Final Fantasy XIII-2

Here are some new screenshots of Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII-2 for PS3 and Xbox 360, showing the Historia Cruz system, Lightning as the Temple Guardian and various locations like Etro Shrine. The time travel element seems to share some similarities with Chrono Trigger.

Prologue: "She" fought against fate and challenged false gods. That battle changed the world. The power of the gods vanished, Cocoon fell from the sky, and mankind is living in peace. Now free from the tyranny of the gods, a new era has begun. However, "She" is no more and vanished after the battle. Everyone gave up hope and believes "She" is dead, except Serah Farron.
Three years passed. Suddenly a meteorite crashes and the calm days come to a close. A distortion from space-time opened a portal to another dimension. Invaders rushed out and Serah is saved by a young stranger called Noel. He tells Serah he’s a hunter from the future who drifted through time. The two set of on a journey through space-time because "She" is waiting.
"She" is Lightning and now resides in a world with death and disorder rule. Lightning once saved her beloved little sister, now she protects a goddess’ temple. With a weapon in hand, Serah moves forward hoping to find her older sister.

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Dragon Quest X

Jump magazine revealed additional details on Dragon Quest X, players can create a character from one of the 5 races: Ogre, Elf, Dwarf, Pukuripo and Wedi. There is a 6th race in the game, it is human but it seems something has happened and human race became extinct.

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Tales of Xillia

Bandai Namco announced they have shipped 500,000 units of Tales of Xillia for PS3 in Japan on 09/08/2011, and an additional 100,000 units were shipped the next day, pushing the total shipment to 600k in 2 days, also marks this as one of the most successful Tales title in recent years.

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Crysis X360/PS3 versus PC - First Sample Of Comparison

If you’ve been following us, you’ll know that we respect and love Crytek’s first game. Contrary to most PC gamers though, we didn’t mind whether Crytek decided to port it to the consoles. Obviously, we want console gamers to experience one of the best 2007 PC games and we are – kind of – glad that Crytek is bringing this acclaimed shooter to both X360 and PS3 this October. You can check out its debut trailer – courtesy of GameTrailers - and an early comparison shot after the jump.

It’s pretty obvious from this early comparison that the console version has lower resolution textures. In fact, it looks a bit ugly. SSAO is nowhere to be found – or was toned down – and although Crytek claims that they used a new lighting system, the results of that change are not as good as we’d hoped to. Our guess is that Crytek chose a different lighting method in order to scale down the game as good as they could and not to offer better or similar visuals. Reflections are also toned down as can be easily spotted.

Now this early comparison is based on some compressed video samples but still, it gives a pretty good idea of what to be expecting. Even if we take account that Crysis X360/PS3 doesn’t show its full potential in the following video, the same can be said about Crysis’ PC version screen that is captured from a video too.

Additionally, the environments look way too empty. Crytek obviously reduced the amount of trees and bushes in order to save some resources. By reducing them though, the overall experience will be impacted negatively as… well… cutting trees and the firefights in the jungle was Crysis strongest feature. Still, for a console version, it does look good although it definitely looks dated by today’s standards. Crysis X360 is on the left whereas Crysis PC is on the right.

 

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August NPD: PS3 hardware sales

Sony has continued their trend of not officially announcing NPD hardware sales for the PlayStation 3. However, the number can be calculated based on a piece of data included in Microsoft’s response.
Microsoft’s release states that the Xbox 360 saw a “43 percent share of the overall current-generation console market” last month. Based on this statement and hardware sales for the 360 and Nintendo hardware, the PS3 moved 218,000 units in August.
In July, the console sold 148,000 units, so there’s no question that the system saw a sizable increase last month

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