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<center>Looks like Star Ocean fans won't have to wait until March for the Xbox 360 iteration of their favorite franchise after all. It'll be hitting stores next month.
Square-Enix has kindly let us know that Star Ocean: The Last Hope has been bumped up eight days, meaning that it will hit North American stores February 24. The new release date comes only five days after the Japanese date of February 19.
So get ready to rush the stores, Star Ocean fans. Hopefully it'll be early enough to alleviate some of those post-holiday blues.
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<center>Perhaps the biggest knock on the PlayStation 3 is its price; even with the cheapest SKU you're looking at a premium of $150 over the Wii and $200 over the cheapest Xbox 360. Even though that is unavoidably the barrier of entry, Sony doesn't seem to think it's a fair comparison. So what they've done is cooked up a little comparison of the three systems' true prices -- something that's likely to accomplish nothing more than incite a fanboy flamewar.
While Sony's chart no doubt speaks for itself, there are a few things worth pointing out. I think anyone would agree that the 360 shouldn't require an external device for Wi-Fi, but it's not necessary for your 360 to function if you're able to run an ethernet cable or don't plan on playing online. Any new system comes with an HDMI port so it's not as if anyone buying a system now will find that to be a problem. And lastly there's the hard drive situation -- for people who might be buying a hard drive-less system, we know Microsoft is offering a cheap upgrade to a 20GB hard drive in lieu of paying the extremely high retail prices Sony refers to.
Besides the unavoidable hate that the previous paragraph will garner Sony fanboys, it's hard to ignore the fact that this is nothing more than marketing spin for the sake of marketing spin. At least fanboys will have some new ammunition to fight about.
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<center>Rumors flew last year that Microsoft would be implementing Blu-ray in the Xbox 360 after the demise of HD-DVD. Nothing came of it though, and now Robbie Bach is here to explain why.
In an interview with Techflash, Bach said that when people are asked to list the things they want developed for the Xbox 360, "Blu-ray is way, way down on the list." Bach also expressed concerns about such a move splitting the market.
"From a technical perspective, it doesn't help us in the core of what Xbox does, which is in gaming. We can't have publishers produce games on Blu-ray disc," Bach said. "Because then they won't play on the 28 million Xboxes we've already shipped. So it doesn't help us in the core gaming space."
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<center>Hope you haven't killed your voice playing Tom Clancy's EndWar yet. Because there's a whole more where that came from.
Videogaming247 is reporting that World War III continues in the near-future RTS with the Faction Elite Pack on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which is available for 300 Microsoft Points ($3.75). That hardearned money will net you three new battalions, six new upgrades and new armor.
EndWar has flown a bit under the radar over the past few months. But who knows, maybe a little added content will get players chattering once again.
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<center>Atari may have wanted to hold off on this a little bit longer, but it looks like Sony Pictures Home Entertainment got there first. Ghostbusters finally has a date.
Buried in the slew of press releases that went out with CES 2009, Joystiq noticed that a press release giving a June 19 release date Ghostbusters for Blu-Ray also mentioned a date for the game. Atari has now confirmed that Sony Pictures spilled the beans early, saying that the game will indeed be coming day and date with the Blu-ray release.
So if you're a Ghostbusters fan, now you have two things to cheer -- the Blu-ray, and the impending release of a game that had fallen between the cracks during the last year's Activision-Vivendi merger. After all that, it'll feel twice as good to don the proton pack come summertime.
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<center>Perhaps the biggest knock on the PlayStation 3 is its price; even with the cheapest SKU you're looking at a premium of $150 over the Wii and $200 over the cheapest Xbox 360. Even though that is unavoidably the barrier of entry, Sony doesn't seem to think it's a fair comparison. So what they've done is cooked up a little comparison of the three systems' true prices -- something that's likely to accomplish nothing more than incite a fanboy flamewar.
While Sony's chart no doubt speaks for itself, there are a few things worth pointing out. I think anyone would agree that the 360 shouldn't require an external device for Wi-Fi, but it's not necessary for your 360 to function if you're able to run an ethernet cable or don't plan on playing online. Any new system comes with an HDMI port so it's not as if anyone buying a system now will find that to be a problem. And lastly there's the hard drive situation -- for people who might be buying a hard drive-less system, we know Microsoft is offering a cheap upgrade to a 20GB hard drive in lieu of paying the extremely high retail prices Sony refers to.
Besides the unavoidable hate that the previous paragraph will garner Sony fanboys, it's hard to ignore the fact that this is nothing more than marketing spin for the sake of marketing spin. At least fanboys will have some new ammunition to fight about.
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<center>The developers of PlayStation 3's Home feel they may have announced it too early, as revealed in an interview with Develop. Asked about reception from developers, director Peter Edward said "initially, there was real excitement from people, because we were showing something really different and that had a lot of potential. And then there's the realization that, well, we probably announced it too early - GDC 07 was a long time ago." He goes on to say that developers were hesitant to make plans for Home, calling it "a bit thin" in terms of support and tools in the early days. Lead programmer Mitch Goodwin added that there was some "initial reluctance" because developers "don't know practically what they can do to benefit." But, after showing examples, he says developers seem to warm up to it.
Though the comments were targeted specifically towards the reaction from developers, it's hard not to see the parallels with the public reception. While Home was an exciting idea, the long wait and frequent delays fizzled the anticipation a bit. By the time the app was released, a portion of the audience felt disappointed at the scope of Home, many complaining that there simply wasn't much to do for a project that took so long. Sony has asked for patience as they get new features up and running, and sees the platform as constantly growing. In the meantime, they're apparently making plenty of money with the feature set as it stands.
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<center>Atari may have wanted to hold off on this a little bit longer, but it looks like Sony Pictures Home Entertainment got there first. Ghostbusters finally has a date.
Buried in the slew of press releases that went out with CES 2009, Joystiq noticed that a press release giving a June 19 release date Ghostbusters for Blu-Ray also mentioned a date for the game. Atari has now confirmed that Sony Pictures spilled the beans early, saying that the game will indeed be coming day and date with the Blu-ray release.
So if you're a Ghostbusters fan, now you have two things to cheer -- the Blu-ray, and the impending release of a game that had fallen between the cracks during the last year's Activision-Vivendi merger. After all that, it'll feel twice as good to don the proton pack come summertime.
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<center>Harmonix is pretty good at making rhythm games, but how about music distribution? We may find out soon.
Opposable Thumbs is reporting that Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos hasn't entirely ruled out partnering up to sell tracks that could be listened to outside of Rock Band. But he is also having mixed feelings about the idea.
"People want to buy recorded music," he said at CES 2009. "I think it does make a lot of sense to find ways to offer up the game level along with a recorded version of the song as a single offering."
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<center>2K Games believes that BioShock's epic story could give it the staying power of Star Wars, complete with several sequels to tell the entire tale. In an interview with MCV, 2K president Cristoph Hartmann commented that, "because [Bioshock] is so story driven, the question obviously arises: how long can you do it without turning into The Matrix?" He said that the Matrix trilogy lost its luster quickly, but also brought up another famed sci-fi series. "Then again, look at Star Wars. It's a fight between good and evil, just like BioShock. If we spin it the right way and get the right twist of innovation, we can make six parts of it, as Star Wars did."
The comparison may not bode well, especially since large portions of the Star Wars fanbase hated half of the movies. Still, Hartmann stressed that the company can't exploit the franchise either. "We have to be careful not to cash in," he said. "I won't name the company, but there was a great racing game years ago. They brought it back year-on-year. If you look at the scores, it's hard to believe what they've done to it." So even if BioShock could potentially support sequel after sequel, at least Hartmann is against the series seeing diminishing returns. We'll see how much story is left after BioShock 2 expands the fiction, but so far we know very little about the plot for the upcoming sequel.
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