DICE 2008: Resistance 2 Ted Price Interview

At the DICE Summit 2008, GameTrailers caught up with Ted Price, president of Insomniac Games, to discuss the upcoming Resistance: Fall of Man Sequel. An extensive interview, so enjoy the watch!

NCSoft to Reveal First Console MMO This Year

Chris Chung, the new president of NCSoft, spoke with Wired at the DICE Summit 2008. Chung talked about console MMOs and stated the company should have "something to announce--not only announce but to show--by the second half of this year. I'm pretty psyched about that."

When they talk about console MMOs, they obviously mean the PLAYSTATION 3, due to the fact they have a four game contract with Sony Computer Entertainment.

They could easily port titles like City of Heroes & City of Villains, Guild Wars, or Tabula Rosa. Chung, however, says "that's the wrong way to do it. You have to create a gameplay that's really suitable for the console space, the console experience. I mean, it's very different from PC."

Look forward to hear more about NCSoft's upcoming console MMO in the coming months. On another note though, keep in mind NCSoft is considering its "console specialist," is as the City of Heroes & City of Villains team.

[NCSoft Unveiling First Console Game This Year]

God of War: Chains of Olympus Goes Gold, Website Opens

Well, after two years in the making, Ready at Dawn has completed God of War: Chains of Olympus, meaning it's gone Gold in the United States.

The game is to hit shelves March 4, 2008. The official website for the game is open as well, which you can view [here].

[Chains of Olympus is GOLD!]

Street Fighter IV's Crimson Viper Gets Updated Look

So far, only one brand new fighter has been shown for Capcom's upcoming Street Fighter IV, that being Crimson Viper. In the latest marketing materials released from Capcom, there is a few differences between new and old Viper.

The old Viper (left) has a different face structure than the new Viper (right) does. The belt buckle and buttons on the new Viper are now green as well. She looks a bit wider as well.

[Street Fighter IV's New Character Has A New Look]

Valve: No PS3 version of Left 4 Dead In Development

The latest 1UP Podcast featured Brian Intihar from Electronic Gaming Monthly. He stated that he knows that Left 4 Dead will be coming to the PLAYSTATION 3. He (yet again) claims to have been told by a good source. The game is also listed as multiplatform in EGM's "Games of 2008" feature.

However, Destructoid contacted Valve. Doug Lombardi stepped in to say "There is no PS3 version of Left 4 Dead announced, nor in development. Not sure how that got started."

You never know, it could just be a secret. It's called surprise fellas. I have a good feeling about this one.

[Rumortoid: Left 4 Dead headed to PlayStation 3 (Update)]

Sega Superstars Tennis: Launch Trailer

Sega Superstars Tennis actually does look fun. I hope to pick up a copy upon it's release actually. What I don't understand though is how this is a launch trailer even though the release is March 21. Eh, who knows? Enjoy the watch!

Lair v2.0 Flying to PLAYSTATION 3's?

We'll admit it, mostly nobody liked Lair. It received poor reviews across the charts. Recently though, Factor 5 preident Julian Eggebrecht spoke about the mixed reception Lair received. He threw in a little hint about future enhancements to the game.

"Well, obviously we've got this huge gap there where basically if you read more casual comments -- on Amazon, for example -- to the overwhelming degree they are pretty positive. I think that everybody who got the controls actually enjoyed the game. I think the IGN review was probably the most scathing. I didn't think you left one good hair with that nice 4.9, which opened up so many great jokes. But on a more serious level, I think that people who actually got it had something really going going there," said Eggebrecht about Lair's critical reception. "What's disappointing to me is that almost every single person in and outside of the industry who is little bit more of a hardcore gamer had a huge problem with it, and we, quite frankly, didn't anticipate that. I hope that a lot of people realize that underlying the problem they had with the base control, there actually was a really good game there. That's at least what I think. Well, what else would I say?"

Read on, for the hint.

"If we find a chance in the future that would bring Lair to the audience which didn't get any access, that would be fantastic," stated Eggebrecht. "I can't say anything quite yet, but there might be something in the works there. We might have a chance yet to bring those back to the table and hopefully, if that should happen, they would give the game a second chance Nevertheless, we definitely took a long look at the results and learned a couple of lessons. If you're on a platform where this whole motion control is something new and not being pitched as the main feature of the platform, you should probably give the choice between having different control schemes, there is absolutely no doubt about it."

You never know what you might see as a PLAYSTATION Network update one day.

[Lair 2.0 on the Way?]

PLAYSTATION 3 Information Board to Incorporate Blog Posts this Week

On the PlayStation.Blog, Jeff Rubenstein commented that the stories posted on the PlayStation.Blog will start feeding into the PLAYSTATION 3's information board this week.

Hopefully now, it will not be such a useless feature.

[New Blog Feature: Post Ratings]

PSP: The Design Sony Should of Made a Reality

This PSP redesign was made by BluezPS from Flickr. He is obviously a dedicated PLAYSTATION fan, which you can tell by both his name and redesign.

I wonder how much sales the PSP would of gotten if Sony would of used this design.

[BluezPS' photos]

Blu-Bag: Netflix Goes Blu-Ray Exclusive

More companies just keep going blu. Internet rental service, Netflix has announced today that it is going Blu-ray exclusive and dropping it's HD-DVD support. They say they will completely out stock their HD DVD collection by the end of the year.

Of course they are still supplying customers with their regular DVDs as well.

[Netflix goes Blu-ray exclusive]

Everyday Shooter Arriving In Europe Thursday

Queasy Games developed title, Everyday Shooter, will finally be arriving in the European PLAYSTATION Store this Thursday.

We have no idea why it took so long. But hey, it's finally coming so smile! We will update you with your store update Thursday!

[Finally! Everyday Shooter arrives in Europe this week]

Resistance 2: Some New Details

PlayThree has got some exclusive information on Insomniac's upcoming Resistance: Fall of Man 2.

- Online matches are separated into 30 vs. 30 teams which will then be divided into squads with their own objectives.

- The story starts with Nathan travelling to Iceland, the base of the SRPA (Special Projects Research Administration). When he arrives, he finds out that other humans have been infected by mutant DNA who also have mutant healing and telepathic abilities. They were brought together as a task force named the Sentinels, each having their own abilities and weapons.

- The cooperative campaign is all about teamwork. "The initial bridge attack forces players to deal with danger from multiple angles. The Titans meanswhile require the squad to divide and conquer, as these behomoths can easily take out an entire squad with one hit from a rocket cannon."

- There are 3 co-op character classes. Soldier, medic, and special-ops trooper. Each can collect XP points to improve their skills (ala Call of Duty 4.).

- The Splitter is a new weapon, a mini-gun that can spray a barrage of rounds.

- Special abilities can be 'charged up' by killing aliens. If your shields are down, kill more aliens to recharge.

- The medic will shoot a special gun on the injured.

- The new stalker has been significantly upgraded in detail level and functionality. It now features a big red eye at the front.

- New super-bosses. Giant size. That aren't taken down the same way as other enemies are taken down. They have full AI, and dynamic animation.

All PLAYSTATION 3 owners should leave your homes now and go get a headset because when Resistance 2 is released, your going to want one.

[Resistance 2 - Attack on the USA - Exclusive new details]

Far Cry 2 Developers Were Worried About PLAYSTATION 3

Ubisoft Montreal, developers for the upcoming Far Cry 2, admitted today that they were a bit worried about the PLAYSTATION 3's architecture.

"We were somewhat worried by some of the reported high complexity of developing for the PS3", reveals Tech Director Dominic Guay, "but the raw processing power is impressive".

After a lot of different looking titles for the PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360 that were supposed to be identical, developers are finally getting it right with Sony's console. "We made sure we had a group of programmers that were not scared by complexity and had a large console programming experience to work on the initial PS3 R&D of Dunia (Far Cry 2's graphics engine). At that point, we didn't know what to expect."

"One thing that we realized pretty quickly as we started R&D on PS3, was that the hardware architecture had a very nice fit with some of our technical design decisions. We were positively surprised by how efficient the SPUs (the Cell processing units) were to do such things as run our vegetation simulation, our animations or our physics systems. So while it did require quite a bit of R&D to understand how to use the system correctly, once we started having results we saw that it was a very capable console and that FC2 could run on it."

Tech Director Guay is also impressed by the potential of Blu-ray and PS3's hard drive for streaming games in real-time. "The hard drive and Blu-ray are making our life easy considering FC2 is an open world continuously streamed around the player. That streaming bandwidth and disk space is very appreciated. So, in terms of AI, game structure, physics, dynamic time of day, open world gameplay, dynamic weather system, destructible vegetation, all of those things where we had really pushed the envelope technically, they run well on PS3."

Of course, the game won't match up to PC specs.

[Far Cry 2 Devs "Worried" by PS3...]

King of Fighters Coming to PLAYSTATION 3 in 2009

On February 16, 2008, the AOU 2008 will occure. SNK Playmore JP and Taito will be showcasing King of Fighters XII in video form. The game will firstbe displayed in Type X2 and will be ported to the PLAYSTATION 3 in 2009.

More fighters is a good thing.

[KOF XII to be shown at AOU 2008]