Spotlight

GameStop’s Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Pack

In case you haven’t heard, newspapers across the country are dying — both as a result of rapidly decreasing revenue and increasingly stiff competition from digital alternatives. As a result, the Federal Trade Commission is holding a series of discussions to explore potential options to help save print journalism in the digital age, and one idea they’re mulling may cost you more money the next time you want to buy some gaming hardware: a five percent tax on all consumer electronics (via GamesIndustry.biz).

The idea is that the money raised through the consumer electronics tax — which would be applied to such products as game consoles, smart phones, computers, and digital cameras — would be used to subsidize the print journalism industry, particularly newspapers. The FTC believes this could bring in as much as $4 billion in potential subsidies.

But before you immediately start throwing boxes of tea into the nearest body of water in protest, note that this is not yet an official FTC proposal — it was raised “solely for the purposes of discussion,” and is only a small part of a number of other ideas to help revitalize the newspaper industry (all of the FTC’s ideas can be seen in this .pdf document; the consumer electronics tax suggestion appears on page 21) . Other ideas include postal subsidies, a two percent tax on broadcast advertising, and direct tax breaks for journalists.

The studio announced today that a Lego Harry Potter demo will be available on the Xbox 360 later this week. Playable sections will apparently include the Forbidden Forest.

The demo will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 in the early going, with PS3 and PC versions due later in the month.

Last we heard about the planned film adaptation for Metal Gear Solid, producer Mike De Luca relayed the unfortunate news that, at least for the time being, the project likely isn’t moving forward. Now speaking to MTV’s Movies Blog, Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter says that delay hasn’t changed, but he does give the world some insight into what a Metal Gear Solid movie might be like.

Hayter is of course the voice of Solid Snake, but he’s also a screenwriter, having written or co-written X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and Watchmen. As such, he was a natural candidate to write a screenplay for an MGS adaptation. “A couple of years ago, a producer friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in doing the adaptation,” Hayter said. “And I said ‘Of course. I know it pretty well.’ I think I can say without contradiction that I know it better than any screenwriter on the planet. I’ve said every word that Snake has said. So I felt well-qualified.”

Hayter then wrote and submitted his script, but unfortunately that’s when things started getting derailed. “They’ve been trying to work out a deal between [creator Hideo Kojima] and [Sony],” Hayter said, although MTV notes than any other details Hayter heard about why the project stalled are all second-hand and unconfirmed — although evidently part of the problem was due to “political reasons” on Konami’s side. Interestingly, producer De Luca’s previous comment was similarly that there was a lack of “coordinated will at this point on the side of certain parties to see a movie get made,” although whether he was talking about Konami at the time is unclear.

Industry Gamers is reporting that The NPD Group is in the process of making significant changes to their IT architecture. Consequently, the release of the May sales data has been delayed into July.

April marked one of the worst declines on record for the industry, with videogame sales dropping some 26 percent. Major May releases like Red Dead Redemption are expected to help the industry recover some momentum.

As discussed earlier today, several gaming giants (including Sony and Nintendo) are banking on 3D video games in a big way in their E3 portfolios. If a new survey released by Famitsu magazine is any indication, however, they may have a lot of convincing to do over in Japan.

Respondents to a poll posted on Famitsu’s website about gaming in 3D had a lot to say about the up-and-coming technology, and their opinions ran the gamut from must-have to must-avoid. Among the pollees, 72.3% stated that they were interested in 3D coming to video games, with many of them pointing out the novelty involved (”It has the same impact as when games went from 2D pixels to 3D polygons,” said one). Not all readers were excited, though: “I saw a demo of a 3D computer game and the 3D aspect was really convincing, but I found that the effect wasn’t as striking on a smaller screen. It darkens the image, too, so I couldn’t really call it breathtaking.”

72.7% of people polled had viewed 3D in action before, mainly through watching Avatar in a theater, and 26.6% had plans in mind to purchase a 3D-compatible TV in the future. (2.4% had already done so.) When asked what kind of games they’d like to play in 3D, first-person shooters took the top spot, followed by action games and RPGs. “I wish I could really go into an RPG world and grab anything I wanted to inside of it,” one reader said. “I bet the original Super Mario Bros. would seem really fresh all over again if you played it in 3D,” another one added (jokingly, we hope).

It’s been a little while since we looked into Monhan Nikki: Pokapoka Airu-mura, the PSP title that takes the world of Monster Hunter and makes a cutesy Animal Crossing-ish game out of it. The game’s almost done, as it turns out — it’s coming out August 26 in Japan for 3990 yen, and Capcom’s been holding pre-release demo events all over Japan to celebrate.

“There were a lot of women and families trying the game at the demo booths,” producer Tatsuya Kitabayashi told Famitsu magazine this week, “which I think is nice because it leads me to believe that it’s not just fans of the series trying this out.”

“Especially during the quests, you had people go ‘Awww’ when their Felynes all got bowled over by a Bullfango and so on,” added assistant producer Shintaro Kojima. “All the little actions and animations that go on in here are really exciting them.”

This year’s E3 is just weeks away, and with the 30,000 new game announcements pouring in daily, it is sometimes hard to keep track of the good stuff. That’s why we’ve put together a countdown of our top 50 most anticipated games of E3 (that we know of so far) in this delightful series of videos.

Note that we shot this a couple weeks ago, so there may be some games missing. Killzone 3, for example, was not announced when we put this together. And we have no details or confirmation about either “New Wii Zelda Game” or Metal Gear Solid: Rising. So those and some others were not included; we stuck to confirmed titles that we had concrete information about for this video.

Some E3s are like Shigeru Miyamoto in 2004 — smiling, sword in hand, hopeful for the future. Then again, some E3s are like Miyamoto in 2007, doing a presentation for Wii Music that can be described as “strained.” What’s E3 2010 going to be like, though, when it starts up in two weeks? Pretty good for all three console hardware outfits, according to Famitsu magazine.

You don’t have to be clairvoyant to see what Nintendo will be concentrating on this year, of course. They’ve already announced the new 3DS portable, and there’s no doubt that it’ll be the centerpiece of its presentation. Famitsu believes it’ll be shown in its final hardware and boast a software lineup that’ll be playable on the show floor. “A lot of attention has been paid to its 3D capabilities, but I’d like to learn more about its other specs as well,” said Eiji Maeda, senior analyst for J.P. Morgan Securities. “The key is how well the 3D hardware can be used to create interesting content. I think they’ll announce the price and other details after E3, once they gauge the response in the media and on the show floor.”

Otherwise, software will drive Nintendo’s booth and press conference. The new Zelda is confirmed to be showing up, and given its planned 2010 release window, it ought to be playable. The Wii Vitality Sensor shouldn’t be forgotten, either — a device that Nintendo head Satoru Iwata still claims to be one of his company’s top priorities. “There were no really big surprises last year,” Maeda added, “so maybe they’ve got one for us this time.”

Spotlight

GameStop’s Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Pack

In case you haven’t heard, newspapers across the country are dying — both as a result of rapidly decreasing revenue and increasingly stiff competition from digital alternatives. As a result, the Federal Trade Commission is holding a series of discussions to explore potential options to help save print journalism in the digital age, and one idea they’re mulling may cost you more money the next time you want to buy some gaming hardware: a five percent tax on all consumer electronics (via GamesIndustry.biz).

The idea is that the money raised through the consumer electronics tax — which would be applied to such products as game consoles, smart phones, computers, and digital cameras — would be used to subsidize the print journalism industry, particularly newspapers. The FTC believes this could bring in as much as $4 billion in potential subsidies.

But before you immediately start throwing boxes of tea into the nearest body of water in protest, note that this is not yet an official FTC proposal — it was raised “solely for the purposes of discussion,” and is only a small part of a number of other ideas to help revitalize the newspaper industry (all of the FTC’s ideas can be seen in this .pdf document; the consumer electronics tax suggestion appears on page 21) . Other ideas include postal subsidies, a two percent tax on broadcast advertising, and direct tax breaks for journalists.

The studio announced today that a Lego Harry Potter demo will be available on the Xbox 360 later this week. Playable sections will apparently include the Forbidden Forest.

The demo will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 in the early going, with PS3 and PC versions due later in the month.

Industry Gamers is reporting that The NPD Group is in the process of making significant changes to their IT architecture. Consequently, the release of the May sales data has been delayed into July.

April marked one of the worst declines on record for the industry, with videogame sales dropping some 26 percent. Major May releases like Red Dead Redemption are expected to help the industry recover some momentum.

Last we heard about the planned film adaptation for Metal Gear Solid, producer Mike De Luca relayed the unfortunate news that, at least for the time being, the project likely isn’t moving forward. Now speaking to MTV’s Movies Blog, Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter says that delay hasn’t changed, but he does give the world some insight into what a Metal Gear Solid movie might be like.

Hayter is of course the voice of Solid Snake, but he’s also a screenwriter, having written or co-written X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and Watchmen. As such, he was a natural candidate to write a screenplay for an MGS adaptation. “A couple of years ago, a producer friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in doing the adaptation,” Hayter said. “And I said ‘Of course. I know it pretty well.’ I think I can say without contradiction that I know it better than any screenwriter on the planet. I’ve said every word that Snake has said. So I felt well-qualified.”

Hayter then wrote and submitted his script, but unfortunately that’s when things started getting derailed. “They’ve been trying to work out a deal between [creator Hideo Kojima] and [Sony],” Hayter said, although MTV notes than any other details Hayter heard about why the project stalled are all second-hand and unconfirmed — although evidently part of the problem was due to “political reasons” on Konami’s side. Interestingly, producer De Luca’s previous comment was similarly that there was a lack of “coordinated will at this point on the side of certain parties to see a movie get made,” although whether he was talking about Konami at the time is unclear.

As discussed earlier today, several gaming giants (including Sony and Nintendo) are banking on 3D video games in a big way in their E3 portfolios. If a new survey released by Famitsu magazine is any indication, however, they may have a lot of convincing to do over in Japan.

Respondents to a poll posted on Famitsu’s website about gaming in 3D had a lot to say about the up-and-coming technology, and their opinions ran the gamut from must-have to must-avoid. Among the pollees, 72.3% stated that they were interested in 3D coming to video games, with many of them pointing out the novelty involved (”It has the same impact as when games went from 2D pixels to 3D polygons,” said one). Not all readers were excited, though: “I saw a demo of a 3D computer game and the 3D aspect was really convincing, but I found that the effect wasn’t as striking on a smaller screen. It darkens the image, too, so I couldn’t really call it breathtaking.”

72.7% of people polled had viewed 3D in action before, mainly through watching Avatar in a theater, and 26.6% had plans in mind to purchase a 3D-compatible TV in the future. (2.4% had already done so.) When asked what kind of games they’d like to play in 3D, first-person shooters took the top spot, followed by action games and RPGs. “I wish I could really go into an RPG world and grab anything I wanted to inside of it,” one reader said. “I bet the original Super Mario Bros. would seem really fresh all over again if you played it in 3D,” another one added (jokingly, we hope).

It’s been a little while since we looked into Monhan Nikki: Pokapoka Airu-mura, the PSP title that takes the world of Monster Hunter and makes a cutesy Animal Crossing-ish game out of it. The game’s almost done, as it turns out — it’s coming out August 26 in Japan for 3990 yen, and Capcom’s been holding pre-release demo events all over Japan to celebrate.

“There were a lot of women and families trying the game at the demo booths,” producer Tatsuya Kitabayashi told Famitsu magazine this week, “which I think is nice because it leads me to believe that it’s not just fans of the series trying this out.”

“Especially during the quests, you had people go ‘Awww’ when their Felynes all got bowled over by a Bullfango and so on,” added assistant producer Shintaro Kojima. “All the little actions and animations that go on in here are really exciting them.”

Some E3s are like Shigeru Miyamoto in 2004 — smiling, sword in hand, hopeful for the future. Then again, some E3s are like Miyamoto in 2007, doing a presentation for Wii Music that can be described as “strained.” What’s E3 2010 going to be like, though, when it starts up in two weeks? Pretty good for all three console hardware outfits, according to Famitsu magazine.

You don’t have to be clairvoyant to see what Nintendo will be concentrating on this year, of course. They’ve already announced the new 3DS portable, and there’s no doubt that it’ll be the centerpiece of its presentation. Famitsu believes it’ll be shown in its final hardware and boast a software lineup that’ll be playable on the show floor. “A lot of attention has been paid to its 3D capabilities, but I’d like to learn more about its other specs as well,” said Eiji Maeda, senior analyst for J.P. Morgan Securities. “The key is how well the 3D hardware can be used to create interesting content. I think they’ll announce the price and other details after E3, once they gauge the response in the media and on the show floor.”

Otherwise, software will drive Nintendo’s booth and press conference. The new Zelda is confirmed to be showing up, and given its planned 2010 release window, it ought to be playable. The Wii Vitality Sensor shouldn’t be forgotten, either — a device that Nintendo head Satoru Iwata still claims to be one of his company’s top priorities. “There were no really big surprises last year,” Maeda added, “so maybe they’ve got one for us this time.”

This year’s E3 is just weeks away, and with the 30,000 new game announcements pouring in daily, it is sometimes hard to keep track of the good stuff. That’s why we’ve put together a countdown of our top 50 most anticipated games of E3 (that we know of so far) in this delightful series of videos.

Note that we shot this a couple weeks ago, so there may be some games missing. Killzone 3, for example, was not announced when we put this together. And we have no details or confirmation about either “New Wii Zelda Game” or Metal Gear Solid: Rising. So those and some others were not included; we stuck to confirmed titles that we had concrete information about for this video.