Sony unveils a new PlayStation Store, THQ closes its Australian offices, and Capcom announces a classic Darkstalkers collection
While not the busiest week in gaming news, a few big stories managed to drop over the last week. Click through for the three biggest stories for the week of October 8:
A small taste of what Darksiders II has to offer before its release this month.
The company's VP has also stepped down.
THQ has been in the news a lot lately, due to its financial woes that have caused the company to completely restructure. This has resulted in everything from massive layoffs to the selling off of game properties such as the UFC license to EA and Devil’s Third by Tomonobu Itagaki’s Valhalla Studios. Well, that restructuring continues, as we’ve learned of a few more developments in the ongoing saga of this long-suffering publisher.
THQ San Diego closes its doors as part of the transaction.
During the EA press conference, the massive publisher/developer casually dropped a bomb: EA had reached a multi-year deal with the UFC to develop games based on the wildly popular MMA franchise. That’s a lot of acronyms flying around, but in all the glitz and glamor of the EA press conference it was easy for even the most astute follower of the video game industry to not ask a very important question: What happened to THQ and the Undisputed franchise?
The date just got probed.
THQ has moved the release date of the new South Park game (tentatively titled the Stick of Truth) from 2012 to 2013. It is now scheduled to release sometime in the publisher's fourth fiscal quarter of this year, which means sometime after January of 2013.
The Xbox Live Marketplace seems to leak another.
A listing for South Park: The Game became visible yesterday on the Xbox Live Marketplace thanks to its supposed release date of May 5. However, the listing didn't feature the working title, but instead the name South Park: The Stick of Truth. Complete with correspoding box art, as well as screens that match Obsidian and THQ's latest work, it's likely the two titles are one in the same.
Vigil holds the game back a couple months for polishing.
Darksiders was the definition of a sleeper hit. The 2010 release started off slow, but gradually built up steam over the course of the year, gaining an appreciative fanbase for the “Zelda for adults” approach that the game took. While it wasn’t a smash hit, it did well enough to warrant a sequel, which has been gaining hype thanks to its position as a Wii U launch title. Today we’ve learned that the game is getting a small delay, and even though it’s easy for people to speculate that it may have something to do with the recent layoffs at Vigil, the reality is much better news.
THQ shifting to a single-player focus, over 100 employees laid off.
Financial woes at THQ have brought many titles being developed for the publisher under scrutiny. While some titles have been scrapped altogether, other titles, such as the planned MMO Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium, have been “refocused” – changed to fit into their evolving new strategy of serving the hardcore gamer.
Fun, fast-paced gameplay overshadowed by an outdated matchmaking system
With addictively chaotic gameplay and intelligent map design aimed at thrusting players headfirst into the action, Nexuiz has the potential to be a great game. Based on an open-source PC game that was derived from a Quake mod, Nexuiz is heavily inspired by its illustrious gaming background. Sounds like an old-school gamer’s dream, right? Unfortunately, it’s not. While Nexuiz brings us classic gameplay from a forgotten era; it also delivers an outdated matchmaking system along with it.
