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:
- Gears of War 3 Pushed Back to Fall 2011
- 3DS Japanese Date and Price Announced
- Beyond Good and Evil Getting HD Re-Release
- Ron Gilbert Hired at Double Fine, Working on 5th Game
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Enslaved, NBA Jam and Wii Party This Week
Gears of War 3 Pushed Back to Fall 2011
Microsoft announced that Gears of War 3 has been pushed back from April to the Holidays in 2011. There was major buzz when the April date was given, but to be honest I’m not too surprised by this. Chances are Microsoft looked at their future release plans and saw nothing big for next holiday, so why not push this game back and allow even more months to make it the best game it can possibly be and sell millions still?
Some are speculating that the Kinect is somehow involved, but I don’t know whether that is true or not. I just can’t see Epic not putting regular control in this game and instead go full Kinect in order to push the peripheral. I think that could be a sales disaster. Cliff B. did say on his Twitter that there is a silver lining coming up, but as of yet this announcement has not been made. Maybe it is based around a game other than Gears of War 3 that Epic is working on or overseeing.
Source: Colony of Gamers
3DS Japanese Date and Price Announced
Nintendo announced the 3DS release date for Japan (February 26, 2011) and price (25,000 yen). In current conversion, that price would be $300 in our money. This doesn’t mean the system will come out at that price point here, if I were to guess it would be more along the $229 or $249 price point. That is still pretty expensive and initially keeps me away from jumping right on board with the system.
Hopefully we will hear soon about the date (supposedly March) and price of the 3DS over here. I do think Nintendo may be taking the place of Sony in the arrogant sphere (PS3 was $599 when it came out on the pure idea that people would jump to it because of the success of the PS2) believing we will buy anything for whatever price they set. I think it will be interesting to see a 3DS that may sell higher than the initial Wii price of $249.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Beyond Good and Evil Getting HD Re-Release
In awesome news, there will be an HD re-release of Beyond Good and Evil coming sometime in 2011. Could Ubisoft be setting the table to see how well this will sell to decide for sure if Beyond Good and Evil 2 will ever see the light of day or not. The game will supposedly be downloadable only and will get an HD update along with a re-mastered soundtrack and achievements/trophies. Hopefully many will pick this up, far more than purchased it originally (like me).
Source: Colony of Gamers
Ron Gilbert Hired at Double Fine, Working on 5th Game
This is pretty major news as it joins up Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer once again, the men who worked many years together at LucasArts. Word is that Gilbert is heading up a fifth game for Double Fine. Previously there had been four different games that were being worked on by different people. It will be interesting to see what type of game Gilbert is making and honestly it would be cool if LucasArts got its head out of its ass that they commission Double Fine to make some new adventure games. However that is too logical, so it will never happen.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Enslaved, NBA Jam and Wii Party This Week
The biggest surprise in that list is Enslaved, which after playing the demo looks awesome from Ninja Theory. This is honestly the first time I had heard of the game and I’m said I don’t have an extra $60 to purchase the game. The new Castlevania is probably the biggest release of the week though, although is it really Castlevania when it started as a totally different game? It is sounding like a really good game though, so we’ll see.
Source: me