Peoww News

Word reaches us of a £14.99 (€19.99) pricepoint for Ubisoft’s forthcoming PlayStation3 port of Child of Eden (our 360 review here). No doubt this has nothing to do with the that the K*n*ct-enabled version only sold 34,000 copies in the US during its first month.

It goes without saying that PS3 owners get the now obligatory Move support as well as the likelihood of additional 3D support for those of them that believed the hype and bought into first-gen 3D televisions.

Hopefully Mizuguchi’s  visually stunning photosensitive-seizure-em-up will sell a lot better than the 360 version did, as it’s by no means a bad game. The average punter just didn’t know what the hell it was.

I have to confess not having played it for a while. Though that has more to do with the fact I did that Bean Dive so now barely have time to focus on any of the 34 games I started, let alone one in particular. I’ll get back to it someday, I promise. I’m sure the lure of achievements will tempt me back.

Child of Eden is due to be released for PS3 on September 23rd. Ian

Peoww News

In a move that’s probably not going to surprise anyone aware of Activision Blizzard’s standard revenue generation practices (I feel dirty even saying that), they’ve unveiled a doozy to rival their forthcoming Call Of Duty MW3 Elite service. In an announcement on their website, the Blizzard tentacle of the drooling multidimensional behemoth that threatens to consume everyone that lies quivering before it; it’s corporeal form represented by the entity known to us as Kotick; unveiled the forthcoming Diablo III beta. Contained therein is information regarding an in-game auction house. Fine you may think, it’ll be just like in WOW where you trade with in-game currency.

Now here’s the kicker, they’ll allow you to list items for actual cash money. I guess they’ll call it ‘monetising the transaction’ on their annual balance sheet. Hypothetically you could get a random drop of a rare item your character class can’t use and as opposed to previous versions where you could sell the item to a merchant upon returning to town, this time you can put it up on the in-game auction site for either virtual or cold hard cash.

The beauty of the system (from Blizzard’s point of view at least) is that you’ll pay to list the item you want rid of, the person buying the loot has to pay too. And once you’ve got the money, if you then buy another item with the balance of your account they get more cash, only swapped around from the selling point of view. The crux being that Blizzard will get paid four times in this process. When you multiply that by the many thousands of transactions that’ll no doubt take place upon the game’s launch, that’s a whole stack of cash Blizzard will add to their coffers.

I’d not be surprised if this were a dry-run for a similar system to be implemented in WOW. As a correspondent in this webcast put it, you’re effectively gold farming for Blizzard. Ni hao! Ian

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Dear Vicious Cycle,

I finished EDF: Insect Armageddon today.  At least I think I did.  You appear to have forgotten to put an ending on the game.  A game which has just fifteen near-identical levels that lack all the variety of the original EDF. This is what happens when you entrust a much-loved series to the inept fuckwits who made the risible Eat Lead I guess.

If I see any of you at the Eurogamer Expo in September I’m going to shit in your fucking hair.

(review to follow once we’ve doped ourselves enough to block out the fucking pain).

Peoww News

Square Enix have created an ultra-rare version of the 3DS AKA one that anybody can fucking bother playing?  Amirite?

EA and Manchester City FC have joined forces to piss on what’s left of football’s soul by announcing that upcoming FIFA games will have bespoke Man City content “experiences” which has led some cocksucker at the club to blurt out “”Many of our supporters, not to mention first team players are huge fans of FIFA. The deal with EA Sports was therefore a natural fit and the beginning of what I know will be an exciting partnership.”

And finally, Andy McNabb is writing a tie-in novel for Battlefield 3. We’ll leave you to fill in your own derogatory words. Rich