WOOT: Xenoblade coming to the US as GameStop exclusive!
According to a NeoGAF poster listing what appears to be a shot taken from GameStop’s database, it looks as though Monolith Soft’s Xenoblade Chronicles will arrive in the US on Wii on April 3, 2012. Furthermore, the database states it’s a GameStop exclusive.
Wow, this is HUGE news for Wii RPG fans! As much as I dislike GameStop, I’ll happily drop the cash on this title to show my support.
Mondays suck, right?
Here’s something kind of rad to help it suck just a little less - A Mega Man/Rockman toaster!
“For this project we needed to pick a cartoon/video game character and create a toaster specifically for them,” writes MacInnis. “I chose my all time favorite character, Mega Man.” Mind you, this isn’t a real working toaster — it’s a conceptual design made from “half renshape, half love.” But who are we kidding? Working or not, this is a pretty cool concept! It has “do want” written all over it.
COOL: OnLive iPad/iPhone/Android app released!
My good pal Greg (who’s a huge fan of his iPad) sent me this tip - Apparently OnLive has now released a mobile app for their cloud gaming service!
Now, you’ll be able to do the same on any “post-PC” device too. Today, OnLive has released an official OnLive player app available for free on tablets and smartphones, including Android and of course iOS.
At its core, this news means that gamers will be able to play much of OnLive’s catalog right there on the iPhone and the iPad, and OnLive’s CEO Steve Perlman tells TUAW that it will work “beautifully.” The service will take high-end PC games (like Rockstar’s LA Noire, above), and bring them in full motion to any iOS device. “So you’re taking one of the highest end games and putting it on one of the lowest end devices,” he tells us. “You can literally run this game on a phone now if you want to.”
The article goes on to describe how exactly the games can be controlled via these mobile apps:
The most fascinating solution is that OnLive has been working directly with some game developers to provide full touch interfaces for some of the titles. Rockstar is one of those developers, and the company has given its recent ’40s cop title full touch controls for OnLive’s app.
Gamers who buy LA Noire via OnLive and then play it on the app will be able to control it using special touch controls that allow them to do things like rotate objects in the game world, or poke around crime scenes with their fingers. And because the game uses OnLive’s streaming service, this will all be done with console-quality graphics, regardless of which iOS device you’re running — older devices like the iPad 1 or the iPhone 3GS will work great. Indie game Defense Grid Gold is the other launch title that will perform like this, and OnLive promises more touch interfaces are coming.
As for games that simply require buttons, you’re still covered - The OnLive app can offer you either on-screen controls or you can opt for the $50 OnLive game pad, which can connect to your device over (what I assume to be) Bluetooth.
To be brutally honest, I’m surprised OnLive has survived this long, but clearly they are on to something. One of my biggest concerns is how much bandwith the OnLive service can consume. In this day and age, you probably have either a hard or soft “cap” on your broadband service (even if your ISP isn’t advertising as such, you’ve probably got one) - and adding a streaming gaming device on top of streaming movies and other day to day internet activities a modern household will do… I can see a lot of bandwidth caps being reached.
Still, this is very cool and seems to be very forward thinking. Who knows - maybe in 5-10 years time we’ll all look back and realize OnLive was way ahead of it’s time.
