Video Game Development – Page 44

Wii Price Cut

Wii

When will Nintendo lower the price on the Wii? If you think it’ll be this holiday season, you’re probably wrong. I’d say Spring ’08/Summer ’08. Here’s why:

Nintendo has yet to steadily replenish its Wii unit supply. Why would Nintendo want to lower the price of a system that’s still sold out? There wouldn’t be any advantage to doing it.

This holiday season Nintendo needs to focus in on the games. It needs to tell gamers that while the Xbox 360 may have Halo 3 and the PS3 has Heavenly Sword – The Wii has Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros Brawl. Mario has always been a million unit seller series and last generation’s Smash Bros title gave the Gamecube its most wide appealing game. Nintendo cannot afford to draw attention from these two AAA title releases.

Thirdly it’s highly likely that Sony will lower the price of the PS3 either by this holiday season or early next year. In the race of console supremacy, the PS3 is in dead last. Sony needs to throw as many cards as it has to grab gamer’s attentions before the gap between the Wii and Xbox 360 sales gets seriously out of control.

In order to continue to appeal to a wider consumer audience, Nintendo will have to lower the price of the Wii console. Keeping the above factors in mind, Nintendo will most likely wait till next year to take the plunge. Most likely the price drop will only be a $50 price reduction. Hopefully Nintendo will continue to bundle Wii Sports even after the price drop. Wii Sports has been the reason why many casual gamers have been so interested in the Wii with its unique gaming style. To eliminate this free bundled title might actually hurt Nintendo in the short run.

Blizzard’s “really awesome” project is codenamed Hydra

We brought you news of Blizzard working on a secret, “really awesome” project some 2 months ago, but you’ve probably forgotten all about it. Here’s a bit of a refresher. The game is under development by a certain “team 3” comprised of 40 members. Nothing is known about the game other than Frank Pearce’s (Blizzard Sr. VP of Product Development) words: “really awesome”.

Now, the snoopy reporters at The Inquirer did some invisibility-cloak-enhanced spying on Blizzard employees and heard the following conversation:

Blizzard Employee 1: What are you working on?
Blizzard Employee 2: Starcraft II, and you?
Blizzard Employee 1: I am working on Hydra.

The codename “Hydra” has been confirmed, though it makes one wonder as to whether it will be the actual game’s name. Are we still staring at the game that will one day become the hugely-anticipated Diablo III? One can only be left in the shadows at this point.

[Via Kotaku]

Lego Star Wars is NOT the “Big Wii Lightsaber game”

There were rumours abound of a lightsaber game for the Wii a few months ago. Then again, I wonder if it were possible not to hear rumours of a Wii lightsaber game. Then there came a massive wave of fan disappointment when it was found that this mysterious Wii lightsaber game was Lego Star Wars – The Complete Saga. Lego Star Wars is a respectable line of video games, but us fans were hoping for some with, well, a little less plastic.

Well, it has just so happened that Mark Montuya,from LucasArts has leaked that Lego Star Wars’ Wii-induced lightsaber action is “just a taster” for a future release involving lightsabers. This sounds awesome! Can it be a Force Unleashed port or sequel? A Jedi Knight sequel? Whatever the case, Montuya’s words imply that such a game must be in planning stages, or heck, may have already entered production!

I can’t frikkin’ wait! But if you wish to play Lego Star Wars – The Complete Saga, you must. LSW – TCS gets released on November 7 for the Wii, DS, Xbox 360 and the PS3.

BioShock sequel confirmed!

Alright, c’mon. How can a game that has silenced so many critics not have a sequel? BioShock is being loudly touted as one of the greatest shooters ever, and to not make a sequel for it is just against gaming laws.

Take-Two Interactive’s Chief Executive Officer Ben Feder reportedly said when presenting his company’s financial report:

Our creative teams are delivering a strong and increasingly diverse product portfolio, including our successful new BioShock franchise.

BioShock “2” hasn’t been listed on Take-Two’s 2008 Fiscal Year line-up, which can either mean that it’s going to be released in 2009 or (worse,) later, or that it’ll be on next year’s November 2008 line-up. Certainly exciting!

[Via Gameplayer]

Sony’s reputation sinks further. (Includes Wikipedia, Halo 3, Infinity Ward and bad English)

Halo 3

It appears that Sony is really in quite a ditch. If their lunatic antics aren’t enough for you, here’s some more. Reportedly, a Sony staff member has been caught editing a Wikipedia page. What’s so embarrasing? The page in question is the Halo 3 page.

A sorry staffer at Sony Liverpool is the origin of a hate comment against Microsoft’s great Halo 3. The comment in question says:

Although it wont look any better than Halo 2.

Talk about that. He didn’t even bother punctuating the ‘wont’. Pfft. Don’t look at me like that, I’m not the only one who doesn’t like Sony’s English. Ask Grant Collier, one of the big guys at Infinity Ward, makers of the upcoming Call of Duty 4. In an interview, Grant says:

With Microsoft we’ve got the advantage of them being an American company so our level of accessibility to them is much better than Sony. I’m not disparaging Sony in any way, but it’s just that they [Microsoft] speak English, we speak English. I know ten or fifteen guys over there and I can just call up and find out what new special sauce is coming around… I would really like to have that level of relationship with Sony. We’re really pushing for that and it’s a personal goal of mine to get there but I think there’s very few companies that have that level of relationship with Sony. After we come out with CoD4 I hope that we’ll be one of them.

Poor Sony. I’m actually starting to feel sympathetic for a corporation. I wonder what they’ll do next!

[Via Xboxer.tv and Kotaku]

Blizzard getting sued by Chinese firm

Yes well, thankfully it’s not the Chinese Government that’s going gung-ho this time. Blizzard Entertainment, the famous makers of the StarCraft series, the WarCraft series, and of course, World of Warcraft are getting sued by Chinese IT firm Founder Electronics Co., Ltd. Blizzard is sharing the pain with IT company The9, which handles WoW in China and Qingwentuwen company, which handles it in Beijing.

The offence? Nope, it’s not enslaving half of the Chinese population, but stealing five of the fonts made by Founder Electronics and using them in World of Warcraft. Awesome lawsuit strategy. Founder claims that they lost “One Billion Yuan” because of the whole thing, seeing as WoW itself snowballed into 7.5 million players. If my conversion is correct, that should translate to $131,648,235. Big money, indeed.

If some people are right, this is the largest intellectual property lawsuit in the land of the dragon as far as damages are concerned. It appears that Blizzard is in quite a spot.

[Via Xinhuanet]