At first it seemed as though this past week was a tad bit on the slow side, but I started looking at everything that happened and boy did we have some interesting news stories. Oh well, here we go.
I want to lead with a story that came out this morning concerning Rockstar Games. We all knew it was inevitable and they announced today that a GTA3/Vice City 2 Pack was on the way to PS2 and Xbox. Details are fuzzy right now if it is just a straight port or if the Xbox versions have some additional features. The PS2 set will retail for $39.99 with the Xbox version at $49.99 which is not bad considering it is 2 full games.
We also learned this morning that the PS3 will in fact feature backwards compatibility with the PS2 as well as the original PS. If there is one thing Sony has for them, it is this. The Gameboy is the only other console that can boast a library that spans this many systems. I think it is safe to say that the Xbox and GC2 will need to feature similar plans to stay in the race.
HomeLanFed got a chance to talk to the director of the upcoming Jak & Daxter sequel, Evan Wells. It should be a well known fact that I love the original JD and I am very much looking forward to this sequel. It had been a long time since I had enjoyed a platform game as much as I did JD and I can safely say it brought me back to the genre.
Apparently Madden 2004 has been doing very well, because according to Business Wire it has sold over 3 Million copies in its first 2 weeks. I would have to say that is pretty good.
It has been a long drawn out ordeal that Vivendi Universal has been trying to sell off its entertainment/media division, which includes Sierra and Blizzard. GE/NBC has emerged as the company that will merge with Vivendi. I hope they get things moving along soon as I am sick and tired of VU dropping titles like Malice from they lineup.
One of the more humorous things that happened this week was Activision trying to release the Call of Duty demo exclusively thru FilePlanet. Apparently that pissed off the rest of the file hosting sites and they decided they would not carry the demo at all, even after the exclusivity was over. That resulted in Activision backpedaling and releasing the demo to everyone. I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as “exclusive” online anymore. *shrug* I suppose Activision was too busy cooking up some stupid PR stunt to get the memo.
Last but certainly not least is a special offer from Joyride studios offering an active camo version of the Master Chief toy to anyone that purchased a Halo figurine. It costs $5 and supplies are limited.
