General gaming

---

• Postcard from COD XP: Just Arrived
• Capcom Really Wants to Partner with Overseas Developers
• Nintendo's Pre-TGS Conference Will be Streamed Online
• April's PSN Breach Hasn't Stopped 3 Million New Users From Signing Up
• Video Game Confessional: 1UP Members' Darkest Sins
• Here's What Square Enix Says About Deus Ex's "Racist" Character
• 18 Million Map Packs Sold to 23 Million Black Ops Owners
• Star Trek Online Free-to-Play Model in the Works
• Pac-Man and House Lead This Week's Nintendo Downloads
• Watch BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth Recording Her Lines

Postcard from COD XP: Just Arrived Posted: 01 Sep 2011 06:11 PM PDT After a (not so) long, long flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, there's nothing better to see than a free goodie bag waiting in my hotel room. As you can see in the photo above, Activision blessed me with traditional "man baby" food. Oh, and the wristband you see me wearing will be there... all weekend! At least the employee (that put it on for me), politely mentioned that it's waterproof; so that's good! Call of Duty XP officially starts tomorrow, so expect news on Modern Warfare 3, soon!

Capcom Really Wants to Partner with Overseas Developers Posted: 01 Sep 2011 04:51 PM PDT Japanese developer and publisher Capcom is looking to secure partnerships with overseas developers in the near future as it seeks to increase its overseas business. "Acquisitions and partnerships are one of the important strategies for increasing our market share overseas," reads a note sent to investors, GamesIndustry.biz reports. "We aggressively seek the opportunities of acquisitions and partnerships for the purposes of creating game content with universal market appeal and acquiring technologies and know-how required for our 'Single Content Multiple Usage' strategy." Last year Capcom said it was done having western developers work on original IP. Dark Void, developed by Airtight Games, and Bionic Commando, developed by GRIN, were both to blame for this; neither sold as well as hoped -- Dark Void did 520,000 units when it was projected to do 2 million, and BC did 700,000 when it was expected to do 1.5 million.

Nintendo's Pre-TGS Conference Will be Streamed Online Posted: 01 Sep 2011 04:02 PM PDT The event Nintendo plans to hold prior to the start of the Tokyo Game Show this month will be streamed online, the company has announced. Nintendo's Japanese website has a page dedicated to the upcoming conference, which is being described as a "Nintendo 3DS new product announcement conference," according to a translation by Andriasang. When word of the event first made it out, all of the talk was about it being centered around new hardware as rumors of a second analog stick attachment and a redesigned system had just been reported. All of that seemed unlikely at the time, and it seems even more unlikely now that we've seen the 3DS be the best selling system in Japan for three weeks running -- ever since the price drop -- based on Media Create sales numbers (via NeoGAF).

April's PSN Breach Hasn't Stopped 3 Million New Users From Signing Up Posted: 01 Sep 2011 03:08 PM PDT The PlayStation Network has continued to attract new users and get people to spend money despite the massive breach that took place this past April. Sony CEO Howard Stringer shared the news during a conference at the IFA electronics show in Germany yesterday, Cnet reports (via Gamasutra). "I'm pleased to tell you that the PSN is more secure and better than ever," he said. "We are aggressively expanding its content. We have more than 3 million new customers since the network came back online, and sales are exceeding what we had before the cyberattacks."

Video Game Confessional: 1UP Members' Darkest Sins Posted: 01 Sep 2011 03:07 PM PDT Feature Share it: Tweet Video Game Confessional The 1UP community confess some of their most shameful gaming sins. By: 1UP Staff September 1, 2011 Often times, we as gamers find ourselves doing something that we're not too proud of. Sometimes we may unleash fits of rage while playing on Xbox Live. Other times we might spend too long oogling an attractive in-game character. And on occasion we may miss out on an entire storied franchise, even if we might consider ourselves video game scholars of sorts. Our resident priestly figure/Editor-In-Chief Jeremy Parish decided to pose the question to 1UP's community: what are some of your darkest, most shameful gaming sins? You can read his personal confession, or share a few of your own on the message boards. Repent!

Here's What Square Enix Says About Deus Ex's "Racist" Character Posted: 01 Sep 2011 02:04 PM PDT Exploring the world of Deus Ex: Human Revolution might just be my favorite thing to do in the game, as you never know what you'll find. If you're like me, you've probably already spoken with everyone in Detroit, in which case you've run across Letitia. Letitia is an NPC who used to serve as an informant for Adam Jensen when he worked for the police. When you find her, she'll offer up some information and tips if you're willing to bribe her with cash. (Or give her four beers and she'll grant you access to a hard-to-hack area nearby.) While that sounds harmless enough, it's the way she speaks that has prompted some criticism, namely from Time's Evan Narcisse, who wrote a piece calling the character "the worst thing about Deus Ex: Human Revolution."

18 Million Map Packs Sold to 23 Million Black Ops Owners Posted: 01 Sep 2011 12:51 PM PDT There were quite a few angry people out there when Activision decided to bump the price of Call of Duty map packs up to $15 each from $10. Some even promised to avoid buying the map packs altogether to protest the "ridiculous" new price. Whether or not they stuck to that -- something tells me many didn't -- there are more map packs selling now than ever before. Activision revealed some numbers during an Analyst Day event today, including the fact that the company has seen $1.7 billion in digital revenue in the 12 months leading up to this June. By comparison, the previous 12 months (up to June 2010) saw $1.4 billion, and the 12 months before that (up to June 2009) saw $1.2 billion. That's only going to continue to grow with Diablo III on the horizon and Call of Duty Elite coming up. It was also noted that more than 23 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops have been sold, with 18 million map packs sold for the game. Modern Warfare 2 sold 19 million units and 11 million map packs; World at War did 9 million units and 9 million map packs. Keep in mind that each game had multiple map packs released, so it's not as if everyone who bought World at War purchased a map pack.

Star Trek Online Free-to-Play Model in the Works Posted: 01 Sep 2011 11:23 AM PDT Although Cryptic has yet to begin talking about it, its new owner, Perfect World, recently announced plans to convert Star Trek Online into a free-to-play game. A transcript of a recent Perfect World conference call shows Kelvin Lau speaking about change at Cryptic and free-to-play games in general, which led to him saying, "And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well." It's not a major surprise to see the game move in this direction. Both of Cryptic's previous MMOs, City of Heroes and Champions Online, began as subscription-based games and eventually adopted the free-to-play model. Champions did so in less than a year and a half, even quicker than STO, which launched on February 2, 2010. Also remember that Cryptic outright said it could make the change if Champions Online proved to be successful with its new business model.

Pac-Man and House Lead This Week's Nintendo Downloads Posted: 01 Sep 2011 10:26 AM PDT The ten free NES games for 3DS Ambassadors were meant to be the big downloadable release today. With those becoming available yesterday, today's Nintendo Download update isn't quite as good as it otherwise would have been. 3DS gets a single new game all to itself: a port of Pac-Man for Game Boy. For $3.99, you can enjoy the old Game Boy version of Pac-Man in its monochromatic glory. It's not especially exciting with the recent Championship Edition versions making the original seem somewhat stale (particularly when it's not even in full color), but it's a classic nonetheless.

Watch BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth Recording Her Lines Posted: 01 Sep 2011 08:59 AM PDT In an unusual move, Irrational Games decided to prominently feature two of BioShock Infinite's voice actors at PAX Prime this past weekend. Voice actors don't generally get a lot of face time or attention for their contributions to games, at least before they're out, but Irrational had Courtnee Draper (Elizabeth) and Troy Baker (Booker) at the show to talk about their performances. "I think we had a lot of people asking about the characters at E3 -- Booker and Elizabeth and what their story was, and so much of that came out of... well, we were lucky enough to find Courtnee and Troy and work with them," Ken Levine told 1UP. "I like them so much, and their work is so important to what we're doing, that I think it's important not to bury that light under a bushel." During an Irrational panel with Levine, Draper, and Baker, the video above was shared with the crowd. It shows a short clip of Draper recording lines for Elizabeth overlaid on the corresponding footage from the game's very impressive E3 demo.

You are subscribed to email updates from 1UP RSS feed To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610