This year's Evolution Fighting Game Championships boasted some of the most surprising results to date. These included two pad players, Shizza and Vance “Vangief” Wu, placing top eight in Super Street Fighter IV, Taiwanese sensation Bruce “Gamerbee” Hsiang eliminating US champion Justin Wong, and top two placers for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix were both new school players, shutting out legends like Daigo Umehara and Jason “Afrocole” Cole. To America's devastation, Umehara managed to take the gold in Super Street Fighter IV, keeping northern California's EG.Ricky Ortiz at second place. A stream was available at both G4TV and Shoryuken, but it crashed several times throughout the weekend due to technical difficulties, most notably during the Super Street Fighter IV grand finals. Hopefully this won’t be an issue next year and the stream’s producers, Level|Up, will take note. Videos of the finals are available at EVO’s Youtube channel here. Results after the jump.
[Source: Shoryuken]
Starting July 29, new white and black 160GB PS3 and black 320GB PS3s will be available in Japan. These will retail for ¥29,980 ($342) and ¥34,980 ($399) respectively. The white PS3 is certainly good news because there’s no indication that it is a limited run, which will open it up for people who want to buy systems in different colors but not want a decal that says “Final Fantasy XIII” on it. The slowly increasing hard drive size is becoming a bit of a nuisance, considering that few things can actually take up the 120GB on current models, much less the 160GB or 320GB that will be available. Considering that the old models will be replaced by the newer models, however, at least consumers won’t have to pay extra and a lucky few can even snag the remaining older models at discounted prices. No word yet on a US release.
[Source: GameSpot]
In addition to being a competitive tournament and free LAN party, Quakecon shows off several notable games from id Software and its associated companies every year. This year is no different, with id Software confirming Brink, Fallout: New Vegas, and Hunted: The Demon's Forge. Seeing as how these games were all present at E3, press and industry members really have nothing to be excited about. On the other hand, fans should take advantage of this and make plans to attend Quakecon 2010. Quakecon 2010 will take place from August 12-15 in Dallas, Texas and is free to register. For more information, visit Quakecon's website here.
Shown off at E3, Final Fantasy XIV will be released on September 30, 2010. For those who want to get in on the beta, the PC collector's edition will offer beta keys starting early July. While the beta is a nice treat for fans who will buy the collector's edition, it seems like they won't get much time with it before the game comes out. It's also a shame that the standard version won't include a beta; it would have really hyped up the game for players who did not play Final Fantasy XI or did not want to drop almost 80 dollars on a game. Hit the jump for system requirements for PC players, new features, and exclusive collector's edition contents.
Level-5, famous for the Professor Layton series, will be opening a development branch in both the United States and Europe. The United States branch should open in Santa Monica later this year around September. We can only imagine how this would improve the Professor Layton series, which is already popular in the west. Perhaps the studio will create a brand new series that appeals to the west and gets imported to Japan instead? We'll have to wait and see.Page 82 of 98