All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

#screengrab Capcom's official Okami Facebook page is running a giveaway; first three to spot this lost-dog poster in New York will get a plush Chibi. See the page for details on submitting your entry. More »

If you're a PlayStation Plus member, you can get into the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood beta now! Originally available to pre-orderers and "select" PlayStation Plus subscribers, Sony and Ubisoft have opened up the beta to all those who have paid their dues to Plus. So now the service is good for Hulu Plus, discounts on Cho Aniki ... and this.

We say you can get in "now," but the beta client is a 2,806 MB download, so you can start the process of getting in now, and actually play the game some time tomorrow.

More Tom Clancys Ghost Recon Videos More footage here - developed by Next Level Games - cooperative mission on rails - You and a partner – either another human player or computer AI - take cover at specific points in the fixed-area levels - peek out from behind cover to focus your aim - choose when to leap from cover to cover - [...]

Most of the media we've seen from Red Dead Redemption's "Undead Nightmare" DLC paints the expansion's ghouls as decaying, hideous monsters. This latest batch is ... well, it's still pretty grim, but look at that guy in the picture above! The diffusive glow of his brain hole is just delightful.

A final hands-on in New York with the GT branded wheel and 3D effects.

#blizzard Blizzard fans are a patient lot, so the gap between StarCraft II's future episodes focusing on the Zerg and Protoss races should be easy going. It's only going to be about 18 more months before we see the next one. More »

#avatars Preordering NBA 2K11 via GameStop delivered a free Chicago Bulls road jersey for your avatar; NBA 2K11 now has six different pairs of classic Air Jordan sneakers to help complete the look. More »

Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Kate Paiz announced during a panel at GDC Online 2010 today that Turbine has done it again: Lord of the Rings Online has doubled its revenue and created over a million new accounts since going free-to-play early last month. That's the second MMO Turbine has taken from a paid subscription to a hybrid microtransactions-based business model, with Dungeons and Dragons Online doing the same thing earlier this year (important to note: Paiz was in charge of both transitions, switching to LotRO in July). Paiz told us after the panel that LotRO wasn't in trouble, but rather that Turbine did the math and decided the switch would work. "We knew there was more out there for us," she said.

Paiz also shared that 20% of LotRO's former players have returned to the game since the switchover, and that the game has seen a 300% increase in peak concurrency, with three times the number of players online simultaneously, and a 400% increase in active players total. 53% percent of players have used the in-game microtransaction store (which sells everything from mounts and outfits to XP boosts and character slots), and as you can see above, extra storage slots are extremely popular in the store. And even paid subscriptions have increased. Turbine's lesson seems to be that, as Paiz said during the panel, "when you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves."

Don't call it a karaoke game comeback, the genre's been here for years.

Those of you who have spent a day out in the world looking for Dragon Quest IX tags know how taxing the DS's Tag Mode can be on its battery life. It appears that's still going to be the case with the 3DS and its expanded "StreetPass" passive communication mode. And that's one reason the 3DS comes with that fancy charge cradle.

"As for the battery," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said during an investor Q&A, "it is inevitable that Nintendo 3DS will be a device which requires more frequent recharging than Nintendo DS. This is why we are going to include the cradle, which is a dedicated battery charger. Perhaps we may need to dispatch to our consumers a message, something like, 'Please place your Nintendo 3DS on the cradle as soon as you return home with it.'"

Though we like how Nintendo thought about the consequences of increased battery use on the daily DS routine -- and we happen to think the cradle is a really attractive accessory -- we must admit that we wonder how much that cradle adds to the cost of the 3DS package.

Zombies, hands-free handhelds and madness! Plus, guess the game and win!

#ratings The studio in charge of Duke Nukem Forever asked that press not film a trailer featuring strippers,"the word f—-ing" in giant letters and an alien getting punched in the balls repeatedly, because it risks a harsh rating. More »

Yahoo Japan and social cell phone game developer Mobagetown recently partnered up to help strengthen the latter's projects. Now called Yahoo Mobage, the company recently outlined its plans for a new web portal for social games, including Persona 3 Social, a new Nobunaga's Ambition title from Tecmo Koei and, arguably the most exciting game announcement of the 21st century, a social game called Shenmue Town. Yes, that Shenmue.

Other than its winter Japanese launch window, we know next to nothing about Shenmue Town. In our heart of hearts, we imagine you mingle around crowds of other real life players, asking if anyone knows anyone who speaks Chinese, or if anyone knows where a dude can find some sailors around these parts.

And that's when it started to get fun.

Zombies, hands-free handhelds and madness! Plus, guess the game and win!

#halo The current home of all things Halo, 343 Industries, is working with Powerhouse Animation Studios—responsible for the animation in Risk: Factions—on a new, ongoing Halo-themed animated series dubbed Apt. 117. Maybe you'll think it's funny? More »

Zombies, hands-free handhelds and madness! Plus, guess the game and win!

Get ready for massive, MASSIVE amounts of details on the 3DS, DS, Wii and Nintendo’s plans from here on out. A lot of reading to do, but it’s all quite worth it. Iwata on 3DS release date, pricing… First about the launch timing, when we made the original financial forecasts for this fiscal year, we thought [...]

Zombies, hands-free handhelds and madness! Plus, guess the game and win!

The original survivors are back… but not for long.

Your chance to meet the dev team and score some God of War goodies too!

#nintendo The previously coveted Japanese folding fans—sensu, they call 'em in Japan—offered by Club Nintendo overseas are coming to North America, courtesy of Club Nintendo of America. How much will cost to experience this raw, manual cooling power? More »

PC gaming is set to grow in 2010, according to NPD's Michael Klotz. Klotz hosted a panel here at GDC Online 2010 this afternoon, and said that expected growth can be attributed to two things: StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. PC revenue has reached $303 million as of August this year, and Klotz expects the WoW expansion to put the total over the top of last year's $538 million.

Klotz also talked about the ongoing transition of customers simply buying physical copies of games to buying both physical discs and digital downloads. In terms of revenue, physical sales still outweigh the digital side, but digital purchases (including both full game purchases and DLC) have overtaken bought discs in terms of numbers. That means, said Klotz, that physical purchases are still selling at full price, while customers are paying much less for digital games, either because of sales or because they're buying casual or just cheaper titles online. Klotz credited Rock Band for pioneering the digital move -- lots of players weren't sure about digital purchases until they saw how seamlessly the Rock Band Marketplace worked, and then they were OK with downloading games and game content.

Finally, Klotz shared an interesting stat: Physical point cards (like those for Microsoft points on Xbox Live) have overtaken gamepads as the largest accessory category for game retail in just the past six months. As long as he could remember, Klotz said, game controllers have always been the best selling game accessory, with power cables next on the list. But cards for DLC are now on top of the charts after a 37 percent increase in the past year, showing just how important it is for game retailers to try and get a piece of that pie.

A portion of a Guardian interview with actor Sam Witwer (Starkiller), David Collins (sound supervisor, voice director and voice of Proxy) and Darragh O’Farrell (director of audio)… G: So did you use full performance capture in Force Unleashed 2? Darragh: No, for TFU 2, we were in a voice-over studio in LA, but we had HD cams [...]

Hands-on with the uniquely designed cooperative mode that gives Media Molecule's platformer surprising new life.

#politics Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.comEA Sports president Peter Moore appeared on Fox News earlier this day to talk about the unlockable political celebrities in NBA Jam, out now for the Wii, and artfully fielded a question that sounds loaded, considering the source. More »