Following up on past rumors, the next project from Double Fine Productions (headed by Psychonauts creator Tim Schafer) will be heavy-metal centric Brutal Legend featuring comedy rocker Jack Black. This comes from the latest issue of Game Informer, which carries a feature on the game.

According to the magazine’s website, the game is billed as a “surreal ode to the mythology of rock and roll, starring the talents of Jack Black and a stable of heavy metal legends.” The game is in development for PS3 and Xbox 360.

Some scans from the magazine article have popped up online. It was originally contributed to this forum thread on Double Fine’s forums, but I have mirrored them here for convenience.

Adding a new layer to Anarchy Online, Funcom has launched virtual item sales within the game, allowing players to purchase items ranging from hover-bikes, social clothing, and pets to luxury apartments with real money. However, it is said that this will not affect gameplay balance.

The game will employ a points system that can be purchased in blocks of 10, 20 or 40 USD/EUR, where 100 points is equivalent to 1 USD/EUR (unfair for Europeans). As an example, a new hover-board starts as low as 300 points, but players can also purchase an entire range.

“This kind of system puts the choice in the hands of the players by allowing them to take as little or as much of the new content as they like,” said Craig Morrison, Game Director on Anarchy Online. “It really adds an extra dimension to what we can provide in terms of fun social items, designed to look cool while being something players don’t feel forced into. That extra element of choice has allowed us to add a much broader range of items than we might if we were simply targeting it into a self contained expansion.”

Paying subscribers of the game will get a set of monthly points included in the subscription price, with longer pricing plans like 6 and 12 months getting extra points.

Austin-based Gamecock plans on opening a new office in the UK. “It’s mostly about us trying to give our developers the best deal we can across the PAL territories too,” said company CEO Mike Wilson to Next-Gen. “When doing a co-publishing deal, it’s really hard to do that.”

The second office will make the company an international publisher and offer its enterprise of developers the opportunity to reach out to European gamers.

What with the PS3 and Xbox 360 getting price cuts ahead of the coming Holiday season, one would have expected a reduction from Nintendo as well. However, that will not be the case, as senior marketing VP George Harrison told Reuters that the $249 price point will remain for some time.

“We’ll stay at $249 for the foreseeable future. We are still selling everything we can make,” Harrison told Reuters. “We think we’re in a great position. Both our competitors took price reductions and it hasn’t stalled our momentum at all.”

The promised v7.10 Catalyst drivers for ATI graphics cards are now available from AMD’s website. The “shoot-em-up” drivers offer adaptive anti-aliasing for the X1000 series, software Crossfire support for the HD2600 and HD2400 series, and significant performance improvements in quite a few games.

Additionally, new beta 163.76 drivers for NVIDIA cards have also been released for Windows XP. These are recommended for use with the TimeShift demo.

In a deathblow to the gaming industry, EA announced that it will acquire both BioWare and Pandemic Studios, two of the finest game developers in the world. The former is well-known for its action role-playing games, including upcoming Mass Effect which is being published by Microsoft, though the property is now owned by EA. Pandemic is popular for creating the Mercenaries series, one of the best open-world games out there. Both studios employ roughly 800 people spread across four locations: Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin; and Brisbane, Australia.

“These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I’m glad to be working with them again. They’ll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties,” said John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive Officer. “We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders.”

“Pandemic Studios remains focused on attracting the best talent and creating blockbuster action games,” said Josh Resnick, president and cofounder of Pandemic Studios. “As a worldwide publishing leader, EA represents the ideal partner to bring our titles to market as global entertainment events.”

“We are truly excited by John Riccitiello’s new vision for EA,” said Ray Muzyka, co-founder and CEO of BioWare. “This vision is consistent with BioWare’s focus on crafting the highest quality story-driven games in the world. It will enable us to further the careers of the passionate, creative and hard working teams at BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Austin.”

Battlefront sends word that they are looking for beta testers for Histwar: Les Grognardo, its upcoming Napoleonic wargame. The game puts players in charge of a Napoleonic army on the battlefields of the early 19th century. It features a three-tiered AI system, editing and customization, historical accuracy and more.

With the Manhunt 2 fiasco going on, it’d be wise to write a feature on games that should be banned, right? Right. Pro-G takes a look at the games that should have been barred from being released, albeit with a humorous look. It’s funny, read.

Nintendo sent out a huge release schedule for its game, proudly claiming that “everyone” is developing for its two platforms - Wii and DS. With 140 and 450 games to be available for the two platforms, respectively, by the end of this year, “everyone” is indeed aboard the consoles.

Hit the jump for the full list.
(more…)

Serving as an insult to SCi, Reuters reports that Paris-based Ubisoft no longer has any interest in buying the Eidos parent company. Apparently, the purchase would be too expensive, according to an Ubi representative.

“Ubisoft has no intention of making an offer for SCI-Eidos,” said an unnamed Ubi spokesperson. “We are looking at other opportunities for external and internal growth which can create more potential value for shareholders.”

Though Ubi may no longer be interested, SCi is still courting two possible suitors - Time Warner and an unnamed Chinese corporation.

From Japan comes word that Nintendo has announced Kirby Super Star for the DS. Set for release sometime next year in the country, the 8-in-1 Super NES funpack will be ported to the handheld, with a couple of additions, though those weren’t detailed.

The game, as expected, lets players take on the role of Kirby, who is partnered with a foe-turned-friend sidekick for the majority of the game. It will allow a second player to join in as a buddy, with each player having a different move-set.

NaturalMotion, developers of 3D animation technologies euphoria and endorphin, announced that morpheme 1.2, the latest version of its animation middleware, adds support for the Wii, offering creative control to the studios developing for the console by allowing them to author and preview blends, trees and transition graphs in real-time. The technology is also available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

“Support for Nintendo’s Wii console was a natural extension of the morpheme product offering,” said Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. “Wii is enjoying tremendous popularity, and we believe morpheme can help developers further expand on the new gaming experiences that the platform has opened up.”

Additionally, morpheme features enhanced run-time compression, enhanced SPU support for PS3; collaboration network editing, reusable sub-networks, new flexible layout manager and more.

The already fragile alliance in Kane & Lynch: Dead Men will get even more delicate in the online multiplayer mode called “Fragile Alliance.” The mode will have up to eight players team up against police in a series of heist scenarios, however, it will be up to the player to either work as a team or back-stab their team mates and work for themselves at any moment. The objective is to steal the loot and make it to the getaway point; the winner is the player who escapes with the most loot.

“We wanted to make a multiplayer experience using the theme, dynamics and atmosphere of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men” said Kim Krogh, Lead Game Designer, IO Interactive. “Fragile Alliance is a new way to use co-op in multiplayer. Play it like a soldier and you’ll lose, play it like a criminal and you’ll win”.

The game will hit stores on November 20 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. It will be released throughout Europe on November 23.

First, the demos:

• AVENCAST: Rise of the Mage on 3D Downloads, ComputerGames.ro, FileFront, FileShack, Gamer’s Hell and Internode Games Network

• AGON: The Lost Sword of Toledo on FileFront, Gamer’s Hell, Internode Games Network and PixelRage

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat on Yahoo Games, 3D Downloads, 4players.de, ActionTrip, ComputerGames.ro, eXp.de, FanGaming, FileFront, FileShack, Fragland, Gameguru Mania, Gamer’s Hell and Internode Games Network

• Championship Manager 2008 on 3D Downloads, ComputerGames.ro, FileFront and PixelRage

• Steel Fury on 3D Downloads, ComputerGames.ro, FileFront and PixelRage

• TimeShift on 3D Downloads, ComputerGames.ro, FanGaming, FileFront, FileShack, Fragland, Gamer’s Hell and Internode Games Network

• Unreal Tournament 3 on 3D Downloads, 4players.de, ActionTrip, AusGamers, ComputerGames.ro, eXp.de, FanGaming, Fileaholic, FileFront, FilePlanet, FileShack, Gameguru Mania, Gamer’s Hell and PixelRage

• Call of Juarez v1.1.1.0 on 3D Downloads, ComputerGames.ro, FileFront, PixelRage and The Patches Scrolls

• Evochron Renegadesv1.078 on the Official Website

• Maximum Football v2.1.8 on Matrix Games

• Space Empires V v1.58 on FileFront and Gamer’s Hell