Joystiq

If you had your heart set on downloading Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment via XBLA or PSN this September, prepare to have it broken. Konami has confirmed to Joystiq a report by Eurogamer that the return of the company's classic strategy RPG franchise has been delayed until "winter."

No reason was provided for the postponement of the game, which we first caught a glimpse of earlier this year. Let's hope the developer's equipment wasn't ... wait for it ... vandalized. (That one was from the heart.)

Grasshopper Manfacture boss Goichi "Suda 51" Suda likes to do everything to the extreme, whether it's the ultra-violence of No More Heroes or -- as we now know -- playing other developers' games, specifically Criterion's Burnout Paradise. The British dev's head honcho, Alex Ward, issued a tweet revealing that Suda had recently popped by his studio (likely after the recent Nordic Game Conference) and is a "hardcore Burnout fan."

"Hardcore" may be an understatement, as Ward disclosed that server logs show Suda has played more than 700 hours of Burnout Paradise. So, there it is: Even more proof that Suda 51 knows great games and takes everything to the extreme. It may also explain why we haven't heard anything more about the horror title he's working on for EA alongside Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami.

[Via VG247]

Thanks to Silverlight, Microsoft's answer to Adobe's cross-platform Flash standard, Xbox 360 owners will soon be able to experience the thrill of high-definition interactive advertisements. Speaking to MediaPost, Microsoft's advertising business group director, Sean Alexander, touted the ability for HD ads created using the technology to run in web browsers, on mobile phones and on the fancy-schmancy, multi-touch Surface "table computer" without needing to be re-written.

The tech is to be implemented on 360 "within the year," Alexander said. Though it would likely require a minimal download, we've got the feeling MS will save its roll-out for the next major Dashboard upgrade, rumored to hit this fall. We can't wait.

[Via Edge Online]

Whilst staring longingly at Tuesday's finally released cover art for Brütal Legend, something struck us as a little ... out of the ordinary. There they were, right above the game's logo: the words "A Tim Schafer Game." (With a seriously metal "S" in Schafer, we must say.)

You see, unlike the wonderful world of film, it's a rarity that video games' creators get credit in promotional materials, let alone on their games' covers. Sure, there are exceptions, like Sid Meier, Hideo Kojima, Tom Clancy and John Madden. Oh, that's right. Those last two don't even make "their" games; they just get all the credit. For shame!

But Tim Schafer? He makes the game (in more ways than one). Although his lone "solo" work to date -- Psychonauts -- was a critical success, it unfortunately didn't set cash registers ablaze, literally or figuratively. So, why the box-front accolade then? Two likely answers. The first is the fact that EA, in its early years, was fairly unique among computer game publishers in that it prominently displayed the names of its designers on their games' boxes -- so there's precedent. The other, perhaps stronger possibility: EA knows it's got something good, and is banking on Schafer and his Double Fine crew to keep on making EA-published games with his name on them, hopefully for many years to come.

The indie, fantasy action-platformer that is FrozenByte's Trine has already impressed us during hands-on time with it. Today, SouthPeak announced that it will be publishing a PC version of the game in the US so that non-console gamers can experience its unique blend of on-the-fly object creation -- both for puzzle-solving and attacks/defense -- and side-scrolling gameplay for themselves.

Supporting three-player co-op, the game is due to hit PC, PSN and XBLA (the latter via Atlus) in late summer. PC owners don't have to wait for a taste of the game, though, as the San Francisco Examiner turned us on to the fact that a demo is available now from BigDownload. If you want a better idea of the console version's gameplay ... plug in a 360 controller and BAM!

[Thanks, theineffablebob!]

The organizer of SIGGRAPH, an annual gathering of digital visual artists, has already implied that gaming will have a larger presence at 2009's conference than in previous years; there's even going to be a keynote address by SimCity creator Will Wright. It's now been announced that a session focusing on real-time computer graphics will explore the creation of visuals for EA Sports' newly released Fight Night Round 4 and Epic Games' not-so-new (but still mightily pretty) Gears of War 2.

Titled "Big, Fast, and Cool: Making the Art for Fight Night Round 4 & Gears of War 2" (that title is neither small, quick or cool, by the way), the session is being offered for CG artists because, as SIGGRAPH 2009 real-time rendering chair Evan Hirsch says, "So much of what makes today's videogames so great are the responsive graphics and the stories that unfold during game play." It's a shame about that "during game play" bit; otherwise the entire thing could be called "The cinematics of Metal Gear Solid 4: Watch and Learn." Next year, Kojima. Next year.

According to the official programme for this year's Develop Conference (a UK soiree for game devs), the recently totally confirmed PlayStation Motion Controller will be a highlight of a keynote titled "PlayStation: Cutting Edge Technologies." Specifically, attendees are being told to "expect to hear a lot more about the new PS3 controller shown at E3, together with vision processing and advanced graphics techniques in the PS3 libraries" during a presentation by SCEE staff.

The keynote description also makes mention of "several real-world examples of such techniques as used in recent and soon to be released PS3 and PSP titles from both Sony Computer Entertainment first party and external developers," but don't take that to mean "OMG actual games using motion control;" it's referring to the aforementioned "adavanced graphics techniques," which should still be pretty ... and pretty ace. The conference runs July 14 through 16 in Brighton.

You may find this hard to believe, but removing the Call of Duty from Modern Warfare 2's title -- it's confusing some people. In fact, according to a survey conducted by GamePlan Insights -- a game tracking service offered by OTX -- and reported by Gamasutra, 50% fewer people knew about the game.

"In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game," GamePlan head Nick Williams told the site. "That is quite a remarkable statistic." Williams went on to state his revalatory belief that the massive marketing push Activision has lined up for the game (on the scale of "biggest entertainment launch of all time") should quash any consumer confusion.

Wait -- "Activision?" We've heard of an "Activision Blizzard;" are they the same company? We're only half convinced.

Choosing to title it "Schrödinger's Cat and Heisenberg's Dog: The Change from Offline to Online," former Sony Computer Entertainment Europe prez David Reeves will deliver his keynote address at Germany's Games Convention Online, which runs July 31 through August 2. The speech "will provide a view of when online sales of games overtake classic retail distribution," Reeves told Develop.

It had been (wrongly) rumored that Reeves left Sony for a gig at APB dev Realtime Worlds, but we now know the hobbies he'll be taking up in his retirement: theoretical physics, quantum mechanics and watching The Big Bang Theory. We can't wait to hear how he manages to work those topics into a talk about online games. (10 bucks says Reeves' friends submitted the keynote's title without him knowing it.)

Last December, the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) called for the development of technology to prevent stolen disc-based software from being used without being "activated" at retail, as detailed in a report by Video Business. Edge Online now reports the EMA has released results of a study it commissioned that show retail, game publisher and movie studio revenue could increase by as much as $6 billion if "benefit-denial" technology could be applied to games, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

The issue isn't piracy in this case; it's shoplifting and the current measures used to prevent such theft. EMA president and CEO believes that if technology can "eliminate barriers erected to deter shoplifting, consumers will have easier access to the products, additional retail channels will carry these products, and costs will be eliminated from the supply chain."

Much in the way that stores must activate a gift card before it can be used, the EMA's proposed system would require games and movies to be scanned at checkout before use. There really are more questions than answers at this point. Will discs sold online be pre-activated? Will every copy of a game have a unique serial number? The only immediate solution we can think of is a car wheel boot -- but, as comical as it would be, that wouldn't conform to the EMA's requirement that packaging size must be unaffected.