While it’s been promised that Saints Row 2 will be a more lighthearted affair than Grand Theft Auto, the new “Storyline” trailer certainly doesn’t demonstrate that aspect. Instead, what you’ve got is a trailer filled with guns, violence, swearing and a stripper for good measure — in other words, a nice evening out on the town. I can’t embed the trailer here because of all those things I just mentioned, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in seeing what the story is going to be all about in Saints Row 2.

If you haven’t watched it before, now would be a good time to check out the “Activities” trailer, which pokes fun at some of the more mundane tasks you partake in when playing GTA IV.

Saints Row 2 is still on track for a release this October, after it suffered a delay in May so that they could tweak co-op (i.e. because they were blown away by GTA IV and needed more development time.)

The 2,676 people who filed claims against Rockstar in the “Hot Coffee” class action lawsuit will be splitting a monetary settlement of less than $30,000, according to the New York Times.

The contents of the settlement which Jonathan reported yesterday, stated that the customers who were offended by the sexual mini-game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would be granted anywhere from $5 to $35 each, or a revised edition of the game. Those who were “offended” had to enter a certain code to even get to the content, so if they did it was their own fault in the first place if they were offended.

Take-Two stated that the claims amount to less than $30,000 but unfortunately the company spent $1.3 million in legal fees. Add to this the $860,000 charitable donation the company agreed to and you get a bill totaling $2.19 million plus the production cost of the altered game and the distribution of it.

However, there is still the possibility, although small, that the civil lawsuit can still go to trial. The  settlement will go before Manhattan’s Federal District Court for final approval next Wednesday, so keep your eyes peeled for more details.

Via: New York Times

Still holding out for a Grand Theft Auto movie? Well, there’s just one little snag. It seems Take-Two actually cannot make a movie with the title “Grand Theft Auto.” That’s because back in 1977, Fox released a film written, directed, and starring Ron Howard by that exact name. Right now, Fox Atomic owns the rights to the title. According to a studio insider though, any sort of follow-up to that movie is highly unlikely:

“Yes, Fox owns the Corman movie. Yes, it has been one of 400 development projects for several years. But they are nowhere on the script. It has certainly not been a front-burner project.”

Furthermore, an agreement between the two companies says that Fox cannot make a game with that title, and Take-Two can’t release a movie with it either. I’m not sure if that leaves the possibility of a movie titled “GTA: Grand Theft Auto” or something open, though I kind of doubt it. Point is: this is one big hurdle a movie based on the game would have to overcome, since it’s the title that would mostly sell it to gamers.

Via Deadline Hollywood Daily

Some people might say that walking around Liberty City is a boring affair. While I wouldn’t go that far, it would be nice if you had access to the game’s excellent selection of radio stations while on foot — it would make wandering the back alleys while looking for those blasted flying rats a bit more enjoyable. That’s been a feature I’ve wanted since the third Grand Theft Auto rocked the scene. Rockstar had the feature implemented in GTA IV until fairly late in the game’s development cycle before it was yanked, MTV Multiplayer learned last week.

“Some people on the team didn’t like the music/mobile phone idea for various reasons, but they went back and forth on the idea until the very end,” Rockstar spokesperson Darlan Monterisi explained. “This is VERY common. We do it in every game we make. We still prefer the balance of music in car and the ambient world’s noise on foot, but we are constantly reviewing this stuff.”

From the sound of what he’s saying, it seems like Rockstar would consider releasing a music player through an update if there was enough interest in it. I don’t quite understand the decision to completely omit the feature; why not just give players the option to listen to the radio while on foot, even if it isn’t by default? Hopefully they keep “reviewing” this and decide to amend their decision. (And it better be free.)

The next time you boot up GTA IV for either the Xbox 360 or PS3, you should be prompted to download a new, helpful patch from Rockstar. The new patch essentially offers a number of changes and fixes that should improve the overall experience for everyone. Some of them are minor changes like more frequent leaderboard updates, while others are major fixes like eliminating game-crashing bugs. You can check out the full list of fixes below:

• Fixed an issue where players were unable to enter or exit vehicles in GTA Race.
• Fixed an issue where scripted vehicles were causing games to unexpectedly crash.
• Improved reliability and frequency of PS3™ online leaderboard updates.
• Fixed a rare hang some players encountered when moving from a Race or GTA Race lobby into gameplay.
• Fixed a hang that would occur when players were switching teams during the countdown in the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where players were able to get ridiculously high scores from Cops ‘n Crooks matches.
• Changed GTA Race and Race so that the last player remaining always receives a reward of $250.
• Fixed an issue where spectating players would prevent the game from finishing.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to spectate in Round 2 of Cops ‘n Crooks games.
• Changed countdown timer in lobby so that it no longer resets when new players join a game.
• Changed the kick option so that kicked players are no longer brought back to single player.\

Via Rockstar Social Club

While I’m always interested in seeing each month’s NPD results, what I perhaps like even more is getting to see each hardware manufacturer’s spin on the numbers. Although, really, Nintendo doesn’t need any spin with numbers like these.

Microsoft’s spin on the May numbers hones in on the number of copies GTA IV sold on Xbox 360 versus “the other platform’s version” (Why can’t they just say PlayStation 3? It’s said a number of times throughout the rest of the release) and how much money the system is generating for third party publishers.

Higher Metacritic scores and the Nielsen report that 10-26 year olds play more on 360 than either the Wii or PS3 are also featured the Microsoft press release, so there’s actually quite a bit more variety than they had last month.

Oh, and they might mention that record-breaking attach rate. Again.

Hit the break for the full spin.

Read the full article

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when you consider GTA didn’t have much time to sell in April, but it was a much closer contest for the top spots in May than you might have guessed. While the 360 version of GTA IV did take the top spot with 871.3k copies sold, Mario Kart was right on its heels with 784.4k and Wii Fit not too far behind at 687.7k. The PS3 version of GTA IV came in at number four with 442.9k and then there was a significant drop off to number five, Wii Play, which sold 294.6k copies.

Wii Play’s number is actually fairly low given the number of Wii systems that were sold in the month, but it’s quite possible that many of those Wiis were sold alongside a copy of Wii Fit, which isn’t a multiplayer-happy game like so many other games in the system’s library.

The DS and Wii also took four more spots in the top ten with Smash Bros., Guitar Hero III, and the two versions of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon coming in at numbers 6, 8, 9, and 10. Iron Man on the unkillable PlayStation 2 snuck in at number 7, no doubt thanks in large part to the movie’s great success.

May 2008 Software Sales:

1. Grand Theft Auto IV (360) – 871,300
2. Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel (Wii) – 787,400
3. Wii Fit w/ balance board (Wii) – 687,700
4. Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3) – 442,900
5. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 294,600
6. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) – 171,100
7. Iron Man (PS2) – 130,600
8. Guitar Hero III (Wii) – 116,800
9. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS) – 107,000
10. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS) – 102,000

Metal Gear Solid 4 is sure to come in highly with the June NPDs, and it’ll be difficult to overcome both Grand Theft Auto and a continued stream of Wii Fit copies. It’s definitely got a good shot at outselling them, though, and with those hard-to-come-by MGS4 bundles selling like crazy, the PS3 will be sure to see a nice bump in the first month of summer.

I thought the numbers might rise from April, when both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 had average months despite the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Clearly, that wasn’t the case; the PS3 outsold the 360 in May by a little over 20,000 units, but neither system saw a dramatic boost from April. Clearly, the people who have been holding out for the release of GTA IV either already had picked up a system of their choice or is continuing to wait. Perhaps the kids are waiting until Christmas when they’ve got some cash?

Nintendo, meanwhile, continues to run circles around the competition. The Wii sold less than April, but still was more than 450,000 units ahead of Sony or Microsoft’s best effort — better than triple the PS3 or 360. The DS was up, though, and like the Wii outsold the PS3 and 360 combined. Wow.

May 2008 Hardware Sales (April numbers in parentheses):

• Nintendo Wii – 675,100 (714,200)
• Nintendo DS – 452,600 (414,800)
• PlayStation 3 – 208,700 (187,100)
• Xbox 360 – 186,600 (188,000)
• PlayStation Portable – 182,300 (192,700)

Conjuring up images of a man with a monocle (for Jonathan, at least), Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey has criticized a recent Saints Row 2 trailer that ripped on Grand Theft Auto IV, referring to it as “pompous.”

“The trailer directly attacks Grand Theft Auto IV in game content, an unusually pompous position in our view, considering GTA IV is estimated to be the highest grossing 1st week entertainment release of all time – and is currently the highest quality scored game on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 according to Metacritic.com,” Hickey said in a note sent to clients and certain press, according to Gamasutra.

He continued, “We remain conservative on our sales expectations for Saints Row 2, in light of mediocre game previews and a delayed release in-part from quality concerns.”

That seems pretty harsh of him. The trailer (watch it here) seemed pretty tongue-in-cheek to me, and I found it absolutely hilarious. Of course, if the first game is any indication, Saints Row 2 itself will be polluted with lame, uninspired satire that’s a poor rip from the GTA games. That notwithstanding, I still believe the trailer was terrific, and I hope it’s the first of many to come.

Recently, it seems like nearly every game that comes out — whether it’s Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, or Grand Theft Auto IV — isn’t natively running at 720p. Of course, it hasn’t really mattered all that much, since the developers still managed to produce beautiful games. (That didn’t quite turn out to be the case with Haze.) According to Ted Price, however, Resistance 2 will be running at 720p and 30 frames per second.

Price, who is the CEO and president of Insomniac Games, was answering questions in a Eurogamer Q&A when he dropped that nugget. Of course, his answer was so straightforward that it’s up in the air whether he was saying that the game is locked at 30FPS and runs natively at 720p. We’ll probably have to wait until closer to the game’s release to find out for sure.

Another person asked Price about the campaign’s length, being worried with the number of shooters that don’t even last ten hours. Price said, “R2’s campaign should be as long or longer than R1. We haven’t timed it out yet but it’s shaping up to be huge,” but not before adding, “I though[t] COD4 absolutely rocked. I liked the fact that its campaign WASN’T 10-15 hours. It made for a more intense experience.”

Somehow I doubt this’ll be a 30-hour affair.