Category: Games

PlayStation Portable gets March release date
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – Last Thursday Sony Corp. said it will release the PlayStation Portable in North America on March 24 and have one million units ready for sale in the first week.
The PSP game machine, a challenger to Nintendo Co.’s long-standing grip on the handheld video gaming market, will be sold as a “value pack” for $249 US and $299 Cdn. It will include numerous accessories and a copy of the Spider-Man 2 movie on the new Universal Media Disc format that Sony designed for the PSP.
Sony said it has already shipped 800,000 PSPs in Japan, where it went on sale on Dec. 12 for about $190 US.
By comparison, Nintendo’s newest product, the Nintendo DS sells for $150 US. It was among the must-have Christmas gadgets, with 1.5 million sold worldwide since its release in late November.
The PSP is designed, however, with more multimedia features. It can play digital music, movies and display photos on its 11-centimetre colour display, using Sony’s 1.8-gigabyte UMD discs or a Memory Stick.
Sony said 24 game titles will be available around the time of the launch with prices starting at $40 US each.

Bond writer turns to video games for latest 007 title: Everything or Nothing
TORONTO (CP) – Pierce Brosnan is back as James Bond. So are Judi Dench as M and John Cleese as Q.
Willem Dafoe takes a turn as a Russian villain, Richard Kiel returns as Jaws and supermodel Heidi Klum and actress Shannon Elizabeth are the latest Bond girls.
Throw in a theme song by Mya and exotic locations like a secret facility in Egypt, mountain fortress in Peru, the French Quarter in New Orleans and Red Square in Moscow and you have the latest James Bond – video game.
“It’s like a movie where you’re James Bond,” Kiel says enthusiastically.
Such is the world of gaming these days. And Electronic Arts seems to have spared no expense for James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, out Tuesday for Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameBoy Advance.
The game’s script was written by Bruce Feirstein, whose Bond movie-writing credits include The World is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies and GoldenEye.
“I was completely amazed by the cast that EA assembled. It was as good as anything we’ve done on a Bond movie,” Feirstein said in a telephone interview.
“I think what this game shows is the kind of convergence that goes on. Whereas this has become such a big, important entertainment medium, we’re now able to attract that kind of talent.
“I mean, Judi Dench in an electronic game?”
The game’s cast of actors and musician-composers have won or been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and Grammys.
Everything or Nothing even starts like a Bond movie – although it is a stand-alone title with no links to future films – as the gamer is thrown into a ticklish situation before the plot kicks in.
It was Feirstein’s first foray into the world of gaming, but the American says it wasn’t that much different from writing for any other medium.
“It’s like a newspaper article, you hope the first paragraph will be interesting enough that people want to read the second,” he said. “When you do a video game or an electronic game, you hope the first level of play will keep you interested to do the second.
“Writing is writing. It’s all about what happens next.”
And there’s plenty to write about when it comes to Bond, although Electronic Arts designers presented Feirstein with the basic framework for a story.
There are restrictions, however. Like Star Wars devotees, Bond fans can be fanatical.
There was someone on hand to oversee game production “from the Bond point of view.”
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“There are things you do and don’t do,” said Feirstein.
“Everyone thinks they know Bond but it’s really once you get inside it that you realize all the little rules.”
“The rules for a Bond movie are that you can have everything that someone can do with an unlimited amount of money,” he continued. “What that means is you can hollow out a volcano and fill it with big-breasted women.
“What that means is that you cannot time-travel, you cannot morph yourself into something else. The last movie (Die Another Day) came very very very close to skirting that rule with the invisible car.
“The Bond movies deal five minutes into the future.”
Everything or Nothing has Bond in a new third-person perspective, as opposed to the first-person view of the last game 007: Nightfire. The new game also offers a two-player co-op mode and four-player multiplayer mode, and there is online play in the PlayStation version.
Graphics are superb and gamers should enjoy rapelling down buildings with a weapon in hand or breaking the speed limit in an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV or Triumph Daytona 600 motorcycle.
In addition to the now-routine goofy Bond plot, the game also features more than 20 weapons and gadgets.
Feirstein’s many writing credits include a regular column for the New York Observer and he is also a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. But his Bond credentials often grab attention first.
“You can’t imagine the impact that Bond has had on worldwide culture. I defy anyone to go a week in any newspaper without finding at least some reference to something that is Bond-like . . . It’s amazing to me how it permeates culture everywhere.”
“There were almost riots when Pierce would go to various cities,” he added.
Bond movies produce plenty of other anecdotes on location.
Feirstein, who is in his late 40s and remembers watching Bond movies in the theatre with his dad, recalls being in a producer’s hotel suite in Bangkok, which covered the entire top floor.
The hotel overlooked the Chiang Mai river and as Feirstein and others went over the script in the boardroom, two black helicopters rocketed up the river one firing at the other.
“Off in the distance, we saw something blow up and a small cloud rise. I don’t even blink, I turn to the producer and say ‘Are those ours?’ ‘Yes, those are ours.”‘
Then there was the time making GoldenEye when the producers bought up a consignment of Russian tanks and MIG aircraft and put them on a film lot north of London. A couple of days later, the studio got a visit from the Home Office and MI5. A satellite had noticed the weaponry and the officials were wondering what the hardware was needed for.
Notes: Since 1962, there have been 20 Bond movies. EA has done a half-dozen video games: Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, 007 Racing, 007: Agent Under Fire, 007 Nightfire and now 007:Everything or Nothing.

This is an awesome new game!!
I love this game!!!

Nintendo Gets Back in the Game
TOKYO (Reuters) – Only a few months ago, it looked like it was ‘game over’ for Nintendo.
Its mainstay GameCube console was losing ground toMicrosoft’s Xbox and Sony, which had already ousted the company from the top slot in the home market, announced plans for a hand-held game machine to challenge Nintendo’s Gameboy Advance.
Nintendo answered with a series of price cuts that rejuvenated GameCube demand and sent holiday sales up more than 70 percent from a year ago. It is also launching a new, hand-held game machine that is not as high-tech as what Sony and Microsoft plan to roll out but still breaks new ground in the gaming world.
Investors are starting to sit up and take notice.
“It’s undergoing a bit of a reconciliation and if you stop forecasting worst case scenarios, it looks quite cheap,” said Jeremy Hall, a fund manager at Henderson Global Investors.
The stock had a dismal 2003, tumbling to a six-year low in May and losing 10 percent in a year when the Tokyo stock market posted its biggest rise since 1999.
Analysts say that was an overreaction, especially given Nintendo’s solid finances.
“If you consider that its balance sheet is ridiculously strong and there is so much in cash and assets…then I don’t think the company’s valuation has been formally recognized,” KBC Securities analyst Hiroshi Kamide said.
It has 660 billion yen ($6.18 billion) in cash and carries a price-to-book (PB) ratio — a favorite indicator for value investors — of 1.6, compared with valuations of 7.9 for software competitor Electronic Arts and 1.8 for Sony.
If Nintendo’s PB ratio rose to 1.83, the average level for all the companies included in Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 N225> , the stock would reach 11,880 yen. That is 15 percent above Thursday’s closing price of 10,370, which was up four percent from the start of the year.
SIMPLE IS BEST
Sony and Microsoft are developing microprocessors to power the next generation of game machines, but Nintendo seems to be heading in the opposite direction — so much so that one high-ranking Sony executive recently joked that Nintendo’s next new product might be a deck of cards.
The comment was a dig at the company’s humble origins as a maker of playing cards, but also a reference to Nintendo’s notion that video games should be fun and simple, like toys.
With that in mind, Nintendo has unveiled details of a new, portable video game system, codenamed “Nintendo DS.” The hand-held device, due for launch later this year, will feature two LCD screens, one above the other.
“It’s going to be a challenge for Nintendo to compete with Sony and Microsoft technologically, so it behoves Nintendo to try different forms of gaming, such as the “DS” product,” said Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Jay Defibaugh.
It already has one hand-held product in the Gameboy Advance, which controls almost the entire portable gaming market, but Nintendo says the new “DS” is unlike any existing game system.
The dual screens might allow the user to view the game from two angles at once, in racing games for example.
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Nintendo’s new product might still be overshadowed by Sony’s PSP, an advanced hand-held gaming device set for launch by the end of the year.
Sony’s PlayStation guru, Ken Kutaragi, has said the PSP will be the “Walkman for the 21st century” and it will play not only games, but music and movies as well.
PS2 RULES
The “simple is best” strategy has not helped Nintendo in the home console market, where the company is neck and neck with Microsoft for second place, way behind Sony, whose PlayStation 2 (PS2) controls roughly two-thirds of the market.
But Nintendo has seen a surge in sales in the United States after it slashed GameCube prices to less than $100, a 40-percent discount to PS2 and Xbox.
Nintendo officials now say it will “easily” meet a target for the year to March to sell six million GameCubes, a goal that looked very much in doubt when it sold less than a million units in the first six months of the business year.
“You can explain almost all of the recovery, the renaissance in GameCube interest with the price cut,” said CSFB’s Defibaugh.
One concern is Nintendo’s exposure to currency fluctuations since it generates over 70 percent of its revenue overseas and foreign profits will be cut in yen terms by the yen’s strength.
Goldman Sachs analyst Ken Uryu wrote in a note to clients Last week that if the dollar stayed around its current level of 106 yen until the end of March, there was a danger that Nintendo would suffer a currency-related loss of 65 billion yen.
Nintendo based its net profit forecast of 60 billion yen for the year to end-March — which would be down 11 percent from last year — on an assumed dollar rate of 114 yen.
Analysts say this does not affect the company’s intrinsic value but the yen’s strength will have an impact on earnings because Nintendo holds almost $5 billion of dollar-denominated assets that are revalued in yen terms every six months based on prevailing currency rates.

Canadian Beats World at Rock, Paper, Scissors
TORONTO (Reuters) – The competitors, in glitzy, off-the-wall costumes, call themselves professional athletes. Some even bring along team doctors to supervise their nutrition and take them through intense warmups.
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This is serious stuff for at least some of the 320 competitors who shook their fists at the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championships at a nightclub in downtown Toronto.
The winner, who netted $3,825, was Toronto’s Rob Krueger, a member of the “Legion of the Red Fist” team. He took the lofty title of World RPS Champion with a combination of rock-paper-paper, defeating his opponent’s three rocks.
Treading a thin line between silly spectacle and serious sport, the event drew a crowd of about 900, including a slew of local and international media.
Andy Cumming, 28, flew in from London with five other members of the British team, plus their team doctor who counsels them on warmups, diet and practice. “It’s an internationally played game, you know,” he said, wearing a pair of worker’s coveralls with the red, white and blue of the Union Jack patterned on it.
To the uninitiated, taking the playground game seriously is difficult. Many competitors wore crude, homemade costumes, and played with a can of beer in their non-throwing hand.

Do Video Games Now Draw More Women Than Boys??
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Challenging the stereotype that video gaming is the domain of teenage boys, an industry group on Tuesday reported that more women over 18 than young boys are playing games and the average age of players has risen to 29.
A poll released by the Entertainment Software Association and conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found 26 percent of game players are women 18 or older, while 21 percent are boys 6 to 17.
Video gaming has traditionally been seen as the province of teenage boys locked in dark rooms and twitching away at their game consoles, although in recent years the industry has worked to publish games catering to kids, women and older gamers.
In line with that trend, adults over 50 now make up 17 percent of the gaming population, the ESA said, compared with 13 percent three years ago.
The largest group of gamers, at 38 percent, is men 18 and up, while girls 6 to 17 account for 12 percent of game players, the poll found.
“I think that what used to be the standard in games, which was the female character in distress and the big macho man saving the day, is no longer the case,” said Vikki Hrody, a faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, who teaches art for game design.
“I do see a lot more girls, especially the students that I’m teaching, that want to play games,” she said.
A random national sample of 806 adults, covering a total of 1,048 game players including kids, was used in the poll, the ESA said.
The average gamer spends 6.5 hours a week playing games, the ESA said, while boys 6 to 17 average 7.3 hours per week of game time.
As the age of gamers has risen, so has the number of games for adults. Of all games sold in 2002, the ESA said 13.2 percent carried a “Mature” or “M” rating, up from 9.9 percent in 2001 and under 8 percent in 2000.
Hrody said she and her friends much prefer many of those mature games, like war titles, to the games specially designed and targeted by game companies at the female market, such as dancing themes or Barbie.
“They don’t hear enough about what the market is. I think they just assume that it’s boys that are playing these games,” she said. “(Girls’ games are) very boring, there’s no story line, it’s almost like they play it down for girls.”
The poll found little difference in the relationship between game play and income, with 39 percent of gamers reporting total household income of less than $50,000 a year and 41 percent reporting an income of more than $50,000.

You won’t be board by Trivial Pursuit
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Trivial Pursuit, the board game hit of the ’80s, is getting a makeover ó and some star power ó for a new generation.
Among the celebrities whose voices grace Trivial Pursuit Unhinged, a video game being developed by Atari, are Whoopi Goldberg, who will deliver arts & entertainment questions; Fox NFL Sunday analyst Terry Bradshaw, sports; cover girl Brooke Burke, people & places; former Monty Pythonite John Cleese, history; Bill Nye “The Science Guy,” science; and actor John Ratzenberger, wild card. The categories differ slightly from the original game, which has sold more than 70 million copies since its launch in 1982.
The new, colorful, 3-D version of the game has some twists that allow betting, challenging of answers, bonus points and capturing of other players’ wedges.
“It definitely has been jazzed up a lot,” says Burke, who hosts E!’s pop culture series Rank. “Instead of just challenging the mind intellectually, it’s a bit more fun now.”
A version for Sony PlayStation 2 ($29.95) arrives in November; Microsoft Xbox and Windows PC ($19.95) versions hit in December.

New ‘Tomb Raider’ Game Tweaks Franchise
LOS ANGELES – Lara Croft has finally learned that there’s more than one way to raid a tomb.
The sixth and latest “Tomb Raider” video game title, “The Angel of Darkness,” hits stores this week. Now fans will decide whether the game’s latest innovations have freshened the franchise or alienated players with too many changes.
“For us to take Lara and put her in a racing car, it would have been very simple to do. But that isn’t ‘Tomb Raider,'” said game co-creator Adrian Smith, operations director of British-based Core Design. “People buy this game with some kind of expectancy of what they’re getting.”
“Angel,” available for PlayStation 2 and PC, features Croft being framed for the murder of a rival. She then tries to simultaneously prove her innocence and stop an evil cult while hiding in catacombs beneath Paris.
Apart from dramatically improving the graphics, which make the bombshell Croft look more lifelike, Croft can now sneak through levels, hiding in the shadows and ducking behind walls, instead of engaging other characters in battle. Of course, you also can still choose to go in with both her signature thigh-strapped guns blazing.
“Angel” also has added more open-ended gameplay. Like a child’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel, players now can make decisions that lead the story in varying directions, rather than follow traditional linear storytelling.
For the first time, Croft also must interact with non-playable characters, asking for advice on which path to choose. There are multiple ways to solve the game, so players may play again to pick different options. That’s not something new to gaming, but it is to “Tomb Raider.”
“It adds a little bit of longevity to the game,” Smith said. “So people can go back and talk to Pierre rather than talk to the janitor. Both will tell you to go to the same building, but one may give you a key to go one route and the other might tell you to go in the back door.”
Some fans playing the game after it debuted Friday praised the new graphics, but had mixed feelings about other changes.
“As the games have progressed there have been more and more confusing commands, more in-game characters and plots to keep up with, and the story lines increasingly lack creativity,” said Kelly Johnson, 17, of Columbus, Ga. “The new equipment is nice, but there’s just too much of it.”
Still, Johnson was optimistic about “Angel”: “I’d have to say the alternate ways to finish a level would be the most enticing.”
In a “Tomb Raider” chat room, one fan posting under the name “SCJX” described the gameplay as “awesome,” but complained that the story started slow: “I feel a little like I’m playing a role-playing game some of the time, though. Running around Paris searching for an address so I can talk to someone, blah, blah, blah. I’m still hoping for some vast tombs and blasting action.”
Updating a popular game franchise is a tightrope for many designers. Mess with a format too much and fans revolt, like 1988’s “Zelda II: The Adventure of Link,” which robbed players of their coveted topdown gameplay in favor of “Super Mario Bros.”-style side-scrolling action.
Meanwhile, the same-old, same-old treatment can lead to stagnation. The popular “Megaman” series has spawned more than a dozen sequels since the 1980s, but its following has faded as fans complained that the action never evolved enough from one title to the next.
Some drastic changes work miracles. “Grand Theft Auto 3” is virtually indistinguishable from “Grand Theft Auto 2” √≥ with substantially more detail, closer “camera” angles and extreme depictions of carnage. Still, “GTA3” became wildly more popular than its predecessor.
In the new “Tomb Raider,” another important change is not in the player’s hands. While the shapely Croft was the only playable character in the previous games, this time a muscular new hero named Kurtis Trent will take the lead later in the story. Croft is relegated to the sidelines.
“People have always wanted a love interest for Lara and while we don’t obviously have them shack up, so to speak, there’s some sexual tension there,” said Paul Baldwin, marketing executive with “Tomb Raider” publisher Eidos Interactive. “There are some cut-scenes when they first meet eyeing each other and some caressing. Kurtis takes her weapons away and goes for a little roller coaster ride down Lara’s curved body.”
That’s a ride, developers think, that fans will be willing to take.

A New PS2!
At E3, Sony unveiled a new Playstation 2 that will be debuting in Japan this year and early next year in America and Europe. Dubbed, the PSX, the new PS2 comes with a hard drive (a la the XBox) and a DVD burner. “We want an extreme product to represent a new platform out of Sony,” said Sony executive deputy president Ken Kutaragi. Industry analysts think that the move may be a bad one for Sony, because of the lack of overlap between those who want a DVD burner and those who play video games; it may add to the $945 million loss that Sony experienced January through March 2003. Kutaragi refused to name a price for the new system.

Atari Sells 1 Million Matrix Games in Week
PARIS – Atari Inc. Friday said it had sold more than 1 million copies of “Enter the Matrix” one week after the computer and video game hit shelves in the United States and Europe.
New York-based Atari shares closed Friday up 73 cents, or 17 percent, at $4.96 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The heavily indebted company, a subsidiary of Infogrames Entertainment SA of France, is counting on blockbuster games such as “Enter the Matrix” to revive its fortunes.
The game was released May 15, the same day as the movie it is tied to, “The Matrix Reloaded.” The game includes additional footage and is one of the most expensive ever made.
In early May, the company said it expected to sell 4 million units of the game for a total of $160 million in revenue. Infogrames had total sales of $770 million for the year ended in June and does about 65 percent of its sales in the United States.
Atari sales expectations, if reached, would put “Enter the Matrix” on track to be one of the best-selling games of all time.
Atari said the game will be released in Japan June 19.