News!

Lets start off the past couple of days news with a somewhat of a bizzare twist.

Ever since Activision and Aerosmith confirmed the rumours that there was going to be an installment in the Guitar Hero franchise dedicated to the self-styled bad boys from Boston, questions have been asked about whether the deal extended beyond the scope of the game. A recent article by a US magazine indicates that the deal locks in Aerosmith to the Guitar Hero series for some time to come. Newsweek reports, via its Level Up blog, that Aerosmith’s publicist has confirmed that the deal is “exclusive…for this game.” Activision’s vice president of music affairs was then moved to extend this, explaining, “We do have the band exclusively, and their catalogue should be exclusive to us beyond the one or two tracks they had licensed out to Rock Band before we made our deal.” To date, only one Aerosmith track, “Train Kept A Rollin’,” has appeared in Rock Band, and even then only as a cover version. It is likely that the success–or lack thereof–of this exclusive tie-up will have a significant bearing on any future deals of this nature. It has been suggested that The Beatles may feature, but nothing has been confirmed. Those worried about never being able to sing along with Aerosmith in-game due to the lock-in should remember that Activision’s chief executive, Bobby Kotick, recently confirmed that Neversoft was working hard on providing options for “a lot of other instruments [and] vocals” in future iterations of the franchise.

Midnight launches aren’t always the gaming industry’s proudest moments. The PlayStation 3 release in particular was riddled with launch-related crimes, including a mugging, a store robbery, a launch line hold-up, and a shooting. Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale in stores around the world at 12:01 a.m. this morning, and already reports of criminal midnight launch madness are starting to filter in. BBC News is reporting on a pair of incidents, with news of a stabbing outside a Gamestation in Croydon and a mugging by another game store in Lancashire. According to the news service, a 23-year-old man was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant as he passed a line outside the Gamestation. The victim was treated for several stab wounds and has since been released. The attacker, who police said appeared to be waiting in the line of about 50 to 100 people, was not apprehended. In the mugging, an 18-year-old was robbed of his copy of the game and beaten as he walked home from the store with a friend. The victim was taken to the hospital with a broken jaw and a broken nose. Police are asking for witnesses in both cases to step forward.

But do you think it was worth it? Last month, the launch of Rockstar Games’ Bully on the Xbox 360 was marred by a bevy of crash bugs and other glitches. With this morning’s heavily anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto IV for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Rockstar finds itself dealing with still more troubleshooting trouble, as online forums are buzzing with reports of crashes. Combing through crash threads on the Xbox.com forums, Sony’s official message boards, GameSpot, and the NeoGAF forums, it seems that the issues are affecting PlayStation 3 users more frequently, although gamers with both systems are reporting problems. Reports of crashes on the 60GB version of the PS3 hardware are the most common, and tech support advice like deleting and re-installing the game doesn’t appear to address the issue effectively.

Crysis, developed by German studio Crytek and released in late 2007, was one of the most highly praised PC-exclusive games last year. It won a load of awards. However, it seems that all is not rosy at Crytek HQ in Germany. The studio’s director and founder, Cevat Yerli, recently spoke out about the problems currently besetting his firm, PC gaming in general, and how Crytek plans to address the issues it faces. In an interview with Croatian magazine PC Play, Yerli said, “We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin… PC gamers that pirate games, inherently destroy the platform. “Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us, and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.” When asked if this meant that the rumours of Crysis coming to consoles were correct, Yerli simply stated that the port would be “impossible,” saying that the game would have to be “largely changed to bring it to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3,” and that Crytek’s “internal focus is not linked to bring Crysis to consoles.”

Xbox 360 exclusives seem to be making a habit out of eventually being released on Microsoft’s other platform, Windows, several months after the fact. In February, BioWare signaled that this trend would continue for its epic-scale role-playing game Mass Effect, with PC gamers offered a variety of tweaks, balances, and revisions to remunerate for the lagging ship date. Today, BioWare revealed yet one more incentive for PC gamers to pick up the latest edition of Mass Effect. Those who preorder through participating brick-and-mortar retailers or online will receive $10 off of the game’s regularly schedule $49.99 price tag. Those who purchase the game through BioWare parent company Electronic Arts’ online storefront will instead receive Dead Space swag, including a poster and the first edition of the comic-book series that surrounds EA’s survival horror shooter. BioWare has said that it will be addressing a number of griped-about issues for the PC edition of Mass Effect. Namely, the inventory and item-decryption game mechanics have been revisited, and the game’s heads-up display has been fully revamped. PC gamers will also receive for free the “Bring Down the Sky” downloadable content released on the Xbox 360 in March after they register with BioWare’s community site. Developed in conjunction with Demiurge Studios, BioWare’s Mass Effect will be available for the PC on May 27.

Microsoft is continuing its attempts to gain a foothold in the Asian gaming market with the Xbox 360, and the latest part of that effort is a series of hardware price cuts. As reported by The Wall Street Journal and later confirmed to GameSpot, Microsoft is lowering the price of the Xbox 360 hardware in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Each country receives a different price cut, with Singapore gamers getting the biggest of the breaks at nearly 20 percent to SGD$499 ($366). Taiwanese Xbox 360 prices will drop 17 percent to NT$10,360 ($340), with Hong Kong gamers receiving a drop of nearly 11 percent to HKD$2,499 ($321), and South Korean systems falling barely beyond 5 percent in price to settle at KRW$369,000 ($367). Korea’s price cut goes into effect on Thursday, whereas the remaining drops are effective as of today. The Wall Street Journal article included a quote from Microsoft saying that the cuts were part of the company’s “ongoing strategy to bring Xbox’s high-definition gaming and entertainment experience to an even wider user base.”

Well thats what I deem as the most important news bulletins of the past few days.