Launching in Japan on November 1st and Europe in spring 09, yesterday Nintendo announced their long rumoured update to the ever popular DS, the DSi (adding an i, how inventive…).
There are a plethora of upgrades on the original:
A set of bigger screens, going from 3 to 3.25 inches.
Two cameras, an external 3.0 megapixel and a internal 0.3 megapixel one.
An SD card slot for much easier storage expansion (although the current max is 2GB)
An integrated web browser
Improved audio playback (which lead to the Daily Mail getting all excited, announcing Nintendo are taking on the iPod… oh dear…)
Thickness decreased by 12%, aided by the removal of the GBA slot. (so probably say goodbye to quirky hardware add-ons)
Nintendo also announced DSiWare a download service for add-on content and full games, with games being playable off a SD card. Which seems it may be playing right into the hands of the R4 developers. Hopefully Nintendo has some good copy protection.
Sainsburys’s today announced plans to slash the price of the 360 Arcade from £129 to £99.97, marking the first time one of the big three consoles have fallen past the magical £100 barrier, I imagine Sainsbury’s will sell a lot of consoles over the next week. For that is all the time you have, the offer is set to end on Oct 12th.
But wait there’s more!
The 60GB 360 and the Wii are also receiving the equivalent discount. The 60GB 360 will be going for £139.97 (which is unbelievably cheap if you ask me) and the Wii for £149.97. Now I’m not encouraging anyone to start a riot, but hurry! I imagine stock will be limited, especially on those pesky Wiis.
Multiplayer zombie shooter Left 4 Dead has been receiving considerable hype from the PC crowd lately, and if you want to see what all this fuss is about a demo is coming soon. Valve super legend Gabe Newell has confirmed both the 360 and PC versions will be getting demos, telling Videogamer.com
“I think it’s going to contain the first part of one of the campaigns. I think it’ll probably be Hospital but I’m not sure. That’s a decision that Doug Lombardi is making”
He also added that you’ll be able to play both online co-op and single player with bots. This will hopefully go someway to making up for the game’s recent delay, and provide a good taster of what is shaping up to be one of this winter’s most excting prospects.
Expect the demo to hit sometime in October and the full release on Nov 21st.
GearsofWar.com’s new splash page may be giving us a strong (yet subtle) hint for the release date of this Winter’s biggest blockbuster. The dog tags that appear on the page show 033-116-117-126-071, which apparently in ASCII character codes translates to ESC-N-O-V-9. Unless this is a crazy coincidence it looks like this will probably be Emergence Day for Gears of War 2, but expect confirmation from Epic very soon as E3 starts in a matter of days.
Respect to Dark Infinity 1 on the GoW forums for Nicolas Cage in National Treasure-esque code-breaking skills.
Sony’s PlayStation Day was held today at the O2 arena in London providing us with lots of new gameplay footage of their upcoming lineup, and a trio of delays. LittleBigPlanet is moved back to October, Home to the end of the year and Killzone 2 to February ‘09.
Ted Price, president of Insomniac, confirmed on stage that Resistance 2 will feature 8-player co-op and 60-player online. Squads within the 60 players should keep the game a little less hectic but I’m still not convinced this many players can work, especially when a much smaller base has access to a headset compared to the 360.
Now, I was planning to post the new videos of Resistance and Killzone, but it seems Gamevideos.com where a bit hasty posting them, as they have now both been taken down. So for now your just gonna have to put up with the new gameplay footage of Mirror’s Edge from DICE. Its another fps, but there trying to take it in a different direction with lots of free running and an emphasis on melee combat.
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Oh and Motorstorm 2 has a name, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, exciting…
Konami have released a video showing new gameplay footage of MGS4. In what appears to be a dream, Snake is seen sneaking through a location from the original MGS on the PSone. Whether this will be a one off flashback or you can play more of these old scenes remains to be seen, but it doesn’t look like it’s the exact same timeframe as the original as there are no patrolling soldiers or any enemy activity.
Here’s hoping this isn’t a one off, I’d love to play some snippets of MGS with updated graphics, and as its in Snake’s head they can mix it up and add some crazy psychedelic stuff.
Yes, it’s very exciting. Metal Gear Online is now available for download from the European Playstation Store.
Now, I’d love to tell you what it’s like, but it seems Konami was expecting the same 5 people who played Subsistence’s Online mode to be the only ones trying this out. A Konami ID is required for play, and guess what, the website is down. Even if you already have your Konami ID, the forced patch required at the start of play is either causing a network error or taking hours to download. Well done Konami, surely it occurred to you this beta might be quite popular? I’ll keep trying and hopefully I’ll be able to post my views on the game in the near future.
I’m still wondering why anyone would buy GTA on the PS3 with the 360 offering extra content in a few months, but for those who think the time is right to jump on the Sony bandwagon, retailers have confirmed they will be offering a bundle on the 29th April. For £299.99 £319.99 you’ll get yourself a 40gb PS3 with the game and one Sixaxis (surely they could stretch to a DualShock 3?). My excitement for this game is getting a little out of control and with news of stock running out fast I’m off to pre-order the limited edition.
Playstation.Blog have posted a video walkthrough of the revamped Playstation Store and although previously hinting about the interface being quicker, it seems they have integrated the whole store into the PS3, ala Xbox Live, it is no longer web browser based. It seems quicker and much better organised but its a shame its taken them over a year to essentially copy the layout of the 360’s store. Check it out:
I’m still wondering why anyone would buy GTA on the PS3 with the 360 offering extra content in a few months, but for those who think the time is right to jump on the Sony bandwagon, retailers have confirmed they will be offering a bundle on the 29th April. For 