Gaming News 15th October

EA Get Bigger

I know this story is a bit late but I could not let it pass without posting some comment. In news that has shocked the gaming world it has been announced that leading publisher Electronic Arts has brought two major development houses in Bioware and Pandemic. The deal which is thought to be in the region of $860 million has brought EA some big future titles with both development houses rumoured to be working on around 10 projects between the pair of them. Mass Effect developers Bioware have been quick to say that Mass Effect will still be published by Microsoft as planned next month and that it is the first game in a planned trilogy and that there are no plans at present to bring the game or its sequels to the PS3. I personally doubt this as EA are not exactly renowned for console exclusives tending to release titles on every format possible and apparently Mass Effect has stayed a Bioware IP so does not belong to Microsoft. So expect to see this stunning looking game coming to a PS3 sometime next year. As for Pandemic’s upcoming big titles Mercenaries 2 and the Mars Attacks sequels these were going to be multi format anyway so no change there.Whether this is a good move only time will tell EA have brought big dev teams in the past only for them to waste them such as Bullfrog and Westwood Studios on the flip side the more recent purchase of Criterion seems to have gone pretty well with the Burnout series going from strength to strength and blockbuster FPS Black being a big success. They also do seem to be trying to sort their act out to some extent with more orginal IP’s in development than ever before but this still has not seen the end of the endless conveyor belt of identi-kit yearly updates and the early shutdown of online game servers. 

 Wii Live Market Place

At a surprise secret press conference Nintendo have announced that their answer to Xbox Live Market Place and Arcade, Wii Ware is almost ready to go and that there are around 100 titles proposed including Dr Mario, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Pokemon Ranch Channel and Bomberman. They have also confirmed they will be releasing demos of future DS titles quite how this is all going to work with the Wii’s measly 512mb of flash memory I don’t know, unless they improve the integration of the SD cards or introduce some sort of mass storage device I can see it being a total nightmare. I do not know about anybody else but it is already a balancing act with my Xbox 360′s 20gb hard drive let alone only having 512mb of storage space on my Wii. Also announced was the price point and release date for the hotly anticipated Wii Fitness Board which will be this December in Japan for around £35 no news on a European release but hopefully that price point stays similar.

Xbox 360 Arcade Edition Picture Leaked

As long been rumoured it would seem that the demise of the Xbox 360 Core edition is nigh with pictures of the new entry level edition of the console leaked onto the net and with some retailers in the States listing it already.  The new edition of the machine still comes without a hard drive but now comes HDMI enabled with  a 256mb memory card, wireless pad and 5 Live Arcade games including Pac Man and Uno. The new console is launching this month in the States for $280 dollars no news on a European launch but I cannot see it being far behind and will definitely be launching at a price point similar to the current Core package at around £180. At this price it should represent a good challenge to the Wii coming into the festive season with Nintendo resolutely refusing to drop the price of its machine before christmas. When we have concrete details on a release date and price point you will be the first to know

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