Xenoblade Chronicles has been critically acclaimed everywhere it has released, but Nintendo of America has declined to announce any plans to release it in State-side… until now! A new trailer confirmed the release of the epic RPG in April 2011.
Sony has rolled out a new official viral trailer for an exclusive called The Last of Us. The full trailer for the game will be seen at the Spike VGA’s on Saturday, December 10.
MotorStorm RC is the latest version of a racing franchise that’s already seen a lot of traction on various PlayStation properties. In this video, PlayStation.Blog Manager James Gallagher interviews Paul Rustchynsky, Game Director on MotorStorm RC to talk about the new elements in this MotorStorm.
REI is opening its first store in NYC. Download the app and user your phone to open up unique outdoor experiences simply by scanning any of our specially designed posters. There are six scenes, each one corresponding to a specific poster. There are over 400 posters around the city, which serve as portals to six virtual scenes. Use the map functionality on the app to find the posters nearest you. Log on to Facebook and send a virtual backpack {link no longer active} to a friend.
GREE has announced that their gaming platform will be adjusted so that it works globally as a payment and promotional service. All 150 million registered users will have a single log-in worldwide for both iOS and Android platforms starting Spring 2012.
“This new GREE platform continues to show the commitment we have to building a truly global, free-to-play ecosystem for mobile developers. Our goal is to offer the best social gaming experience to players around the world,” says Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO and founder of GREE. “GREE worldwide has the largest cross-platform network and this is a step closer to our goal of reaching one billion users.”
A Bit Lucky has released some statistics to [a]list daily about their newly launched game Lucky Space and the results are very encouraging for them. The game has seen over 3 million gameplay sessions with the first gameplay session averaging around a half hour, or roughly four times that of most social games.
The game has seen roughly 1.5 million friend requests, nearly a million colonists, 25 million buildings stocked, 5 million quests and nearly a million meteor strikes. Previous to Facebook turning off user reviews, Lucky Space had managed a 4.8 star score.
Find out more in the [a]list interview.
Gowalla announced today that it has accepted a buyout from Facebook. The Foursquare-like location service recently angled itself towards more of a social travel guide earlier this year.
“We created Gowalla to inspire people to go out and share those places, photos and stories. The past three years have been quite the journey, oft-times in a very literal sense!,” said Gowalla CEO Josh Williams. “The Gowalla Passport has become a record of all the places we’ve visited, the people we were with, the photos we took, and the stories we told. Many of you even use Gowalla like a scrapbook of sorts — a place to keep all those memories.”
“About two months ago, my co-founder Scott and I attended F8. We were blown away by Facebook’s new developments,” he added. “A few weeks later Facebook called, and it became clear that the way for our team to have the biggest impact was to work together. So we’re excited to announce that we’ll be making the journey to California to join Facebook!
“Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well. Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data. We know how much many of you loved Gowalla. It’s been the highlight of our lives as we’ve built it with your help over the past two years. As we move forward, we hope some of the inspiration behind Gowalla — a fun and beautiful way to share your journey on the go — will live on at Facebook,” Williams concluded.
Source: AdWeek
Halfbrick revealed that they and ToyFoundry have made up a new online Fruit Ninja toy store. Fans can purchase a wise sensei plushie for $15.99, a sliced juicy watermelon plushie for $14.99 and a training pack with both plushies for $29.99.
“With Fruit Ninja’s universal success, this partnership just developed naturally,” said Phil Larsen, chief marketing officer at Halfbrick. “Our fans are crazy about Fruit Ninja and this is a really fun and charming way to extend the brand outside of games.”
Mojang announced today that they are working with Lego to build official Minecraft sets in an extension almost everyone can agree makes sense for both parties. They will donate their amount of the proceeds to charity.
“Seeing Lego Minecraft sets is also our dream, so we linked to one of the projects. It’s clear to us that there are many creative people with good ideas for this and we want to throw our own hat into the ring and start this project to bring the best Lego Minecraft builders together,” said Mojang. “Minecraft is about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine in the virtual world. You can build anything you imagine with Lego bricks in the physical world. Minecraft and Lego were meant to be together.”
Source: lego.cuusoo.com {link no longer active}
The PS3 price has dropped steadily since it’s release, and now it’s right in the range of what the PS2 had not soon after it released. SCEE president Jim Ryan indicates that as the system progresses, it will benefit both general consumers and the hardcore gamer.
“If you look back at the history on PS1, PS2 the vast majority of the business that we did on both those platforms was done at the sub 129 British Pounds price points,” Ryan said. “Now we’ve only got to 199 British Pounds in the U.K. a couple of month back so you can see there’s still a lot of PS3’s potentially to be sold. I think you’ll see us taking the console more towards a slightly younger demographic. More family market.
“The core gamer will absolutely not be neglected,” he added. “There’s going to be tons of great stuff for the core gamer but from our own studio [and] third parties there’s some quite interesting stuff happening in a number of areas which would allow us to open up a market that we accessed pretty successfully on both PS1 and PS3 but haven’t yet got to on PS3.”
Source: OPM UK
