The Game Developers Choice Awards are the premier accolades for peer-recognition in the digital games industry, celebrating creativity, artistry and technological genius. Industry professionals from around the world nominate for the awards, free of charge, ensuring that the recipients reflect the community’s opinions.
Awards in thirteen categories will be given at a ceremony produced by the Think Services Game Developers Conference (GDC) and presented by Gamasutra.com and Game Developer Magazine, on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at GDC. The gala event, held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival, will be hosted in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center. For further details about the Choice Awards, visit www.gamechoiceawards.com.
At this year’s Tokyo Game Show, executives from Square Enix, Capcom, and Namco Bandai engaged in a roundtable discussion about Japan’s diminished role in the gaming industry. As a result, the publisher and many of its fellow Japanese outfits are putting a greater emphasis on the West, both in selling and developing their games there.
Square Enix recently set up a development studio in Los Angeles. Capcom is “actively pursuing friendly acquisitions and partnerships” with foreign outfits, and developing games like Dead Rising and Lost Planet with a more Western audience in mind. And today Namco Bandai established Surge, a new publishing label “dedicated to providing cutting-edge, genre-defining games that are targeted at satiating the appetite of western gamers.” Surge will produce games across a variety of genres and platforms.
Last month we learned exactly how the connectivity between the Wii and DS would work in the upcoming Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, but if the latest rumor from Quartermann in the the January issue of EGM is to be believed, Square Enix will not stop there with the new technology. Our favorite gossip master has heard that the RPG giant will be bringing Dragon Quest IX: Protectors of the Starry Sky to the Wii as well as the DS.
While Dragon Quest IX being announced for the DS rather than a home console was a big enough surprise in the first place, fans of the long-running series were even more shocked to discover that this latest entry will sport faster-paced gameplay and a surprising MMO-lite option to play with up to four friends. Assuming this multiplayer mode works similarly to the DS-and-Wii-linking Echoes of Time, it makes sense that Square would bring DQIX to the console as well.
Earlier today, Square Enix unveiled their release line-up for 2009 which included 28 titles. Unfortunately, only 7 of these titles are related to the world of Final Fantasy.
It’s great that they are releasing all three Fabula Nova Crystallis titles in the same year, but they have seemingly merged Japanese, North American and European release dates all into one, so it’s difficult to tell if any will see the light of day outside of Japan this year.
There is also no news on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers and even though Square Enix recently announced that the game hadn’t been cancelled, it seems to be stuck in development hell.
Square Enix Ltd., the publisher of Square Enix® interactive entertainment products in Europe and other PAL territories, today announces that DRAGON QUEST®: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride™ will be released across PAL territories in Spring 2009, exclusively on the Nintendo DS™ handheld system.
Following the fun and colourful path set by DRAGON QUEST: The Chapters of the Chosen™, the second instalment in the Zenithia Trilogy, DRAGON QUEST: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride now journeys onto the Nintendo DS as a high quality remake of the classic DRAGON QUEST V, packed with exciting new features and a truly genre defining story.
The German organization of game classification, USK, has assigned a rating to Persona 4 on PlayStation 2.
Its European publisher will be Square-Enix and that the game will be in English. The release date should be near the beginning of 2009.
