PS3 Overstretched By Slippage

We wondered what you guys think about all of the slippage that seems to be plaguing the PS3. With so many titles slipping, some for a short while, others for a long while, is this just the beginning of the end for the ps3, or can it make the leap and get back some pride?

Sure there are some cool titles out for the PS3, but as far as cross-platform titles go, a lot of the time they're out after they've appeared on some other platforms. A few examples of what we mean: The Orange Box - Xbox 360 (OUT NOW) - PS3 version Dec 13, Stranglehold - Xbox 360 (OUT NOW) - PS3 version Nov 29, Blazing Angels 2 - Xbox 360 (OUT NOW) - ps3 version Nov 22 and the list goes on. Add to this the PS3 exclusive titles that have also slipped (SingStar being one of the latest) and things look bleak.

As if all this wasn't bad enough, there's been rumblings quite a few developers aren't happy with the difficulty level of working with the ps3 architecture and that Sony had to 'beg' third-party developers not to abandon the console. Guess that sort of tells us what we've known all along, despite the ps3 being in front with power and size, it ain't those things that matter, but what you do with them that counts. Thoughts?

Buzz! Releases Stateside - Finally!

Buzz! is pretty much the king of quiz games. It features cool buzzer controllers and has loads of games out in the series, including kids versions, sports, movies and general knowledge. As 'party' games / quiz games go, Buzz! is a classic.

So with Buzz! being so prevalent in Australia and Europe, why is it only JUST getting a release in the USA, when, let's face it, they get most games long before the rest of us. David Amor (Relentless Software Boss) thinks it may be down to US gamers being restricted to the 'den', rather than the group play of the living area.

Hmm, we're not so sure, plenty of our US readers love to play the Wii in groups--with family and friends, so really it's not like they're against socially led gameplay experiences (that would be a gross generalisation). Anyway we just thought it was strange, a game series that released in 2005 is only just getting a US release.

eGames Hits Melbourne November 16-18

Heads up Aussie readership, this is for you specifically. The successful eGames Expo is returning to Melbourne and will showcase the latest in gaming and digital entertainment. The eGames and Entertainment Expo takes place at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre from 16 – 18 November this year. This is Australia's Largest Video Games and Digital Entertainment Expo, so if you're in Melbourne or able to get there, do so.

Visitors to the Expo will be able to play unreleased and all the latest titles hitting the market over various platforms, including Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC. As well as all the gaming goodness you'll also be privy to the latest products including Media Centres, mp3 players, Portable Video Recorders (PVRs), Blu-Ray and HD DVD Players and the biggest and the best in High Definition screens. Check out all the info you can digest at the official eGames website.

Samba De Amigo Wii Detailed

Everyone's favorite Dreamcast monkey is back. Samba De Amigo is coming to a platfom made for him and his maraca shaking--the Nintendo Wii. The news broke last week or so, but now we have the official press release from SEGA with fresh details, here we are letting you know.

The Wii incarnation will utilise the Wiimote and Nunchuk controllers as the maracas. We at GirlGamers think two Wiimotes with silly maraca add-ons would have been cooler, but you can't have it all. The title is expected to release Spring 2008 and feature new songs and old favorites. We're including the full press release in the comments for your perusal, so be sure to check that out.

Animal Crossing Wii to be MMO?

More of a rumor at the moment than 'news' perse, but as we're big Animal Crossing fans here at GirlGamers we're going with the flow baby! Animal Crossing MMO, that's the rumor and not on PC obviously, but on your Wii. No 'official' word from Nintendo on this as yet, but let's think back to when they first announced this title and there was lots of chat about it being a massive online title to really show off the Wii's online capabilities.

Nothing on the Wii has even touched on all that chatter, so it will be interesting to see where this goes. Animal Crossing Wild World was a lot of fun over Nintendo WiFi and worked extremely well with up to four players, now imagine that on the Wii with even more players. Fingers crossed! You can check out out Wild World DS review HERE.

Psychonauts Wii Incoming?

It was no doubt the intention of developers Double Fine Projects to cause quite a stir as they placed the above banner on their 'projects' page at their website-and it's worked. Yes that is Raz, the goggle headed hero from Psychonauts.

So what does it all mean? Well, we could leap to the Psychonauts sequel conclusion, which let's face it, would be fantastic, but alas, it is more likely that Psychonauts is headed for the Wii. Tim Schaffer (founder of Double Fine Productions) has previously gushed about the idea of a Wii outing for Raz and gang.

Whatever the case, be it Psychonauts 2, Psychonauts Wii, Psychonauts Xbox 360 or PS3, we're just glad it's Psychonauts to be honest, as it's a fantastic title. Yes we know we didn't mention Scaffer's other project 'Brutal Legend' (Xbox 360, PS3)... oh damn, I guess we did.

Mass Effect Goes Gold

Yes ladies and gentlemen, Mass Effect has gone gold (for those not familiar with that terminology, it means the game is finished and going to press - this term is used because it is a gold master copy that is sent to the CD plant for replication).

Along with the 'gone gold' news, a limited edition has been revealed. The limited collector’s edition will be offered through participating retailers, and will include the following bonus materials: A “Mass Effect” fiction book titled “Galactic Codex: Essentials”, an additional “Mass Effect” art book titled “A Future Imagined” and a bonus DVD of exclusive “Mass Effect” background material and additional content.

Further to Mass Effect and because we're all about the female gamers, don't be fooled by the copius amounts of screenshots showing the games hero 'Commander Shepard' as a macho guy, the Commander can be male or female... very cool! The default names are John and Jane Shepard. We're looking forward to this title, here's hoping it lives up to the hype.

Battlestar Galactica Hits XBLA (Finally!)

Heads up nuggets! After dropping off DRADIS for awhile, the Battlstar Galactica XBLA title has reappeared and will hit the service in just a few days (Oct 24 to be exact). Although essentially just a mad shoot-em-up based in the re-imagined Battlestar universe, this should be a hoot for fans of the show.

We LOVE the re-imagined Battlestar here at GirlGamers Australia. If you haven't had the pleasure, go buy the mini-series and season one.. then when you realise it's some of the best sci-fi TV ever made, go buy the other seasons and hold your breath til November when 'Razor' is released, prior to the season 4 (final season) opener in January (USA).

Additional BSG Info for nuggets!:
DRADIS - Direction, RAnge, and DIStance (BSG Radar essentially)
Nugget - Pilot Trainee (ie a newbie)
Razor - TV film about Battlstar Pegasus
Minisodes - Playing in the lead up to Razor (look on youtube 'razor flashback')
PC Users - PC version of the game is released Oct 23

Stand Out Game Store - Gametraders

As female gamers the act of going into a game store can be a good, or bad experience. More often than not we've found it's the latter "is it a gift for your boyfriend?", no moron, it's a gift for myself, I like to frag! Anyway, we've come across a little Aussie gem, no we're not being paid, this is a selfless act of bigging up a game store with a difference.

We'd never heard of 'GameTraders', having moved to Queensland from bonny Scotland, but always having to walk into a game store, in we wandered, bracing for the worst. One of the guys working behind the counter looked pretty young -- here's part one of the gem bit. Never judge a book by its cover, this guy was a gent, chatty, knowledgable and an asset to the store, so was the guy working wth him.

More to this, every staff member we've dealt with in the Hypderdome Gametraders at Logan has been polite, never assuming that we're not gamers ourselves, that we're purchasing for someone else or most annoyingly that we know nothing about gaming because we're women. They're as passionate about games as we are and we think they deserve a big w00t! If you happen to be in the area, pop into the store and make a purchase, you won't be sorry you did.

Folklore Sneaks Onto Shelves

Folklore seems to be one of those games that fit the category 'Released but Unheard', at least to a certain extent. This title snuck onto Australian store shelves today, without so much as a murmer or a poster hailing its arrival. Given you get the chance to play either a male or female character, we of course nabbed it from the PS3 section of our local Gametraders (which we love and perhaps will post about shortly).

Anyway, back to Folklore, we haven't given it a look as yet, but as soon as we get the time, we'll be letting you all know whether it was worth the expenditure or not (probably in our own comments as opposed to another post). We just wanted to highlight it, since it's all very fairy hush hush around its release.

Perrin Kaplan a Fond Farewell

Ok, so we're a few days late with this as 'news', but we're not putting it up for its news value, we're putting it up because were a female gamer site, we're all about the women gamers and / or women in the games industry. Needless to say Perrin Kaplan is one of the big fish, given her role as Vice President of Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Nintendo of America.

Sadly though, that role will cease as of the end of this year, when Kaplan leaves Nintendo. What's the chance of another woman taking on the role? Worse still, what's the chance of another woman with Kaplan's finesse taking on the role--we'd guess zilch.

Perrin Kaplan always seemed so... honest, so nice and let's face it, supportive of the female gamer community. It's hard to say goodbye, but we wish Perrin all the luck with whatever project she's falls into post Nintendo.

Read Comments by us (Girl Gamers) for more on this story as it unfolds.

Simon the Sorcerer PC

Long before a certain Mr Potter waggled his wand and shouted "Expecto Patronum" there was a young wizard named Simon, who appeared in the simon the Sorcerer adventure games. The game was first released in 1993 (DOS & Amiga) and fell into the point and click category. What set Simon the Sorcerer apart was the fact it was fairly comedic and included parodies and various popular culture referencing.

Why are we reporting on an Amiga game from 1993? We're not, we're reporting on the fact Playlogic will be publishing the fourth title in the series next year; it's already out in German, but this will be the English version obviously.

So there you have it, fans of the point and click genre, be prepared for smart mouthed boy sorcerers to hit the PC sometime after Christmas. You can check out more about the game at the official site.

Wii Loved Space Channel 5

Remember 'Space Channel 5' on the Sega Dreamcast, what a superb game. There were mad characters, camp dancing and weird aliens. Don't get excited, we don't have an exclusive that it's definitely coming to the Nintendo Wii, but since Thumb Bandits podcast host Gadget Girl has been right about both Samba De Amigo and Sega Bass Fishing heading to the Nintendo Wii, we're thinking maybe she was right about Space Channel 5 as well.

Ok we're thinking and hoping, REALLY hoping she's right, because this game would be awesome on the Wii. If it does hit the Wii at some point, we hope it uses the Wiimote as a sort of dancing baton. No point in playing a dancing game, unless it has the ability to make you look like an absolute ass in front of your friends.

More Female Gamers Than Male for Wii & DS

According to notes from the Nintendo Conference a few days ago "For each household, the DS has 3.0 users, the Wii has 3.5 users. DS has a 53% female user base. Wii has a 51% female user base." Yes ladies, we're playing it big, at least on Nintendo, which poses a slight problem really, it harkens back to the yawny view that those are the only sorts of games we play--Nintendo, pretty, bright, cute and 'fun'.

Not to say it isn't great news, too long have female gamers been on the periphery. With this news, perhaps developers and publishers will take the female market more seriously than they have been. We've long known the surveys have come back with a 50 / 50 split over most gaming types, though usually it does lean slightly in favor of the male gamer, which makes this Nintendo news so amusing. Are the gaming tides a changing? Is the female gamer on the rise? And if so, where the hell is MS and Sony's marketing to that fact. Look out boys, we're a comin.

Puzzle Quest XBLA Price

We've all longed for Puzzle Quest to come to XBLA. It was just so much fun on the PSP and DS, which many of us already own. So it appears yesterday at around 80MB, a small file, other than the price! Puzzle Quest for XBLA has the rather whopping price tag of 1200points! That's around $20AUD, €16EUR and $17USD for a file of 80meg. Now we know it isn't all about the file size, this is a great game, but we were expecting it to be 800 or 900.

Here's hoping game prices on XBLA don't start to sneak up in price. The fun of XBLA was that you could replay old favorites and not have to pay through the nose for them, especially as some people already had / have the games on retro formats. Who wants to pay a fortune for what is for some, a second copy of the game they paid $70 for in the high street. All up we've now paid $90 for Puzzle Quest. Yeah I know, we didn't HAVE to buy it again, but we wanted to, so really yeah, you can argue the fault isn't with MS dropping a 1200 point 80 meg file on XBLA, but with the likability of this game over willpower to stop yourself lol.

The Simpsons Game Demo - Doh!

The Simpsons Game--a title we ladies thought looked pretty cool, then we played the demo on XBL yesterday and we sort of changed our minds. This made us wonder just how often a demo can actually damage the sales of a game? Another title this happened with recently was TimeShift (also on the Xbox 360), we were looking forward to this title, then we played the rather lacklustre demo.

Back to The Simpsons Game for a moment though--it looks fantastic, it really is just like playing the cartoon, but the demo didn't bode well for actual playability, it was all a little annoying and repetitive. Sure we'll probably still get it and we look forward to a Thumb Bandits review of the title, it's just a shame the demo, which is meant to make you want the game even more actually had the opposite effect.

Stranglehold - John Woo on 360

Every now and again a game comes out at really the wrong time and we think maybe Stranglehold is one such game. It managed to keep us engrossed enough to play it all the way through in a few days. Some great graphical touches, nice voice work and beautiful environments. Still no one on the Aus girl gamer teams friends lists are playing this title, they're all on Halo 3 (everyone yawn together lol).

Not that it will matter in a few weeks I suppose, when the friends list changes from Halo 3 to Mass Effect, at least for the non die-hards who will be playing Halo 3 until Halo 4 comes out! Anyway back to Stranglehold, cool game, not brilliant, but a lot of fun to play and some really cool gameplay moves and effects. Definitely one to look at when it hits the sales bins.

Where Are The Girl Gamers?

A little thought hit us here at Girl Gamers Aus and it was 'where are the girl gamers?'. We know you're out there, we know this because we play with you online. Where are you when launch events, like the recent Halo 3 launch went ahead. Were you getting your beauty sleep and opted to pick it up the next day? Did you send your husband / boyfriend / girlfriend / parent / other to pick it up for you? We ask this because we're girl gamers and at the Halo 3 launch we went to South of Brisbane we were two of only three women there, the third being a loyal young woman draped over her boyfriend, with about as much interest in Halo 3 as she did in cleaning sewers.

So what does this sort of female gamer turn out tell the big companies. Should we be alarmed that we are stand out customers at our local games store because we're women? Statistically speaking almost half (around 47% allegedly) of all gamers are female, so where the hell are they? In a straight relationship sense we would surmise that more often than not the 'husband' / 'boyfriend' of the pair will be the person in the game store, with their other half, whilst still a gamer, remaining pretty much invisible. Any thoughts?

Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers

Ok so this isn't a gaming post, there's little doubt that if the new imagining of the Bionic Woman (note they've dropped the 'The') is a smash hit, Jaime will be running around on the Xbox 360, PS3 and other formats sooner than we could do the 'bionic sound' we'd all make as kids.. or maybe that was just us.

Anyway why are we posting this? Well, Bionic Woman starts tonight on Australian screens. As gaming geek girls, we're obviously going to be looking forward to it, more so given 'Starbuck' Katee Sackhoff of the also re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is also in the show. We'll let y'all know what we thought tomorrow!

Pre-Launch of GirlGamers.com.au

GirlGamers.com.au is a website made by female gamers for female gamers. Sure we're all about the pink stuff, but that doesn't mean we don't want to kick a little ass in Halo, BioShock and numerous other shooter titles. You see, we're all about the gaming, not just a tiny percentage of gaming.

Girl Gamers Australia will feature Australian gaming news and worldwide info about female gamers. The site was made in association with well established female run gaming site ThumbBandits.com and ThumbBandits.com.au

Anyway we just wanted to let you know, the girl gamer is out there.