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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. You know a week is slow when Mickey Mouse dominates the gaming news. It was confirmed this week that Disney’s iconic figure is getting a dark re-imagining in Disney Epic Mickey. GameInformer revealed the cover art for their upcoming November issue, which featured the ominous looking new mouse amidst a daunting environment. For a glimpse at what Mickey is set to look like, check out the GI cover art by clicking HERE . While Disney is turning a movie icon into a badass game hero, Activision is looking to take their masterpiece Call of Duty gaming franchise and give it the silver screen treatment. According to the eagle-eyes over at Trademork, Activision filed on September 21, 2009 for trademark protection of the Call of Duty franchise in relation to “pre-recorded movies featuring comedy, drama, action, adventure, music, theatrical performances and/or animation”. What’s more, well-known community manager, Robert Bowling, tweeted the following: “First round of meetings in Paris wrapped. Grabbing lunch with Xavier Gens, director of the Hitman film while in town. Talking game films.” Perhaps a film adaptation is already brewing? EA and in-house development studio Visceral Games have filed two trademark applications for a title called The Ripper. You can check out the apps by clicking HERE . This seems to confirm what LA Times’ Ben Fritz reported back in August: “…two sources close to EA told The Times that Visceral’s next game would be Jack the Ripper, based on the 19th century British serial killer. It’s not clear what the game would involve, but it’s a natural follow-up of sorts to Dante’s Inferno, which is also based on copyright-free historical material.” Both Turn 10 and BioWare announced that they will be releasing launch-day DLC for Forza Motorsport 3 and Dragon Age: Origins, respectively. Over the last several months, game production houses and development studios have been trying to come up with ways to limit the secondary game market (i.e. used games and renting). Apparently, providing a chit for “extra” game content is the path to be trodden. Microsoft’s Robbie Bach was quoted by Variety this week concerning a possible elevated price point for Natal at launch, with a series of market-determining price cuts thereafter. Bach specifically stated: “Relative to Natal, we’ll see how the pricing cost works out, but people should expect that it will go through the usual price curve.” FIFA 10 dropped this week in Europe and it made video gaming history. In the game’s first week at retail, over 1.7 million units were sold. That makes FIFA 10 the “biggest sports game launch ever”. Finally, the Internets were aflutter on Friday when Epic Games’ Mark Rein told OXM “any future Xbox games we make will have some Natal support” was construed as meaning the company was diving headlong into motion controls. However, after a bit of spin control, Mark Rein clarified his statement by limiting his comments to that of Epic’s Unreal Engine – as a development toolset, Unreal Engine will evolve in order to accommodate Natal rather than the development studio being committed to support the technology in their games. Thanks so much everyone and we will see you next week! |