iPhone has turned the mobile phone industry on its head, sliding past its smartphone rivals with its sexy design. We know Apple has opened a new chapter in mobile technology, but the real story behind this is how the iPhone is quietly taking over pocket gaming.
Business Week has already pointed out what is clearly becoming a new player in the handheld market. Apple has set iPhone on the right track to contend with Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable as the definitive portable gaming platform new figures show. Sales of iPhone continue to increase with each passing month, not to mention downloads from the App Store.
Momentum behind iPhone can't be discredited either as developers both large and small are flocking to the system. It all points to the strong possibility that iPhone could become the leading device for handheld gaming in the coming years.
The argument isn't a new one, as we were one of the first to identify the pote... More »
Empire: Total War, is the new installment in The Creative Assembly’s Total War RTS franchise and will maintain the series 3D battles, grand turn based campaign map and rich historical flavor; while for the first time introducing 3D naval combat into the series.
Below is an interview with one of the game's developers:
WP: Who has the honor to speak with us? State your name, rank, and occupation!
Kieran Brigden, studio communications manager for Creative Assembly.
WP: Empire Total War marks the first time that the Total War series has had really intricate naval battles. Why have them now?
KB: Well, it's a combination of factors. One, we've wanted to do it for a while but the technology was ready now. Two, it's the period that's right for it. When you add naval battles to the game, you have to do it when it's interesting, enjoyable, and fun. The 18th century was the absolute height of cool naval warfare. You had thi... More »
The PlayStation 3 and PS2 were the only platforms that didn't receive a significant boost this week as the end-of-year climb finally begins.
The DS and PSP platforms are both up nearly 20k units, the 360 almost doubled last week's effort from 8k to 15.5k, and the Wii is up 10k units from the previous week.
Defying the weekly gains for every other platform, the PS3 sold only 17.4k units this week, exactly (for our purposes) what it sold last week. As we look for continued increases in hardware next week, will the PS3 be along for the ride?
Sales of Eidos' Tomb Raider: Underworld are strongest on the PlayStation 3, with 51 per cent of all units sold in its first week of release on Sony's home console.
The Xbox 360 accounted for 34 per cent of sales, with the remaining sales made up of Wii, PC and DS SKUs.
Earlier this year, Eidos announced that only the Xbox 360 version of the game will benefit from two exclusive digital episodes, amounting to around six extra hours of play.
Tomb Raider: Underworld only beat the first week performance of last year's Tomb Raider: Anniversary by 6,700 units.
Responding to new rumors of a PS3 price cut in March 2009, a Sony Computer Entertainment America rep told Edge, "There are no plans for a price reduction on PS3 in March 09, and anything reported on or discussed otherwise is purely rumor or speculation."
Over the weekend, online magazine D+Pad cited an anonymous source who purportedly attended a Sony staff briefing in London where execs said the PS3 will have a more competitive price from March 2009 and beyond.
March 31, 2009 marks the end of Sony's fiscal year, during which the company expects to sell 10 million PS3 units, or about flat compared to the previous year.
Sony has repeatedly denied a PS3 price cut will take place before the holidays.
Currently, Xbox 360s retail from $199 to $399 and Wiis sell for $249 in the U.S. Standard 80GB PS3s sell for $399.
There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3. Months of intense hype were followed by a late launch (fully a year after the Xbox 360) and a staggering $600 price tag for the deluxe model.
Even worse, the PS3 didn't initially have any real must-have exclusive titles, and despite the power of its vaunted Cell processor, multiplatform games from third-party developers didn't look appreciably better than the respective titles on the Xbox 360.
Since then, the company's been modifying the PlayStation product line to better fit the competitive market landscape. As of August 2008, a new "bargain" PS3 is available with a larger, 80GB hard drive, and a "deluxe" model is due in November, doubling the capacity to 160GB.
Both, however, lack backward compatibility with PS2 games and do not come with flash card readers. If those features are a must, it might be best to pick up the 80GB "Metal Gear" bundle version on eBay w... More »
Looks like the New Xbox Experience dashboard update is experiencing some not-so-new Xbox woes. November 19: launch day for the NXE update. Not 24 hours after it went live, complaints
are already piling up.
Various forums online (such as the one linked above) have threads and threads of people reporting anything from connection freezes, slow downs, lock ups, broken TV connections, and so many other different numerical errors that, if all of them were strung together, could potentially measure all the way from Earth to the moon (and back).
There are even reports of brickage - yes, the famed red ring of death is back. Some say it's limited to modded consoles only (no surprise there) but other untainted units seem to be affected by the same problem too.
We've yet to hear any official response from Major Nelson or any of the Microsoft staff. Some say the slow downs are caused by the simple fact of surging traffic accessing XBL, but the oth... More »
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