During the recent PAX convention, and later mentioned on the Playstation Blog, details were revealed of a very limited release for the upcoming Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The Fortune Hunter Edition will not be available for sale but rather will only be made available to those who win a copy through contests on the Playstation blog, the games multiplayer beta, or through Playstation Home; making it a TRUE limited edition release.
Included in this release is the game, an exact in-game replica of the Phurba Dagger artifact with a stand, an art book, and a special case autographed by “Naughty Dog”, plus codes for special downloads.
Most of you probably know at this point, but for those of you who haven’t Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will come in 3 different trims.
Regular Edition: The game in a plastic case, you know the drill. Retails in the US for the standard $60 but European buyer are stuffed paying a hefty £55.
Hardened Edition: Taking it’s name from the 2nd to hardest difficulty setting in the game, this version comes in a SteelBook case a hardbound art book titled “Behind The Lines” and a code to download the original 2003 game Call Of Duty from whatever online marketplace your console uses. Setting US gamers back $80 and £70 for those in Europe
Prestige Edition: Taking it’s name from the multiplayer ranking system of the previous modern warfare game, this edition includes everything that’s in the Hardened Edition but comes in a larger cardboard box with a set of functional Night Vision Goggles capable of seeing up ot 50ft in the dark, as well as a mannequin head stand to hold them. This at about $150 for US gamers and £120 for European gamers.
All 3 editions will arrive on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC in the US and across Europe on November 10th.
Kotaku is reporting on recently released details about the upcoming Limited Collector’s Edition of Forza Motorsport 3:
Forza 3 will cost you $60. But the Forza 3 Limited Edition will cost you $80. What’s jacking the price up by $20 get you? It doesn’t look like it gets you much at all.
Those parting with the extra cash will receive:
a 2GB USB drive and a keychain, both “specially branded” (ie they’ve got the Forza logo on them)
“Forza Motorsport VIP Membership”, which will “entitle gamers to special treatment at the game’s auction house, community storefront, and on the game’s official forums.”
5 cars, “available only through your VIP membership”
“Exclusive Collector’s Edition Car Pack”, which is five cars that have been “hand tuned and hand painted by the developers at Turn 10”
A Forza 3 dashboard theme.
So a couple of cheap trinkets, vague community perks and some in-game cars is worth $20 now? What a world we live in.
So far it has only been reported for North America and looking at the listing on GameStop’s website they seem to be claiming that they will be the exclusive re-seller for this edition. Also interesting is that they will have a pre-order bonus of an additional downloadable car, the Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro. For both brick & mortar and online shoppers pre-ordering any edition of the game.
As of now the game is priced at about $80 and scheduled for released October 27th this year. While Kotaku doesn’t seem to happy with the package’s contence I for one will be pleased as long as the case is of high quality, additional in-game content is always a sweet addition to any CE. I’m just happy that they’re going to give the US a Forza CE this time around since we all had to import it last time.
Game Informer reported yesterday on a rumor from “sources close to the game” that Batman: Arkham Asylum could be pushed back form June until sometime in holiday season.
No official word yet (which is odd) Some speculate that the delay is due to Square Enix’s recent acquisition of Eidos.
Grim_d wrote in to tell us that GAME stores in the UK received a limited number of 8cm (~3 in) Chris Redfield figurines that they will be giving away to certain pre-order customers. The lucky few received the following email:
As the UK’s leading games retailer, we’ve been able to acquire a limited number of Chris Redfield figurines – and as a thank you for preordering with GAME, YOU will be one of the lucky few receiving one!
Your FREE figurine will be despatched in a separate package to your copy of Resident Evil 5, but should arrive on the same day. And don’t forget, by preordering at GAME, you also get double reward points!
It seems that the oldschool Amega community took advantage of a chance discovery and ran with it. The result is a chemical that can dramatically restore the original color of old yellowing/browning plastics. This will be of interest to many collectors out there who are interested in restoring their old plastic-clad consoles to their original luster.
Before Street Fighter IV’s release Capcom made a special training manual available to the press as a forum of advertisement. Today Capcom has made it available as a PDF (download as zip).
This might be of interest to collectors who like to get their hands on extra goodies like this.
Valve’s Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year’s Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which “resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title’s original launch performance.” They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount. This will undoubtedly add to the speculation that game prices have risen too high for the current economic climate. G4TV ran a live blog of Newell’s presentation, providing a few more details.
Obviously dropping the price dramatically on a new game will make it seem like an overwhelming value compared to other games on the market still priced normally, chances are the “happy medium” for publishers to maximize profit is below the current market pricing but above the low point tested by Valve. How does this factor in with Collector’s Edition games though? Do you think a new game priced at 30 out of the gate would still be worth an extra 10-20 on top of that, or should the extra price for the CE shrink accordingly as well?
Not long ago rumors about a Red Xbox 360 started popping up. Kotaku recently caught a tid-bit where in an announcement to New Zealand retailers Microsoft inadvertently confirmed the console.
The email was to announce a deal whereby anyone buying a 360 console in NZ would, for a limited time, receive a free copy of Halo Wars. Good deal! Except, there’s a catch. You’ll get the game if you buy an Arcade, Pro or Elite model, but “this Halo Wars offer does not apply to the Red Xbox 360 Elite console which is exclusive to EB games.”
It would seem that this new rumored “Limited Edition” Red console will be exclusive to EB Games (now known as “Game” in the UK and “GameStop” in the US). It will be interesting to see if there is anything in particular that will make this console desirable to consumers beyond just the color. I would have to be something that’s worth more than a free copy of Halo Wars at least.
I picked up Call of Duty: World at War Limited Collector’s Edition today. I must say that it has the nicest case of any Call of Duty game released thus far (though the actual Bonuses for COD4 were much better).
Interesting though is that this game included the previously rumored Netflix/XBL Gold trial code.
