Max Payne 3 delayed till May

Take-Two Software announced in a press release through Business Wire today that Rockstar Games’ upcoming release, Max Payne 3, will be moved back to a release date in May.

This delay in release adds Max Payne to the list of titles scheduled to be released in the fiscal year, which ends March 31st, 2013.

In a direct quote from Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two, Zelnick reassures that the company wants Max Payne 3 to be at its best quality for release.

“We do not take changes to our release schedule lightly, and this short delay will ensure that Max Payne 3 delivers the highest quality, groundbreaking entertainment experience that is expected from our Company,” said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two. “Max Payne 3 promises to be one of our most exciting releases to date, and we are confident that consumers will once again be amazed by Rockstar’s ability to take interactive entertainment to another level.”

“With Max Payne 3 now slated for May, our robust lineup of upcoming releases for fiscal 2013 is even stronger, including BioShock® Infinite, Borderlands 2, Spec Ops: The Line, XCOM, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and other titles yet to be announced for release that year. Fiscal 2013 is poised to be one of our best years ever, with anticipated substantial revenue growth and Non-GAAP Net Income of over $2.00 per share. We are well positioned to deliver growth and profitability over the long term.”

According to the press release, Take-Two Software expects to reduce its fiscal year 2012 net revenue by $210 – 230 million and Non-GAAP net income per share by $0.60 – $0.70, including $0.03 – $0.04 per share related to a lower share count of 83 million shares used for purposes of calculating Non-GAAP net income (loss) per share.

Take-Two will update its fiscal 2012 financial outlook to reflect this change and other factors when it announces its third quarter financial results on February 2, 2012.

With files from Business Wire

Dark days for “The Last Guardian”?

This last week has certainly been a tough week for Team ICO, Sony, and “The Last Guardian”.

Rumors of Team ICO’s creator Fumito Ueda leaving Sony to finish The Last Guardian surfaced last month, according to eurogamer.net. It was rumored that Ueda was leaving Sony to finish the project freelance, but these rumors have since been faced, and it seems that The Last Guardian will see the light of day, but Ueda will not be sticking around with Sony after the game is shipped out in 2012.

Ueda released a tweet in Japanese, that was released on Game Informer on December 5th, which reads:

“Recently, I have been getting a lot of questions…don’t worry, as usual, I’m still working hard on The Last Guardian.”

The tweet doesn’t exactly dis-spell the rumor, but Eurogamer reports saying that Ueda’s departure from the team has accentuated the ever-growing delay of the project’s launch. It appears Ueda is still working diligently on The Last Guardian, but plans to work on personal projects after the game is finished.

According to Game Informer, a Sony spokesperson spoke out about the Ueda rumor, saying, “the company does not comment on rumor or speculation.”

In recent news, EuroGamer confirms that The Last Guardian’s executive producer and ex-vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment, Yoshifusa Hayama, has left the project to pursue work on social media games, joining Monstermind creator Bossa studios as its creative director. Hayama will work with Bossa Studios to release its first 3D game, set for launch this year.

The Last Guardian’s release date was pushed back from Holiday 2011 to sometime in 2012.

With files from Game Informer, Eurogamer, and Gamasutra

Skryim “Creation Kit” arriving in January

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim has taken the world by storm after its release three weeks ago, and a new patch arriving in January will give players a chance to create and construct mods in the world of Skyrim.

The 1.2 version patch will be available for download after the New Year in January, and includes a Creation Kit, allowing users the same development tools as Bethesda software used to create Skyrim, according to overclockersclub.com.

The Creation Kit will allow Skyrim players the same development tools as Bethesda, the developers behind the popular game.

The 1.2 patch also cleared out a lot of programs gamers were facing, and introduced new problems. According to the same site, “some gamers no longer have magic resistance calculated properly on their character or any NPC in the game, plus a few are even seeing dragons fly backwards.”

Bethesda plans to release an update to fix these problems, but as for the Creation Kit, PC gamers can expect to receive this treat sooner that PlayStation and Xbox users. The reason being because “of the relative ease of releasing patches through Steam.”

“Beginning in January, PC players will be able to download the same development tools we used at Bethesda Game Studios to create Skyrim,” reads the post on the Bethesda Blog, as found through the Escapist site. “In tandem with the Creation Kit’s release, we will roll out a new Wiki and videos to help you get started.”

With files from overclockersclub.com and The Escapist

Resident Evil Revelations steps away from Raccoon City

Capcom-Unity has just released the latest trailer to the upcoming 3DS game, Resident Evil Revelations.

As the days go by, we’re starting to see more and more information being released, as well as a ton of new characters coming together with a completely new storyline never seen in the series.

From what I’ve seen from the recent screenshots is the last few days, there seems to be an extreme lack of zombies, but rather a ton of new grotesque-looking enemies that you’d think would be from a Silent Hill game. The enemies are considered to be new bio-organic weapons, or B.O.W.S., mutated in the Umbrella labs.

According to the Resident Evil Wiki, here are plot details:

“Set in 2005, Revelations depicts the events shortly after the establishment of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA), a counter-terrorism group which Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine have co-founded. The trailer that was released showed the two of them talking to an unidentified prisoner on a luxury cruise ship. The principle setting of the game will be Europe, environments in addition to the ship include a port town and a snowy mountain. Jill and her new partner, Parker Luciani are searching for Chris and his new partner, Jessica Sherawat, who have reportedly gone missing during a mission. A mysterious masked man who operates a terrorist organization known as Il Veltro, who are responsible for the bio-terrorist attack in Terragrigia, leaked a new virus called the t-Abyss virus and infecting the Queen Zenobia’s tripulation. Both Chris and Jill are being led into the same trap, and each chapter will alternate between them.”

Most of the photos I found were posted by GregaMan on the Capcom-Unity forums, which yesterday revealed three new characters to be featured in Revelations: O’Brien, Raymond and Morgan. Today, he’s posted two new characters Quint and Keith. And now take a look at some of the enemies. I’ll show three pictures, but seriously, does this not make you think of Silent Hill?

Here are some of the photos:

Quint Ketchum, a new character in Resident Evil Revelations.

Keith Lumley, a new character in Resident Evil Revelations

From left to right: Clive O’Brien, Morgan Lansdale, and Raymond Vester

With files from Capcom-Unity and user GregaMan, and Resident Evil Wiki

Saying goodbye to GamePro magazine

According to IndustryGamers.com, GamePro magazine as well as its sister website, GamePro.com, are throwing in the towel after 22 years of service.

The November issue of GamePro magazine is their final publication.

The November issue of GamePro magazine recently launched and will be their final magazine publication.

The move to calling it quits comes after GamePro’s shift to a quarterly magazine plan didn’t work out so well.

GamePro magazine started as a monthly publication in May 1989, and opened its online news portion in May of 1996.

An IDG representative told IndustryGamers that ad revenue wasn’t sufficient enough to survive on a quarterly basis, and layoffs are being made. It is unclear how many have/or have been laid off at this time.

Visitors of GamePro.com will be redirected to the PCWorld GamePro channel on pcworld.com, said GamePro in a quote to IndustryGamers.

According to Mike Kisseberth, who head’s up IDG’s Consumer and Small Business media group, GamePro Media is “refocusing its US business exclusively on its growing custom publishing and solutions business”. GamePro Custom Solutions will be led by Marci Yamaguchi Hughes, the GamePro president, according to IndustryGamers.

“The U.S. editorial and business staff worked hard to earn a passionate, loyal following for GamePro and I am grateful for their dedication and hard work over the years,” said Kisseberth. “GamePro, like all businesses, must keep up with industry changes and economic realities. Marci and her colleagues have tremendous expertise in the games arena, and now they will be putting that knowledge to work for the brands that gamers love. Look for GamePro Custom Solutions to be blazing new trails in online branding for the game industry, providing gamers with deeper, richer interactions with the companies and titles they most want to know about.”

With the November issue of GamePro already published, the GamePro site has until December 5th to be closed down.

As a fan of GamePro.com, and a constant reader of most video game sites, I am deeply saddened by the news of GamePro’s end. I wish all staff good luck in their future endeavors, as GamePro was always one of my favorite gaming news sites. I was able to acquire my own copy of GamePro magazine, and I will cherish it well.

So long, GamePro.

With files from IndustryGamers and VG247

EB Games/Gamestop to stop selling used games in Canada: rumor or not?

According to an article on Kotaku.com, a Canadian EB games worker said that the line between what’s new and used is fading, and that used games may not even be given their own place on the shelf, though don’t buy in to the rumor just yet.

The plan is to move all games (new and used) into one big section, rather than to separate them by colored price tags.
The original rumor-er also said that they, along with other employees, were to hide the new games behind the used ones.

Kotaku has since been updating their story, and their second tip-off from another reader who claimed to be a Canadian EB Games employee stated:

“I can confirm this 100% we were given instructions last week to start this. We were told that we were to merge all used games with the new games and have them sectioned off by one of four specific genres they gave us. They told us that the new copy must be on the very bottom of the pile and the used ones stacked on top and that we were to change all price stickers to the white ones. They also instructed us to discard all materials advertising used games. Now the stickers do have the words NEW or USED on them but no one looks at that.

HUGE problems with this will of course be with the online code games. Generic_Customer_01 will grab the top copy of NHL 12, go home, and not be able to play online. There are also MANY games where the new copy is as cheap as $19.99 but the used copies stacked on top of it are $34.99. It is also a nightmare to find anything anymore and the
opinion of what games fall in what categories was different even across staff members in the same store.”

An update was later added, suggesting that the whole rumor was false. Until then, Kotaku continues to follow the story as it develops.

With files from Kotaku.com

End thoughts from Red vs Blue Season 9 finale

Red vs Blue Season 9 DVD Cover

With Season 9 now at its end, we can only look forward into 2012 expecting another epic season from Rooster Teeth’s upcoming Season 10.

SPOILER ALERT: In the final scene of Season 9′s Episode 20, Epsilon-Church is retrieved from inside the memory unit by Caboose and Sarge, much to Church’s dismay. And what we find out at the very end is that Agent Carolina is still alive, and her conscience and head is in tact, asking for Church’s help in killing the Director, thinking that Church is the Alpha, when really its his Epsilon memory unit counterpart.

Caboose peeking into the memory unit to find Church.

So with Carolina’s return, we may see a combination of the recollection series brought back, with the Reds and Blues (with Agent Washington) joining Agent Carolina to stop the Director. Last we heard of Agent Carolina before Season 9 was that she had presumably died, according to a conversation between Tex and Church in Season 5.

Carolina was apparently the experiment of using a Freelancer and implementing two Artificial Intelligences in her head at once. What we learned was that the two AIs battled for control, which would have driven Agent Carolina to the brink of suicide.

That’s why I was rather surprised when I saw her at the end of Season 9, in what appeared to be a much angrier state, most likely her thirst for revenge against the Director getting the better of her.

What can we expect from Season 10?

Agents South Dakota (left), Conneticut/C.T. (middle), and Carolina (right)

Well we left off Season 9 on a cliffhanger this time around, both with the return of Agent Carolina in the present world, and in the mo-cap animated prequel within Season 9 detailing the history and early missions of Project Freelancer. So I think we’re going to see that continue throughout Season 10, and finally see the implementation and early stages of AI development in the Project Freelancer side-story, with a much bigger focus on Agent Carolina working with the Reds and the Blues, as well as rekindling her relationship with Agent Washington in the present story.

So all we can do now is wait and look forward to Season 10, coming 2012.