According to industry figure Kevin Dent, all is not well at THQ, as the company’s situation continues to worsen. According to a new rumor, the publisher will be facing 170 staff layoffs, including its vice president of tech Mark DeLoura.

You may recall that earlier this year, Dent went so far as to say that THQ would be looking for a buyer and canceling its 2014 lineup. This morning, he posted on his Twitter account supposed information about the layoffs:

This is probably going to break in the morning, I have sat on it for a week or so. The culling at THQ was 170+ souls including @markdeloura.

A smart journalist would send THQ’s VP of Tech Mark DeLoura an email and see what the auto reply says.

On top of that, VG247 has allegedly received word that the layoffs will “significantly” hit the publisher’s UK division. As expected, THQ has yet to comment on the matter.

© Alex for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

Earlier this morning, Sony announced that Kazuo Harai will be the new President and CEO of Sony Corp effective April 1, 2012. The company’s current head, Howard Stringer will hand off his position at that point.

Hirai has been heading up Sony’s Computer Entertainment division for some time now, and rumors regarding this promotion have been circling the web over the past couple of weeks. As the head of SCE, he has done so much over the past couple of years to elevate the PlayStation brand and Sony Entertainment as a whole, so this step up is certainly well deserved.

Kaz had the following to say about his new position:

I am grateful to Sir Howard and to the Board for their confidence in me, and I look forward to working with everyone at Sony more closely than ever before to build a strong future for our customers, shareholders, partners and employees.

The foundations are now firmly in place for the new management team and me to fully leverage Sony’s diverse electronics product portfolio, in conjunction with our rich entertainment assets and growing array of networked services, to engage with our customers around the world in new and exciting ways.

Howard, who will be filling Yotaro Kobayashi’s place as board chairman, expressed his confidence in Hirai, saying:

Kaz is a globally focused executive for whom technology and the cloud are familiar territory, content is highly valued, and digital transformation is second nature.

I believe his tough-mindedness and leadership skills will be of great benefit to the company and its customers in the months and years ahead. I look forward to helping Kaz in every way I can so that succession leads inevitably to success.

All of us here at PlayStation LifeStyle want to wish Kaz the best of luck; we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Sony.

© Alex for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us

High Moon Studio’s next transformers game, Fall of Cybertron, has been unveiled at the Spike Video Game Awards.

The last entry in the franchise, Transformers: The War for Cybertron, brought players into an immersive world. The game featured a fully realized single player experience and competitive multiplayer that took cues from some of the biggest shooters, namely the COD level up and ranking system.

Hopefully this next game retains all of these elements and adds even more.

Watch the new trailer below:

© Sparky for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Counter Terrorism Unit Rainbow Six is set to return in 2013 thanks to the folks at Ubisoft. As revealed by the publisher earlier in the month, Rainbow faces a new threat from within North America’s shores in the latest game. Team Rainbow will take on domestic terrorists in Rainbow Six: Patriots.

Ubisoft took the unusual move of revealing their internal ‘target render’ for the project ahead of the official reveal.  The game’s director explained that the development team was concerned that the target video would be leaked. The internal video has some truly cringe worth moments, namely Team Rainbow having to snipe a civilian with a bomb strapped to his chest.

Rainbow Six: Patriots is currently scheduled for “unspecified platforms’.

© Sparky for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

Respected strategy franchise Command & Conquer rolls out its ninth official outing (we’re not counting Renegade or expansions) with Command & Conquer: Generals 2.

This latest entry in the Command & Conquer series was teased a few weeks ago by GameTrailers. Leaks came out this morning that the game returns to the ‘modern day’ setting established in the original Command & Conquer: Generals, which was released in 2003. It has now been  officially revealed at the VGAs.

The main C&C storyline dealt with Tiberium, a crystal like organism that could convert any form of matter into a crystallized form. Over the course of four games, and two decades, the factions of the Global Defense Initiative and Brotherhood of NOD battled it as the Tiberium crisis worsened. The conflict was eventually resolved with the appearance of *spoiler* space aliens *end spoiler* during the events of C&C 3/4.

The Command & Conquer Generals series takes a more “real world” approach. In the 2003 game China and the United States joined forces to fight the Global Liberation Army, a well organized terrorist faction. Reviewers at the time drew parallels between the War on Terror and the events in Generals.

Check out the screen that leaked this morning:

© Sparky for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

Zachary Levi, the star of NBC’s Chuck, is set to host the Spike Video Game awards next month the Hollywood Reporter reports. Levi is no stranger to videogames – he is both an avid player and voice actor, having last appeared in Bethesda’s Fallout: New Vegas and Microsoft’s Halo: Reach.

Casey Patterson VP of Entertainment at Viacom said:

Zac Levi is an avid gamer who is truly a part of gaming culture and understands the fans -

The Spike Videogame Awards air on December 10th on Spike TV and Gametrailers. This year, rumors have been flying that we will see a major reveal from Sony. There are a total of 13 big reveals coming Metal Gear Solid Rising, Bioshock Infinite and a new title from BioWare.

We will have all of the big unveils from the Spike Video Game Awards as soon as they are announced. Stay tuned!

© Sparky for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Each year at the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards, the show acts as a grand stage for a number of high-profile video game reveals. Just last year alone saw the announcement of some heavy hitters like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. This year, Spike TV is teasing a “PS3 exclusive you won’t believe”.

According to this picture of a Times Square advertisement, taken by a NeoGAF forum member, the text reveals some teasers for what to expect at this year’s VGAs. There will be a total of 13 world premiers, including “Metal Gear Solid: Rising, Bioshock Infinte, a PS3 exclusive you won’t believe, plus a special tribute to The Legend of Zelda“.

What the exclusive might be is really up in the air. It could be this “Sony Smash Bros.” game that’s been generating some buzz lately.

The Spike TV VGAs air on Saturday, December 10th at 8PM EST. We’ll be live-blogging the event.

© Anthony Severino for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to del.icio.us

It seems a little early to be handing out Game of the Year awards, but that’s how the GamesMaster Golden Joystick Awards roll. And who I am to tell them otherwise? They’ve picked their big winner, and it’s Valve’s Portal 2. But who else took home awards?

Portal 2 wasn’t the only winner today, we’ve got the full run-down of awards and their winners below:

• Action/Adventure Game of the Year in association with Metro UK — Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft)
• Mobile Game of the Year in association with MSN — Angry Birds Rio (Chillingo)
• Roleplay Game of the Year in association with Edge — Fallout New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks)
• Massively Multiplayer Online Game of the Year in association with PC Gamer — World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
• Fighting Game of the Year in association with Official Nintendo Magazine — Mortal Kombat (Warner Bros. Interactive)
• Racing Game of the Year in association with GamesRadar.com – Gran Turismo 5 (Sony Computer Entertainment)
• Sports Game of the Year in association with Zavvi.com — FIFA 12 (EA Sports)
• Strategy Game of the Year in association with Official Xbox Magazine — Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard Entertainment)
• Music Game of the Year in association with Habbo.com — Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (Activision)
• Free-To-Play Game of the Year in association with CVG.co.uk — League of Legends (Riot Games)
• Downloadable Game of the Year in association with Virgin Media — Minecraft (Mojang)
• Shooter Game of the Year in association with Turtle Beach — Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision)
• One To Watch Award in association with Shortlist — Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks)
• Innovation of the Year — Nintendo 3DS Outstanding Contribution — Sonic The Hedgehog (Sega)
• Ultimate Game of the Year in association with Alienware — Portal 2 (Valve Corporation)

How do you feel about these winners? Are they worthy? Is Portal 2 your GOTY? Is it too early to really tell what the Game of the Year even is? Sound off in the comments below, or spill your guts in our forums.

© Anthony Severino for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us

The largest user based gaming awards show in the world, the 29th annual GamesMaster Golden Joystick Awards has already won a Guinness World Record for the amount of people who have voted. 2.06 million votes later and the awards show is finally here, but who will win the coveted Ultimate Game of the Year? On top of that, there’s set to be four big surprise reveals. We’re at the show in the heart of London, and will be liveblogging the event as it happens.

The show is set to start at 2:45 BST / 9:45 EDT, watch our coverage here:

© Sebastian Moss for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

The original Syndicate was a cult classic on the PC, with a real-time tactical approach to the battlefield. Fast forward to present time and a new Syndicate game is in the works – but it might shock fans of the old games, because it is a completely different beast. I recently got to sit down with the game in Sin City and play about with the title.

Syndicate takes place in 2069, where the world is no longer governed by politicians, leaving fate up to three mega corporations known as Syndicates, who wage a never-ending war to control the market place. Each Syndicate places a chip inside the people loyal to them, allowing the people access to all the perks of their group but also allows the Syndicate all kinds of access into their lives. Your role in all of this is as Miles Kilo, a beefed up agent of Eurocorp, who is out to do what his bosses tell him, until something is sure to go wrong. The mission I played had Miles trying to retrieve a chip from a rival corporation’s worker, who decides when you reach him to kill himself, trying to seal the tech. However, as any good agent would do, Miles simply rips the chip out of the guy’s head through his ear, making for one gruesome scene.

First off, Syndicate strays away from its roots as a real-time tactics game and instead goes the route of a fast-paced action shooter. However, the game goes far deeper than just your run of the mill shooter, as players must also use an ability called breach, which will allow you to hack into enemies brain chips. In doing this, you can control enemies, making them fight for you or commit a gruesome suicide where they pull the pin of their grenade but forget to throw it. As I made my way through the demo, I quickly discovered that to win in Syndicate, you HAVE to use your breach ability, there is really no way around it. If you try to just shoot your way through the entire game, you will find yourself dying far too often, as the enemy AI in this game is smart and they will find a way to flank you. The use of these abilities are not unlimited though, so after use you must refill your adrenaline meter, which is done by killing enemies, so it is a nice balance between the two fighting styles.

Breaching is not limited to attacking measures, as you can use this ability to withdraw cover on enemies or unlock a door, with these non-combat abilities not costing you anything on your adrenaline meter. In fact, there was one battle in particular where I was able to remove cover on 4 enemies and then proceed to force one of them to suicide, then take out the rest with my gun. In one section of the game, I also had to use my breaching to hack into a door, then use my gun that can set a target and hit it with bullets no matter where you aim, to blow open the lock on another door. It is this kind of strategy on top of the shoot em up action that looks to set Syndicate apart from some of the competition.

Besides the ability to breach, your character also has an advanced chip inside of him called the Dart-6 brain chip, which allows him to slow down time and take out enemies in a precise manner or look around the room to plan his next move, as enemies can be viewed through walls or any kind of cover. This is an extremely useful mode if you catch yourself in a huge firefight or you just need a second to think, but once it has run out, you have to wait for it to refill until it can be used again, so use it wisely. I actually didn’t find myself using this feature too often, but I am sure when the fights get a bit more intense later on, this is something that will come in handy.

When I was done with my demo time, I didn’t just walk away from the station, instead I just sat there thinking to myself, this is one hell of a game. The game feels somewhat like Deus Ex but then again nothing like it. The game is a brutal, fast-paced, in your face game, full of augmented agents, brain chips, and corruption. Now, when I say brutal I mean it – the game does not shy away from getting a little blood on its controller. In fact, during one scene I was actually tasked with forcing a man to kill his partner, his mother, his dog Marley, and himself… Well actually only his partner and himself, but I think you get the point.

While many fans of the original might still be offended by the change, developer Starbreeze is confident that even those people will fall in love with the new take on this series. After my time with the demo, I am starting to see their point. Early returns are promising, as Syndicate looks to be a hit when it releases February 21st for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

The Tokyo Game Show was Sony’s to dominate, and dominate it did, basically grabbing everyone by the face and making it obvious that the Vita is a force to be reckoned with. Here, I give Sony its official TGS Report Card.

Science
A
The Vita is an amazing machine and Sony did a fine job proving it. Shuhei Yoshida got on stage and was like, “Oh hey by the way check out Resistance: Burning Skies cause I’m gonna play it, all the while showing you the social interaction features that Trophy whores around the world are gonna go gaga over.” As if he couldn’t put enough saliva on the show floor, he continued, “So, you biznatches wanna see me play Killzone 3 on this bad boy?” and went on to do so. The Augmented Reality (AR) demonstration was insane; I’d heard of the concept but hadn’t yet seen it in action. During the demonstration and the Sony Keynote, I thought homeboy was gonna kick a field goal right from the stage and then say “Yeah I just did that because like, I can.” Bravo.

Math
F
What was Sony’s most important point to make at the show? That the Vita is something worth buying — that it’s the handheld gaming device to own. What’s the best way to prove that? Well, stage presentations are good, but what you really wanna do is create a batch of loyal believers; it’s the same as starting a new religion, really (with which I may or may not have experience >_>). When someone has a positive personal experience with a product (or deity), they’re gonna try to rally others to it, they’re going to defend it when necessary, and they’re probably going to support it with their time and money. It’s a no brainer that three short months before release, Sony would want to use Japan’s biggest game show as a golden opportunity to get that bugger into as many hands as possible. With Microsoft’s small presence in Japan’s gaming world shrinking even smaller and Nintendo skipping the show, Sony had the chance to make Vita the only game in town…but it dropped the ball.

Lines to play any Vita game were going to take you an hour to get through, whether you were the one and only person wanting to play that game or one of the 500 waiting to play Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Having some long lines is understandable, but making your short lines into long lines felt like a dick move. The way Sony was running its Vita demos was putting everyone through a retard test first, making sure they knew how to handle the new device. People were plucked from the various lines 10 at a time to compete in some touchscreen games, two people for each Vita unit. After that, they were passed along to the real lines for their games of choice. While this was necessary once, maybe even twice, the process could have really been sped up if there was some kind of stamp or card you could get that said “Hey, I’ve been through this, can I just cut to the actual line?”

After that, hey, how about adding some more Vitas? Looking at the show floor, the low amount of Vita units present was really disappointing. You gotta get more people playing more games, and having a good time doing so; that’s just basic marketing. The press-only days were strenuous for anyone that wanted to play more than one Vita game. On the first press day of the show, I played Uncharted and Disgaea 3 on Vita and then I was basically done. I did have time to squeeze in another more Vita games, but the lines were killing me. In talking with other people in those lines, I was far from alone. One told me, “My boss isn’t gonna like it but I only really have time to play two Vita games.” It’s an important system and certainly Sony’s hottest thang right now, but the company can’t expect everyone at the show to wholly ignore everything else; heck, even if the attendees did ignore everything else, there wouldn’t be nearly enough Vitas to placate them. The Vita supply represents a missed opportunity.

Does not play well with others

Driver’s Ed
F
In order to slightly quell the math problem above, journalists from top print and online publications all over the world were invited on a special boat ride, which promised a little bit of talkin’ with Sony and some hands-on time with the Vita. They were herded onto a bus that was to take them to the dream boat. Problem was, the bus was late to depart, then got horribly lost, causing a lot of problems. So you had all these writers stranded, sitting on a bus when they could be writing about TGS. When they got to the boat, things didn’t get any better. For all that hoo-ha, Sony only brought one Vita per every 10 attendees to play (60 people, six Vitas to be exact). I wasn’t on the “lose cruise” myself, but in talking with three people that went and asking about their experiences with the Vita, their answers were:
“I didn’t get to play anything,” “I enjoyed Sound Shapes, but only got to play for four minutes,” and, “By the time it was my turn I didn’t care anymore.” Yes, these kinds of quotes are what I fill my little notebook with.

Physical Education
C
Those Vita lines should have had some sort of management going around and giving shoulder rubs to those of us who had to carry backpacks around. Speaking of getting physical, where the heck was Move? The hyped up debut of a product one year only to see it fade far, far into the background the next is not a way to build confidence among your user base.

Art
A
Some of the most artistic games of the whole damn show were PS3 exclusives. The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection is now on shelves, a remastered version of two classics, among very few examples of “games as art.” Are games art? If so, these are two prime examples, and you could read the joy on the faces of those that played ICO and SotC. Fun story, my wife’s pretty darn good at SotC in particular and got farther in the timed demo than anyone else who’d played the game at the show; the booth attendants were educated on how to find and defeat the first colossi and that was it, so when she started fighting the second one, her chaperone’s awe was visible.

The other area where Sony gets good marks in Art class is having a PS3 exclusive that paints a pretty picture: Ni no Kuni. Talk about a great-looking game, this is atmospherically one of the most impressive RPGs of the generation. Cumulatively over two shows, I’ve spent 40 minutes with it, but in that time it’s shown me everything: an overworld that’s genuinely fun to explore, towns full of wonder, likeable characters, entertaining battles, and of course, top-notch visuals courtesy of Studio Ghibli. Tales of Xillia, with its special system bundle, helped shift over 60,000 PS3s in its first week of Japanese shelf time, so props to Sony for allowing a similar opportunity to Level-5 with its own Ni no Kuni bundle, hitting Japan in November.

History
B
With all the flash of the Vita, I forgot all about that network down…um, the credit…ah…credit score? Credit report? Network security…br…something about the beach? Beach? I can’t even remember anymore because Resistance: Burning Skies and handheld Killzone acted like the flashy thing from Men in Black, wiping the memories of everyone at the show and convincing us instead to focus on things like the Vita, its 26 launch games, its Augmented Reality, and boatload of social abilities. The strong presence of PS3 games everywhere in both shared and exclusive form, the continued flow of strong PSP software, practically rewrote history.

Final Grade: C+
Sony did a lot of things right with its stage presentation, its show of great third-party support for PS3 and Vita, and its demonstration of what the next Sony handheld can really do. There were some definite flubs, however, as not nearly enough gamers were able to get their hands on a Vita, and those who did could only sample a very limited number of its highly touted games. This wasn’t just a popularity problem, it was largely a supply problem. You gotta bring all your guns to the big show like that. Lack of competition helped Sony come away the clear star of the show, so in the end, a little luck went a long way for PlayStation.

© Knifefight for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Aside from making itself a name for its intense gameplay, Battlefield 3 is aiming to reach out to the those who also enjoy the finer things in life. If you’re the type who enjoys the up-kick musical beats while brandishing DICE’s digital arsenal, then they’ve got a spot reserved just for you with their latest event.

As of late, Battlefield 3 has been successfully using the social media website Facebook as a PR wagon to help spread the word of their IP and to cater to their growing followers with the latest news. To further garner their fans, DICE will be kicking off a display of their musical talent by hosting a full Battlefield 3 concert at Kansas State University on October 5th at 10PM – the first stop of many on their cross-country tour.

What’s that? Don’t have bus ticket to Kansas, you say? Not a problem – DICE will also be hosting the concert via live-streaming on their Facebook page. And the best part about that is that it’s free! If you have a Facebook account, click here to book your RSVP and convince your friends to tune in as well.

Start planning to take that much needed break from their online beta, and rest your ears from the bangs and bullets to some symphonic feng shui. Then get locked and loaded with your Battlefield 3 preorder to ensure that you won’t miss a beat when the battlefield erupts this October 25th.

© Razor for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Goichi Suda is a busy man these days, working on titles like Lollipop Chainsaw and Black Knight Sword, but while the ideas mostly come from him, his role with each game varies depending on the project. At the Tokyo Game Show, Suda explained his many different roles at the studio.

Suda told 1UP that for Lollipop Chainsaw, the idea was his and he is the executive director for the game. With Diabolical Pitch and Black Knight Sword, he came up with the idea but turned the games over to different teams, but stays around to offer as much feedback as possible. Sine Mora on the other hand, was an idea by Digital Reality that Suda also offers feedback for.

Suda had the following to say:

Black Knight Story’s original concept is reflected pretty heavily [in the final game]. I had this vision where the main character is a guy who hangs himself trying to die, but he can’t die and he actually gets possessed by this spiritual thing. So I actually wanted him to explore the world to find the three rarest foods in the world, but that doesn’t happen in the game. That was resisted strongly by the director…so that didn’t happen, but other than that, it’s pretty close to the original concept.

Diabolical Pitch, I think it’s kept pretty close to the original idea. You know Randy Johnson, right? I really like him. I originally wanted Randy Johnson to do the motion capture, and I also wanted to put this pitching style that [a legendary Japanese pitcher] had, but that didn’t really happen. But other than that, I think we’re pretty close to the original concept.

Grasshopper currently houses 120 employees and, while they may not wear the amount of hats that Suda does, they are all very important to the success of the developer’s games.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

The Tokyo Game Show has wrapped up the show and closed its doors, but not before welcoming in a record number of visitors to the event. In fact, this four day game show hosted 222,668 visitors in a time frame from Thursday to Sunday, according to organizer CESA.

The 222,668 is a nice bump up from last year’s 207,647 and an even bigger increase from 2009, which only saw 185,030 people stop by. The show was so good, that the first public day of the event, which was 9/17, broke a single-day record for the event. The full rundown of the attendance per day can be found below:

• 9/15: 25,631
• 9/16: 27,042
• 9/17: 86,251
• 9/18: 83,744

This high attendance should do Sony wonders with sales of the PlayStation Vita, which clearly was the star of the show this year. Sony had multiple announcements for the device, from 100 titles in the launch window to Final Fantasy X HD.

In preparation for possibly even better numbers next year, organizer CESA has announced that the show will be held from September 20th to September 23rd next year, so start saving your money now.

[Via]

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

Following the news today that Level-5 would be bringing Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joou over to North America, we now have found a lot of off-screen footage of the game from this year’s Tokyo Game Show. In the footage, we get a good look at the world map, combat, towns, shops, and just how beautiful all the details of this game are.

The first video gives you a very good look at the extremely artistic and spacious world map that players will be able to traverse in the game.

The next two videos come by way of website Ruliweb, and then from Gematsu, with bot videos showing all kinds of gameplay from Ni no Kuni, including towns, shops, battles, and the world map.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ni no Kuni is a collaboration between Level-5 and Studio Ghibli, and is currently on schedule to release in Japan on November 17th and in North America early 2012.

© Cameron Teague for PlayStation LifeStyle, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us