The Beatles: Rock Band Outsells Guitar Hero 5

Two music heavyweights went head-to-head this September. Both The Beatles: Rock Band from MTV/Harmonix and Guitar Hero 5 from Activision were released in the same month, both with two very diverse music offerings.

So who came out on top?

The Beatles: Rock Band takes the the first round, selling a combined total of nearly 600,000 units. Guitar Hero 5, meanwhile sold just under, 500,000 units.

As you can imagine, MTV/Harmonix is excited about this news.

"We've heard countless stories about how The Beatles: Rock Band has inspired and brought friends, families and even complete strangers together," stated Scott Guthrie, EVP and President, MTV Games. "The overwhelmingly positive reaction by music fans, hardcore gamers, critics, retailers, young and old alike, has been extremely gratifying. The game was a labor of love for the teams at Apple Corps, MTV Games and Harmonix and seeing it resonate across generations the world over is truly priceless."

MTV also pointed out The Beatles: Rock Band outsold Guitar Hero 5 even with the free promotional Guitar Hero: Van Halen game and a version available on PlayStation 2.

The company also revealed the Xbox Live exclusive track "All You Need Is Love" was downloaded over 100K times.

Credit : ps3.ign.com

Assassin's Creed Lineage Short Film Debuts

Back during E3 2009, one of Ubisoft's major press conference announcements was the company's creation of a new studio called Ubisoft Digital Arts. It was built around their recently acquired special effects studio called Hybrid, the crack team you might recognize from their work on the films Sin City and 300. According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, the goal of the new studio is a focus on convergence -- streamlining the creation of all digital entertainment from games, to movies, to digital shorts. Recently I had the opportunity to see the fruits of this concept when Ubisoft premiered the first short film for Assassin's Creed II.

Assassin's Creed Lineage fills in the back story of ACII by focusing on the exploits of Ezio's father, Giovanni Auditore da Firenze, a master Assassin. Ezio makes a short cameo in the first segment, but he is young and naive, and not yet an important player in the saga. The most noticeable element of the short is how eerily similar everything is to the game. That's because the environments were rendered directly from the Anvil Engine, the same engine used in both Assassin's Creed games. Ubisoft also cast the same actors in the film that were digitally interpreted for the videogame and inserted using a green screen. The result is a world that looks extremely similar to the the game but is strangely realistic. It's often difficult to distinguish which elements are computer generated and which items might actually exist.

The film ran for approximately 12 minutes, but is only the first installment in a series that will last a bit under an hour. The first installment will debut on YouTube on October 27th. We are still waiting to find out how the rest of the films will be distributed and its possible that even Ubisoft has yet to make a final decision on this matter. After all, this type of content reaches out into uncharted territory, straddling the line between cinema and game.

One thing we do know is that this is a good indication of things to come. Because the same engine was used to render the backgrounds it is conceivable that the next generation of consoles could output a game as visually impressive as the short film. Developers close to the project spoke of the possibility of some day watching a film such as this one, pausing it during an action sequence, then jumping in to take control of the characters yourself. In this way the perfect convergence between cinema and game is accomplished by giving the viewer ultimate control over which is which.

Credit : ps3.ign.com

Daytona HD Confirmed

SEGA Racing Classic, the all-new arcade game in development at AM2, has been confirmed as an HD remake of 1993's Daytona USA.

First pictures of the game's cabinet have hit Highway Games (via Arcade Heroes) as well as a small sprinkling of details, pinning down a 1280 x 720 resolution, 4 player link-up and a Billboard Leader Display. It boasts all of the original's tracks given the high definition once over.

As was previously detailed, it's to run on SEGA's Ringwide hardware, and we don't expect any news on a home port soon – although here's hoping it will make its way to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 soon.

Credit : ps3.ign.com

Welcome to the PlayStation Nation

Nearly half a million of you purchased a PS3 in September. Amazing. Welcome to the PlayStation Nation and to what will be one of our best holidays yet.

We are in the midst of one of the most exciting times for PlayStation as we continue to redefine entertainment experiences for consumers, both at home and on the go. Over the past few weeks we’ve launched several game-changers such as the sleek 120GB PS3 at a new price point of $299. We’ve also introduced more storage capacity with the 250GB PS3, debuting November 3 at $349. We’ve made unprecedented strides in digital and mobile entertainment with the availability ofPSPgo. Last week we launched the critically acclaimed UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves which is receiving rave reviews. The best part is that we’ve only just begun an onslaught of relentless, rich content hitting throughout the fiscal year, including Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, God of War III, MAG, and ModNation Racers.

We’re also seeing tremendous response to the great value of the newer, slimmer, lighter 120GB PS3 system, which surpassed its one million unit mark worldwide just after three weeks on shelves. In NPD Group’s September 2009 video game sales data, released today, the PS3 ranked as the top console sold for the month, beating out all our competitors. It was also the only hardware platform to realize an increase of 112% when compared to the same period last year.

The PSPgo is driving additional momentum for the entire PSP platform. In its first three days on store shelves, top retail partners experienced a 300 percent lift in overall PSP hardware sales compared to the previous week. During this time, the PlayStation Network also experienced the largest number of downloads ever for a single week period. In addition, the new 250GB PS3 will provide the ample storage needed for what is expected to be a big Blu-ray holiday with blockbuster releases like Transformers 2, Star Trek and Hangover. And we’re continuing to stack the chips this holiday with great game content including God of War Collection, LittleBigPlanet – Game of the Year Edition as well as popular third party titles like Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2.

If you haven’t already experienced UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves for yourself, this is a must-have this season. The Naughty Dog team has delivered a truly visually stunning and immersive game that is clearly only possible on the PS3. It has garnered an average review score of 96 with over 64 perfect scores by game reviewers. This game promises to be a system seller for PlayStation and we couldn’t be more pleased.

There simply has never been a better time to be part of the PlayStation family and we look forward to providing you with the best entertainment content and experience for many, many years to come.

Jack Tretton

Credit : blog.us.playstation.com

Coming to PSN this Week: Oddworld PSone Classics

OMG! Our baby’s come home! Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus PSone Classics are both available on the PlayStation Store for only $9.99 each starting Thursday, October 22.

It was only about six years ago that I told our agent at the time, “Larry, don’t you get it!? Our classic Abe games are history. The systems that played them are gone and they aren’t coming back. Ours is a disposable medium and we don’t have a Turner Classics channel.” He looked at me with this defeated expression and said, “Dude, that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say.” He believed me, and I too believed it at the time.

Six years later and I have to admit it’s great being proved wrong.

We couldn’t have been more thrilled when we learned that the PlayStation Network was willing to offer our classic Abe games to an entirely new generation of gamers. Finally, gamers who never got the chance to meet and play him when he first came out on the PSone system, will now get that chance to meet the guy who graced many magazine covers and proved the unlikely hero that captured people’s hearts.

We poured years of our lives into both Abe games as part of the love affair that we had with the original PSone system. It was our first character and story to be developed by our new company and I had promised Sherry McKenna, Oddworld CEO, that we would create characters that even she would love. Characters that would make her laugh and that she could be proud of, even though she didn’t care about games. (To this day, Abe is still her favorite)

Gaming seemed such a blank slate of possibilities back then. It was an early super-cool medium with which we could start telling stories of our own. We wanted characters living through stories that might inspire people while still enabling them many hours of challenge and entertainment. We wanted to integrate the best of our previous trade from the visual effects field to delve deeper into the storytelling potential with this exciting, rapidly evolving interactive medium.

We also wanted characters whose score was kept by their karma, not by their number of kills.

We started with Abe, the little chump trapped by the dark side of globalization who would need to find his way (and his soul) through a vast landscape of relentless hazards. He was to be the lovable hero trying to survive heavily armed idiots and hungry critters of the carnivorous kind.

He was designed to cause as many laughs as he would accomplishments, and we wanted him to be remembered.

Now here we are today and because of SCEA and PSN, Abe’s goofy face and doofy walk are finding their way back into gamers’ homes once again. Abe finds a new generation of gamers on PSN, but this time it’s without the costly price of a physically distributed box product, which means Abe is now able to find his way at a ridiculously low price.

We can’t help but feel like Abe is our lost child who has finally returned home. He’s still healthy, he’s still happy, and if you read the forums lately…still holding up after all these years.

Thank you, Sony. (sniffle) You brought our baby home. (sobs)

 

Credit : blog.us.playstation.com

Coming to PSN this Week: Trine

Hi everyone,

I’m Olivier, I work for Nobilis as the Product Manager of Trine, and I’m really happy to be able to tell you that it’s coming to the US PlayStation Store this Thursday, October 22!

This long-expected innovative action / platform game that combines 2D gameplay with 3D graphics is almost here! Acclaimed by players throughout the world and designated as “Best E3 Downloadable Game” by Gamespot, Trine will be available for download Thursday on thePlayStation Network.

Three heroes are bound to a mysterious device called the Trine in a quest to save the kingdom from evil and the player can at any time freely choose whoever is best suited for the upcoming challenge or puzzle.

Trine is balanced between action and puzzle solving sequences, which are just fantastic to play. Thanks to an extensive use of physics, you’ll be able to solve puzzles in many different ways, whether you play alone by switching characters or alongside with a friend (up to 3 players simultaneously on the same system). Just take a peek at this trailer and you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about!

Video

 For those of you who are always on the hunt for Trophies, rest assured! I’m thrilled to announce that Trine has full support for trophies and also features a Platinum Trophy as the ultimate reward!

I realize that many of you have been waiting to get your hands on Trine for some time. I’d like to assure you all that we are deeply sorry about this delay. We worked really hard in order to give you the best experience possible playing Trine and we really hope you’ll enjoy it.

One more thing. Don’t forget to get all the experience vials that you can pickup throughout the levels! With them you’ll be able to improve the abilities of your characters and become an even bigger threat to your enemies!

Trine is available for download this Thursday on the PlayStation Store for $19.99.

Credit : blog.us.playstation.com