News Snatch: Wii U Crysis, Death Inc, XCOM And Dead Space 3

“At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the U.S. had no Wii U left in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom,” said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata recently, “But sales are not bad, and I feel it’s selling steadily.”

Reuters notes that Nintendo’s share price was down nearly 2.1 percent on Monday at 8,980 yen and has fallen 15% since the Wii U was launched.

Oh dear, never mind Nintendo I’m sure there wil be better news to follow – let’s see what else has landed on the news desk today… hmm… what’s this? Crysis 3 won’t be heading to the Wii-U! Oh.

“There has been discussions between Nintendo and EA and Crytek, but the bottom line is that there is that there’s not enough business drive in it,” said Crytek CEO,  Cevat Yerli. “It’s a purely business decision. I’d love to see it on Wii U, but what I love to see and what gets done at the end of the day are two different things. Even so, I could initiate it but someone has to sell it, right?”

More importantly someone has to buy it, the charts seem to be rather untroubled by Wii U games at the moment. Thankfully Platinum Games (and Team Ninja) are supporting the console with Bayonetta 2 and The Wonderful 101 which can be seen in the developer’s 2013 show-reel.

Back to Team Ninja who have suggested that some reviews for DmC: Devil May Cry may not be entirely accurate. ‘Genuine review = one where the reviewer has actually played the game. Sometimes people make up reviews without actually playing the game,’ they tweeted.

Square Enix are taking names for both the PC and the PlayStation 3 beta test of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Tickle this link to sign up for the European trials.

The next series of The Walking Dead will carry over saves from the previous season, “Right now we are just starting to form the concept for season two,” said Telltale CEO, Dan Connors. “This all remains to be seen but we are definitely figuring out how to carry the saves over.”

I’ve been off work with the lurgy and took the opportunity to to buy and play The Walking Dead and to be honest I’m not all that impressed, I don’t see much difference between the game and Telltale’s previous offering, Jurassic Park, other than Jurassic Park had dinosaurs in it, was fun and didn’t make me want to slit my wrists.

Former LittleBigPlanet lead coder Jonny Hopper has gone off to set up a new team with ex-employees of Criterion and Lionhead, and their first project is entitled Death Inc. In the game you play as ‘Grim T. Livingstone: Reaper, entrepreneur, malcontent and founder of Death, Inc., the afterlife’s premier mortality outsourcing agency.’

The premise of the game is that you have to spread the bubonic plague across the green and pleasent land of England, a nice change from cartoon hedgehogs and cyborg ninjas. The game is to be released on PC and Mac and is described as ‘a free-hand strategy game with more than a hint of the Pied Piper.’ ‘We’d use Plague, Cremate, Scare but we’d probably get sued,’ they add.

A Kickstarter for the game will launch shortly, in the mean time check out some of the concept art.

The team between the rather awesome Asura’s Wrath, CyberConnect2, are working on three ‘original new works’, which presumably means no sequel for Asura. Boo!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown gets some free DLC today, 16 gaming options that were removed during development but have been re-instated for you to play.

The options are as follows:

• Damage Roulette: Weapons have a wider range of damage.*
• New Economy: Randomized council member funding.*
• Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats.*
• Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, stats increase randomly.*
• Red Fog: Combat wounds will degrade the soldier’s mission stats.
• Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot guarantees a critical hit.
• The Greater Good: Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien.
• Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete.
• Results Driven: A country offers less funding as its panic level increases.
• High Stakes: Random rewards for stopping alien abductions.
• Diminishing Returns: Increased cost of satellite construction.
• More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare.
• War Weariness: Funding goes down over time. **
• E-115: Elerium degrades over time. **
• Total Loss: Lose all soldier gear upon death. **
• Alternate Sources: The power source cost to build facilities increases dramatically. **

*Unlocked prior to completion of campaign.
** Obtainable upon completion of Impossible difficulty

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has taken to the stage at CES and said Sony will not be pulling out of the Television market despite that portion of the company losing huge amounts of money. He also said PS Vita sales are “on the low end of what we expected” but noted that the PS3 had low sales to begin with, “long term is what is important.”

The ‘Violence in video games’ debate rumbles on with this refreshingly unbiased article from The Boston Globe . They have talked to a number of parents who give fairly reasonable explanations as to why their children are playing 18 rated games, it is well worth a read.

And finally, Dead Space 3 with Kinect, because that makes it better. Allegedly.