Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- Higher Quality Audio Coming to Live
- Sony Expects Modest Move Sales, Hoping for Word of Mouth
- Play Goalkeeper in FIFA 11
- Supreme Court Violent Video Game Case Begins November 2nd
- Metroid: Other M Only Major Release
Higher Quality Audio Coming to Live
With the release of Kinect in November there will also be a Fall Update for Xbox Live. One of the announced additions is a higher quality audio upgrade. I’m going to guess with Microsoft abandoning support of old Xbox titles that it has freed up a lot of room in the general Live footprint and this is just one of many changes coming. Microsoft has not changed the codec for a long time and they hope this will alleviate problems people have with hearing others on Xbox Live.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Sony Expects Modest Move Sales, Hoping for Word of Mouth
This is just weird given how Sony likes to really oversell things when they’re coming up for release. Anyway, they’re saying they expect the Playstation Move sales to be modest and are hoping for word of mouth to increase the penetration. This is a stark contrast with Microsoft or at least in how I interpret their push for Kinect. I think Microsoft is really counting on a lot of people picking up Kinect, but we’ll see what happens with the two new motion control systems on the market in the coming months.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Play Goalkeeper in FIFA 11
Pushing the number 11 in all their ads for FIFA 11, EA has announced you can play as the goalkeeper for the first time this year. It will also allow 11-on-11 play for the first time online. Seeing the videos it actually looks quite cool and follows in the tradition of NHL 10 allowing control over the goalkeeper last year. It does look like controlling here is a bit easier, although I never played NHL last year either. Kind of left that series behind a while ago, just couldn’t keep buying all the sports games that come out.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Supreme Court Violent Video Game Case Begins November 2nd
The date has been set when the violent video game case goes to the Supreme Court. Basically the case itself comes from California with the state trying to stop minors from buying mature rated games. If a company sells to minors there would be consequences. Obviously, the retail market is against this. The ruling will probably set the table for the whole country on this subject, so it should be interesting to watch.
Source: Joystiq
Metroid: Other M Only Major Release
Ninja Team’s Metroid: Other M finally comes out this week. The reviews so far have been pretty good with Game Informer being the only one ballsy enough to give it a 6.25 out of 10. All the others are mostly in the 8s and 9s with 1UP giving it a B-. I don’t know whether to pick it up or not. Love Metroid, but Phil’s review (GI) does not paint a nice picture. Then again a lot of other people seem to like it.
Source: me