Capcom has reported its earnings for the nine months of fiscal year ending March 31, 2014 and the usual suspects are all represented. Monster Hunter 4 did extremely well for the company, selling four million units; Resident Evil: Revelations (or "Reverations," as Capcom calls it; yes, they're still making typos) pulled in 1.1 million sales; and Dead Rising 3 also broke a million.
According to Capcom, the latter two games and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies "basically achieved" projected sales. Even DuckTales: Remastered showed a "better-than-expected performance." But then we get to Lost Planet 3 and you can probably finish my sentence for me. Sales were "below expectations due in part to intensifying competition in the European and North American markets," which sure is one way of looking at it.
While sales for this period increased to 75,221 million yen (a 3.5 percent jump from the same term last year), net income for Capcom was down 10.3 percent, to 5,957 million yen.
Keiji Inafune spoke about Mighty No. 9 at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas this week and showed off the design of the character Mighty No. 7 which, as you guys pointed out, doesn't at all look like Zero from the Mega Man franchise. Drawings are nice, but it's footage that really does it for me these days and some of that has gone public as well.
Here's video of Inafune playing that early alpha build of Mighty No. 9 which we saw screenshots of not long ago. The game's basic action (shooting, dashing) is implemented but not a whole lot else. Still, it's a much more informative look at the game than those images were.
Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla . Give yourself a few seconds for that to sink in. He is a gorilla, who has been cybernetically altered to have chainsaws for arms and a pogo stick in place of his legs. If that is not the most awesome thing you have heard today, then you lead a much more exciting life than I do.
Of course, Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla is coming to us via Adult Swim Games (because who else would be publishing it?), after being developed by Roger Barr, the same man responsible for Abobo's Big Adventure . As a bionic entity, the titular chainsaw pogo gorilla can actually have its parts swapped out Mr. Potatohead-style, resulting in a character that is no longer a Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla, but perhaps a Rainbow Cactus Beehive Robot. Yes please.
[This month's Dtoid Community Assignment will span three topics: the past, the present, and the future of gaming. Sound off on one, two, or all three!]
This month's Cblog theme is all about taking look at the different eras of gaming and creating something personal to convey your thoughts about each. Well, the Dtoid community has some amazingly talented musicians among its ranks, so isn't it about time they started getting a bit more of the spotlight?!
For this month's Musicians Wanted, I want all you music types to create something inspired by the state of gaming today. It can be an original piece inspired by your favorite current-gen games, a remix, compilation, or mash-up of some of your favorite pieces, or anything else you can think up!
To participate, start a community blog and title it "The Present: [Your title here]". No topic is off the table, so don't feel like you're restricted to the ideas presented above! Throughout the month of February, Dtoid's new Cblog Manager and I will be keeping an eye on the Community Blogs and promoting your musical creations to the front page, so make your entries count!
Have fun! I can't wait to see what you folks come up with.
Dungeon Keeper is not good. It's a sleazy release that has been mostly skewered. It has a high rating in the Apple (4/5) and Android (4.5/5) app stores, however.
On the Android side, trying to rate Dungeon Keeper any less than a 5 stops you from doing so and sends you to a feedback form, which plenty users undoubtedly don't want to bother with and end up not rating it at all. EA explained this design decision to Gamasutra.
"We're always looking at new ways to gather player feedback so that we can continue to improve our games. The 'rate this app' feature in the Google Play version of Dungeon Keeper was designed to help us collect valuable feedback from players who don't feel the game is worth a top rating. We wanted to make it easier for more players to send us feedback directly from the game if they weren't having the best experience. Players can always continue to leave any rating they want on the Google Play store."
Sneaky sneaky. EA had a great answer that sounds good, yet the system still undoubtedly inflates the user ratings.
EA says Dungeon Keeper rating system makes it easier for players [Gamasutra]
The Fullbright Company has announced that its award-winning "story exploration" game Gone Home has sold more than 250,000 copies. Speaking to Joystiq, co-founder Steve Gaynor mentioned approximately 80 percent of those sales happened through Steam (as opposed to through the Humble Store on the game's official site).
Nothing at all against Gone Home , but it's surprising to learn that it's been doing so well. I've always thought of it as a "game designer's game," one that wouldn't necessarily break out to find a substantial audience. Pretty cool to hear that over a quarter of a million people have played it, though -- that says good things about this industry.
Gone Home finds 250K sales, most on Steam [Joystiq]
The Mario and company Sonic Boom redesign was great, but it was one of many wondrous fan compositions inspired by the redesign.
Please post more in the comments. Please.
Are you a bad enough dude to come watch me, Bill Zoeker, and our pal Blake Morse of Midnight City playing Double Dragon Neon for two hours? Because that's what we'll be doing at 2 PM Pacific Time today on the DTOID.TV Twitch channel, a mere forty-five minutes from this post going up.
Well if not, BARF, because there is no knowledge that is not power, plus, we've got ten codes for the game to give away. Maybe more, if you're extra good. Also, there will be at least two Hawaiian shirts in attendance, and possibly drinks with umbrellas in them.
Jagex is transforming their direction for Transformers Universe . Originally it was planned as an MMO, but now the game will be a MOTA. A what?
According to Jagex, MOTA stands for a Massively Online Tactical Action game. So it's a MOBA then? Okay. It's set to launch this summer, and you can sign-up for the beta on the official site.
MOTA, as defined by Urban Dictionary by the way, is slang for marijuana and the name of a song by The Offspring.
There was no official word about Grand Theft Auto V coming to PC, much less PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, during Take-Two's earnings call. CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about the possibility of such ports, of course -- these are investors after all -- and his response was:
"If that is where consumers are, absolutely. But we wouldn't drive them there, we would just be there if they are there. That is why we have a companion app for our basketball title, NBA 2K Everywhere. It is wherever consumers want to be."
Zelnick also said "It's really important that we have our labels [like Rockstar] make the marketing announcements. I know there's a good deal of heartburn among the financial press that I don't give more color. It's not for wanting to be coy, though." C'mon!
'We'll launch GTA on other platforms if that's where the consumers are' [MCV]
Take-Two plays the waiting game with mobile [GamesIndustry International]
You know, I keep forgetting that Deep Down technically hasn't been announced for release outside of Japan. It's surely coming, though, and besides its reliance on a free-to-play model (I'd rather just pay up front, thanks) I'm quite looking forward to the dungeon crawler. Might be a bit of a wait, from the sound of it: the Japanese release has been pushed back.
"I think we'll give full-fledged information to everyone after the summer, so you may have to wait for a little while beyond the launch [of PS4] on February 22nd," Kazunori Sugiura said to Dengeki Online, as translated by DualShockers. "Since we don't want to risk to be told 'This could have been done on PS3!' we want to finish a game that fully uses the PS4 hardware specs."
Which is funny, because everything I've seen of Deep Down has looked, well, awesome. Or maybe the fire-breathing dragon tech demo isn't indicative of the rest of the game? Either way, I want Capcom to nail this -- taking more time out to do so is perfectly fine by me.
PS4発売目前クリエイターアンケート！ 第2回は、カプコンの小野義徳氏、コーエーテクモゲームスのシブサワ・コウ氏など、12名の回答を公開!! [Dengeki Online via DualShockers]
After next week's single-player Left Behind DLC for The Last of Us releases, the team at Naughty Dog is due for a good mental break away from that universe. "Bruce Straley, the game director, and I have been doing this for over four years now," creative director and writer Neil Druckmann told Eurogamer. They have started brainstorming ideas for their next project.
"To be honest, some of them are sequel ideas, and some of them are brand new IP -- we've spent the last few weeks brainstorming new IP," he said. "So we have to get some good steps and see... It's kind of like how we approached Left Behind. Can we tell people a story that's really worth telling, and that's not repeating itself? And if we can't, where can we get inspired -- what is something that's really going to challenge us, and push storytelling in this medium forward?"
Going for a new IP brought us The Last of Us in the first place, so yeah -- do that, please. Especially since we've already got that new Uncharted for PS4 in the pipeline.
Naughty Dog mulls The Last of Us 2 [Eurogamer]
