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July 14, 2000 Oddworld Inhabitants' president Lorne Lanning ripped into Nintendo in a recent interview with Hyper Magazine. When asked about the Dolphin, Lanning said that none of Oddworld's games will be released for the system. He elaborated, "Nintendo has made it clear that they are a toy company only and have no interest in being a true media entertainment company. They want to keep making machines with limited potential so that they can keep control over game publishers and developers while enforcing those insanely high manufacturing costs." I don't know about you, but I think it's about damn time that one of the industry's creative leaders spoke their mind about Nintendo rather than trying to be overly optimistic or politically correct. Two weeks ago, Infogrames' CEO Bruno Bonnell denied that his company was in negotiations to buy the struggling Eidos Interactive. When rumors persisted even after Bonnell's denial, he changed his story from "I haven't had any talks with Eidos" to "I have only had preliminary talks with Eidos." He also said that rumors of a buy-out were nothing more than the "rumor-mongering video game press." Now, Financial Times has revealed that in fact, "The deal has reached the final stage of talks and could be completed within weeks, though it could still fall through over valuation and management issues." Infogrames is prepared to pay up to $1 billion for 100% ownership of Eidos. I'm no financial analyst, but you don't have to be one to realize that $1 billion is a ridiculously high price for such an under-achieving and inefficiently-run company. Eidos' founder and CEO Charles Cornwall is not expected to stay with the company if it's purchased by Infogrames. Massive lay-offs are planned when and if the deal goes through, to the tune of $75-$150 million in payroll expenses. If Infogrames does end up buying Eidos, the combined company will be the largest video game company in all of Europe. Meanwhile, despite Eidos' company-record $41 million in the latest financial quarter, the company recently gave cash bonuses to Core Design employees in the form of a combined $8 million. Eidos gave an additional $6 million bonus to a single employee (head of development Jeremy Heath- Smith). Yuji Naka, the leader of Sega's Sonic Team, recently told GameWeek that Sonic Team is thinking about making games for the Xbox and/or Dolphin in addition to the Dreamcast. Naka did completely rule out the possibility of PlayStation 2 development, adding that he doesn't "think very highly of it." Naka continued, "My main focus is on the Dreamcast, but Sonic Team is separating from Sega, so anything is possible... with the Dolphin and Xbox, there is a possibility." In what was surely a relief to Sega's upper management, Naka concluded, "I love Sega and the Dreamcast. Why would I want to develop for any other system?" Nintendo's volatile owner Hiroshi Yamauchi has confirmed rumors that his retirement isn't too far away. At a recent meeting of Nintendo shareholders, the 70-something Yamauchi said, "I plan to step down as president by Christmas 2001 to ensure the successful launch of the Game Boy Advance and Dolphin." Hmm... why would he have to wait until late 2001 if the GBA and Dolphin are going to be released in early 2001? Of course, the answer is that they're not really going to be released in early 2001. Yamauchi's successor as the person in charge of Nintendo has not yet been named. One leading candidate for the job is Nintendo of America's president Minoru Arakawa, who is married to Yamauchi's daughter. If you're interested in buying a PlayStation 2 at any time this year, it is highly recommended that you go out and pre-order one right now if you haven't done so already. Not only have many video game retailers sold out their initial PS2 shipments through pre-orders, but many have also sold out their PS2 allocation for the entire year. Of course, availability will vary to state to state and city to city, but the longer you wait, the harder it will probably be to find a system. Personally, I pre-ordered my system months ago at the Babbage's in Maryland's FSK Mall. That store is definitely the place to go if game knowledge is important to you in a retailer. The manager, John, is always helpful whenever I call (he even knew about the Conker and Banjo-Tooie delays the day they happened, while Toys R Us had never heard of either game and didn't know what I was talking about). Last week's announcement that Sony had dropped its lawsuit against Connectix came from Connectix itself, and was apparently a misleading announcement. Sony did drop its initial lawsuit against Connectix, but only so that it could re-file the case with "amended complaints." A Sony spokesperson says, "The judge in this case actually made the recommendation for us to do that. The court was fully aware that we were going to do it (re-file the case), and Connectix was also aware that we were going to do it. Connectix's press release was really misleading." A new game show with the actual name of Bleeding Thumbs is set to debut on the England-based BBC television channel. On the show, celebrities will battle it out in a modified version of Unreal Tournament for the PC. Pictures of the celebrities will be scanned into the game in the form of player skins, but the show will not feature realistic weapons for political reasons. Let's hope someone creates a similar TV show for the US market sometime soon. THQ's future focus will be on the PlayStation 2 and possibly the Xbox, not the Dreamcast. THQ has ten PlayStation 2 games due out by the end of 2001. In addition, THQ's chairman Brian Farrell recently told FGN, "We see the Dreamcast providing short-term opportunities, and this is not our long- term strategy." Simon West, the director of the upcoming Tomb Raider movie, recently told Empire Online that the Tomb Raider movie could have up to two sequels. West said, "I have the choice to do the sequels if I want, but I don't have to. At the moment, it feels hard to let someone else and mess around with it, or screw it up completely." When pressed for more information, West came right out and said, "Everyone's signed on for three movies." Now that criminals in Hong Kong have reportedly "cracked" the Dreamcast's GD-ROM storage format, Sega has established an e-mail address that consumers can write to if they want to anonymously report piracy. The address is piracy@sega.com, and Sega encourages you to report piracy whether it takes place online or off. It hasn't been officially confirmed by Nintendo or Rare, but Rare is working on a sequel to Perfect Dark for the Dolphin. The game is nowhere near ready to be released because the initial design team is still being assembled. Rare recently registered "After Dark" as a US trademark, leading some to believe that After Dark will be the name of Perfect Dark's sequel. It has been well-known for months, but Fox Interactive has finally announced that a sequel to Aliens vs. Predator is being developed by Monolith, which is also developing No One Lines Forever and Sanity. AVP 2 will be developed using the latest version of Monolith's LithTech game engine. In the meantime, Rebellion (the company that developed AVP for the Atari Jaguar and more recently, the PC) has purchased the intellectual property rights to such comic book series as Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, and Scrontium Dog. Ubi Soft's deal to make games starring Pamela Anderson Lee is valid for the next ten years. Of course, by the time the deal is nearing completion, Pamela might not be anywhere near as attractive as she is today. Before anyone accuse me of being a male chauvinist pig for saying that, let's be realistic here. Do you think Ubi Soft signed Pamela because of her acting skills? If Pamela and her husband Tommy Lee continue at their current pace, they will break up and get back together about ten times over the course of the next ten years, which will force Ubi Soft to constantly change Pamela's last name in marketing materials... CVG reports that according to "sources close to Nintendo's Japanese office," the Dolphin will be renamed "Star Cube," a patent that Nintendo registered last December. According to the sources, the new name will be announced on August 24, one day before Nintendo's Space World show kicks off in Japan. Nintendo of America's VP of marketing George Harrison took a couple of shots at the competition in the latest issue of EGM. Harrison said, "The most important thing is to have killer applications that make people say, 'Wow! I've never seen that before! I need to go buy a new hardware system.' One of the things that sort of surprised us is that we don't necessarily see that in the PlayStation 2 line-up." Harrison also said, "I honestly don't think the Dreamcast is going to make it much past the holidays." Nintendo's official web site now lists Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Tooie, and Mickey's Speedway USA as "Future Games" under the heading, "We do not yet have solid release dates for these games. Some of these games may in fact never be released." Dinosaur Planet is still officially listed as a fall release, despite the fact that it's no more than 50% complete. Turbine Entertainment will be holding an interesting event on Saturday, July 15. Players of Turbine's online RPG Asheron's Call are invited to attend a luncheon and meet other Asheron's Call players, as well as some of the game's designers and artists. The event starts at 10:00 AM at the Four Points Motel in Norwood, Massachusetts. Admission costs $25 per person. The Dreamcast version of Half-Life probably won't ship with online multi-player capabilities if it's released in September or October as currently scheduled. Sierra is now in the process of deciding whether they should release the game without online capabilities or delay it so that online capabilities can be added. Ambrosia Software's marketing director Jason Whong once said that he would eat a plateful of insects if his company ever released a game with bugs in it. Guess what? Ambrosia released a game with bugs in it, and now Whong is going to eat bugs at the MacWorld Expo next week. Ambrosia's president Andrew Welch said, "It's going to be a great public demonstration of poetic justice-- the hype of product release announcements crashing head-on into the realities of the software development business. It's just not possible to utter marketing slogans while your mouth is full of bugs." No, but it is possible to utter marketing slogans while your game is full of bugs. Just ask Origin... Sega is planning on selling a Sega Sports Dreamcast package starting sometime this fall. For $220 ($20 more than the standard cost of $200 for a Dreamcast), you'll be able to get a Dreamcast with free copies of NFL 2K and NBA 2K packed right in. Also, the Dreamcast itself will be black instead of white and will have the Sega Sports logo on it. The Attorney General of British Columbia, Canada has imposed an adult rating on Raven Software's ultra-violent PC game, Soldier of Fortune. The Canadian government apparently believes that not only does Soldier of Fortune contain realistic violence, but it also contains "an element of torture." As a result, the game will now be sold in the adult movie section of retailers in British Columbia, which will theoretically keep the game out of the reach of children. Final Fantasy 9 has been released in Japan, and it racked up amazing sales of 2.6 million units in its first day on the market. The game cost Square a whopping $37 million to produce, as opposed to $28 million for Final Fantasy 8. FF9 has already made up for its high development costs (and then some) with over $200 million of sales. Take-Two Interactive has made the action/strategy game Hidden & Dangerous the latest game to be offered as a free download on freeloader.com. Hidden & Dangerous is currently being ported to the Dreamcast, although there probably won't be much reason to pay $50 for it when you can play it for free (and legally) on Freeloader. Freeloader supposedly has over 120,000 registered users. Most of the site's games are just casual fare, with the only "hardcore" games besides Hidden & Dangerous being Grand Theft Auto and Spec Ops. NEWS BRIEFS Square will be releasing two soundtrack CDs in the US this fall. Parasite Eve 2's soundtrack will be released in September, followed by Final Fantasy 9's in November. A feature film based on Tekken is currently in development. The movie will be live-action, not CG or animation. Also, the movie's action scenes are being done by Corey Yuen, the man who was in charge of the X-Men movie's action scenes. Sega's World Series Baseball 2K1 was originally scheduled to be released this past week, but it has been slightly delayed. The game's new release date is "late July or early August." According to Ion Storm's Andrew Thomas, the company's upcoming PC game Anachronox is "a likely candidate" to be brought to the Dreamcast after the PC version is complete. Square's PlayStation 2 game The Bouncer isn't due out in Japan until "winter," which could mean either late 2000 or early 2001. Either way, the odds of the game being released in the US this year are very low. Ubi Soft is in negotiations to buy both Activision and Red Storm Entertainment, but no deals have been signed yet. Funcom has announced that it won't be making any PlayStation 2 games because it's going to focus on Xbox games. Without Funcom masterpieces like Speed Punks to support the system, the PlayStation 2 doesn't have a chance in hell against the Xbox... Konami is currently working on a sequel to Silent Hill for the PlayStation 2. Time, Inc. is suing Sierra and its parent company Havas Interactive for trademark infringement. Time publishes a magazine called InStyle, and Sierra publishes a virtual makeover program called iStyle, which Time perceives as being too similar to "InStyle" in name to be legal. Sony has announced that the PlayStation version of NFL GameDay 2001 will be released on August 1, three weeks before the PS1 version of Madden NFL 2001 is released on August 22. So many people were trying to play Diablo 2 on Blizzard's Battle.net online gaming service that it crashed and was completely inaccessible for a while. Battle.net is now up and running once again, much to the delight of the many people who have already purchased the game. Dreamcast software continues to sell miserably in Japan. Jet Set Radio, which will be released in the US as Jet Grind Radio, sold just 40,000 units in its first week on Japanese store shelves. That's a long way off from Final Fantasy 9's 2.6 million sold in one day... At some point during the next few months, Sega is planning on changing its official company name from Sega Enterprises to just plain Sega. Capcom is bringing the original Dino Crisis to the Japanese Dreamcast, but the port's US fate has not yet been decided. However, a Capcom spokesperson did say, "It would be a good product for the US since the PlayStation version did very well here." SALES CHARTS The following sales charts are based on unit sales for the week of June 25 to July 1. Dreamcast 1. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 2. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. Street Fighter 3: Double Impact 4. Silver 5. Gauntlet Legends PlayStation 1. Legend of Dragoon (click on the blue text for Master Gamer's review of the game) 2. Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol 3. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire 5. Vagrant Story old games still in the top ten: Syphon Filter and Tekken 3 Nintendo 64 1. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards 2. Perfect Dark 3. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. Pokemon Stadium 5. Excitebike 64 old games still in the top ten: Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye 007 Sources for news: Fastest Game News Online, GameSpot, GameFan, Blue's News, GI News, Next Generation, Adrenaline Vault, The Magic Box, Daily Radar, Sega X, PSX 2 Online, Nintendorks, IGN, The Sega Zone, Sega Otaku, Gaming Age, The NPD Group, www.cowdance.com
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com