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:
- Nintendo Drops 3DS Price to $169.99
- Driver: San Francisco Pushed Back One Week to September 6
- Red Faction Franchise Could Be Finished
- Glen Schofield Interview on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
- Quiet Week in Releases
Nintendo Drops 3DS Price to $169.99
By far the biggest and most surprising news this week was Nintendo’s intention to drop the price of the Nintendo 3DS by $80 on August 12 to $169.99. Along with this it was later reported that Nintendo’s leader Iwata would be taking a 50% pay cut. Sales for the 3DS have been decidedly lackluster and I think Nintendo has learned that you can’t sell a handheld system for $249.99, the price of the Wii console at launch.
The good news in all of this is that it undercuts Sony and their upcoming Playstation Vita handheld which was priced at $249 for the Wi-Fi version and $299 for the 3G version (w/AT&T). It’s just too bad Nintendo did this under 5 months of release here in the United States. At least now this interests me for picking it up even though I can’t experience 3D at all.
Source: me
Driver: San Francisco Pushed Back One Week to September 6
On the road to redemption after the horrendously bad Driv3r, Driver: San Francisco, now in the hands of Ubisoft has hit a speed bump and been pushed back one week to September 6 for release. Along with this there was also the announcement that the PC version would only be playable if you had a constant connection to the internet, basically the PC’s version of the Online Pass I guess. Sad news for PC owners interested in the game, but are you really that surprised when we’re talking about Ubisoft? They’ve shot themselves in the foot many times over PC releases lately.
Source: Joystiq
Red Faction Franchise Could Be Finished
Chances are good that the Red Faction franchise is over after the poor selling of the new Armaggedon game. THQ has termed it a “niche” game, basically because the critically regarded Red Faction: Guerilla didn’t sell well and neither did its followup which I’ve heard is not as good as Guerilla was, although I wasn’t a huge fan of that game either. I know a lot of people, especially game reviewers, will be disappointed, but games have got to sell in our current world or they’re left by the wayside.
Source: Joystiq
Glen Schofield Interview on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Just want to pimp our interview with Glen Schofield again found at the link below. Let’s attempt to get the views up over 10k. We only have a little over 1,000 hits left before hitting that mark. I hope you like the interview as I feel Glen was very open and honest about the questions we asked.
Source: Co-Optimus
Quiet Week in Releases
Kind of a dead zone this week with only a downloadable game being the lone exception. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is on tap this week for the Summer of Arcade on XBLA. The graphics look nice on it, but I have no idea how good it is.
Source: me