If I remember right, I predicted on a previous Podcast that the 3DS would launch at 249.99, because America would never pay 299.99 for a handheld system.
Our friends at Engadget released their information from the dual press conference Nintendo held this morning in Amsterdam and New York. The system will launch on March 27th, 2011 at the price of 249.99 in the United States. According to the press release the game selection during the launch window (March 27th, til about the first week of June.) will include 30+ titles including:

During the launch window (between the March 27 launch date and the E3 Expo in early June) more than 30 games will be available to Nintendo 3DS owners. These include Nintendo-created games like Pilotwings Resort™, which has players soaring acrobatically over iconic Wuhu Island; nintendogs™ + cats, a new version of the Nintendo DS classic with a feline enhancement; and Steel Diver™, a side-scrolling submarine adventure that gives the illusion that the player is peering into an aquarium. Other Nintendo 3DS games in the works include The Legend of Zelda™: Ocarina of Time™ 3D, Star Fox 64™ 3D, Kid Icarus™: Uprising and new installments in the Mario Kart™, Animal Crossing™ and Paper Mario™ series.

Nintendo 3DS also enjoys some of the strongest third-party support of any system launch. A partial list of titles coming soon to Nintendo 3DS includes Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked from Atlus; Super Street Fighter® IV 3D Edition and Resident Evil®: The Mercenaries 3D from Capcom; Madden NFL Football from EA SPORTS; The Sims™ 3 from Electronic Arts; Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D from Konami; LEGO® Star Wars® III: The Clone Wars™ from LucasArts™; Ridge Racer® 3D and Dual Pen Sports™ from Namco Bandai Games America Inc.; Super Monkey Ball™ 3D, Thor™: God of Thunder and CRUSH™ 3D from SEGA; BUST-A-MOVE™ UNIVERSE from Square Enix, Inc.; Samurai Warriors® Chronicles and Dead or Alive® Dimensions from Tecmo Koei America Corp.; and Asphalt™ 3D, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon® Shadow Wars, Combat of Giants™: Dinosaurs 3D, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® 3D, Rayman® 3D and Rabbids® Travel in Time from Ubisoft.

I’m excited… is anybody else as pumped as I am? The thought of the eventual 3D Pokemon touches me deeply, and Street Fighter on a handheld that doesn’t drop frames?! (we hope) I’m sold times ten. Thoughts anyone?

First up, as if anyone cares, Top Spin 4 will be MOVE-compatible on the PS3. Oh, and it’s coming out March 15, 2011.

Next, once again proving the title to be completely incorrect, Final Fantasy XIII will have a direct sequel. Possibly even this year. Seriously, what’s so “final” about a game with 53,000 iterations? Apparently FFXIII-2 has been announced by Square Enix and is scheduled for 2011, making me think it’s actually been in the works a long time. To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second direct sequel in the franchise’s history.

Game Informer interviewed Bethesda about the new game engine being used for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Anyone who played Oblivion or Fallout knows the engine needed an overhaul despite the games’ being fun. It’s a pretty extensive interview and you may just want to read the whole thing. The highlights to me were drawing distance and detail; dynamic shadows, wind, and weather; and general physics. Other interesting changes will be in NPC AI. Characters actually work instead of stand in the restaurant all day, they react to you walking into their house in the middle of the night, and a mission provider that you kill may be replaced by his brother (who will still get you the mission but might also hold a grudge). It seems they’ve made the entire game and its world far more dynamic, which is saying a lot.

Arguably the biggest news I’ve got today is about Valve, Portal 2, and PS3 connectivity to Steam. I don’t use Steam since I play almost exclusively on PS3 but I have a lot of respect for what Valve has done for the accessibility and distribution of gaming. If you play on PC you really should have a Steam account. They get great deals and their network is amazing. But today’s news follows up on the company’s promise at E3 that the PS3 version of the game would be the ultimate one. Many of us wondered at that statement and assumed it was just pandering to the audience, especially considering derogatory statements their top dogs had made in the past. Apparently, with the Portal 2 disc in your PS3, you’ll be able to link to your Steam account where you’ll be able to chat or play with your friends regardless of which system they’re using (PS3, PC, Mac). This kind of cross-platform interactivity has been a long time coming and is a welcome sight to see. In addition, your activation of the PS3 version will also unlock a PC or Mac copy for download in your Steam account – another welcome announcement considering the higher price point for the console version. This game was headed straight to the top of my GameQ, but with this information I may be buying it in April instead.

Let’s face it, this week is going to break a lot of piggy banks but if you work it right it could pay dividends down the road. If you don’t already know why, let me inform you:

If you’re reading this on Monday you should hurry and place your “preorder” for Mass Effect 2 on Amazon because it’ll net you a $20 promo credit on their site. Considering everything they sell, that’s practically $20 cash back just for buying one of the hottest games of 2010. You could do worse. Beyond that, I don’t think I actually need to tell you anything about this game. If your XBox friends haven’t ruthlessly shamed you for not playing it yet then it means you don’t have XBox friends.

The next reason you are now broke? Well that would be LittleBigPlanet 2. Not everyone loved the first one like I did (even though I just. can’t. kill. the final. boss!) but this should be even better. I seriously think I might need this game just for the amazing things that will be done with user-created content. I’ve already seen screens of people remaking classic games that should be very fun. Anyone want to place bets on how long it takes for a user-created version of Angry Birds in Sack physics?

So you’ve spent $60 on Mass Effect, plus $80 on LBP2 (because you know you want that Sackboy plush doll and the book ends), do you really want to drop another $60 on Mindjack? Don’t look at me, I can’t answer that. I’ve heard good things, but it’s a whole new IP with a whole new concept and I’m not going to tell anyone to drop that much cash on such an unproven game. But, if you think you’ll be spending that money sooner or later, you might as well do it now because you can get another $10 video game credit at Amazon. Add that to the $20 you get for ME2 and you’re well on your way to buying another one of the AAA titles coming this year, possibly as early as next week when you get the much-anticipated Dead Space 2.

Happy gaming, everyone.

Welcome back to the eleventh week of Convention Sketches!

We feature a convention sketch here every week.  We’ve got a whole pile of our own, but we want to see yours, too. Email us convention sketches you want to show off and let us know what website you’d like credited for it.  (bigshinyrobot(at)gmail.com)

This week we feature Andrew Hou from Udon doing Fei Long from Street Fighter.

The holiday lull has ended and new games are being released again. There aren’t many this week, but what there is should excite you.

Venetica from Deck13 is out today. It’s been available in the UK since November. I honestly don’t know much about this title but it has an interesting premise. It’s a fantasy RPG. The player controls Scarlett, the daughter of Death, in the 16th Century. The current Death is slated to be replaced, but the chosen successor is hell-bent on destroying the world and you have to stop him. Welcome to the GameQ Venetica.

The only other PS3 release this week is actually very big news. Androidika and Shazbot have already written about their experiences with the beta for DC Universe Online and the final product is out tomorrow. Geeks everywhere will just fall off the face of the world for a while as they will be playing this non-stop. I’d love to try it out, but I am much too afraid of the addiction it will create.

And that’s it. Only two games to get us started on 2011 but that’s okay. There are still plenty of greats from last year that you haven’t played and we’re just whetting our appetites on what should be an amazing year of games, especially this fall.

I just did one of these on Friday but a lot happened over the weekend and I wanted to update everyone on all that I’ve heard.

First, Rockstar has patched Red Dead Redemption’s main game and the Undead Nightmare expansion (DLC or disc-based) on XBox360 and PS3. If you’ve stopped playing because of trouble with your game freezing while playing Liar’s Dice or had a few Achievements/Trophies glitch on you then now would be a good time to get back to it. There’s actually a whole laundry list of fixes but those seem to be the big pieces.

If you haven’t pre-ordered Dragon Age II yet you only have until tomorrow to lock in your free upgrade to the Signature Edition. Apparently that upgrade will also include a DLC episode worth about $7.00, The Exiled Prince. If you’re buying this game anyway, do yourself a favor and get it ordered now. GameStop does it for just $5 down and Amazon lets you order now but doesn’t charge you until it ships.

It’s starting to seem like every VGQH gets news about Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. This time, it’s more leaks. Now Gamer had a screenshot of the game up for a little while but it has been pulled. That screenshot seems to confirm Akuma’s presence in the game, and that Spider-Man can be almost completely hidden behind MODOK.

Do you like baseball games? Do you think you could pitch a perfect game one? Want to prove it for a cool million? Here’s your chance. Major League Baseball 2K11 from 2K Sports is available on March 8, 2011, which will give you a few weeks to practice before their contest begins. Starting on April 1, MLB’s opening day, the first person to pitch a verified perfect game wins $1,000,000.

As if you haven’t already lost way too many potentially productive hours playing Fallout: New Vegas, it seems there is more DLC coming. ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, has recently trademarked three new titles: Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road, and Old World Blues. While I can’t confirm that these are definitely for New Vegas DLC it does thematically match the existing DLC title, Dead Money. Also, people who look way too deep into their game files have seen stuff labeled Honest Hearts already included. To the best of my knowledge all of this DLC is still exclusive to the PC and 360 versions, at least temporarily. It’s a safe bet that with at least four episodes available we’ll see a game of the year edition on PS3 eventually.

While nothing so appealing as the recent Tomb Raider HD announcement, there are a few noteworthy items in gaming today.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood has added a free map for online multiplayer, “Rome at Dusk.” Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like: The Rome Map, at dusk. Playing at night can be a game changer. Your attire choice is much more important and it makes the rooftop strategy less obvious.

Despite the full roster being leaked on Twitter some time ago, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is still slowly releasing information via trailers just like nothing is wrong. That’s okay in my book though, because the latest announcement has two awesome additions. From the X-Men, Phoenix has arrived. Better yet, Metro City Mayor Mike Haggar, formerly of Saturday Night Slam Masters, is wrestling his way into battle with our Marvel favorites. Sorry everybody, but I just have to gush. Haggar is such an awesomely brilliant character and Final Fight sucked up way too many of my quarters at Peter Piper Pizza when I was a kid. Hopefully Galactus and Taskmaster haven’t kidnapped his daughter and he’s just fighting for the sheer joy of it.
Do you remember Bionic Commando? Not the new one that sucked, but the awesome old one from the NES-era (this might actually be the first video game I ever beat). Even if you don’t remember the original you should know about Bionic Commando: Rearmed, the downloadable HD remake from 2008. Why am I asking? Because FatShark has been developing Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2 and it just got a release date: February 1st. I’m surprised they waited this long to announce it if it’s coming so quickly. It will be $14.99 on PSN (and whatever number of points is equivalent on XBLA). Also, you can actually jump now. The retro part of my brain hates it, but the sensible part of me is overjoyed.

If you watched the VGAs and saw the announcement of SSX Deadly Descents you probably thought to yourself, “What the hell are they doing to this once awesome snowboarding franchise?” If you’re a fan, it gets worse. The game sounds pretty epic: 17 real world regions, 70 peaks, special danger conditions for each track, and drops so extreme you might actually die. Wait a minute. Die? In SSX? That’s just stupid. Actually, maybe it’s cool. No, definitely stupid. What’s my beef with what sounds like a farily cool extreme snowboarding title inspired by modern combat games? This is not SSX! It sounds awesome and I want to play it, but make it a new IP. SSX is cartoony, completely nuts, and very arcade-y. This is something else entirely, but not necessarily something bad.

Okay, so this was as much editorial babbling from me as it was gaming news. Sorry. There’s still some very cool information. Now if I can just get Capcom and EA to work together so I can play as Haggar in the not-SSX snowboarding game I’ll be forever satisfied. <==Not a true statement.

Crystal Dynamics wasn’t kidding when they said they were refreshing the Tomb Raider franchise. Most gamers have heard about the franchise reboot that’s in development, but just announced today is an HD repackage of Legend, Anniversary (itself a remake of the original game), and Underworld for PS3. While Underworld was originally released on the PS3 in November 2008, Legend and Anniversary (2006 and 2007, respectively) are hitting this generation of Sony’s console for the first time.

In addition to the Tomb Raider Trilogy (as it’s being called) they will also drop a pack of themes for your PS3, HOME items (including a Lara Croft outfit for your female avatar), and a series of “Making of…” videos. It’s also exciting that each title will presumably have its own set of trophies. No fan of the series will be skipping this package.

Crystal Dynamics’ studio head, Darrell Gallagher has said:

We’re really excited to be able to offer gamers the chance to play both Legend and Anniversary remastered in high definition on the PlayStation®3. These are two titles we are extremely proud to have created.

These remastered packages of classic games from prior console generations are becoming very popular. The God of War and Sly Cooper series both got the treatment last year and the Team ICO collection is scheduled for Spring 2011. What classic game series would you like to see get the HD treatment next? Personally, I’m thinking the PS2 era GTAs, maybe with unlockable versions of the PS1 games included.