GamingConviction.com

Earlier today, The California Superior Court officially allowed Activision to add Electronic Arts as a defendant in its US$ 400 million countersuit against former Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella. A document was obtained by Gamasutra making some believe that a Modern Warfare 2 map pack was delayed on purpose to wait and see how good Bad Company 2 was. Gamasutra said this…

“In a document shown in Activision’s amended cross-complaint, EA’s senior director of global marketing Lincoln Hershberger sent an email titled “The Fall of IW?” to EA SVP of marketing Jeff Karp, EA LA general manager Sean Decker, EA Europe SVP Patrick Soderlund and EA Games label president Frank Gibeau. Copied in the email was Karl-Magnuss Troedsson, executive producer of the Battlefield franchise.”

Lincoln Hershberger , Senior Director of Global Marketing for EA had an e-mail that said…

“A couple months ago, I asked Vince [Zampella] to hold back their map pack [allegedly Modern Warfare 2's Stimulus Package] until after we launched (he owes me one). Given that they’ve already made a billion, he was cool with that, obviously [Activision CEO Bobby] Kotick took it as being belligerent.”

EA spokesman Jeff Brown claims that it was “obvious sarcasm”. “It’s clear from the e-mail this was a joke and they never spoke. We explained this to lawyers at Activision — who apparently don’t have much of a sense of humor.”

Sounds pretty interesting. We hope to have more information on this soon.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Major Nelson announced earlier this morning that a new mandatory dashboard update will be coming to Xbox 360. The Dashboard update will be going live today with the website update coming tomorrow. The mandatory dashboard update “re-enables the ‘Boot to Disc’ option in the Xbox 360 dashboard. After you accept the update, you’ll be able to set the option to boot to the Xbox 360 dashboard OR directly to the game you have in the tray when you power up your console. This option can be found in the System Settings.” Also included in the update is they are getting rid of the gamerzone and will change your gamercard by making it have a gray background.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Earlier today 2K Games released some more information about their upcoming tennis game Top Spin 4. They released a box art that features Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, and André Agassi. 2K also announced that the PS3 version will be Move Enabled, but the 360 version won’t be Kinect enabled, despite the the over 6 million units sold since November. When we tried to contact 2K Games about this decision. They simply replied “no further comment”.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Earlier today, Square-Enix announced that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is currently in development. The game is being directed by Motomu Toriyama and will be available for PS3 and Xbox 360. A trailer was also leaked and posted on youtube, but was quickly pulled. The game is going to be available in Japan sometime this year, and the U.S. will receive the game “next Winter”. No additional information has been received at this time.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Last week we reported about the interesting similarities between Capcom’s Maxplosion, and Twisted Pixel’s Splosion Man.  As you know, Capcom recently released a mobile platform game based of the Splosionman concept.  Capcom has confirmed that they did meet in the past with a representative of Twisted Pixel about producing the concept on consoles.

Today, Twisted Pixel CEO Mark Wilford gave us this statement:

“We won’t be bringing any charges against Capcom.  As a small independent studio, we’ve got a lot of hard work to do on making our games as awesome as possible, and don’t want to be distracted by looking into if or how we should bring a suit against a company that has inspired so many of us to make games in the first place.”

We will continue to monitor the situation, and will report if anything more develops.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Earlier this morning, we discovered that Square-Enix has trademarked more names. In addition to the story where they trademarked Final Fantasy Type-O, they have also gone out and trademarked Type-1, Type-2, and Type-3. No additional info is known about the recent Type trademarks. Rumors are floating around about the possibility of a manga, or a downloadable series. More Soon

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO said in a recent interview with USA Today, that the Xbox 360 isn’t a gaming machine, but a family entertainment center. Here’s what he had to say…

“Xbox isn’t a gaming console. Xbox is a family entertainment center. It’s a place to socialize. It’s a place to watch TV. We have Hulu coming. It’s the only system where you are the controller. Your voice, your gestures, your body.”

He also said that Kinect is going to go after the female demographic.

“You go to your average 15-year-old boy and he will say “I’ll take an Xbox.” I want that average 15-year-old girl as excited about the Kinect, and we haven’t done as good a job drawing in that broader set of demographics.”

Even parents are being targeted.

“If you want to know where is the consumer heat, the things that people want to get their hands on, it’s Xbox and Xbox Kinect. I think about my own family. My wife used to say, “No, no, that’s the machine the boys use,” and now she says, “Yeah, I want to go watch movies. Let’s go play the dance game.”

So in quick summery, Kinect is being targeted towards all demographics now.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

For those who pay attention to iPhone games, you might know that there is a game called Maxplosion, which was developed by Capcom. Those who look at screenshots can probably tell an uncanny resemblance between Maxplosion and Twisted Pixel’s ‘Splosion Man. Michael Wilford said that they “originally pitched Splosion Man to Capcom and they said no.” Capcom had this to say…

“While Twisted Pixel did have discussions with our console game team about publishing ‘Splosion Man’ on game consoles, Capcom Mobile is a different division of Capcom with separate offices and as such, had no prior knowledge of any meetings between the console game team and Twisted Pixel.”

Capcom did confirm that they did in fact, have that meeting with Twisted Pixel. As of this publishing, there has not been any kind of legal charges against Capcom

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

This week, EA DLC’s will be 50% off on Xbox Live. Below is the entire list of things on sale…

* Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening
* Dragon Age: Origins – The Golems of Amgarrak
* Dragon Age: Origins – The Darkspawn Chronicles
* Dragon Age: Origins – Witch Hunt
* Dragon Age: Origins – Leliana’s Song
* Medal of Honor – Hot Zone Pack
* Battlefield 1943
* DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue
* DeathSpank
* RISK: Factions
* Madden NFL Arcade
* Hasbro Family Game Night: Battleship
* Hasbro Family Game Night: Scrabble
* Hasbro Family Game Night: Boggle
* NHL 3 on 3 Arcade
* MicroBot
* Madden NFL 11 Max Pack
* NCAA Football 11 – NCAA Power Pack
* Tiger 11 – Favorites Course Pack
* FIFA 11 – Live Season All Leagues
* Fight Night Round 4 – Champions Pack II
* NHL 11 – 20th Anniversary Bauer Boost Pack

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction

Earlier today, there was a post on the Lords of Shadows official Facebook page from Konami saying…

“Tick tock… it’s time for another glimpse into the upcoming Castlevania: Lords of Shadow ‘Reverie’ DLC. What might Gabriel try to change with this time machine?”

This confirms that a new DLC for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is now in the works. Konami has yet to release any other details, but we’ll keep you posted.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Gaming Conviction