Gaming Console Platform

The ace attorney is back! No, wait, we have a different ace attorney this time as Phoenix Wright retreats from the court room (kinda). This time around, it’s Apollo Justice who will be pointing the finger of justice at criminals, and shouting “Objection!”

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney was already released in Japan and America. European gamers will be getting to try their detective and court skills soon enough: the game will be released in the region come May 9.

For our European readers who are eager to get their hands on the game, and for the others who haven’t been able to get a copy yet, you can head over to QJ.NET’s review of the game, by our very own Sally B to see what’s in store. No spoilers on the story, we promise.

Here’s a stern warning coming from Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH and Play.com: Players found cheating in Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS)’s online tournament matches will be disqualified from the competition and will be banned for a year from the online ranking system.

This statement was issued following the ban of one of the game’s leading online players due to cheating. Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH did not elaborate on the details, but stressed its commitment to keep its turf clean.

An online tournament is currently going on to honor pre-order promises to the game’s customers. Under the pre-order promo, everyone who ordered the game in advance would receive an invitation to join the PES 2008 tilt. Finalists will be flown to Wembley on March 15th to 16th, 2008 for the grand finals.

At stake during the championship round is a whopping 50,000. Add to that the bragging rights involved, and it gives you an idea of what motivated some to do a bit of dirty work to grease the wheels.

Heads up, shinigami lovers! Sega recently announced that Bleach: Dark Souls will be making its way to North America this summer.

As far as we’ve been able to figure out, this will be a localization of developer Treasure’s Bleach DS 2nd, which means that not only will you get to play as the shinigami of your choice, but you’ll also be able to don the mask of a Menos Grande and take on the Soul Reapers.

Here’s the list of features we picked up from the press release:

• Exclusive Single-player Storyline. Bleach: Dark Souls features an exclusive storyline that takes place in between seasons 1 and 2 of the animated series. Fans of the anime will have to play Bleach: Dark Souls to uncover story plot points that are sure to shed new insight on Ichigo s quest to save Rukia.
• Exciting Multiplayer fighting action. Up to four players will enjoy the fighting action via Wi-Fi connection. This game supports the Download Play feature where one player has a cartridge and transmits the game to another player s Nintendo DS which allows them to play head-to-head.
• Variety of multi-plane 2D fighting arenas. Players can switch between the foreground and the background battlelines to chase after or escape from opponents.
• Large cast of popular characters. Players will select from 44 of their favorite characters who are all voiced by the actors from the anime series including the Hollows.
• Special attacks to master. Players can inflict massive damage on opponents with special Combos and Super Power Attacks taken directly from the series.
• Seven thrilling gameplay modes. Story, Arcade, Versus, Training and Challenge modes along with two unlockable modes which will provide hours of replayability and keep players coming back for more.
• 30 New Power-up Cards and Power Crystals to Customize Spirit Card Deck. On the lower screen, players can customize and manage their deck of Power-up Cards for boosts to Health, Attack and Defense, and much more. 
• New Bleach Encyclopedia. Contains fun and interesting facts about the entire Bleach universe. Fans of the series are sure to use this as a reference for to expand their Bleach knowledge.

While many of you have probably read up already on what comes after the “Rescue Rukia” story arc, it’s still one of the more exciting portions in the series, and one that definitely deserves another look-see, if only for the chance to to shout, “BANKAI!”

Gamebooks were fun in the 1980s, but they’re even more fun when you add a bit of a technological twist to them. With that in mind, F. Calendini has turned one gamebook into an e-gamebook, which means you can actually play it on the Nintendo DS. All you need to do is run an application called LoneWolfDS, and you can get to play the fabled gamebook, “Flight from the Dark.”

Seeing as it’s a gamebook, you actually control it as if you were holding a book, which means you hold the DS sideways while using the stylus to pick out choices, access the inventory, and fight.

In any case, feel free to understand it better by viewing the video embedded below. As for us, we’ll be trying out this handsome piece of homebrew on our respective handhelds. Just remember to check the readme for additional instructions on using the actual game. Enjoy!

Download: LoneWolf DS: Flight from the Dark RC6

Nippon Ichi fans don’t have to envy the folks in Japan anymore after the announcement of Disgaea: Prince of the Demon World and the Red Moon for the Nintendo DS, since NIS America revealed that the handheld Disgaea title will see release stateside. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is packing the features previously added to Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness for the PSP.

Aside from the inevitable return of Prinnies, the Geo Panels, Geo Cubes, and Transmigration are back. To mix things up a bit in Disgaea DS, there will be Demon Gadgets which are randomly generated items on the field that have various effects such as leveling up your unit by 30 at once.

Disgaea DS is scheduled for release this summer in North America with improvements intact. Up to two players can go head-to-head as they vie for victory by utilizing Geo Cubes like in Disgaea’s PSP iteration.

Some studies have shown that video games breed violence, while others say that it’s actually healthy for kids. It’s a bit messy, really.

Let’s put violence on the shelves for now and take a look at this new study from Herber Gintis, Economics Professor at the Central European University. The research studies behavioral patterns by using games. Introversion, in particular, was given attention.

The study collected data from 15 countries with varying levels of economic development, having its subjects play cooperative games.

The study used the cooperative games as a tool to show how economic and social institutions influences a person’s willingness to cooperate with others. The study showed that:

university students in democratic societies with advanced market economies rarely exercised a type of antisocial punishment featured in the game, while this behavior was commonly exercised by students in traditional societies based on authoritarian and parochial social institutions.

The study has no solid conclusions as of yet, but the findings are interesting nonetheless. Here, games were used as a tool to show how the economy influences introversion. It would be interesting to see if they could also show if video games themselves influence human behavior as well.

All people need reassurance, even employees of companies such as Take Two Interactive. With all the news going around regarding Electronic Arts‘ plans to buy out Take Two, it seems that the latter company’s employees need reassurance more than ever.

The interesting thing is that Take Two Interactive management recently sent an interesting e-mail message to its employees regarding changes in their severance plan.

In a nutshell, Take Two Interactive informed its employees that the new Employee Severance Plan will provide for “minimum levels of compensation” in the event that someone else takes control of the company and fires the employees.

While Take Two pointed out that it wasn’t assuming that the Electronic Arts buy-out would actually occur, the company did mention that the purpose of the plan was to address “understandable concerns” that employees might have regarding the possibility of such an occurrence.

A relevant excerpt of the Take Two e-mail message follows:

Our “Change in Control Employee Severance Plan” provides for minimum levels of compensation for all employees in the event that an employee’s position is terminated as a result of a change in control of the Company. These types of plans are fairly common for publicly traded companies. In fact, both Electronic Arts and THQ have change in control severance plans. If you have any questions about our plan, please speak with your manager, local HR director or Courtney Kelley.

We hope that this benefit will alleviate some of the concerns you may have, and allow you to remain fully focused on your responsibilities. You are critical to the success of Take-Two. The most important contribution each of us can make during this period is doing our jobs with the same focus, skill and creativity we always have.

If there was ever any doubt that Activision would come up with a bite-sized version of the popular guitar sim, Guitar Hero, then it’s time for those doubts to be dispelled. We’ve just found out that Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) recently rated a game called Guitar Hero On Tour. And yes folks: it’s for the DS.

It seems that earlier this week, the OFLC got their hands on the game for rating, and as everyone can see in the above picture, they recently gave the game a G rating.

Of course, this still leaves us with some important questions. How will the sound quality be on this game? Will there be any special attachments that’ll improve the game experience for fans?  How will it play? Most importantly, will it actually be a good game to play? Well, we don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but as more information gets revealed, rest assured that we’ll deliver the news to you as soon as we can.

Have a favorite game developing firm? Then heads up as Think Services’ Game Developer magazine has just unveiled its first ever annual Top 50 Game Development Studios worldwide list, showcasing the very best of this industry’s movers and shakers.

This is the first time that Game Developer Magazine has held such an event, so it’s definitely a special moment not only for the magazine itself, but for those who got into the list.

But before we get into the specifics, just how does the Game Developer Magazine figure out the best of the best? They combine empirical market data with a detailed survey taken by the gaming website Gamasutra. This ensures that the game studios’ reputation data is taken into consideration, aside from game sales.

So, with that in mind, just who made the list? We’ll let you figure out for yourselves with the list below:

1. Nintendo Kyoto
2. Infinity Ward
3. Blizzard Entertainment
4. Electronic Arts Canada
5. Valve
6. Konami Japan Studio
7. Insomniac Games
8. Capcom Osaka Studio
9. Electronic Arts Tiburon
10. BioWare Edmonton
11. Bungie Studios
12. Ubisoft Montreal
13. 2K Boston [& Australia]
14. Harmonix
15. Bandai Namco Tokyo
16. Square Enix Tokyo
17. Game Freak
18. Epic Games
19. Hudson Soft
20. Neversoft

Well, that was definitely a surprise. Coming out on top of the heap is Nintendo’s main Kyoto department, with Infinity Ward and Blizzard Entertainment close behind. While we can certainly understand Nintendo netting first place and that Blizzard is making a huge killing with World of Warcraft, we have to give it to Infinity Ward and its huge success with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360, PS3, PC).

And considering that it overtook other titles such as Insomniac, 2K Boston and even Bungie, it’s definitely clear that Infinity Ward struck gold with Captain Price’s handlebar mustache.

If there’s anything else we have to say about the list, it’s definitely the fact that it’s been high time western and eastern developers were pitted with each other. Sure, we can probably glean just what this side or that side of the world thinks about this game via the weekly NPD or Media Create stats.

But there’s nothing like a list like Game Developers Magazine to show us (and the developers) how they’re doing in the world stage. In any case, updates as we get them!

When the news broke out that Ziff Davis Media had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York - Chapter 11 meaning Reorganizational Bankruptcy - one couldn’t help but be worried about 1UP and the gaming publications EGM, Games for Windows, and PC Magazine. But what does it really mean? To clear it all up comes Simon Cox, one of 1UP’s own editors. Let’s see just what he has to say about this entire matter.

What is this bankruptcy issue all about? Well, it seems that Ziff Davis Media had been saddled with quite an enormous amount of debt for some time now. And it was so large that it put a massive crimp on 1UP’s profits as a company.

Sick of not being able to invest a massive amount for their own development, the company soon brought all the bondholders of the debt together. They asked them if they wanted to turn that debt into equity in Ziff Davis.

This meant that instead of having to pay the massive debt, Ziff Davis Media would instead give partial ownership rights to those it owes money to. And to 1UP’s joy, the bondholders agreed. Who? All of them.

And that’s not all. Besides agreeing to the deal, the bondholders went the extra mile and slapped on some cash on top of the debt-smashing proposal. Of course, this lifted that huge financial burden that 1UP had mounted on its back.

They now had funds to make their day-to-day operations just a bit easier on the wallet. So, in essence, not only will 1UP’s profits be put into more good use, the site and its publications will likely improve.

As for the current state of 1UP, Simon Cox has this to say:

So even though that word is unpleasant, and a bit scary, you’ll find few glum faces around the 1UP offices. Next year is the peak of the current console cycle, and we’re going into it in a much better financial state than we have been in in a long time.