General gaming

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• Weekend Deals: Just Cause 2, The Witcher, and GoldenEye
• NSFW Madden Video Ends Up Inspiring a Madden 12 Achievement
• Long-Delayed Final Fantasy Tactics iOS Port Coming Soon
• Driver's Always-Online DRM Deemed a Success by Ubisoft
• Need for Speed: The Run Isn't Always Running on Foot
• Plunging Nintendo Stock Price Sees Former President Lose $300 Million
• This Week in the 1UP Community 7/25/11: The 3DS Nintendrop
• Super Mario Bros. FPS Built on Unreal Engine in Eight Weeks
• Iwata's Salary Cut in Half, 3DS Price Drop Explained
• 1UP's Top Gear Giveaway

Weekend Deals: Just Cause 2, The Witcher, and GoldenEye Posted: 29 Jul 2011 06:53 PM PDT With a new GoldenEye game on the way for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, GameStop has decided to drop the price of the Wii remake all the way to $9.99. While you're at it, you can also pick up another James Bond game, Blood Stone, for the same price. GameStop has some other unusually strong (for them) deals, including the wireless Rock Band 3 keyboard for $59.99 and DJ Hero wireless turntables for $9.99. With how cheap DJ Hero and its sequel have been recently, that's a nice, cheap way to get the DJ Hero multiplayer experience for a very small fraction of what it would have cost a year ago. Direct2Drive has some very fun PC games for $4.95, including Just Cause 2, which is an absolute blast (and is a very difficult game to pick a single screenshot for). For that same price, you can also get The Witcher, STALKER, or Magicka.

NSFW Madden Video Ends Up Inspiring a Madden 12 Achievement Posted: 29 Jul 2011 05:19 PM PDT Whether you were offended by the language in it or not, YouTube sensation Demetry James' Madden video that was published last April must have amused someone at EA Sports. And it's now inspired an Achievement in the upcoming Madden NFL 12, reports Kotaku. In the video, James narrates a replay where Green Bay Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings scores a 99-yard touchdown. What makes this noteworthy is that Jennings had broken his leg earlier in the game, yet was still capable of outrunning the entire New Orleans Saints defense. The video on its own may not have stood out, but the commentary by James led to the video being viewed in excess of 5.1 million times. It's laced with profanity and is sure to upset the more sensitive types, but there are more than a few people who find it hilarious. One of James' comments -- that Jennings was putting the team on his back -- is now being commemorated with a Madden 12 Achievement/Trophy titled "Put Da Team on My Back." It's worth 50 Gamerscore on Xbox 360; to earn it, you need to score a 99-yard touchdown with Jennings. The other Achievements can be seen here.

Long-Delayed Final Fantasy Tactics iOS Port Coming Soon Posted: 29 Jul 2011 04:07 PM PDT Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions will finally make its way to the iOS App Store in the near future. Apple has approved the game for release, TouchArcade reports. This has been a long time coming. After being announced last June, it was set to come out on September 15, 2010. It obviously missed that date and was pushed back and bounced around a number of times; with Apple's approval, it's all but guaranteed to be in our hands very soon. (TouchArcade speculates it will be out by next Thursday.) The War of the Lions was originally released in North America in October 2007 for PlayStation Portable (and was made available for download on PSN just over a week ago). It's an updated version of the PlayStation 1 tactical RPG Final Fantasy Tactics, which debuted in North America back in 1998. The PSP game was hardly perfect, but it did provide fans with some new content without wrecking anything -- or fixing a number of problems the original had.

Driver's Always-Online DRM Deemed a Success by Ubisoft Posted: 29 Jul 2011 03:23 PM PDT Gamers were none too pleased with this week's news that the PC version of Driver: San Francisco is bringing back a form of DRM used in previous Ubisoft games like Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin's Creed 2. Put simply, gamers need to be online at all times in order to play. It was met with a negative reaction last time around, and after the DRM was removed from the aforementioned games in January, it seemed strange that it was making a comeback. The decision was made because Ubisoft feels it's successful at what it's trying to do. Ubisoft has seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success," according to a company rep who spoke with PC Gamer. Given that the DRM was said to be cracked previously and hackers prevented legitimate players from being able to access the game by bringing down Ubisoft servers, it nevertheless seems questionable to bring back this DRM that is decidedly anti-consumer.

Need for Speed: The Run Isn't Always Running on Foot Posted: 29 Jul 2011 02:36 PM PDT For a series always focused on flash and mainstream tastes, it's weird to look at the latest Need for Speed game (and especially EA's laser honed messaging at E3 on its new Hollywood-caliber story) and not feel a little confused. Haven't most NFS games developed by EA Black Box dabbled in delivering movie-style action experiences to players? You'd be kidding yourself if you didn't admit that Need for Speed: Underground was inspired by the illegal neon-lit street racing scene depicted in Hollywood's The Fast and the Furious, and each subsequent NFS game seemed to follow similar inspiration. Need for Speed: The Run tries to take the story concept one step further by upping the intensity, and pushing players out of the car and into scripted action sequences. "For the first time, you can get out of the car and actually play as a character, and [at E3] we showed how we're going to bridge that gap," explains producer Alex Grimbley. "That's still less than 10-percent of our game, so this [demo] is really just to show you the other 90-percent. And obviously it's all about the racing because we're a racing game."

Plunging Nintendo Stock Price Sees Former President Lose $300 Million Posted: 29 Jul 2011 01:45 PM PDT Nintendo President Satoru Iwata didn't have a big presentation about the company's first quarter financial results earlier today in Japan because, as he put it, "the first fiscal quarter has limited importance within the annual business of game companies, it does not make much sense for me to make a detailed presentation on the business in that quarter." Instead, he focused on explaining why the 3DS price drop is coming now and revealing that he and other executives are taking a pay cut. Nintendo did release the obligatory financial numbers, and they didn't look good. For the period of May 1, 2011 through June 30, 2011, net sales were down 50.2%, and gross profit was down a staggering 84.3% compared with the same period last year. The drop in net sales was attributed to a lack of "hit software," leading to a decrease in hardware and software sales. The price drops for Wii and DS were also partly to blame, as was "the impact of absorbing the inventory markdown taken into account in connection with the" 3DS price drop. As for the drop to an 11.7% gross profit ratio, which was called a "drastic drop year-on-year," that was due to Wii and DS price drops, a declining sales ratio for Nintendo's Wii games, the impact of the 3DS price drop, and the lower-than-expected profitability of the 3DS.

This Week in the 1UP Community 7/25/11: The 3DS Nintendrop Posted: 29 Jul 2011 01:41 PM PDT Nintendo decided to drop a massive news bomb yesterday with the announcement of an $80 price cut to its latest handheld console. Hoping to entice consumers, Nintendo has chopped the price of its system from $249.99 to $169.99. While many of the early adopters may think this early price drop as a slap in the face, Nintendo has tried to soften the blow offering the 'Ambassador program' -- offering any 3DS units that connect to the Nintendo eShop before August 11 a free selection of NES and GBA titles for download. Though only a partial list of games has been announced, many gamers are questioning whether this compensation is enough for early adopters of the hardware. IN THE BLOGS:

Super Mario Bros. FPS Built on Unreal Engine in Eight Weeks Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:17 PM PDT Mario platformers have always come in the form of third-person games -- you never see things through the eyes of Mario himself. The project seen in the video above was put together over the course of eight weeks and switches between the two perspectives, giving you a chance to see what it'd be like to play the original Super Mario Bros. from a first-person perspective... if that Mario game also had the Unreal Tournament 3 announcer calling out double kills, killing sprees, and so on. A series of videos showing off the project were recently uploaded to Vimeo. They were created through a joint effort between Massud Sarahi and J. Lee, and run on Unreal Engine 3 -- as if the UT3 announcer weren't enough of a giveaway, loading screens are also pulled right from UT3. It's described as an attempt to "learn more about game development." The reason they decided to replicate a game that already exists was "to save time needed for play-balancing, to present already familiar gameplay, and to focus on technical aspect of implementing game design." The video above shows off world 1-1 with enemies. Below is a video showing an enemy-less run through the game's first four stages, culminating with an interactive version of destroying the bridge Bowser (or his duplicate) would normally be standing on. There are also several other videos showing off UnrealScript versions of various elements like Bullet Bill, a springboard, and procedural animations. It's not the first time we've seen Mario from the first-person perspective, but it's neat nonetheless.

Iwata's Salary Cut in Half, 3DS Price Drop Explained Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:45 AM PDT At a meeting on the company's financial results for its first fiscal quarter, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata explained to investors the thinking behind the decision to drop the price of the 3DS so soon after launch. He also announced that he, along with other key executives in the company, have decided to take significant pay cuts "to show our sincere attitude and to fulfill our responsibility." Executives at Nintendo like Iwata receive both a fixed income and a bonus, the latter of which varies depending upon the success of the company. With things looking down right now between the struggling 3DS and declining Wii and DS sales, that'll naturally be lower. The fixed salaries would be the same regardless of the company's performance, but at a meeting yesterday, it was decided that top officials within the company will be taking pay cuts -- 30% for representative directors, 20% for other directors, and a whole 50% for Iwata himself. Needless to say, that's a big deal. The 3DS price cut, announced yesterday, will see the system drop in price from $249.99 to $169.99 in the U.S. Iwata, who called this a "drastic approach" and "quite unusual," said Nintendo felt it was necessary to push sales of the hardware now so that Nintendo's games coming out later this year will have a larger install base to sell to.

1UP's Top Gear Giveaway Posted: 29 Jul 2011 08:03 AM PDT 1UP's Top Gear Giveaway How To Play Speed lover, thrill seeker, car enthusiast... Do these words describe you? If so, odds are you're a fan of Top Gear! Yes, Top Gear, based off the BBC series of the same name, is hands down the most exciting show on television today. So why not make it the most exciting show in your DVD collection?

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