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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. Earlier this month, Microsoft made a bunch of announcements at X10. On Monday, the Block Party promotion, which begins next month, had its schedule revealed. Starting March 3 rd , Toy Soldiers will hit the platform for 1200 points. Then, on March 10, Scrap Metal will be made available for 1200 points too. On March 17, the remake of Perfect Dark will drop for 800 points. Finally, the arcade portal, Game Room, will launch for free to all LIVE members on March 24. If you pick up all the games in the Block Party promotion, Microsoft will rebate you 400 points. Similar to Microsoft’s X10, Nintendo had its own Media Summit this week. There, a ton of 2010 hardware and software details were revealed. First of all, the DSi XL was dated for its release in the Americas. The new, larger handheld system in the DS family of gaming products is set to launch on March 28, 2010 for $189.99. Next, two important franchises were given firm release dates. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is set to hit store shelves on May 23, while Metroid: Other M is coming a little more than a month later on June 27. SEGA made a release date confirmation of its own too. The Obsidian Entertainment-developed RPG espionage shooter, Alpha Protocol, is set to hit store shelves on June 1st, 2010 in North America for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group has gone ahead and picked up Rocksteady Studios; creators of Batman: Arkham Asylum, ensuring Warner Bros. continued quality growth as a major video game publishing player. On a related note, Games for Windows LIVE members can pick up a digital download version of Batman: Arkham Asylum for just $12.49 this weekend. Other titles will be deeply discounted each and every weekend in March via Games on Demand for Games for Windows LIVE. Finally, the most important digital delivery service, Valve’s Steam, may get a Mac makeover. Apparently, a Steam forum member culled through the recent Steam Beta code program files folder and found 10 instances where the prefix “osx” was used for graphics files. Also, there is an osx.menu file in the C:\SteamResourceMenus, “which contains definitions for standard OSX menus.” While this remains unconfirmed by Valve, it’s likely a Mac version of Steam will hit the platform; just don’t expect incompatible Windows-made games to run on your Apple computer, this will likely only specifically support Mac compatible games going forward. Thanks so much everyone and we will see you next week! |