News

Just a few quick tidbits from the wonderful world of gaming.

The first is that a sequel to Paper Mario has finally been confirmed. The game is being developed by Intelligent Systems, the Nintendo in-house team that developed the original title.

The sequel will retain the unique art style of the original: "paper thin" sprites in a fully 3D world. There is no set release date as of yet for the title. One might recognize the Intelligent Systems label as it has been the force behind such titles as Donkey Kong, Excitebike, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Tetris Attack, Super Metroid and the Fire Emblem series.

Source: Gameforms

The second scrumptious tidbit of the day involves money and not an actual game. More concretely, it is that Microsoft has lowered the price of the Xbox to $149.99. The drop places it in the middle for lowest price of the three major consoles.

This might make the console more appealing to gamers recently leaning towards purchasing a Gamecube instead because of its much lower price point of $99.99

Source: Games_Are_Fun

Four months after it's PC release, Final Fantasy XI has now made its way to the Playstation 2 console.

The delay of the release, according to Game Revolution, was due partially to Square Enix's desire to monitor success of the PC version and to the necessity of a marketed PS2 hard drive to store information for the game.

Additional information about the PS2 release, as well as screenshots from the PS2 version, can be found at Gamezone.com.

With all of its well publicized troubles, Disney still has a few bright spots. One of those is Kingdom Hearts. Disney Interactive and Square Enix have jointly announced that more than four million copiesof the title have shipped worldwide.

North America is actually outselling Japan moving two million units compared to the 1.23 million in the latter area. Europe has chipped in with 820,000 copies. Square Enix U.S.A.'s president and CEO Jun Iwasaki, was quoted "The unique blend of Disney characters and worlds in a Square Enix style gameplay seen in KINGDOM HEARTS resulted in one remarkable game. We couldn’t be happier with the results"

Kingdom Hearts was recently added to the Sony's "Greatest Hits" label. There is a Kingdom Hearts Gameboy Advance title in the works as well as a sequel to the original title.

In other Square Enix news, GameTrailers.com has a new Final Fantasy XII trailer available for download on their website. The trailer is from a recently released Famitsu DVD (For those not in the know, Famitsu is a popular gaming magazine in Japan).

Source: Games_Are_Fun

Just as a word of warning, our host will be conducting some maintenance to our server tomorrow. You may see some times where you are unable to access the site, or some things on the site may be pretty badly broken when you reach them. These changes will require a change to our DNS setup, which will account for most issues in accessing the site.

Our hope is that the intermittent connection issues with the site will be resolved by these changes. Thank you!

The first Final Fantasy symphony concert to be performed in the United States has become a sell out in just three days.

The concert scheduled for Monday, May 10 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles will consist of songs from Square Enix's Final Fantasy series as performed by Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Ticket prices had started $40 and topped out at $120 US. The only place to find tickets now will probably be Ebay, if even there if one is lucky (lucky is a relative term as the price of such a ticket will probably exorbitant). The fact that the E3 Expo is also occurring that week in LA is thought to have contributed to the quick sell out.

Source: Games_Are_Fun


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It be interesting to hear the orchestra and chorale's rendition of One Winged Angel. Maybe they will produce a CD of the performance.

Prime time television ratings may have taken a considerable blow from the video gaming industry this season, according to a recent article posted at CNN.com.

Nielsen Media Research reported that viewership among the men 18-34 demographic were down some 10% since last television season. It attributes part of this decline to an expanding video game industry.

Indeed, Sony has noted that over half of its prime time (8 p.m. - 11 p.m.) online gaming community consists of men aged 18-34.

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I largely prefer gaming over television, especially online gaming.
I see online gaming with friends as a social event, and as so it is far more valuable to me than a television program--or its advertisements.