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:
- Rockstar Bringing GTA IV DLC to PS3 and PC on March 30th
- God of War III Coming March 16th, Ultimate Edition Detailed
- Heavy Rain Demo Landing February 11th
- No Dedicated Servers or LAN Play for BioShock 2
- Star Trek Online and White Knight Chronicles Highlight Releases
Rockstar Bringing GTA IV DLC to PS3 and PC on March 30th
No big surprise here given how disappointed Rockstar and Take Two were in the sales of the two DLC episodes on 360 which Microsoft paid a pretty penny to hold as exclusives. Both The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. They will be sold separately as well as in the Episodes from Liberty City pack. The former required GTA IV in order to play while the latter did not and I’m not sure if the same will be true for the PS3 and PC releases.
Source: Colony of Gamers
God of War III Coming March 16th, Ultimate Edition Detailed
Sony announced the release date for God of War III as March 16th. They also detailed what the $90 Ultimate Edition will include: 2 music CDs (a soundtrack and a metal album) an art book, a documentary, a new skin and the Challenge of Exile arena, all in a neat replica of Pandora's Box. I personally can’t wait for this game and I’m sure Sony is hoping it will drive console sales and be a beast in overall sales. We’ll see though, this is a really good test for the PS3 and its selling ability.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Heavy Rain Demo Landing February 11th
Another interesting Sony PS3 releasing landing in February is Heavy Rain. Sony announced that the demo will land on February 11th, just under two weeks away from its release on February 23rd. This game looks interesting, although I am afraid it will turn out to be a Quicktime Event-laden game, something we could use less of in this day and age.
Source: Joystiq
No Dedicated Servers or LAN Play for BioShock 2
Taking the well established Activison pioneered nose thumbing with Modern Warfare 2 on PC, Take Two has announced that BioShock 2, releasing February 9th, will not have dedicated servers or LAN play for its multiplayer component. Add this to my other red flags I have on BioShock 2. The key red flag is that the game is being developed by four different companies now: 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Arkane Studios on single-player and Digital Extremes on the multiplayer. That’s just too many cooks in the kitchen if you ask me. Add in the delay from an advertised and hard release date from late last year and I’m very fearful this game will not even come close to reaching what people are even baseline hoping for.
Source: Joystiq
Star Trek Online and White Knight Chronicles Highlight Releases
A relatively quiet week before the releases of Dante’s Inferno and BioShock 2 upcoming. The biggest releases are the MMO Star Trek Online which I hope is good for all you Trekkies out there and “Good Lord it took this long to come out” White Knight Chronicles on the PS3. Seriously, this game came out over a year ago in Japan and is finally seeing release. The game always looked good, but it wasn’t reviewed well in Japan with the online component being the chief concern. Should be a good RPG pickup for those that like it though.
Source: me