Persona 4

PixelJunk Shooter

Torchlight

Lumines

Persona 4 team to reunite in 2010 to work on “an even bigger title”

Split Second dated for May 2010

FFXIII launch day sales in Japan exceed 1 million

Brutal Legend “Hammer of Infinite Fate” DLC on XBL and PSN

PSN premium subscription possibly coming; possible features include cloud storage and cross-game chat

Trials HD DLC 12/23 for 400 MS points

LBP accessory bundle references PSP 4000; ad company claims it’s a mistake

Crackdown 2 coming “first half of 2010″

Blizzard to return to console development “at some point”

MS files patent for user health-generated avatars

Capcom delays several titles to April 2010 or later

Assassin’s Creed 2 DLC originally slated to be in the game, but was cut

1 vs. 100 available to Live Silver from 12/24 9AM PST to 12/28 9AM PST in many areas

Music games getting specific music stores on XBL

We love listener mail!  Please to be sending more of it to podcast@someothercastle.com.

Return of the links!

Rock Band: Beatles

Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Scribblenauts

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Persona 3

Dissidia Final Fantasy

Halo 3

Batman: Arkham Asylum sells 2 million units, is getting 2 free DLC packs on 9/17 and 9/24

Toys R’ Us will be taking ALL video game trade-ins; get your Atari 2600 games ready

Music games down 46% in sales from last year

US PS3 sales up 300% now that it’s actually at a non-absurd price

Forza 3 goes gold; demo hits 9/24

EA sends out $200 checks to game media to promote Dante’s Inferno

New Katamari demo up on US PSN

Call of Duty 360 announced, $399 with 2 controllers, game, and 250 gig hard drive

Microsoft’s Shane Kim is retiring

Scribblenauts getting full UK localization to avoid pants confusion

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks dated for 12/7

PS3 browser now offers the ability to order Papa John’s pizza

Questions?  Comments?  Hugs?  podcast@someothercastle.com!

Linkatudeination:

Persona 3

Docomodake BOING!

Gardening Mama

Persona 4

inFAMOUS

Sims 3

Rather than try to figure out how many individual links each of the conferences should get, I’m just going to link out to the videos of each…. there are several places with archives, but I’ve found IGN’s to be the most reliable:

Microsoft

Nintendo

Sony

Break music is “Heart Error” by Sabastian Boaz.  Check out http://8bitpeoples.com for his stuff.

No listener mail this week because we’re storing it, like squirrels burying their little acorns for the cold winter months…. so send more to podcast@someothercastle.com!  Next week will be a grand extrrrrrravaganza of mail!  Also, make sure to visit our awesome affiliates over at msxbox world for even more information on E3 and other related news.

Admin Note:  If you fine folks haven’t noticed yet we have added a new writer to our gang.  Dan will be grading games and other items in the gaming industry.  I wonder if he’ll be assigning homework to industry professionals…..

This week on Grading the Games, I will be looking at the crown jewels of E3, the platform holder press conferences.  Games will be revealed, charts will be used to brag, and we may hear the greatest hyperbole in the history of the universe.  In an effort to cover the massive amount of material in each of these press events, I will deviate from our normal formula a bit, and grade individual sections of the press events on their own, before compiling a final grade for the event as a whole.

We begin with Microsoft, about whom much was rumored, but very little was known heading into the press conference.  In a semi-chronological and partially serious fashion, I give you my grades for Microsoft.

The Beatles:Rock Band
This game looks, well, a lot like Rock Band.  Which is good.  It seems to play a lot like Rock Band, which is also good.  The 10 songs revealed, of the 45 in the game are songs I would like to play, so we’re still positive so far.  Abbey Road will be available as DLC shortly after launch, which should sell to every Beatles fan with a credit card.  I had nothing negative to say about this section, until Yoko Ono hit the stage with Olivia Harrison.  I then cursed for 30 seconds straight without breathing, until Ringo Star and Paul McCartney hit the stage, which was really neat.  Until they started talking.  Hey Ringo, no one cares about the way your character walks.  All in all, I love Rock Band, and I love the Beatles.  This section gets high marks, but loses half a letter grade for Yoko Ono being anywhere near it.  ‘A-’

Tony Hawk Ride
Tony came out on stage to hawk his new game and hover board peripheral after the Beatles finished up.  (Ed: A cheap pun, I would be embarrassed, if I could still feel shame.)  At $120, I’m not sure the game will justify the price point, but the footage they showed of professional skateboards playing the game made it look appealing.  It looks like it could be a really fun game to play, but the price point makes it a high risk proposition.  ‘B-’

Modern Warfare 2
I am not necessarily a huge shooter fan.  I like a good shooter, but I probably play one or two shooters a year.  I will not miss this game.  Both a trailer and actual game play were shown.  Both looked stunning, although the trailer was not new footage.  The game play included an ice climbing segment that looked very fun and different.  A “stealth” segment was shown, which included a weapon with a flip out radar screen for finding enemies.  The live demo also included a firefight, which appeared just as engaging as the original.  And who can pass on snowmobile riding?  That’s right people, you can get your Eskimo drive-by on this November.  A can’t miss title and a great live demo, ‘A’.

Final Fantasy XIII
Squeenix sent a couple of representatives out to talk about Final Fantasy XIII … during the Microsoft press conference?  As if they hadn’t already battered Sony enough, now they have really cuddled up to Microsoft.  They showed the same demo we’ve seen before, but now it’s on Xbox.  Yawn.  Still, I hadn’t seen the Odin summon before, and that looked fantastic.  The release date is still a vague Spring 2010, but the fact that Microsoft had Squeenix involved in their press event again at Sony’s expense scores them points.  Overall, a ‘B’ for the FFXIII showing.

Shadow Complex
A 2.5D side scrolling action game from Epic.  It will be an XBLA release this summer, looks to be a very cool downloadable game.  The number batted around was 10 hours of game play.  It seems interesting, I’ll give it a ‘B’.

Joy Ride
A kart racing game featuring avatars.  It was going to get a ‘C-’ for being very generic, until they announced that it is free to download, with microtransactions afterwards.  Being free elevates the grade to a ‘C+’.

Crackdown 2
Crackdown 2 offered only a trailer, but I got goosebumps as soon as I heard the agility orb sound effect to start the trailer.  Very little shown beyond a trailer but I’ll let this title trade of off its predecessor’s reputation a bit.  Not offering any indication of a release date certainly didn’t help its cause.  ‘B-’

Left For Dead 2
Valve announced Left For Dead 2 as a Xbox/360 exclusive.  Left For Dead is not even a year old yet, and still gets plenty of play online.  I feel like this sequel might be too soon.  Also, we only saw a trailer, no actual game play.  For these reasons, I give it a ‘B’.

Splinter Cell: Conviction
The latest entry in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series looks like a fantastic third person action game.  The in game demo only served to make it more appealing.  This was hardly a surprise, but looks to be big title for the “Novembermas” season in the fall.  For delivering a nice trailer and in game demo, I award this title a ‘B+’.  After realizing that Sam’s mullet didn’t appear in presentation, I’m raising the grade to an ‘A-’.

Forza Motorsport 3
In one of the worst kept secrets in video games, Forza 3 was finally announced during the press conference.  After an introduction featuring an actual Audi R8 on stage, which certainly will increase the grade for this title.  After examining the CG trailer and game play of the title, my excitement only increased.  With an October 2009 release date, this simulation racer will be here very shortly.  Turn 10 has done nothing to discourage me from being excited about this tile, I give it a ‘B+’.

Halo 3:ODST and Halo: Reach
This title featured a live game play demo, and looked, rather unsurprisingly, like Halo 3.  The presentation remains essentially the same as Halo 3, with some changes to the HUD, night vision, and the return of the Halo sniper pistol.  It was an acceptable showing, good enough for a ‘B-’, before Bungie announced a prequel to the Halo trilogy, Halo Reach, for release in the fall of 2010.  Announcing a secret game with no details gives the Halo segment grade a bump up to a ‘B’.

Alan Wake
At long last, Alan Wake returned to the limelight.  The Xbox exclusive had an extensive showing in the press conference, featuring an extended live demo.  The presentation was fantastic, and the game is certainly visually stunning.  The lighting effects in the demo were among the best I’ve ever seen, which is good given a light based mechanic used in the game play.  This game needed to make some positive momentum for itself, and it managed to do that in a big way.  Unfortunately, it still won’t be releasing until a vague “Spring 2010″, which will drop it’s grade a bit.  However, the live demo scores a large number of points in this column, and Alan Wake gets an ‘A-’.

Last.fm
Xbox Live will be adding last.fm integration to bring a music component into the service.  This is a strong move toward multimedia feature completeness, and last.fm is a fairly widely used service.  This wasn’t a spectacular or surprising move, but it is definitely welcome.  I give the addition  a ‘B’.

Zune Marketplace
The new video marketplace on Xbox Live will feature 1080p HD video and streaming technology rather than downloads.  I like the 1080p upgrade, but I’m unsure if the 1080p streaming will be as instant as Microsoft seems to think.  Still, it’s a nice incremental upgrade, ‘B-’.

Facebook
For those of you looking for reasons to never get off the couch again, Microsoft is here to help.  Facebook integration is coming to Xbox Live, with a vengeance.  The interface looked pretty slick, and it’s yet another feature Microsoft can lord over Sony.  ‘B’.

Twitter
I have many of the same feelings on this that I had on the new Facebook integration.  Except that I actually like Twitter, and use it much more often.  Thus, the grade is a smidge higher, ‘B+’.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising
Oh man, I knew there was trouble when I heard the Metal Gear “discovered” sound effect.  Then Kojima was out on stage … at a Microsoft event?  Sony must literally just be banging their collective heads off a wall somewhere.  Kojima announced that his next Metal Gear title will be coming to Xbox 360, and it will feature Raided rather than Solid Snake.  No real tangible details beyond those, but Microsoft has stolen yet another exclusive franchise away from Sony.  They score major points for that, ‘A-’.

Project Natal
This is an extremely difficult thing to grade, and may be worthy of it’s own Grading the Games at some point in the future.  I will try to keep it brief at this point.  It is a very interesting UI concept, and I believe it will ultimately live or die with its software.  That said, the software demos that were shown onstage were very well done.  It can perform motion detection, facial recognition, and voice recognition.  It has the potential to really shake some things up, but there were no words on a potential release.  All in all, Natal had a great tech demo and has a lot of potential.  Time will tell, but for a press conference debut, it was well done.  I will grade out some specifics of the Natal presentation below, but overall, I’m giving it an ‘A-’.

Kudo Tsunoda’s Sunglasses
Those things made him like a guy who says “Bro” or “Bra” a lot and wears pink polos to bars with his collar popped.  Also, the press conference was inside.  ‘F-’

The “Elephant”
Two people made an elephant shape in front of the camera to import into “Paint Party”.  It looked like a game we used to call, “Hey, whose hand is that, and what the heck is it doing there?”  I’m taking away points for being a little sketchy, but awarding it points for unintentional comedy.  ‘C+’.

Peter Molyneaux’s Hyperbole
‘A++’ or ‘F–’, I can’t decide which.  But let me tell you, it was either the greatest, or worst, hyperbole I’d ever experienced.

Milo
Peter Molyneaux’s interactive “friend” demo was very interesting.  It was an amazing piece of tech, and appeared to be as truly interactive as any simulated person I’ve ever seen.  The Natal appears to give him vision and other senses I hadn’t seen represented before.  That said, this may very well be the precursor to Skynet.  If too many people play anything like this at once, Xbox Live may become self-aware and destroy us all.  Of course, given the amount of people that will now never go outside again, we may not need Skynet’s, I mean Xbox Live’s, help.  Milo has earned himself a ‘B+’.

Overall
Microsoft certainly had a packed press conference.  They led off with huge multiplatorm games like The Beatles:Rock Band, Modern Warfare 2, and Final Fantasy XIII.  The might as well have just brought out a PS3 and a sledgehammer to open their press conference.  They then proceeded to show off tons of exclusives in two new Halo games, Crackdown 2, Left For Dead 2, and Alan Wake.  Not all of these are coming this year, which makes the lineup a bit less impressive, but it’s still substantial.  They ended the event with stealing another franchise previously exclusive to Sony by having Kojima and Metal Gear Solid on stage, and debuting the most interesting UI device for a console since the Wii was debuted.  They did very little wrong, besides Yoko Ono being in the building, and Kudo’s sunglasses.  I was interested for the entire two hours, and left eagerly awaiting many of the things I saw.  In total, Microsoft started off E3 right, I give the event an ‘A-’.

Look for my grades of the Nintendo and Sony press events in short order.

Student 1: Microsoft

Microsoft was the last platform holder to make a part of its back catalog available for download on the Xbox360.  Xbox Originals titles are available for download via Xbox Live Marketplace.  Let’s start from ‘C’, and see how it grades out.

Pricing: Xbox Originals conform to a flat rate pricing model of $15 US, or 1200 Microsoft spacebucks.  For last generation Xbox titles, that’s not an awful price point.  For some of those games, $15 might be a stretch, but for others it doesn’t seem too bad.  On the annoyance factor, you can’t buy a block of 1200 spacebucks, you have to buy 1000 or 2000.  This means you can’t just buy an Xbox Originals game, you either have to buy extra points, or have some laying around.  To sum up, flat rate pricing is worth raising the grade up to a ‘B’.  The price point is a bit higher than it could be, and the annoyance of not being able to buy 1200 spacebucks combine to drop the grade to a ‘B-’.

Selection: There are currently 31 games available for Microsoft’s back catalog service; however, two of them are exclusive to Japan.  While this is a fairly low number compared to the other two platforms, the service didn’t debut until December of 2007.  There is a nice variety of titles both in terms of genres and publishers as well.  Surprisingly, less than a quarter of the titles available are from Microsoft Game Studios.  Also, some games that weren’t necessarily huge sellers at retail are available.  The solid variety raises the cumulative grade to a ‘B+’, but the relatively low number of titles available drop it back to a ‘B’.

Quality of Titles: While there are some forgettable titles on Xbox Originals, there are some real gems, both Xbox exclusive and multiplatform.  Fable, Halo: Combat Evolved, and and Ninja Gaiden Black are great titles, but non-exclusive classics such as GTA: San Andreas, and the Max Payne games are also available.  Also, lesser known games such as Indigo Prophecy, Jade Empire, and the chronically under-appreciated Psychonauts are available.  For having some all around great titles, Xbox Originals gets bumped up to a ‘B’.  Then, for including the Tim Schafer gem Psychonauts, they get a ‘B+’.  The world needs more Tim Schafer.

Extra Credit: Microsoft has a pretty solid back catalog service.  More titles could certainly be released (they’re releasing between one and two per month, on average) Also, the price point could possibly drop a bit, maybe to 1000 spacebucks or $12.50, which happens to be an amount you can purchase exactly on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Student 2: Sony

Sony started it’s PSOne Classics back catalog service on December 4, 2007 in the US, just after the release of the PS3.  The PSOne classics are part of the broader PlayStation Network.  Once again, Sony starts out with a grade of ‘C’.

Pricing: PSOne Classics have a general price point of $5.99.  However, certain “premium” titles may be priced at $9.99.  The $5.99 price point is good, especially as these games are now from two console generations ago.  The “premium” pricing is a smart business proposition, but very annoying to consumers.  Sony gains half a letter grade for a quality price point, but loses it again for their “premium” pricing scheme.  At this point, their grade remains a ‘C’.

Selection: This is where a major division exists between what is available for North American and Japanese gamers.  There are 36 titles available on this service to North American gamers, a bit pitiful when you consider Microsoft has essentially the same number of titles available, with games a generation newer, in one less year.  The Japanese service, however, boasts 246 PSOne games.  Even considering that many of these titles are Japanese only, that’s a difference of over 200 titles.  Sorry Sony, but these grades are made in America.  They’re down to a ‘D+’.

Quality of Titles: This may sound a bit redundant after the last aspect.  There are solid titles available in North America, including; Castlevania:Symphony of the Night, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Twisted Metal 2, and Wipeout.  However, the Japanese store offers all of these titles, and adds to it with classics such as Resident Evil 1-3, Dead or Alive, Metal Gear Solid, and Final Fantasy VII.  Now Sony, I know these games came out in the US as well, so it’s not as though they would need to be localized.  Rumor has it that Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil are on their way, but they’re not out yet, so no dice.  Down goes Sony, all the way to a ‘D’.

Extra Credit: Sony desperately needs to improve their back catalog distribution.  They have two previous generations of home consoles to draw from, and are barely drawing from one in North America.  They do better in Japan, but other regions suffer.  Also, their entire PS2 library has been ignored.  I understand they still sell these consoles, but since most of the PS3 units sold don’t include backwards compatibility, that would seem to be a logical next step.  If Microsoft can manage to have “last generation” games available, so can Sony.  Like most of Sony’s offerings since the PS3, this one is substandard.

Student 3: Nintendo

Nintendo provides offerings for a variety on consoles, some not Nintendo products, on its Virtual Console service.  The current consoles offerings are the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Turbografx-16, Neo Geo, Commodore 64 (North America), and the MSX (Japan).  For the final time, it’s time to reset to ‘C’.

Pricing: Nintendo provides standard pricing for each individual console available on its service, with a few exceptions for certain titles.  The prices are listed in Wii points, where 100 Wii points = $1.  There does not appear to be an obvious pattern to why some titles are more than the standard pricing.  However, the pricing tiers seem generally reasonable, from 500 points for NES, Sega Master System, and Commodore 64 titles, to 1000 points for Nintendo 64 titles.  Nintendo’s grade rises to a ‘B’ for generally reasonable pricing tiers and the ability to spend exactly the cost of individual games, but falls to a ‘B-’ for the strange pricing exceptions.

Selection: Nintendo has the most impressive selection of titles available due to the large number of consoles it draws upon (including consoles not made by Nintendo).  There are also a fair number of titles available for most of the individual systems, although with these impressive back catalogs, more are certainly possible if Nintendo chooses to release them.  While there are a larger number of titles available in Japan than in North America, this is mostly due to a large number of Japanese-only games developed for Nintendo and Sega platforms.  The vast and varied selection earns Nintendo a jump to a ‘B+’.

Quality of Titles: There are some absolute gaming classics available on the virtual console.  From the Zelda games to Mario, Sonic, and some pretty strong third party offerings, the amount of gaming history represented on this service is impressive.  This service has games that defined the youth of a few generations of gamers available for download.  There are a few exceptions that would be great to see, but more games are forthcoming, and hopefully the gaps will be filled in.  For the amazing breadth of titles and historical significance, Nintendo’s grade jumps up to an ‘A’.

Extra Credit: There’s not much for Nintendo to do, besides continue to release more games.  Some more of the classic RPGs would be welcome (Final Fantasy, Earthbound, etc), and some are rumored to be on the way.  Oh, and please, Nintendo, please ditch the strange pricing exceptions.  Other than that, the Virtual Console is great, provided you have a classic controller around to work with.

Grades are in, class dismissed.