Megaton News

Final Fantasy XIII Extended Trailer

Final Fantasy Versus XIII Etended Trailer

Select Game Sales Outside The Top 10

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games 330,000
360 Rock Band 312,000
Wii Zapper With Link’s Crossbow Training  232,000
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga 180,000
High School Musical 180,000
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles 120,000
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune 117,000
PS3 Rock Band 70,000
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction 65,600

U.S. LTD’s

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption ~500,000
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure 35,000

Console-Software Tie Ratios

360 6.85
PS3 4.01
Wii 3.86 (not including Wii Sports)

Link, Link, Link, Link, & Link

From Bloomberg: 

PlayStation 3 SalesChief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda said Oct. 25 that the company may miss its target to sell 11 million of the consoles during the year ending March 31.

Amazon is having another holiday customers vote with game consoles in the first round. The systems available are the ultra cheap $79 Wii, the no PS2 compatibility 40 gig PS3 for $139, and the why bother 360 Arcade for $99. Wii is currently in the lead. This time winners will be randomly selected so people will hopefully have a better chance actually getting one the 1,000 available systems. The losing items will also be offered at a discounted price, but only if you voted for that item. You can vote HERE

Today Sony managed to simultaneously deny, and draw attention to a rumor that their new 40GB PS3s have a 40% failure rate.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) can categorically deny that there is a 40% failure rate on the newly release 40GB PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3) as has been reported on a Dutch website. Having launched in October, the 40GB PS3 has encountered the same industry leading, very low failure rates, comparable to the low level failure rates of the 60GB PS3.“We are very proud of the quality and reliability of PLAYSTATION 3 and are disappointed that such extremely sloppy journalism has resulted in this totally inaccurate story,” said David Reeves, President, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. “Since launching the 40GB PS3, we have experienced a fantastic jump in sales and the failure rates have remained at the very low level that we not only strive for, but have been achieving since the launch of PS3.”

From timesonline.co.uk:

Like many middle-class, suburban American parents, Shannan and Joey Troiano worried about their son’s behaviour and his bad grades at high school. And like many wayward teenagers, Cory Ryder was grounded for weeks at a time, had a PlayStation confiscated and was banned from watching TV.

Less typically, this 16-year-old was plotting to murder his parents by hiring a hitman, while his mother was organising a sting operation involving a police officer posing as a contract killer.

Cory’s trial is scheduled to begin today at the circuit court in St Mary’s County, Maryland. His mother is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution.

At an earlier court hearing Mrs Troiano, 35, explained how her emotions were torn between being an agonised mother and a murder victim. “I miss him being at home,” she said, “and I miss us joking around and kidding around. And then in the very same breath – I don’t know what this kid will do, because it’s not my son. That can’t be my little boy sitting there.”

Mrs Troiano remembers the night on June 2 when she discovered that the vague threats her son had made were serious. A woman Cory trusted, the mother of one of his friends, took him to a hotel room where he met an undercover police officer pretending to be a hitman.

At home in southern Maryland, Mrs Troiano told her husband that Cory would never go through with it and began frantically tidying the house, according to an account in The Washington Post yesterday.

After a few hours’ waiting, the policeman called: Cory was in custody and would be charged with attempted murder. Mrs Troiano fell to her knees in the bathroom she was cleaning and burst into tears.

Police say that Cory offered the undercover officer his stepfather’s new pickup truck as payment for killing his parents. “Two bullets is all it takes,” he is alleged to have said.

His mother, a financial manager at Patuxent River naval station, and stepfather, a computer specialist, had lived an ordinary life with Cory and his two stepsisters. Mrs Troiano had left his father when Cory was little more than a year old but, by the time she remarried, her son’s behaviour was getting steadily worse.

He walked out of lessons at Spring Ridge Middle School in Lexington Park, smashed a fire extinguisher case and then broke into the county fairgrounds, where he vandalised property. A judge sentenced him to supervised probation and his parents attended no less than 36 meetings with the authorities about him.

But Cory dropped out of school and then, after stealing $45 (£22) from his sister’s piggy bank, had a fight with his mother, which led to him being kicked out of home. He has since told officials that he was upset about being thrown out of the house and that he felt pressured to talk to the man in the hotel.

Cory insists that he never intended to have his parents killed and that he wanted to call the police that night in the hotel room. A judge has ruled that he should be tried in the juvenile system, which means that he cannot be held beyond his 21st birthday.

He has also been writing to his mother, saying: “You know I love you with all my heart mom!” Mrs Troiano fears that he is being manipulative. She wanted him tried in an adult court where he would have faced a much longer sentence. “He needs to understand what he did was wrong,” she told the court in September. “I’m scared to death that if this kid is serious, and they put him in a three-month programme, they’re going to release him to the street.”

Sounds like entrapment, unlike the Halo 3 kid who beat up his Mom and the cops.

Capcom® Entertainment, a leading worldwide developer and publisher of video games, today announced the contents of the Devil May Cry® 4 Collector’s Edition package, which includes volume 1 of ADV Films’ Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, a Steelbook™ case and a bonus DVD filled with extras. The $79.99 Devil May Cry 4 Collector’s Edition will be available February 5, 2008, for both the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.

The Devil May Cry: The Animated Series anime disc will be packed with the Steelbook case, and will include the first four episodes of the 12 episode anime series. Volume one of the four-disc DVD anime series will be available from ADV Films at the same time the game launches. Inside the case will be a second bonus DVD alongside the game that users can slip into their computers. The bonus DVD will contain a “making of” feature on the game, music from the Devil May Cry 4 soundtrack, a digital art book with images and sketches from the development team, wallpapers, icons and screen savers.

From the Playstation Blog:

Just wanted to make a quick post to let everyone know that the Warhawk v1.1 patch will be deployed world-wide on Friday, November 2nd, during an extended maintenance window between 5am and 9am Pacific. 

Also, once we deploy the patch, when you boot Warhawk, you will be prompted by the XMB to download the v1.1 patch. This is a fast download so it’s not a time killer. Once the XMB has pulled the patch down, Warhawk will boot back up and be happy! You will also notice a “v1.1″ in the lower right corner of the screen.

Client-side updates for Patch v1.1
* Stat connection, fetch/post fixes
* Significantly improved client connection stability
* Quad “????” Ping display bug fixed.
* Added support for Player-Ranked Servers.
* Game synchronization fixes due to fluctuating network conditions (packet-drop).
* Crash fixes for end of game and split screen.