[Thanks Max! Via That Girl's Site]
Daxter plushie is incredibly adorable
[Thanks Max! Via That Girl's Site]
Daxter surpasses two million worldwide sales
The news of the PSP's holiday success just keeps on rolling in. Sony made sure everyone knew how well its consoles sold during the blitz, and now Ready At Dawn is getting in on the action as it announced that Daxter had one of its best-selling months in December, despite being on store shelves for almost two years.With the December surge, it put worldwide sales of Daxter past the two million mark, which is extremely good for any game. It's not clear, though, if that's individual sales of the game, or if Ready At Dawn is also including sales of the Daxter PSP bundle.
Either way, two million sales isn't enough for Ready At Dawn's next game, God of War: Chains of Olympus. "We can only look forward to God of War: Chains of Olympus doing even better. The bar has been set and we're just about to raise it!" That's a lofty goal, but God of War might just be the most anticipated PSP title to date, and we wouldn't be surprised if it reached that mark in its first year.
[Thanks for the tip, Merc25!]
Sony makes price drop official; adds Daxter and Syphon Filter to Greatest Hits
According to the press release, "We have always been passionate about making great entertainment accessible to everyone, and the new price for PSP, as well as the continued growth of the 'Greatest Hits' library, reflect our ongoing commitment to supporting and expanding the PSP community," said Jack Tretton, president and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment America. "We are pleased that we are able to engineer savings for the consumer at this stage of PSP's lifecycle, allowing more individuals to experience PSP for the first time. In particular, we have recently seen a steady rise in the number of teens adopting PSP as their primary handheld entertainment system, and we expect the new price will accelerate that trend."
Sony also reminds players that the future of PSP is quite bright, especially with the upcoming God of War: "Ready At Dawn couldn't be more pleased with our success bringing Daxter to the PSP platform last year, and now we have another opportunity to blow away expectations of what a developer can accomplish on a portable when Kratos hits the 'small screen' in God of War," said Didier Malenfant, co-founder and president, Ready At Dawn Studios. "PSP is an ideal platform for us to work on because we have a high level of freedom to be creative, and we can deliver gameplay experiences that rival ones you'd get from a computer entertainment system."
[Update: According to Engadget, the PSP Entertainment Pack will also receive a $30 cut, from $250 to $220.]
PSP Fan Art Fridays: Daxter
Do you want to share your PSP-related fan art? Send us an . A new piece of fan art will be shared every Friday.
Ready At Dawn has been in the news a lot lately, but most PSP gamers still love them for their work on Daxter. This week's art depicts the various qualities of our hero. Wennichelle created this work and I'm not sure I've ever seen Daxter depicted any cuter. If Daxter looks good (and he does) there's probably a reason. Wennichelle has done many Daxter fan arts prior and I actually had a difficult time picking which one I wanted to use. If you like Daxter and/or the art above, go check out Wennichelle's Deviant Art account for more. Thanks for making such great fan art Wennichelle!
Gallery: Fan Art Fridays
Ready at Dawn explains PSP's power; prepares PS2 Daxter?
Obviously, the talented team is unlocking even more of PSP's power in God of War. However, "the biggest frustration right now, in a way, is the limitation on the clock speed. We'd love to run our games at 333Mhz (we do internally just for kicks) because it does make a big difference in how much stuff you can push on the platform."
So, how does Ready at Dawn feel about being responsible for two of Sony's biggest franchises? "The truth is," Malenfant explained, "we built Ready At Dawn Studios to create original IP, but ... I don't think anyone here regrets working on two of the world's biggest franchises in the meantime."
The future is bright for this Santa Ana-based team. The single most wanted request the team receives, though, is a PS2 version of Daxter. "I think everyone here would love to do it, and it actually wouldn't be that hard because Daxter was never designed as a handheld game, we could even add a few things for the PS2 version."
[Via Gamasutra; Thanks, Joe!]
Top 5 on PSP: Action
PSP sales have been quite good the last few months and I figured there's probably a lot of new PSP owners that may not be up to speed on what great games the system has to offer. With that in mind, every day this week we'll feature a new genre and list the top 5 games (according to metareviews), so no matter what you're into, you'll have some idea of what games you should own. We start off the week with one of the most popular genres around: Action.
Top 5 Action games on PSP
- (tie) Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories/Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
- Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
- Daxter
- Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
I'm lucky enough to own and have played all of the games in this particular list and trust me, they are all incredible gaming experiences and it's all the more impressive that they're on a portable. I do have to say that I think Ratchet & Clank is better than Daxter and GTA: VCS is better than GTA:LCS, but you really can't go wrong with any of these games. What did you think about these 5 games? What action games aren't on this list that you think every PSP owner should have?
[Data Via Metacritic]
Top 100 selling games of 2006
Next Generation has the top 100 selling games for 2006 and the only PSP exclusive game on the list is Daxter coming in at number 92 with 240,000 copies sold. That sounds quite bad on paper until you realize that multi-system games make up most of the list and the vast majority had a PSP iteration (like Family Guy and NFL Street 3). So while there may not be many PSP exclusives on the list, it did undoubtedly help several titles on the list reach their respective positions. I would be very curious to see the overall year's worth of just PSP games. I also can't help but hope that this week's Ratchet & Clank fairs as well as Daxter. What PSP game that didn't make the list do you wish was a top 100 seller?
LocoRoco does some representin' in AIAS nominations
LocoRoco has been earning tons of award nominations ever since its release. The most important video game-related award of the year is handed out by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Science, and they have just unveiled their nominations for their 10th annual award. LocoRoco picked up a couple of nominations, including Outstanding Innovation in Gaming, Original Music Composition, and Children's Game of the YearDaxter picked up nominations for Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Male Character Performance, and Action/Adventure Game of the Year. Tekken: Dark Resurrection picked up a nomination for Fighting Game of the Year.
LocoRoco is the sole PSP-exclusive game to receive a nomination for Handheld Game of the Year. The Nintendo DS earned three nods with Elite Beat Agents, New Super Mario Bros., and Brain Age. Good luck to all the PSP games in the running: hopefully, one of them will pick up a win.
The full list of nominations can be found here.
[Via GameDaily]
Loco Roco leads BAFTA nominations
BAFTA's British Academy Video Games Awards, to be held on October 5th, has announced their nominations. There were two games with the most nominations: Loco Roco for the PSP and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for Xbox 360, both earning eight nominations each. The only other PSP-exclusive title to be nominated was Daxter. Read after the cut to see the categories these two games are competing in.
Ready at Dawn ready to develop another PSP game
Didier Malenfant, President of Ready at Dawn Studios, was recently interviewed by QJ.net. The team is famous for development on the technological marvel Daxter, and he had a lot of great things to say: "I think people were quite shocked to see what we pulled off on the PSP so far and our next game is already lightyears away from what Daxter achieved in terms of performance."Other interesting tidbits:
- If the PSP were running at full speed (333 MHz), Daxter would be able to hit 60 frames per second.
- The team is now providing their engine, "Ready at Dawn Engine," as a middleware solution. A lot of studios seem interested in harnassing the power of the no-load-time engine. This is a very good thing.
- The next game that the team is working on is a continuation of an already established franchise, akin to Daxter. Time to start guessing.
