Archive for February, 2009:
Japanese hardware charts - DSi rules roost, PS3 gaining on Wii
The pattern’s starting to become familiar - DSi still reigns supreme in Japan, with PSP in second place. Wii’s just about scraping into third, with PS3 hot on its heels.
That said, it’s interesting to note that even with the release of Street Fighter IV this week, PS3 couldn’t raise its game enough to topple Wii for a single week. So perhaps once it’s over this slightly fallow period, Nintendo’s casual-courting console will start to pick up sales, particularly as the bigger third-party releases hit (how Nintendo must be looking forward to Monster Hunter’s arrival). It’s hard to see Wii de Asobu: Metroid Prime having any effect on Wii’s sales next week, particularly as the series is much more popular in the west - if any console sees a sharp rise in sales next week it’ll be the 360, with Square-Enix’s Star Ocean IV on the way.
MadWorld hits Europe on March 20th
Slicing, smashing, bludgeoning and bashing its way to store shelves across Europe next month is Platinum Games’ ultraviolent destroy-em-up MadWorld - publisher Sega announcing today that the stylish scrapper will launch on March 20th.
It’s another valiant attempt by the Japanese giant to bring a bit of Mature action for us Wii owners starved of blood, guts, gore and chainsaws. It might be a slightly tougher sell than House of the Dead Overkill, though - shooting zombies with a gun controller is more immediately appealing to some than monochromatic, faintly satirical beat-em-ups. Hopefully Sega’s marketing department will have something worked out and can get behind it in a big way in the weeks leading up to its release.
Japanese charts - week ending 15th February
Mario & Luigi RPG 3, as predicted, topped the charts, but there was a disconcerting lack of Wii games in the Japanese top ten this week, as Sony dominated the upper echelons of the chart.Though some were predicting even higher numbers for Mario & Luigi, just under 200,000 copies is by some distance the best first week for the handheld franchise. Indeed, it beat the first week sales of both Superstar Saga and Partners in Time combined. A localisation really can’t come soon enough (will it launch alongside the DSi in Europe perhaps?)
Elsewhere, the sole other Nintendo console representative was the DS version of Echoes of time, hanging in there with a small drop in sales this week to a still-healthy 20,000 units. The Wii take on the game is outside the top 30 despite a hefty price cut. Ouch.
Meanwhile, Street Fighter IV was the other dominant force, the exceptional revival of the 2D beat-em-up genre’s most famous series coming in at second on PS3 and 5th for the 360 iteration. Many Japanese stores reported selling out, which, assuming Capcom gets plenty of stock back in, could make it a contender for the top next week (though Xbox 360 exclusive RPG, Star Ocean 4, could yet have a say).
DSi coming to Europe two days before America, will cost £149.99
“Ha! We’re getting DSi on April 5th!” snort the Americans.”Ner ner ne ner ner!” retort the Europeans, thumbing their noses at their US counterparts as Nintendo announces a launch date of April 3rd in PAL territories the following day.
“We’re getting a blue model, though!” laugh the US residents.
“Ah, but we’ve got white!” is the response.
Little King’s Story hits Europe first in April
In a surprising move for a new Japanese IP, Rising Star Games today announced that strategy role-player Little King’s Story will launch in Europe before any other territory, hitting PAL shores on April 24th.The much-anticipated Wii title is a collaboration between some of Japanese gaming’s biggest names, who’ve individually worked on quality titles such as Harvest Moon, No More Heroes, Final Fantasy XII and Super Mario RPG. In other words, it’s a bit of a developer dream team.
It’s all about building a kingdom, which suggests hints of WiiWare title My Life as a King, yet this offers a more hands-on approach, with the Lilliputian monarch literally leading his followers as they attempt to expand the kingdom and ward off any unwanted intruders.
Smash Bros. creator joins forces with Nintendo to create new dev team Project Sora
A nice spot from GoNintendo here - Nintendo has some new info on its official Japanese site which says that Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai is involved in a brand new project. Naturally, this being Nintendo, there are few concrete details, but it seems to be a new second-party company working under Nintendo named Project Sora, whose rather clinical looking official site can be found here.
GoNintendo also has a quote from Satoru Iwata claiming that the game is “an experience that’s different from anything [you’ve played] up until now.”
Dead Space Wii is a first-person on-rails shooter
In a decision which has immediately split the internet clean in two, EA’s Wii take on hi-def horror-actioner Dead Space - titled Dead Space: Extraction will be a first-person shooter on rails, a la House of the Dead: Overkill.
The sensible people like me think this is a good choice - the Wii’s a great console for arcade-like experiences, and it means it’s not just a watered-down, graphically-inferior version of a 360/PS3 game. Hello, Dead Rising: Chop ‘Til You Drop. Various others claim it’s a disaster, that rail shooters are [expletive deleted] and that EA deserves to rot in hell and that the Wii is rubbish and LOL.
While in one way it’s a shame we’re not getting a third-person adventure, Extraction would never have stood the comparison, especially considering how reliant its predecessor was on state-of-the-art graphics and sound design. Judging by the video above, the on-rails approach has allowed EA to really push the Wii, and create something which looks both great and pretty bloody scary.
DSi release date confirmed - coming to US on April 5th
Nintendo today announced the launch date for DSi in the US - it will arrive Stateside on April 5th, and appears come in laser blue or black variations. What, no white? Madness. Perhaps Nintendo is saving those for Europe.
The official site can be found here, though it’s little more than a press release at the moment - a press release which also confirms that Rhythm Heaven will launch alongside DSi. Interestingly, it talks about the game’s music being composed by Japanese producer TSUNKU, so it seems that an EBA-style makeover is off the cards.
Elsewhere, Kotaku has pictures of the box, whose teeny-tiny icons showing the handheld’s multimedia capabilities aren’t a million miles away from those used by the PSP. If Sony’s really clever, it could do a neat bit of counter-marketing here by pointing out that its console does similar things already. Although you need a separate attachment for the camera, of course.
Plume-ing marvellous - Square-Enix to release Valkyrie Profile DS in April
Square-Enix, perhaps the only publisher releasing more DS games than Atlus, has announced the forthcoming release of Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume in PAL territories on April 3rd.
It’s another RPG from the kings of the flowery subtitle, this time with a more strategic bent than usual, as tri-Ace (Star Ocean, Infinite Undiscovery) tell the story of a young soldier named Wylfred, who thirsts for revenge after the death of his father.
Hardly the most original plotline, then, but the big SP for Profile is its tactical battle system, which has evolved from the console games, utilising a ‘mutual assistance’ mechanic so allies can help you in battle. You’ll also need to shuffle your battle formation to get the biggest benefits from your squad’s abilities in combat. And that’s before we get to the myriad spells, finishers and combos, and the traditional RPG-style item management and skill levelling.
Harvest Moon gets a speed boost with new fast-paced puzzler
As anyone who’s ever played a Harvest Moon game will know, having a surfeit of vegetables is rarely an issue - certainly to begin with. Yet that’s precisely the problem in Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming, a puzzle-based twist on the green-fingered series we all know and love. (And sometimes hate.)
It’s set in the world of the most recent DS release - the excellent Island of Happiness - and most of the game’s key characters are present, as they attempt to gather matching vegetables from the ever-growing crop (sounds like GM gone mad to me). It looks to be something of a tile-matcher with a few tweaks to the standard three-in-a-row formula - which Natsume’s press release unfortunately fails to detail.