PUBLIC MARKS from mrongos with tag japan

The popular Dark Horse Comics demon hero, Hellboy, is receiving the royal video game treatment thanks to the same fellow who brought us the decent-to-great movie (debatable… never saw it, but got mixed reactions from friends), Guillermo Del Toro.

We’ll transcribe the worthwhile questions and answers from the FiringSquad interview with a Sony spokesperson because we’re lazy — besides, not much else to say other than what was asked/answered.

It’s not the freshest news, but it’s not something we should avoid addressing. Recently, Sony announced their initial shipping estimate for Japanese gamers,

Not too bad is about the extent of it. While one price shouldn’t be indicative of any other game prices, there’s at least a little comfort in the recently announced pricing of Resistance: Fall of Man, Motorstorm, and Genji. 5980 yen. Roughly $50 US. That’s really cool, should the prices remain the same upon the North American release. Will they? Maybe. Maybe not. No use guessing, but we can pray to the almighty lords of gaming to make it so. Let’s not forget that Sega also released some prices a few weeks ago: Sega Golf Club and Sonic are both being priced at 7140 yen (about $60)… the expected next-gen pricing, but didn’t someone see Sonic for cheap somewhere? Maybe that was a dream. Seems the pricing will be stuck around $50-$70. Oh well. Is anyone unnaturally bent out of shape about this?

Or is it? Says Nina Kristensen, Ninja Theory’s co-founder, “We’ve always been a launch window title so it hasn’t affected us at all,” referring to the PS3 delay in Europe. However, lead animator Guy Midgley said “No, it’s going to be next year…but we haven’t announced a specific date yet.” So… it’s a launch window title (which should be before 2007, right?) but it’s not coming out until next year in the US? Oh. Launch window for Europe! Well, if you put it that way, it makes sense. So, for those of you wondering, Heavenly Sword hasn’t been moved forward in the launch frame, nor has it been delayed. The difference between Japan/North Ameria launch window and the European launch window might have caused a few rumors to spark into existence, only to be snuffed out by a little bit of common sense.

This time, we’re hearing from analyst P.J. McNealy who claims the PS3 is in the final stages of production and will be able to ship 2 million units by the end of the year. Chew on this hefty quote McNealy uses to back his thoughts: “It is our opinion that given the 13 weeks or so of production time, SNE can still come close to its forecast of 2MM units worldwide by the end of December. We believe this likely means a split of 60/40 (1.2MM/800k) for North America/Japan for shipments, which are counted when invoiced off the SNE factory floor. Our research indicates that typically 10-20% of the unit shipment forecast will likely still be in the channel (en route) at the end of December and not installed in homes yet. The low end of that range is more likely simply because SNE will likely still be air-freighting and not tanker-shipping PS3s at that point.” Is it safe to say the 10-20% spread en route will be more focused on North America? Even if Japan has production in other Asian countries, Japan is still closer. Whatever. Math. The article at GameDaily also mentions the (rolling eyes whilst typing) overheating PS3 units, but we all know that’s a bunch of biased media crap. Go ahead — turn off your air conditioning and put your 360, GameCube, or PS2 into an unventilated plastic box and let it run a game for two days. If nothing happens, congratulations. Your system has no soul… and neither do you, for doing such a thing to it. Does it follow then, that Sony has no soul? Sure, because Sony is a legal entity, but not an actual one. It doesn’t need to have a soul.

Recall the horror game, Siren? Kinda sorta? It was one of those games this clever blogger always had a plan to buy, but never had the budget or the properly operating memory to get into. Supposedly, it was pretty good. So good, there are actually two Siren titles in Japan. Well, guess what? A third/second one is in the works for the PS3. There will be more details later this week… so if you liked Fatal Frame but didn’t exactly love the whole taking pictures thing, perhaps Siren is worth seeking out at your used game store. This guy’s going to look for it online right now.