The stories for this week:
- Some Games Dated This Week
- Halo Moves Into Anime
- Assassin's Creed II Gets Live Action Shorts
- Double Fine Countersues Activision over Brutal Legend
- Wii Sports Resort, BlazBlue Release This Week
Some Games Dated This Week
Last week was all about delays, this week it is all about games being dated. Scribblenauts and Marvel Ultimate Alliance on September 15, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on October 13 (same day as Brutal Legend), Borderlands on October 20 and Grand Theft Auto IV: Ballad of Gay Tony DLC on October 29 were all dated this week. Fall isn’t looking so bad anymore, although a lot of big names have moved to 2010.
Source: me
Halo Moves Into Anime
Yes, the series is moving into the anime arena as the 343 Industries section of Microsoft officially opens and Halo Legends is announced. They will oversee all things in the Halo universe including this new seven part anime series which should see the light of day in 2010. It is being created by a number of Japanese studios much like The Animatrix was for Warner Bros.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Assassin's Creed II Gets Live Action Shorts
Also announced at Comic-Con were 3 live action shorts for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed II game. I believe this was alluded to at E3 this year, but I honestly forget. Each episode will run about 10-15 minutes and will be a prologue to the final game. Chances are good these will be out before the game releases on November 17. The interesting thing here is that the writers and developers of the game will be producing the live action shorts, so no Hollywood team is being brought in or anything. Should be interesting to see.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Double Fine Countersues Activision over Brutal Legend
It was but a matter of time before Double Fine countersued Activision in its attempt to delay the release of Brutal Legend. You may remember that Activision sued for money they felt they should be repaid when Double Fine found another publishing partner in EA. Now Double Fine has countersued going so far as saying that Activision asked them to shoehorn the game into the Guitar Hero franchise and that they only want to release sequels to their lineup and not original games. Now the last point can be contended since they have allowed Raven to work on Singularity, an original IP. They inherited Prototype when the merger went through, so you really can’t use that game as an exception. This should be interesting to see as the case starts on July 30. I can only hope that this works out in the end and that Brutal Legend does indeed come out on Roctober 13.
Source: Colony of Gamers via Washington Post
Wii Sports Resort, BlazBlue Release This Week
Another relatively quiet release week as the big names are Wii Sports Resortand fighter BlazBlue. My big question is why didn’t Nintendo ship a copy of their game without the Wii MotionPlus add-on? I already have one for each of my controllers thanks to everyone needing to have it to play Tiger Woods 10 correctly. Why not have a $10 cheaper option with the game only? Oh well, should be a huge pickup for every Wii owner out there…more Wii Sports is never a bad thing, right?
Source: me