Home

    Wii News

    And you thought DJ Hero was expensive in America

    July 1, 2009 - 4:10pm


    Europeans will be paying through the nose -- but pay they will, if past Hero franchise figures are anything to go by -- for the next rhythm game from Activision. ShopTo has told Eurogamer that DJ Hero will retail for a ridiculous £108 in the UK. That's about $178 -- a $50 markup from the already silly US price.Retailers are doing their best to bring the price down to something a little more reasonable, with ShopTo offering the game for £94.85 and HMV listing a £99.99 price point. Still a bit steep, but we suspect the game will still sell pretty decently. Although, that depends on how much Scratch will be selling for ...
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Go Grease Lightning (to the Wii and DS)

    July 1, 2009 - 3:45pm


    Listen up, musical theater majors! Your time of reckoning approaches. Sure, your friends can easily best you at Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 -- but in a short while, a title which will finally allow you to invoke your unique skill set will hit store shelves. We speak, of course, of Grease. The movie. The video game. For Wii and DS.505 Games recently picked up the rights to adapt the musical film in conjunction with Paramount Digital Entertainment. The game will put players in the gaudy, unfortunate shoes of one of Sandy or Danny's cronies, forcing them to sing and dance using motion controls, microphones or the DS touch screen. Further gameplay details or a release date for Grease are currently unknown. C'mon, 505! Tell us more! Tell us more!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Rune Factory 3 sprouts on DS

    July 1, 2009 - 3:30pm

    The Rune Factory series is showing that it is still, at heart, part of the Harvest Moon franchise -- mostly by having lots of sequels. The latest issue of Famitsu reveals another, Rune Factory 3 for DS. This is actually the fourth Rune Factory, counting Frontier on Wii.In addition to his duties as a farmer, new protagonist Maisu, who features a character design right out of Tetsuya Nomura's sketchbook, can transform into monsters, gaining different abilities in battle and interacting differently with other characters out of battle.According to IGN's translation, the game now features "active seeds" that grow into plants that can be used in battle! Most exciting farming game ever.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Metroid Prime Trilogy pre-order continues to get more awesome. Awesomeness refuses to end

    July 1, 2009 - 2:30pm


    Not only does your GameStop Metroid Prime Trilogy pre-order come with a shirt and art book ... but now it also comes with a poster (for online customers only). GoNintendo takes note of the latest offering and states, "This is a lot of free stuff!"It sure is! Now, maybe if we all put our collective will together, we can get an actual Chozo suit thrown into the pre-order mix. Come on, let's all think about it real hard ...Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Deadly Creatures may have failed, but its tech lives on

    July 1, 2009 - 2:00pm

    Rainbow Studios' Deadly Creatures apparently didn't work out at retail. For whatever reason, the Wii audience just wasn't excited about a game featuring a scorpion and a tarantula having adventures and getting into fights, despite how awesome that premise is.THQ CEO Brian Farrell, however, isn't dwelling on the sales or declaring no more Wii development. He offered a surprisingly positive outlook on the situation in an interview with G4's Feed. "... we have great Wii technology there now and so we're developing other games -- stay tuned for the announcements," he said, "but we intend to leverage that great technology on the Wii in the future."Having a well-designed Wii engine is good news indeed, especially since Deadly Creatures was a pretty nice-looking game (well, actually it was disgusting, but in a technically impressive way).Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Latest Square Enix teaser game revealed as Final Fantasy Gaiden: The Four Warriors of Light

    July 1, 2009 - 12:50pm

    For once, a Japanese publisher has managed to create a teaser site without having the identity of the new game revealed by Famitsu scans before the official unveiling. Because Jump scans revealed it first. The Jump scan shows the same dragon-riding artwork found on the teaser site, with two more characters than the site currently shows, revealing a party of four. Final Fantasy Gaiden: The Four Warriors of Light (not related to the Game Boy Final Fantasy Adventure, known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden) is an original turn-based Final Fantasy RPG for DS, in the same style as the recent Final Fantasy DS remakes. The scan refers to a "four-person party adventure," but we can't tell if that means multiplayer or if it's just a reference to parties controlled by a single player. According to IGN, the main character is a boy who must rescue a princess from a witch. The battle system is a familiar turn-based, menu-driven system, with what appears to be the addition of a sort of action points: each character's status includes a certain number of yellow dots, and each action seems to have a dot next to it, indicating a cost. Final Fantasy Gaiden will be out this fall in Japan, and we wouldn't be too surprised to see it in North America the following summer for $40.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Face-melting deal: GHWT guitar and mic for $50, today only

    July 1, 2009 - 12:00pm


    Everyone's favorite plastic peripheral purveyor, Red Octane, is having a bit of a deal today. The normally $60 wireless guitar and $20 wired microphone for Guitar Hero World Tour (across all platforms) are being offered together in a $50 package -- today only! If you're less than impressed by the GHWT deal from today, why not get into your fancy schmancy time machine and head back to yesterday when you could've gotten an even better deal? Oh, what's that -- you don't have a time machine? Guess you're stuck with the $50 dollar deal over at Red Octane's website then, fancy pants.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Dead Space Extraction box art is terrified and screaming

    July 1, 2009 - 11:00am


    The guys at Visceral Games have revealed the box art for the upcoming Wiixclusive Dead Space prequel, Dead Space Extraction. This time, there's no sign of Isaac or his iconic space suit. Instead, it consists of a terrified and screaming woman protecting a man from evil space beasties -- an ultimately futile battle if the events of the first game are anything to go by. We're all for equal opportunities in the space monster-battling workplace, but this terrified and screaming woman is using Isaac's plasma cutter -- is she a space-engineer too? We suppose anything will do when you're terrified and screaming for your life. Try not to look at the artwork too long, you might get the image of that poor woman's face stuck in your head, like we have ...
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Rumor: EA cancels Wii Brutal Legend that might not even have existed [update]

    July 1, 2009 - 10:30am

    [Update: EA's response: "Brütal Legend was never announced for the Wii." That's ... true ...]Remember the rumored Wii version of Brütal Legend? It was rumored that EA planned to release a Wii version of the game, developed by someone other than Double Fine. The very mention of the project made Tim Schafer uncomfortable.According to Destructoid, that Wii release, which we don't even know was real to start with, has been canceled. "Word has it that quality assurance testers who moved from Electronic Arts to Double Fine were recently let go," Destructoid notes, "after the demise of the project left their services unnecessary."Whether the game was real and canceled or never existed at all, the net effect would seem to be the same: no Brütal Legend game on Wii. If it really was so bad that EA decided to cancel the project, we can only feel grateful that the company didn't subject Wii fans to the kind of embarrassment we had to endure whenever a screenshot of the Wii Dead Rising came out.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Current console adoption rate only now passing last cycle's, Pachter reports

    July 1, 2009 - 7:00am


    Among the many fascinating (and not so fascinating) takeaways from Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter's recent and massive industry report are revelations about the current console adoption rate. As much as the Wii has seemingly penetrated previously untapped demographics (see grandma's now defunct bridge club) and ostensibly raised console adoption rates to new highs, the current generation is practically dead even with the last one when comparing the two generation's first four calendar years on the market. That is, from 2005 (when Xbox 360 launched in late November) through 2008, the current generation of consoles (Wii, PS3 and 360) combined for approximately 78 million unit sales, according to Wedbush Morgan estimates. Comparatively, from 2000 (the year PS2 launched) through 2003, the previous generation (GameCube, PS2 and Xbox) combined for 78-79 million unit sales. However, in this pivotal fifth year, Wedbush Morgan predicts the current adoption rate will begin to pull ahead of the previous rate.

    Continue reading Current console adoption rate only now passing last cycle's, Pachter reports

    Permalink | Email this | Comments