The stories for this week:
- Uncharted 2 Sees Title Update, Double Cash Weekend
- PS3 Has Lost $4.7 Billion for Sony
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Has Disturbing Areas (SPOILER WARNING)
- Champions Online Free Weekend
- Dragon Age, NFS: Nitro, Band Hero and LEGO Rock Band Highlight Releases
Uncharted 2 Sees Title Update, Double Cash Weekend
You’re enjoying Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, correct? If not, run out and pick it up if you own a PS3. On Friday, Naughty Dog released a title update for the game that will fix multiplayer issues. They also announced that this Halloween weekend will be a double cash one where you will score double your usual bounty. Many of Naughty Dog’s team will be playing with you this weekend as well.
Source: Joystiq
PS3 Has Lost $4.7 Billion for Sony
Sony announced that they had lost about $654 million this quarter in their division that includes video gaming. A couple sites decided to wrap a number around how much Sony has lost on the PS3 since its inception (using Sony’s own investor totals) and came up with $4.7 billion. That’s a lot of money, but if you look back to Microsoft and their original Xbox they lost around $4.2 billion as well.
Source: Joystiq
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Has Disturbing Areas (SPOILER WARNING)
Hopefully you read the big SPOILER WARNING above, if not this is your last chance to skip over this section of Beyond Co-Op and go to the other two stories. OK, I think I’ve given you more than enough time to skip this so as to not be spoiled by story elements.
This week feelings have flared up after a person uploaded a video to YouTube showing off some story elements from the game. Basically you infiltrate a Russian gang, The Departed style (for lack of a better connection), and one of the missions sees you in an airport with the Russian gang and you shooting at innocent civilians. Indeed, you play your undercover role as a terrorist and you are able to kill innocent people.
Activision of course came out not long after saying that this was illegally uploaded (no, really?) and noted that you would be able to skip the mission if it disturbs you too much. Problem is that if you skip it you will pull yourself out of the overall story, so it’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t type of situation. I think this is a little crazy since stuff like this has been in games before (playing as Germans in WW II games, the enemy side in almost any game that has multiplayer on it, etc.) it’s just that it hits home because of the world of terror we live in. The mainstream media has latched onto this and I suspect the noise will get louder as the game’s November 10 release gets closer.
Source: Joystiq
Champions Online Free Weekend
Cryptic announced that you can enjoy the MMO Champions Online for free this weekend. They also announced there were over 1 million characters created in the MMO this week, so good news all around. I’m not a big fan of MMOs simply because I’m scared of me getting addicted to them, but I will probably check this out this weekend after playing the beta before release.
Source: Joystiq
Dragon Age, NFS: Nitro, Band Hero and LEGO Rock Band Highlight Releases
Some different genres to choose from this week. Dragon Age: Origins is probably the biggest game this week to the more old-school gamers out there. Available on PC, 360 and PS3 it will be interesting to see what version people pick up. I would recommend the PC version, but then again you have to have a pretty powerful system to run it. Thus making one of the console choices possibly a better pickup.
Along with that NFS: Nitro comes out for the Wii, a totally different racing game than NFS: Shift. To round out the week, two music genre games come out: Band Hero from Activision and LEGO Rock Band from Warner Bros. Band Hero is more family orientated than the Guitar Hero franchise and includes newer hits you hear on the radio as well as classic anthems. LEGO Rock Band is also more family oriented, but the song lineup is more diverse it seems. Not sure how well either one is going to sell, but it should be interesting.
After this we move into the arguably last two major weeks of releases as we move towards Thanksgiving.
Source: me