The stories for this week:
- God of War III Unveiled
- Dead Rising 2 Finally Announced
- Midway Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
- SF IV and GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned DLC This Week
- Square Enix the Secret Paramour for Eidos
God of War III Unveiled
On Tuesday there was a press event put on by Sony for the first showing of God of War III and on Friday the embargo finally lifted. There had already been pictures of the pages from the newest Game Informer magazine, but finally we saw the thoughts of gaming journalists from all around. The sad part is that the presser consisted of the press watching someone play the game for two hours. That makes for a boring presser, but at least we got an expanded trailer. Sony did announce that they would give the release date at E3 and some sites have said they doubt it will be out by the end of 2009 given how much seemed to be missing from what they saw. I guess we’ll know for sure in early June.
Source: me, various sites
Dead Rising 2 Finally Announced
Capcom continues its top tier game unveilings this year with Dead Rising 2 finally being announced and coming to the 360, PS3 and PC with no known release date. My guess would be that it would be out this fall because I’m pretty sure this has been in development for a while and only announced now. From the early information we have you play a new character and the game is based in a Las Vegas-like city named Fortune City. Personally I can’t wait for this game because the original Dead Rising was one of the highlights in the early days of the 360.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Midway Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
No huge surprise here since Midway has been losing money for a while. Chances are excellent they will be able to reorganize and get all square with their creditors before re-opening. One of the interesting rumors swirling is that Ubisoft has purchased the Vin Diesel game, Wheelman from Midway. Crazy ideas range from Ubisoft changing it to a Driver game (they own the rights to the series now) or pushing it back a ways from the current March 20th release. It should be interesting to see if other games are sold off to solidify Midway’s finances. Highly doubt they’d sell Mortal Kombat, but there are other upcoming games out there that could go elsewhere like This is Vegas.
Source: Colony of Gamers via the LA Times
SF IV and GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned DLC This Week
This week will be the start of the industry moving out of the awkward period where little to no big games come out. This week sees the highly anticipated Street Fighter IV on 360 and PS3 as well as the Grand Theft Auto IV 360 DLC exclusive The Lost and the Damned. Microsoft’s $50 million dollar deal with Rockstar will be tested this week. It is sounding like the DLC is set in the middle of the full game and will weave in and out with the story from the full game. No word on how much time of gameplay is added with this download, but there are some new multiplayer modes supposedly and there are new radio content and a bunch of other things. Will be interesting to see the sales for this $20 expansion.
Source: me
Square Enix the Paramour for Eidos
I was rather surprised by this since I thought Warner was the paramour since they already own a good percentage of Eidos. Instead it turns out Square Enix is the company that is interested in buying Eidos for $121 million. The Eidos Board of Directors have already agreed to it and the shareholders will vote on it next month. We all know Square Enix has wanted to get more Western and this would certainly be a move toward that.
Source: Colony of Gamers via Games Industry