Megaton News

EA had their Summer Showcase event today, and those of you with hopes of new game footage or new game announcements will be disappointed, and after today you should just be happy that EA hasn’t announced that they’re leaving the games industry all together yet.

They started off with the EA Sports stuff though not the games they said were their best EA sports games leaving SSX on the shelf while they promoted NCAA Football and some Hockey thing, they then moved on to a Sims expansion pack for a previous Sims expansion pack.

Transitioning to digital downloads EA talked up Origin’s special friends list crossover so ipad gamers, and Battlefield 3 gamers can get together like they’ve been dying to for years, then it was time for Facebook gaming, showing R.I.S.K. Factions, followed by cross-platform play for Scrabble on Android, iPad, iPhone, and Facebook.

They began to go into what looked to be a real game finally with Burnout Crash, but then declared it a Kinect game.

Funcom came out to give a little attention to The Secret World, giving us a teaser trailer, hopefully this MMO won’t be another in the trash heap considering all the development time that could have been being spent on a new Longest Journey game.

Some rep for Bioware came out to push the expansion pack for Dargon Age II which looked notably worse than Dragon Age Origins in both graphics, and of course gameplay.

They closed out the show by showing nothing of Battlefield 3, but promised a great party was waiting for the press in the room.

After more than a decade various levels of developement Duke Nukem Forever has come out on top, at least in the UK for it’s launch week. Beating out the other two new releases for the week Infamous 2, and Red Faction: Armageddon, Duke took the number 1 slot on a single platform alone.

Duke may be making the games press cry of offense and disgust, but at least in the land of royal weddings and blood pudding, Duke still has some old school appeal.

UK top 40 for the week ending June 11, 2001 from Chart-Track

After more than a decade various levels of developement Duke Nukem Forever has come out on top, at least in the UK for it’s launch week. Beating out the other two new releases for the week Infamous 2, and Red Faction: Armageddon, Duke took the number 1 slot on a single platform alone.
Duke may be making the games press cry of offense and disgust, but at least in the land of royal weddings and blood pudding, Duke still has some old school appeal.
UK top 40 for the week ending June 11, 2001 from Chart-Track
01 360 Duke Nukem Forever02 PS3 Infamous 203 WII Zumba Fitness04 PS3 Duke Nukem Forever05 360 L.a. Noire06 PS3 L.a. Noire07 360 Dirt 308 360 Brink09 WII Wii Sports Resort10 360 Red Faction: Armageddon11 PC Duke Nukem Forever12 360 Call Of Duty: Black Ops13 PS3 Dirt 314 360 Fifa 1115 NDS Art Academy16 PC The Sims 3: Generations17 360 Portal 218 360 Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean19 PS3 Brink20 WII Just Dance 221 WII Mario Kart Wii22 WII Wii Fit Plus23 WII Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean24 NDS Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean25 360 Zumba Fitness26 360 Hunted: The Demon’s Forge27 PS3 Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean28 PS3 Portal 229 PS3 Red Faction: Armageddon30 PS3 Killzone 331 WII Wii Party32 PS3 Call Of Duty: Black Ops33 360 Kinect Sports34 PS3 Littlebigplanet 235 NDS Pokemon Black Version36 PS3 Ea Sports Mma37 NDS Pokemon White Version38 360 Crysis 239 PS3 Fifa 1140 WII Donkey Kong Country Returns

Sony dude Jack Tretton was on Gametrailers live E3 coverage just now, and when asked if this year meant fiscal year ending in March 2012, or this year ending December 2011, Jack clarified that the PSVita will not be hitting America or Europe until 2012, but should be coming out in Japan by the end of 2011.

This leaves Nintendo in the clear for this year with the 3DS, Nintendo does great every Christmas, and this year they will have zero competition on the portable front.

According to Joystiq the PSVita will be $249 for the Wifi only version, and $299 for the 3G model, and Eurogamer is saying 250 euros for those guys too.

Looks like Sony is looking to put 3DS in a corner here, though Nintendo has plenty of room to move on price, I wonder what kind of loss Sony is taking per PS Vita at that price.

This holiday will be interesting for the handheld war with Mario 3DS coming out, and we’ll see what 3DS price is by the end of the year.

The list of games for the summer of arcade this year include the Giant Bomb shilled Bastion, an iPhone to Kinect port Fruit Ninja Kinect, Toy Soldiers: Cold War, From Dust, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

Perhaps the least exciting lineup ever? Yes.

Day one of E3 brings us gifts from third parties, first off Ninja Gaiden 3, the first mainline Ninja Gaiden without Itagaki, and it’s bloodier than ever. Graphically it looks like it might be a bit improved over the Sigma games, but not by much, especially given the canned nature of this trailer.

Microsoft has never been able to keep the lid on their news, and this year is no exception, via images on their site they released everything they’re announcing at their E3 conference, and it’s pretty much all Kinect stuff, except for the Halo milking.

Halo 4 is coming, surprise.
As heavily rumored, they’ll also announce a Halo: Combat Evolved remake for the Xbox 360.
Kinect Sports Season 2 is the sequel you’ve all been waiting for.
Dance Central 2 coming to the Kinect
Last.FM becomes Kinect enabled.
Kinect Fun Labs is for “crazy, cool new gadgets” presumably this is where they try to capitalize on Kinect stuff people have been making on the PC. So far this includes: Kinect Sparkler, Kinect BobbleHead, and Kinect Me
Ryse is the Codename: Kingdoms game, and it will be a Kinect thing, a “cinematic, action-packed” Kinect thing.

So this Microsoft event is going to be just as disappointing as had been expected, at least they released this early so there’s no need to sit through it.

A Forbes representative John Geudiosi spent some time with Sony’s E3 lineup, and felt free to blog about an new God of War game to be shown off at the Sony E3 press conference. He describes it as a new God of War 3D adventure, but he was probably just shown the game on a 3D TV or some such garbage, the game will likely be nothing more than what you’d expect out of a God of War 4.

This trailer is all CG, but it’s still awesome, and any mech fan should want to take a look. It’s coming to Japan in October, and hopefully the US not long after.

Do you like Kinect? Well you better start loving it, because that’s all you’re getting from Microsoft for the rest of the life of the Xbox 360. Kotaku is reporting this list of games for the show floor, and aside from the third party multiplatform games there’s absolutely nothing to get excited about.

Tomb Raider
Forza 4
Star Wars Kinect
Gears of War 3
A Halo related title
Codename Kingdoms
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster
The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
Alan Wake: Night Springs (Kinect compatible)
XCOM
Hitman: Absolution
Modern Warfare 3
Spelunky HD
Ghost Recon rail shooter for Kinect
Dance Central 2
Kinect FunLabs XCommerce
Kinect Sports: Season 2
Toy Soldiers: Cold War
Fable: The Journey
Raving Rabbids for Kinect
An Unspecified Double Fine game
Hybrid (XBLA shooter)
Roller Coaster Kinect
Rise of Nightmares for Kinect.

In addition to this list Geoff Keighly has been tweeting about the Batman guys, and the Mass Effect 3 guys being at Microsoft’s event, but again nothing we don’t know about already, isn’t on every capable platform, and that’s worth seeing.

It looks like the 360 is done as a source of new and interesting exclusives, it’s time to move on to the next console generation if they want to retain any of the core audience that their platform was built on.

Just a reminder the Microsoft E3 press conference starts at 9:30am Pacific Time this morning.