Gaming news round-up 20th - 22rd August

Howdy and welcome to what i hope to be a regular feature on my blog, the news round-up. Unfortunately due to my work and how it's laid out, i can't get these out on a daily basis, so i'm going to throw these out twice a week and cover some of the slightly more interesting story pieces of each week, probably every wednesday and saturday. So without anymore waffling, let's get started!

The World Ends With You 2 teaser site?

At midnight UK time on monday, Square Enix opened up a new teaser site which contained a 7 day timer and silhouettes of buildings in the background. With this was a piece of music playing with a very urban style akin to that of TWEWY. Going by the url link having "subaseka", it was easy to assume that this was probably linked to a new TWEWY announcement(or if you prefer the japanese name, Subarashiki Kono Sekai) after the timer had finished. Too add more to this, each day that passes alters something on the site. The background gets lighter and the buildings more noticeable, and the music has, as of today, become a new iteration of the fan favourite, and possibly staple song from the series "Calling". Whether or not this actually hits as a sequel, an iOS remake, or a social game still remains to be seen, but my hopes lie on a full blown sequel back in Shibuya for the 3DS. Regardless, we will see the result in the next few days, and no doubt we will get a showing of it at TGS in a months time.

Calling~ you hear me Calling~

Teaser Site

New Final Fantasy XIII teaser site

Keeping that ball of teaser sites rolling, Square Enix announced earlier today that they would be revealing a new chapter in the Lightning Saga for Final Fantasy XIII on the 1st of September. Not much else is shown bar that the Producer, Director and Art Directors will be at an event in Tokyo to present these details as part of the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy. It seems to me that Square just love announcements of announcements this week, it's funny.

Teaser Site the Second

Ubisoft claim that their PC games have a 93-95% piracy rate

This kind of cracked me up. Yves Guillemot spoke with GameIndustry International earlier this week and claimed that the free-to-play games and PC games are getting roughly the same amount of income as one another. He mentions that about 5-7% of the F2P playerbase buy through micro-transactions and that those that purchase their regular PC games is about the same, and that about 93% to 95% of the rest of players pirate their games. This struck me as weird because, if a game is to be pirated, how would they know the actual numbers for that? A pirated copy wouldn't be connecting to their Uplay service, someone would have built a crack to by-pass it, so essentially, these feel like numbers taken out of a hat. I won't doubt his F2P numbers, but i doubt the accuracy of the regular retail title sales. Not only that, but they wonder why the PC market for them is so terrible. The DRM + delays + for some, bad porting cause PC gamers just to ignore such titles and purchase other titles elsewhere. The addition of their Uplay site/hub they are intent on bringing to their titles on PC adds insult to injury as it brings even more DRM to the table. If it wasn't for the large amount of DRM, i expect their "93-95% pirated games" would be far lower, and the sales far higher. It just doesn't add up.
Maths bit: If, say, that 5% was Assassins Creed 3 selling, say, 5 million. then at 100% sales, that would suggest a total of 100 million sales. Do you honestly see that being accurate? I thought not.

For the full interview, check it out on Gameindustry International

And finally for this edition...

Jay Wilson(Diablo 3 Director) hits at Diablo 1/2 Project Lead - David Brevek

Back on monday, The Diablo 1 & 2 Project leader David Brevek commented on Diablo 3 saying that it was "very different" from the game he would have created, also adding that they made a lot of advancements with Diablo as a whole, but it was "not the game i originally designed for Diablo 3". He commented on the skill system being a bit like a load-out system from a shooter and perhaps too generous, and that he wouldn't have chosen to allow items and weapons to power skills. He did also make a comment on the always online DRM for the game and said he wouldn't have made the same choices. All of these comments where fair game, considering he now doesn't work with them(please correct me if i'm wrong on this), and these comments where all made in an interview with IncGamers. The issue was that, not long after this hit the web, those that work at Blizzard, and those that did once previously all jumped onto facebook and commented on the interview in question, with Jay Wilson adding "**** that loser" which was quickly deleted soon after. This hit forums, reddit and so on fast, and soon became known worldwide. From what is known now, he has written a formal apology to David Brevek(which can be read here) and should hopefully be the end of the tale, but this all stemmed from the team of Diablo 3 jumping on what was easily just a mild comment on the game. He never once said it was a bad design choice, just one he wouldn't have gone with.

You can find most of the details for this everywhere, but if you want the image of the facebook comments + more details, check out the reddit post here and the image here

And that ends the news round-up for the week. I probably haven't mentioned much at all, but these stood out as major things to me. If you want to suggest other ways for me to lay this out, please leave me a message and i'll get on it. Until later!

Delays to writing, E3, gaming and er...distractions

So it's taken me a while to actually get fingers to keyboard for this, but here we go. I was intent on getting a post in when i had finished Zelda: Skyward Sword, oh yeah, i've completed it by the way, but i just never found a good amount of motivation to get my thoughts down for it. So here's a short version:

I loved it, it was zelda as i hoped it would be, but with an actual story stuck onto it. Zelda has always been one to have some kind of story, and it always has the same kind of idea, but it's never been fleshed out a lot. This had a lot of time and dedication put into it, you can tell. Link, albeit still the silent hero(and may he continue to stay that way) felt strangely deep in comparison to his previous counterparts(or should i say, later incarnations).  There was emotion attached to him, something they somewhat worked into twilight princess, but never put full time into. The fact that it felt a little darker nearing the end as well was nice, and the final boss, albeit a little easy on the regular difficulty, had an epic feel to it. I hope Nintendo keep adding improvements to Zelda like they did with this one. Not taking away from the formula, but adding. Don't go over the top, don't bow to pressure and rebuild from scratch, Keep to what has made it so iconic, and build up from there.

For those wondering, my replacement title for Zelda has been chosen, i'm now set to start working on Xenoblade Chronicles as of Tuesday of this week coming. I made a start and got the prequel out of the way, but now it's time to go into full swing. If i'm not back in a week, i've been lost to the game.

Now, part of the reason i've been so deterred in my updates for here, is due to watching a ton of anime. It's been months since i actually dedicated any form of time to the medium, and after having that spark re-lit by Planetes and Escaflowne, it's in full swing again. I'm enjoying the new season a fair bit at the moment. Sakamichi no Apollon has pacing issues later into the series, but is still a fantastic series to watch. If Jazz by Yoko Kanno doesn't get your juices going, i don't know what will. Space Brothers(Uchuu Kyoudai) is my join favourite. It's fantastic in it's execution(first episode is a tad slow though), and Mutta is such a relateable and loveable character, it's hard not to enjoy it. Just don't compare it to Planetes, it isn't really related bar for the space premise. Hyouka is very enjoyable, but i think it'll appeal to people who love series which you need to focus on(hence why i like it, for example). And of course, you can't forget Lupin III. I've still got 2 episodes to catch up on, but it's so much fun, full of style and feels like a Lupin series through and through, despite not actually focusing on him. If you have to watch anything this season, watch Lupin and Space Brothers.

Oh, my other distraction. Only hit this week. I'm playing Diablo 3, i don't think there needs to be much added here.

Now finally, for E3. I had originally re-opened my blog to get the conferences typed up onto somewhere for people to read and catch all the details if they where unable to stream the events. I'm going to do this again this year, and hopefully add some screencaps of memorable moments, or particular announcements. Any particular announcements you think will hit? what do you want to come our way more to the point? I want a new Metroid more than anything, alongside a confirmation of TWEWY2 from SquEnix. I can hope though. All that is left is to ask but one thing, Is your body ready?