In Other News...January 3

[DoctorFinger]

- According to this Wall Street Journal editorial, it's video games - not the military - now driving innovation in technology. In particular he cited the confluence of motion & touch based controllers with the rise of online co-op gaming as the new paradigm of production in the 21st century.

- A Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was spotted on (and since pulled from) Gamestop's website. The listing didn't say what was included in the $29.99 game, but presumably it's Gears 1 & 2 plus the DLC map packs for each. It's set for a February release on the 360.

- The monstrously popular mobile game Angry Birds will be released as a PS3/PSP mini this week.

- The developers of Super Meat Boy - both of them - gave an in depth interview to Game Informer about their baby, and the struggles to get it to market. One of my favorite anecdotes: it was a 100 level demo of the game shown off at a Nintendo conference in 2009 which convinced them to move forward and add the insane amount of content the game has. This is ironic because as of now it's not coming to WiiWare, although a retail release is still a possibility. [Update] - Fixed error about PS3 availability

- Bethesda wants to sell lots of copies of Fallout: New Vegas in Japan, a region notoriously ambivalent towards foreign-made RPGs. Towards that end the publisher has made created a website featuring a "demade" version of the game done as an 8 bit JRPG. "Fallout Quest" is an attempt to convert Japanese gamers over to the open world style.

- Toshiba is showing off a laptop at this week's CES which uses tech similar to the 3DS to produce stereoscopic 3D without the need for glasses.

[Generation ABXY]

Originally Posted by DoctorFinger

- A Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was spotted on (and since pulled from) Gamestop's website. The listing didn't say what was included in the $29.99 game, but presumably it's Gears 1 & 2 plus the DLC map packs for each. It's set for a February release on the 360.

Hm, I'm not what you'd call the biggest fan of Gears of War, but for $30, I could see going in for this... then again, I've already played the first, and I imagine the second game by itself is probably not far off that price.

- Toshiba is showing off a laptop at this week's CES which uses tech similar to the 3DS to produce stereoscopic 3D without the need for glasses.

Oh, being more of a laptop user myself, it'll be interesting to see how well it's received.

[BlackMako]

Originally Posted by DoctorFinger

The developers of Super Meat Boy - both of them - gave an in depth interview to Game Informer about their baby, and the struggles to get it to market. One of my favorite anecdotes: it was a 100 level demo of the game shown off at a Nintendo conference in 2009 which convinced them to move forward and add the insane amount of content the game has. This is ironic because the Wii is the one major platform the game won't be available on.

The PS3 isn't a major platform?

[DoctorFinger]

Originally Posted by BlackMako

The PS3 isn't a major platform?

It's either already out on PS3, or coming soon.

[Spectre-7]

Originally Posted by DoctorFinger

It's either already out on PS3, or coming soon.

This appears to not be so.

[BlackMako]

From their Twitter

Bio XBLA, Steam (pc/mac), and hopefully Wii. PS3 can never happen. Sorry.

I can't really fault someone for not knowing something on a Twitter page. Frankly I'm ashamed of myself for knowing. Also, they've made reference to the Wii not happening, so I'm assuming that bio is out of date.

[tacitus]

FONV ... Hmmm ... Japanese alledgedly do not get shooters; although not a shooter FONV is certainly shooteresque. Also, getting Japanese to like open world games, maybe fixing bugs would be a good idea. I mean I generally will suffer through Bethesda RPG problems, but if your a novice it will be frustrating enough to drop.

[Ultima Thulian]

Kinect sucks as a gaming platform, mostly because devs/pubs aren't doing anything good with the tech, but I've read articles that the device's innovations is making big splashes elsewhere. It's cool to see videogame tech being used in other ways. Hell, I remember thinking it was cool as a kid that the military used video games to train its troops. Now that the thought mostly scares me, haha.

Also, that Gears Ultimate sounded pretty cool. I wonder if the gf would like playing Gears?

[Ravenlock]

Originally Posted by DoctorFinger

- The developers of Super Meat Boy - both of them - gave an in depth interview to Game Informer about their baby, and the struggles to get it to market. One of my favorite anecdotes: it was a 100 level demo of the game shown off at a Nintendo conference in 2009 which convinced them to move forward and add the insane amount of content the game has. This is ironic because the Wii is the one major platform the game won't be available on.

Untrue. Well, partially for-sure untrue, and partly maybe untrue. They've said that a WiiWare version is impossible, but I believe the possibility still exists for a Wii disc version in the future.

Either way, though, they've definitively said the game will never appear on the PS3, so that's an at-least-as-major platform it's never coming to.

EDIT: Sorry, others had already replied with all of that. I blame the forum being wonky.

[rahsoul]

Thanks tacitus, we get it.

[Savok]

Quintuple post?

[muddi900]

What in the...

[Savok]

The site's technical problems are getting worse put simply.

[boratika]

Good to see I'm not the only one to have sextuple posted.

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by Savok

The site's technical problems are getting worse put simply.

Worse you say?

Damnit, can't duplicate on a computer! Seems it only does that on my tapatalk.

[tacitus]

Thankfully I checked before going to work - my duplcates are cleaned up. I have never had a post not go through on this site before in a timely manner; so when I started having problems I tried again (and again). It did happen with a computer.

[Spigot]

Things seem to be working ok today. I wonder what was going on last night...

That FONV thing is both awesome and somewhat sad.

And Angry Birds... must resist... I already spend too much time on it on my iPhone.

[DoctorFinger]

We're working on the technical problems with the site. Hopefully they should be fixed soon.

And I apologize about the Meat Boy error. I could have sworn I did a story where they said they were coming to the PS3.

[Widgetcraft]

Is there some kind of exclusivity deal with Microsoft that is keeping Super Meat Boy off of the PS3?

[Ravenlock]

Yes and no. They signed an exclusivity deal, but only after trying to go to Sony first.

Super Meat Boy will eventually find its way to Xbox 360, Wii and PC, excluding as it will a PS3 release. Now, because you start stamping your feet and shouting "BIAS" while tears start to cloud your vision, make sure you direct your anger at the right people -- Sony itself.

"Why wont this question die? We have answered it publicly at least 15 times but it just never ends," says Team Meat. "We can't EVER do a PS3 version of Super Meat Boy because when we were going into negotiations with publishers, Sony was the only one that didn't express much interest in the game. We assumed this meant they didn't want the game, and [we] decided to sign with Nintendo and Microsoft.

"Our contracts excluded any release on PS3. We would have loved to do a PS3 version, but its not at all possible whatsoever now, so please stop asking about it."

Of course, now the Wii version is in questionable state as well, and who knows what could be possible down the road, but it still sounds like a pretty firm no for now.

Their recent GameInformer post-mortem interview makes it sound like they had some pretty serious trouble convincing Microsoft to back the game, as well, so if that also locked them out from ever releasing on PS3, that's a really raw deal, even though the game did end up being successful.