Today in Gaming News - June 20, 2011 - News

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This is a new feature I’ll be writing which is a heavily contextualized article outlining the important news of the day. Other articles will report news with more detail, and this feature won’t be a replacement for that. You should still be reading our news pieces. You’ll see regular news articles along-side this one. I’ll clearly separate my own opinion from what can be safely called a Fact. What this regular feature will do is try to fit each piece of news into a cohesive context because neither news nor video games exist in a vacuum.

Details have surfaced about PS3’s slimmer ‘slim’ version. Several websites are reporting that the Japanese are getting a 320 GB “charcoal black” PS3 which boasts less power consumption (230w to 200w), and 600 grams less overall weight, available on September 8th. It’s called the "CECH-3000B," and it’ll cost  ¥34,980 ($435.56). This model also has an increased amount of copy-protection.

Other console news: Nintendo USA’s CEO says the Wii U will be available after April 2012. Kotaku and VG247 are running a story that CBS is running a story that the Sega Genesis has been hacked! Oh no! What they meant was that the Sega Pass database had been hacked. Eurogamer has the story. Your email, passwords, dates of birth were stolen and as a result, that service is down. 1.3 million subscribers have been affected. For those keeping score: Nintendo, Sony, Bethesda, Epic Games and Codemasters have all been hacked.

Joystiq’s running a story about Peter Molyneux’s E3 2011 badge being up for sale at eBay to benefit Child’s Play.

Horror title Amy has video trailers available for viewing. In Amy, you can feel your partner’s heartbeat through your controller, says Siliconera. TheSixthAxis has confirmed via the EUPSBlog that Amy will be available for both XBLA and PSN. An entire game made out to be an escort mission? Might want. PSBlog says it’ll be out ‘late 2011’.

Retailer giant Amazon (and others) outed a December release for Max Payne 3. It’s odd that we haven’t heard more about this change from the publishers themselves. Keep this one in your ‘Rumor’ file.

Blips:

• The “Women in Games” Conference has been announced for September 22.
• GRID’s online servers have shut down, according to TheSixthAxis, they say this information is confirmed through Codemasters. Is this a premature step until we see a GRID sequel? Seems like it to me. MCV says the Xbox 360 servers are still up.
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has Kinect support. Anyone surprised? No. Good. Glad we got that cleared up.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution got new screens today, several websites have those available to view.
• Valve’s Doug Lombardi says they’re working on a new free-to-play title. I’m figuratively leaping for joy.
• Epic Games’ Cliffy B says he’ll shoot himself if the Gears franchise is all he’s remembered for.
• L.A. Noire gets an update addressing a number of technical issues.

Crytek says, "Crytek does not have any next generation hardware from Microsoft, nor do we know when Microsoft may announce future hardware or what that hardware will entail."

Uncharted 3’s multiplayer was in development almost before Uncharted 2 shipped. So, they worked on Uncharted 3’s multiplayer really soon after finishing Uncharted 2. Shocking.

There is (a bit) more information out today about the Activision lawsuit with former Infinity Ward employees and EA. The news here is that it’s finally got the green light to go to trial. Develop has the most comprehensive article on the back story. In related news Activision have said they don’t want to be seen as an “Evil Empire.” They’ve also got more up their sleeve related to Call of Duty: Elite. The lack of a feature list was due to the fact that the service has a lot of features tied to Modern Warfare 3.

Activision’s competitors through DICE for Battlefield 3 today announced that the game runs at 720p at 30 frames per second. They're responding to user complaints that the PC version looked better probably because IGN ran a story today that suggested the console version of Battlefield 3 ran at ‘half’ the frame rate of the PC version. Surely none of you made the mistake of assuming that your console could out perform a PC, right? PC games, if you have the shamoolians to do it, will always out perform consoles.

Keep checking back, folks. We'll keep you informed.

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