Megaton News

Kingdom Under Fire 2 is looking pretty great for one of these one million troops, hack & slash type of games. This trailer is focused purely on the online cooperative mode.

It seems Bioware isn’t changing strategies when it comes to advertising Dragon Age games. Present a God of War style we’re so hardcore attitude, and then cover it in blood. Dissappointing that they continue to treat the most traditional franchise they have, and the fans of classic western style RPG’s with so little respect.

Square in their ongoing attempts to appeal to the western market have announced Gun Loco. A more grotesque take on Twisted Metal character designs, a Manhunt like setting and premise, and some Mirror’s Edge jumping and sliding all combine in what looks to be a truly horrible game. IGN has the awful trailer here. The game is currently an Xbox 360 exclusive, oh joy.

Double Fine has announced the first of their new smaller downloadable titles Costume Quest. In a move rarely seen outside of free flash games they’ve made it a holiday themed game, that holiday being Halloween. It’s described as an adventure/RPG, hopefully not to Diabloesque there’s been a quite few of those lately. You play a kid out for a night of trick or treating, and you battle imagined monsters using your imagined powers in a quest to save your little sister. Sometimes you will have help from your friends whose imagined selves are also defined by their cute kid costumes.

Costume Quest is planned for release this Halloween on Xbox Live Arcade, and the Playstation Network

Irrational Games continues to tease their new title on whatisicarus.com slowly revealing this image in a flash video.

Looks like an infinity symbol to me, but no need to keep guessing, Ken Levine today made it clear that we will be seeing their new game August 12th.

On Thursday, August 12th, at 1:45 Eastern Daylight Time, we will launch the trailer for our new game at Whatisicarus.com. Our hope is that you all will see it PRIOR to reading any news in the press (which will start to come out around 15 minutes later).

EA finally released some media for the Alice sequel Alice: Madeness Returns. It looks like the real deal, the same atmosphere and style with a modern graphical upgrade. The teaser trailer is short, but shows us that they won’t be holding back on the weird for the sake of grabbing the mainstream audience, This is a true sequel to a flawed classic of PC gaming.

SquareEnix Eidos have released some concept poster art for the next Hitman game (Hitman 5). It seems Agent 47 will get burned, or god puts a contract on Satan or something. Agent 47 looks a little to movie game friendly in this picture, but it is just a little promotional concept art.

The image also confirms that IO Interactive will continue to be the ones developing Hitman, so there should be no need to worry.

NPD for June changes things up a little bit with the Xbox 360 just barely taking the number 2 spot thanks to stock clearing sales on the old model 360′s and the release of the 360 short. Red Dead and Galaxy 2 continue to hold the first 3 software slots, while Toy Story 3 for DS and Lego Harry Potter Wii make a strong showing for licensed titles. Being beaten in the portable space by Toy Story 3 must be painful for Hideo Kojima whose Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker failed to chart on that unlovable loser the PSP. Alpha Protocol, Singularity, and Transformers should also commit seppuku for their horrible sales this month.

Nintendo DS 510,700
Xbox 360 451,700
Wii 422,500
PlayStation 3 304,800
PSP 121,000

Top 10 Games Sales

Red Dead Redemption 360 (Take 2) - 582,900
Super Mario Galaxy 2 Wii (Nintendo) - 548,400
Red Dead Redemption PS3 (Take 2) - 380,300
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo) - 200,900
Just Dance Wii (Ubisoft) – 174,800
Wii Fit Plus With Balance Board Wii (Nintendo)
Toy Story3 NDS (Disney Interactive Studios
UFC 2010: Undisputed 360 (THQ)
Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 Wii (Warner Bros. Interactive)
UFC 2010: Undisputed PS3 (THQ)

Updating with the rest of the top 20:

11. Pokemon SoulSilver DS
12. Transformers War For Cybertron 360
13. New Super Mario Bros. DS
14. Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 360
15. FIFA World Cup 360
16. FIFA World Cup PS3
17. Mario Kart Wii
18. Pokemon HeartGold DS
19. Toy Story 3 Wii
20. Wii Sports Resort

Also some numbers for specific games were released.
Transformers 360 did 132,000, and Wii Sports Resort in the 20 position sold less than 100,000 which should give you an idea of how bad some of this month’s other releases did. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker failed to even crack the top 20 selling only 52,000 copies. Even worse numbers for Green Day Rock Band which sold only 83,000 copies between ALL 3 of the console releases. Skate 3 only sold 253,000 copies in it’s first 2 months down forty percent from Skate 2, and Tiger Woods 11 dropped 68 percent from last year’s release, due entirely to Tiger’s unquenchable love of white meat being made public this year.

According to the twitter account of an IGN employee some bombs of the month are in this order:
Naughty Bear > Singularity > Sin and Punishment
Perhaps if Singularity, or Sin and Punishment had had any promotion whatsoever they might have had at least a remote chance of beating out Naughty Bear!

Surprising absolutely nobody, it appears the formerly Wii exclusive arcade basketball title NBA Jam will be making it’s way to the HD platforms 360 & Playstation 3. Discovered, as these things often are, via a ratings board the German USK has rated NBA Jam for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 release. It’s not known at this time whether or not this will be a disc release or a downloadable title, though it would seem somewhat insane to undercut full price disc release sales on one platform by releasing the same game as a lower price download on two other platforms.

Fable III Boxart

Notice it features the “only on Xbox 360 AND Windows” stamp. Hopefully that means PC gamers will be able to get their hands on Fable 3, but more likely Microsoft just slipped up with the early box art.