Need For Speed Nitro Set to Be Released on November 17
Exclusive to the Wii and DS

The game will arrive soon enough

Racing games make a lot of money these days, as every gamer wants to unwind by pushing a virtual car to its limits and eventually come out on top and beat his opponents. Without a doubt, one of the most exciting racing franchises is EA’s Need For Speed, which is preparing to receive three new titles in the following months.

We’ve already talked a lot about NFS Shift, and how it will combine both simulator elements but also multiple levels of difficulty, so that everyone can enjoy. Now though, EA talks about NFS Nitro, a purely arcade racer that will be heading to the Nintendo DS and the Wii this fall.

The game, which will see players race through five exotic cities filled with cops, tracks and other opponents, will be available on store shelves come November 17, according to Electronic Arts. Complete with support for a wide variety of controllers, from the Wii Remote to the racing wheel or DS stylus, the title will be a great addition for any Nintendo fan who got bored of Mario Kart.

“Need for Speed Nitro offers fun and intense competition for every type of gamer, “said Joe Booth, senior producer, EA Montreal. “The varied track designs, deep controls, and intuitive drift and nitro mechanics give players something to come back to for months on end. We wanted to fuse together attitude with car culture and the best of arcade racing, to create a new and unique racing experience for the Wii and DS this November.”

But even though Nitro will appear on these slightly underpowered platforms, the amount of visual customizations that can be added is quite large, EA says. The story will also be quite important and will play a big part in combining together the interesting circuits and events from the real-world locations that will be featured in the title.

All in all, NFS Nitro is coming together quite nicely and looks to really adapt the franchise to the Nintendo platforms. Stay tuned for more details as we approach its release date in November.

Microsoft Agrees with President Obama
Parental controls are key features in consoles

Obama’s statements are approved by Microsoft

Video games are becoming part of our daily lives more and more and, as such, they turn into something that almost everyone can relate to. This is exactly why the president of the United States, Barack Obama, uses video games in many of his speeches.

Granted, usually he doesn’t put them in a positive light, as he just recently revealed to the NAACP at its 100th anniversary celebration that parents didn’t have the right to ask for children to achieve in school but “fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we must accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour.”

This example caused quite a stir and a lot of media attention. But now Microsoft has issued a statement in which it reveals that it agrees with the President and, at the same time, applauds the parental controls available on the Xbox 360.

“We agree with President Obama that it’s a time for families to work together so that kids use media in ways that are safe, healthy and balanced. Xbox 360 is the only console gaming system that has a timer feature allowing parents to set time limits for their kids, as well as parent controls to enable parents to set limits on what their kids are playing and watching,” the company reveals in a statement.

You can’t help but notice that Microsoft is quite content with gaining a bit of publicity off of the statements made by the President, as it identifies video gaming with the company’s console. Hopefully at least Obama will continue to keep an open mind about video games in general and won’t stoop as low as to proclaim that they are bad for children and that they entice violent behavior, like other politicians and governments are doing.

Halo 3: ODST Will Have an Open World, Halo: Reach Might Support Natal
So says Bungie

The game will have an open world

The gaming industry has quite a lot of highly popular franchises, but, without a doubt, one of the most successful and to which the Xbox and Xbox 360 owe much of their popularity is Halo. Created by Bungie and currently owned by Microsoft, the series explored a massive story, which is now going to evolve onto new paths and genres of titles.

The next project scheduled to be launched is Halo 3: ODST, a game that will continue the action from the highly successful Halo 3, but also introduce new elements into the first-person shooter genre. One such item is an open world, according to Joseph Staten, the writer and creative director for the next iteration in the Halo franchise.

“We’re doing a lot of pretty neat things in terms of mixing it up, introducing some non-linearity, some free exploration,” Staten told the Seattle Times. “This is also a mystery story so there’s a lot more clue-finding and mystery-solving than you would normally find in a game of this kind – nothing that strays too far from the fun ‘Halo’ experience, but we definitely decided to take a little bit of risk and have some fun with this one.”

For those of you who don’t know, the game will focus on a lone Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, hence the name ODST, who uncovers clues about what happened in the ruins of New Mombasa. His method is quite unique, as, when he interacts with his teammates, he can live out previous battles in which they fought. These flashbacks will be triggered in specific sites, scattered throughout the open world, meaning that exploration will be very important.

The team at Bungie also revealed that it had had an early look at Microsoft’s Project Natal motion-sensitive controller, and said that the next title after ODST, Halo: Reach, might support such a thing.

No More Heroes Will Certainly Appear on Other Consoles
So says its creator

The game will move to other platforms

The Nintendo Wii is the most popular console currently on the market, boasting a huge user base, much larger than the ones of its two main rivals, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. This would theoretically mean that any third-party developer would desperately try to make new, high-quality titles for the Wii.

But, sadly, it isn’t so, as the large casual user base of the console has different tastes in regard to games, meaning that any quality hardcore-oriented title won’t fare as well as other games. This has been quite evident with Sega’s MadWorld, which didn’t really achieve a commercial success, even though it was praised by critics.

Another such title is No More Heroes, which appeared from Grasshopper Manufacture, led by famous game designer Goichi Suda. He recently talked about the sequel to the title, No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, and revealed that it would be the last title in the series made for the Nintendo Wii and that future installments would expand the franchise onto much more powerful platforms.

“I really want to make No More Heroes a big franchise,” Suda said, “and with this second episode have bigger success. I’m putting a lot of care into developing this IP, as I feel there’s a lot of potential. I think this is the last NMH that is going to be developed on Wii. To expand NMH to new possibilities, we need a new platform. Wii is a great platform, but we’ve done everything we can with it now.”

The first No More Heroes featured a rich story and some very interesting gameplay mechanics. With its sequel promising to delve much deeper into the whole universe created by the famous designer, it is clear that a lot of PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or even PC owners are extremely happy to hear this piece of news from the famous game designer.

But, until we can see Travis Touchdown impress us with his ligthsaber techniques on other platforms than Nintendo’s, we need to wait.

Tim Schafer Debunks Brutal Legend PC Rumors
The team is focused on the consoles

The game won’t be arriving on the PC

Brutal Legend is one of the most expected original titles to appear at the end of this year. Promising to put players into the boots of Eddie Riggs, a character voiced by famous actor and musician Jack Black, it will take them into a heavy metal-themed fantasy land, filled with interesting characters and creatures.

While the title is confirmed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and presumably a Wii version existed at some point but was scrapped due to not living up to the quality standards imposed by famous game designer Tim Schafer, a lot of PC gamers wondered why it wasn’t arriving on their favorite platform.

Luckily, in a recent interview with Eurogamer, the game designer talked about this subject and revealed that it was meant to appear on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation, and that his team was extremely focused on those platforms. “Well it’s really an action game, that when you play it you’ll see that it was meant to be on a console,” Schafer said and added that, “We are really focused on the Xbox 360 and PS3 version right now.”

Even though such excuses are getting old, a lot of video game developers should remember that many titles originally made for the console have ended up on the PC. Capcom is a recent example, as it brought a lot of its blockbuster lineups, like Devil May Cry 4 or Street Fighter IV, to PC gamers all around the world, giving them a chance to experience those great titles.

Perhaps Tim Schafer should bear in mind that, although blamed by many analysts or critics, the PC is still the most popular platform in the world and that, even though piracy is an issue, with a game such as Brutal Legend, there would have been a lot of people interested in legally buying the game.

2K Worked on Duke Begins, Forever Still in Development
Say court documents

Duke Begins

The saga of Duke Nukem Forever, which Apogee, aka 3D Realms, has been developing for the better part of 12 years, is apparently not at an end. We thought it would end when the studio announced that it was laying off most of its staff. Later, we thought it ended when Take Two sued Apogee for the money that went into the development process, on the base that the finished videogame had never been delivered.

But another weird chapter has just been written, as Apogee has filed a counter suit against Take Two, accusing the publisher of also breaching a section of the contract related to the development of Duke Nukem Forever.

On October 22, 2007, when the deal was reached, one provision of the document signed referred to revenue that Apogee was to receive from a new Duke Nukem videogame, called Duke Begins, which was supposed to be released by 2K, a subsidiary of Take Two, sometime in mid-2010.

Duke Begins was canceled and Apogee is saying that the loss of this potential revenue has made development efforts at the studio all but impossible and that it was forced to lay off the team working on the Xbox 360 version of Duke Nukem Forever, which then sparked the legal action undertaken by Take Two. In other words, it seems that Take Two’s actions led to its own material loss and 3D Realms/Apogee is at no fault. 2K Games has not commented on the supposed existence of Duke Begins.

The court filing coming from the Duke Nukem Foerever developer also states that “Apogee admits that it has continually worked on the development of the DNF for many years, and continues to do so,” which could mean that the game is still being worked on, although initial reports were saying that Duke Nukem Forever, in its current form, would never be played by gamers.

EA Sports MMA Will Feature Well Known Fighters
Taken from UFC

Mixed martial arts

One of the important announcements that Electronic Arts made at this year’s E3 was that it sought to expand the EA Sports line up by adding a mixed martial arts series, which would be known as EA Sports MMA.

The game was said to receive the same attention that the company offers well-known franchises like Madden NFL, FIFA or NBA.

The only problem with the MMA concept is that most of the fighters who could appear in such a title have their image rights managed by a firm called Zuffa, which has already sold rights for the UFC to THQ. The publisher’s first release using them, UFC 2009: Undisputed, has already moved more than 2 million units and proved to be a success.

So, Electronic Arts could be left in the unfortunate position of creating a fighting game populated with unknown characters that use slightly different names than in reality or sport radically different looks. Still, the company seems confident in its ability to attract famous names.

Peter Moore, who is the head of EA Sports, told Gamasutra that “We are looking obviously at every fighter that we can, that we feel is applicable from a quality level and then analyzing their image rights, and if they’re available and we want them – then we’ll get them. If they’re not then we’ll move on to the next fighter.”

Until now, EA Sports has not announced who are the fighters it has signed to the MMA franchise, but leaked reports are saying that Fedor Emelianenko and Gegard Mousasi are set for a photo tour on behalf of the new game and will probably be featured in it.

Tim Sylvia, a former champion in the UFC, and Randy Couture also seem to have given Electronic Arts the rights to their image, but the publisher has refused to confirm these signings, saying that official information will only be released once the line up for the game is certain.

Xbox Live Will Get ‘A Lot of Cool Features’
Due out later this year

New things will arrive for this service

The Xbox 360 is a very popular console, largely due to its online service, Xbox Live, which is one of the most popular, giving users of the console a great experience by using the Internet.

The service became even more popular as the New Xbox Experience, a major content update, was released at the end of last year, bringing with it an improved dashboard alongside other new features.

But even though Xbox Live is very popular, according to the Xbox 360 community manager, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, the development team is currently working on a brand new update to the service that will give it an extra boost in speed and reliability, thus solving a lot of complaints from many Xbox 360 users.

“We are making the guide faster. The team has done some really good stuff around making performance enhancements. ‘Performance enhancements’ doesn’t sound right because it sounds like we’re going to give the guide a little blue pill, and we’re not doing that. Whatever we call it (and it’s not going to be called the NNXE), but whatever the next version of the dashboard is called, it’s better with a lot of very cool new features. That update will be out later this year.”

There are already quite a few big updates scheduled for the end of the year for Xbox Live, as not only will it get this update, but also support for Facebook, Last.FM and Twitter. New areas like an Avatar Marketplace or a Games on Demand section are also expected by many Xbox 360 users in the following months.

Do you think that with these updates in terms of reliability and of content, Xbox Live will become even more popular and will manage to move a lot of Xbox 360 consoles? Leave us a comment with your thoughts.

GTA: Chinatown Wars Arrives on the PSP This Fall
It isn’t exclusive anymore

Coming soon to the PSP

Grand Theft Auto is one of the most popular franchises in the whole world. It introduced a variety of new gameplay mechanics and completely revamped this genre of video games.

Almost all of the major releases of the title have gained critical acclaim, alongside experiencing some strong sales everywhere around the world. Even the titles made for handheld platforms have achieved respectable numbers, and the most recent iteration, GTA: Chinatown Wars, which was released as an exclusive to the Nintendo DS, was also expected to break records.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case, as the title got, despite being positively reviewed by critics, not so ground breaking sales. Many pinned this fact to the casual user base of the DS, who aren’t into hardcore titles.

Rockstar aims at fixing the meager sales success of the title, and has just announced that Chinatown Wars would be arriving on the PlayStation Portable, a more hardcore-oriented platform, this fall. Set to be a more customized experience, the PSP version will have upscaled widescreen graphics and enhanced lighting and animation. New story missions will also be a part of this new title.

“We’re proud to extend this truly unique handheld Grand Theft Auto experience to PSP and offer a downloadable version of Chinatown Wars for PSPgo,” said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. “Rockstar Leeds has shown incredible talent in creating games that raise the bar in terms of depth and innovation on portables, and with Chinatown Wars we have a rich, fast-paced, and incredibly addictive entry into the series.”

Sam Houser’s excitement was also shared by Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, “Rockstar’s work with the GTA series has been an enormous part of the success of PlayStation platforms. We’re excited to welcome the critically acclaimed Chinatown Wars to the outstanding line-up of great games headed to the PSP platform this fall.”

Overall, it was a pretty obvious move, as the last two titles made by Rockstar for the PSP, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, became best sellers and are still registering respectable sales after years since their release.

Microsoft Set to Unveil Motion-Tracking Camera for Xbox 360
So say people “familiar” with its projects

The Xbox 360 might receive a new peripheral soon

The current generation of consoles has completely rewritten the whole gaming industry. This is largely due to the Nintendo Wii, which, through its motion-sensitive controllers, has managed to introduce an entirely new concept into the creation of a video game.

Seeing as how the gamble paid off and the Wii is the best-selling console, Microsoft is set to soon reveal an innovative motion-tracking camera for its Xbox 360 console that will take the whole gaming experience one step further, at least according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites “people familiar” with the company’s projects.

Unlike the Wii Remote, this camera will be most likely fixed on the TV and will record the movements of the player. But don’t go thinking this will be just like some of the gimmicks that older video games had, as this new technology will sense even the slightest movement, making it ideal for playing games.

Even though the Redmond-based software giant declined to comment on the subject, the possibility is very plausible, as the corporation has recently acquired Israeli company 3DV Systems, which developed a 3D Camera and holds patents to the use of this technology. When contacted by the WSJ, the CEO of the company said that “Unfortunately I can’t comment on the rumors surrounding this deal. We will provide more information when we can.”

Overall, the possibility of seeing a camera peripheral for the Xbox 360 that would track the motion of the players might be something quite interesting. Look forward to Microsoft’s presentation at E3 next month when, as the WSJ reports, we might see the official announcement of this technology.