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The Week in Review news piece summarizes and highlights the most important gaming related news and rumors over the past week. This weekly article will keep you plugged in and in-tune. Still reeling from the holiday lull, interesting gaming news is quite lean. This week, country music fans who’ve had to resort to Southern / Country-Fried Rock anthems whilst getting their Rock Band shwerve on can now rejoice. Harmonix and MTV Games have announced the inclusion of a Country music entry in their vast music catalog. Unfortunately, country fans will be limited to just five artists to start, though more are undoubtedly on their way. The five acts can be purchased as a bundle (680 MS points ; $8.49) or individually (160 MS points; $1.99) on December 16 (360) or December 18 (PS3) and include Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Dierks Bentley, Dixie Chicks, and Miranda Lambert. In the face of harsh economic times, gaming giants Sony and EA have found themselves having to make drastic adjustments. Sony will eliminate 8,000 electronics jobs by April of 2010. That’s approximately 5% of the electronics giant’s workforce. Moreover, Sony will “cut its investment in electronic operations by 30% and shut down about 10% of its 57 production facilities.” Sony’s aim is to save about “100bn yen ($1.1bn; £730m) by the end of the next financial year,” in the face of a global economic recession. “The number sounds big, but this staff reduction won’t be enough,” said Katsuhiko Mori, a fund manager at Daiwa SB Investments. “Sony doesn’t have any core businesses that generates stable profits – the next thing we want to see is what is going to be the business that will drive the company.” Likewise, in a call with investors, EA ’s revealing CEO, John Riccitiello, let it be known that the company has not hit holiday sales figures despite releasing a load of quality titles. Games such as Dead Space and Valve’s Left 4 Dead did well, but others such as Mirror’s Edge suffered greatly in spite of critical acclaim. As such, EA is looking to streamline their product lines and make their business more profitable. Nevertheless, Mirror’s Edge will get a sequel, but specific critiques of the IP will be part of the next game’s design to make it a best-seller. Mr. Riccitiello stated, “Many times with a new intellectual property, the first edition doesn’t generate the units that subsequent editions could generate. Mirror’s Edge is one that was very strongly reviewed, that one’s going to go forward. We’re probably going to look into some issues around the design to make sure strong IP is married with strong business.” On a somewhat brighter note, December 11 th marked the opening of Sony’s Home beta. Though we’re all happy it has finally opened up, the service has had to deal with a lot of problems including rampant error messages. Hey, what do you expect? It is a beta after all. This week really only saw one rumor that, in retrospect, isn’t much of a stretch at all. According to the folks over at EGM, Epic Games is already hard at work making Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360 and a 2010 release. It appears that the Unreal3 Engine is undergoing a host of upgrades ahead of development, and the game will likely boast a five-man co-op mode. Thanks so much everyone and we will see you next week! |