In the month of January, Sony it seems grabbed a fair share of the video game news and gossip. But there was also something for RPG fans, in the form of Dragon Age: Origins and the Mass Effect franchise. The month also threw up hardware and other big news and a few rumours.
In consoles, January brought news that the Nintendo Wii topped Amazon’s best-sellers of 2009, with the Wii Remote and the Wii MotionPlus accessory following in. Also there was news that during the holiday season last year, the PS3 console sold in excess of 3.8 million units worldwide; a huge feat.
January saw Sony announce the 250 GB PS3 for Japan as part of a limited offer. The console with a larger hard disc drive will be brought to Japan this February. And while we’re still on Sony, let us remind you of the delay in the launch of the Motion Controller for the PS3. Sony revealed the controller last year, and initially it was supposed to release this spring, but its release has now been pushed back to the fall. And Sony will probably utilize this time to build up a strong portfolio of games to go along with the technology.
PC gamers will soon have resolute reason to rejoice. Razer and Sixense announced a partnership to bring a new type of motion control system to PC gaming. This technology uses an electromagnetic field to track the absolute position of the controller. This is used to track the position of the controller to an extreme level of accuracy, to within a millimeter of actual position and to within a degree of orientation.
Other big news of January 2010 includes the title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 crossing the 1 billion dollar mark. The title sold extremely well in the initial period of its launch and even went on to be the most pirated title of 2009. Also there was word that God of War III would not be the end of the franchise and that the developers plan to keep God of War going, never wanting to see the franchise ruined or polluted.
RPG fans would be delighted to find out that Mass Effect 3, the last in the ME trilogy, was in development, with the game’s story already underway. Also, the large overhanging void between the second and the third in the franchise would be filled up with some DLC. Shortly thereafter, there was news BioWare had announced the worldwide launch of Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360 and PC. In other RPG news, we heard that Dragon Age: Origins would be getting a full packaged expansion titled Awakening in March.
We end with some more Sony news. Naughty Dog President said that the PS3 exclusive Uncharted 2 could have some more objective-style co-op downloadable content in the future. This came after the developer looked at the stats and number of co-op games being played. Also, in the month of January, a rumour surfaced that Sony was planning to announce inFamous 2, Killzone 3 and Resistance 3 at the E3 this year. Killzone 2 was hugely well received while rumors of Resistance 3 have been quite rampant. And it would only seem sensible that Sony was looking to expand on the inFamous universe.