That's right, folks -- Harmonix has just revealed that Green Day: Rock Band will be available for all come June 8 on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Players will progress through the career of the trio, unlocking "more than 100 collectible images, and more than 40 minutes of rare and unreleased video from interviews, outtakes and performances" along the way.
The game will also sport the same vocal harmonies that made The Beatles: Rock Band such a delight for wannabe vocalists and comes loaded with 47 Green Day tracks, including "Brain Stew," "Jaded," "Hitchin' a Ride," "American Idiot," "Wake Me Up When September Ends" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."
Oh, and if you're looking to export these tunes, worry not: all 47 tracks are fully exportable to Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and the recently announced Rock Band 3. And if you've picked up the six Green Day tunes already available as DLC, you can play them in the new game with "with added vocal harmonies, unique performance visuals, and exclusive archival material."
Green Day: Rock Band will be available as a stand-alone game for Xbox 360 and PS3 for $59.99, while Wii owners will get a bit of a price break at $49.99. A special edition Green Day: Rock Band Plus will also come to Xbox 360 and PS3 for $69.99 and includes "special packaging, export and six Green Day DLC tracks."
#move
Kotaku has already provided the first ever official, up-close look at the Sony's PlayStation Move motion-controller. Now, it's time to look at models pretending to play with it. Can't wait! More »
In an interview with Joystiq during the 2010 Game Developer's Conference, THQ's executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson let a few new details slip about the upcoming sequel to the critical-smash hit Red Faction: Guerrilla. "The new game takes [Red Faction] to a whole new place, it kind of goes back to the old Red Faction because about 80% of it is underground," Bilson said. According to Bilson, the as-yet-properly-named sequel -- which he describes as a "hybrid" between the first two titles in the Red Faction franchise and Guerrilla -- is planned for release in March 2011. (In February, THQ's annual investors conference call vaguely stated a Guerrilla sequel was planned for the company's "fiscal 2011" window.)
Bilson was tight-lipped on other details but did confirm the upcoming open-world third-person shooter would be far more "structured," akin to a "narrative" shooter. The sequel will still feature the destructibility Bilson says cost THQ "a fortune" to develop for Guerrilla, but will have a much greater impact on cities built closer together in the tight confines of the new underground world.
Although Guerrilla captivated most critics (netting a Metacritic average of 85 across three platforms) the third-person shooter failed to meet THQ's sales expectations. While Bilson said it would have been easy to scrap the characters and setting in the upcoming sequel and shift it into a new intellectual property -- effectively severing its connection to Guerrilla's poor retail showing -- he felt the quality in the previous entry was too great to abandon the Red Faction universe.
The strategy now, says Bilson, is to expose gamers to the series in order to prepare them for the future, citing the recent Red Faction: Guerrilla giveaway promotion as an example of giving the title the exposure it "deserved" at launch. "Giving away the stock now, on Red Faction, is getting more people exposed to the IP because we're going bigger on Red Faction next time," Bilson told us. "If the game wasn't so good, we wouldn't be giving it away at all."
#gdc10
Yesterday, Sony took the wraps off the PlayStation Move, which some people will call Sony's next big thing in video gaming, and others will call a shameless Wii Remote rip-off. Here's everything you need to know about it. More »
#mystery
Maybe you'll eat a turkey sandwich. Perhaps, you'll drink a glass of carrot juice. You may even read watch television. The future is endless. The reveal for this countdown teaser is not. More »
#survivalguide
Western game Red Dead Redemption has been delayed from April to May. Those looking to bid their time productively with cowboys, read on. More »
#gdc10
Slider may well be one of the more interesting launch titles for the PlayStation Move, in that it involves the player performing kung-fu. While belting through city streets on an office chair. More »
#gambling
The Japanese population is shrinking. Birthrates have been dropping for the past two decades, and the country needs more babies. The Japanese government is attempting to push through a national child subsidy program. Enter pachinko. More »
We have no doubt you've been counting the days (likely via tick marks on the wall), waiting for more information on Zootfly/SouthPeak Games' Prison Break, so you'll be glad to hear that the game finally got a solid release date (March 30) and a price ($49.99 on 360/PS3, $39.99 on PC) today from its publisher.
Along with the mess of new screens we've dropped below into a gallery, this is just about the most flush we've been with Prison Break info in the entire history of the game's development cycle -- and it's coming out in just under three weeks! As the game's coming from the developer of Mr. T: The Game, we're willing to give this one a shot just so we can support the company's upcoming adventure into madness.
#gallery
The Last Story, the upcoming Wii role-playing game, is the newest title from Final Fantasy designer Hironobu Sakaguchi. Previously, all that has been shown of the game is a logo. Until now. More »
Massively multiplayer online game players in the States allegedly spent $3.8 billion last year, according to the Today's Gamers MMO Focus Report by Gamesindustry.com and TNS. The report claims that the MMO market in the US has reached 46 million users, with 21 million paying for online games. The rest play without spending a dime (think "freemium").
In a shocking upset victory dripping in sarcasm, World of Warcraft was the most popular MMO with the US, besting NeoPets, Club Penguin, Disney ToonTown and Runescape. Ah freemium, where even the traditional MMO companies can make money.
#ea
According to the man who's had to write the cheques for the game's development, Electronic Arts is taking massive multiplayer online title The Old Republic seriously. Very seriously. More »
[Hardcore Gaming 101]
You may not remember this, but in the days before Magna Cum Laude, Leisure Suit Larry games were adventure games. And funny. Series creator Al Lowe has revealed what would have been the plot for Leisure Suit Larry 8: Lust in Space, had upheaval at Sierra not prevented it from ever happening.
Essentially, Larry is captured by "amazonian warrior women" from a distant planet. They brainwash the perennially behind-the-times loser into believing he's in a disco paradise. Then, they plan to use Larry to father a race of alien-human hybrids to take over the earth. "When he finally woke up, he realized: he had to figure out what was going on, find a way to stop the invasion and literally save the planet!"
So why didn't this happen? Sierra tried to hire Lowe to design the game with only a promise that a contract would come later. Considering that the last thing we heard about Al Lowe was that his Sam Suede was being worked on again (without him), and without his knowledge, we believe he was right to be suspicious.
click to enlarge
It's impossible to avoid comparisons between EA's upcoming Medal of Honor reboot and Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare series ... so, I'll just get it out of the way: Medal of Honor unapologetically follows in the footsteps of Call of Duty. In fact, I'm willing to raise the possibility that Medal of Honor could be the "true" sequel to the Call of Duty 4 campaign many of us are still waiting for after suffering through Modern Warfare 2's increasingly preposterous storyline.
Recently, I got a peak at a new Medal of Honor trailer which lays it out like this: There are two sides to every war: the sledgehammer and the scalpel. What Call of Duty 4 did so well was to portray exactly how these two components work in tandem, as it featured scenarios in which large assaults aided small elite forces, and vice versa. Medal of Honor promises to recreate similar battlefield situations, with the "scalpel" represented by the Tier 1 Operators, an elite branch of SOCOM.
#hollywood
Tron Legacy won't be out until this December, meaning there's plenty of time for Disney to promote the crud out of the flick. Know what that calls for? Giant billboards. More »
#gdc10
Activision's True Crime series goes back to the drawing board with a Hong Kong action-adventure reboot, a game that puts the player in the role of an undercover cop, one who knows how to use a freezer door in a fight. More »
#gdc10
When the PlayStation Move is released later this year, it won't just be Sony making games for the thing. A grand total of 36 third-party publishers are also signed up to develop games for the motion-sensing peripheral. More »
#gdc10
The first press shots of the PlayStation Move look delicious, courtesy of the bright coloured balls perched atop the peripheral. Wondering why there's so much variety? So were we. More »
Surprise! Major MMOs cost batty-bonkers-cuckoo amounts of money to produce. Eurogamer reports that Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown said as much today, describing Star Wars: The Old Republic as the "largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company." EA is apparently betting big on having something like Activision Blizzard's World of Warcraft with The Old Republic. Brown guesstimates that WoW cost about $100 million to launch back in 2004 -- the game makes something like that now in a month.
The executive explained that the average game costs about $30 million to produce, but that "any MMO costs significantly more than that." With an expected spring 2011 release, hopefully EA will start making a return at that time on its investment in a galaxy far, far away. Otherwise, the gaping maw of the Rancor would be preferable to what investors will do.
