There was a Nintendo Direct today! Which means announcements upon announcements!
Events
Via: Shoryuken.com
The Evolution Championship Series (Or Evo) is the big event in the Fighting game calendar. An annually held tournament that takes place in The United States with players travelling from all around the world to compete. This year they are having eight main tournament games, seven of which have been already been announced. Unlike in previous years however one of the games is going to be picked by way of a charity donation drive, the game that receives the most donations in it’s name will get that eighth slot and all the proceeds will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Evo 2013 is being held July 12-14 at the Paris Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas.
Are you any good at Street Fighter? Can you get to Telford for the First and Second of December? Well if so you might be interested in this: Signups for the UK qualifier of the 25th Anniversary of Street Fighter Tournament have just opened here.
To help celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Street Fighter, Capcom is organizing a series of tournaments throughout the year in locations across the globe that will include over $500,000 worth of cash, non-cash prizing, and amenities. This high-stakes tournament series will culminate in a grand finals event held in San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2012 and will include players who qualify in the preliminary tournaments throughout the year. The tournament series will feature the following monumental titles from the past and present: Street Fighter X Tekken, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike Online Edition, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.
To get you interested here is a video of the EVO 2011 Super Street Fighter IV AE Final
Now if only I had the time to go to Telford and then on to California. And also was good at Street Fighter.
The Gadget Show Live, for those who haven’t been or heard of it, is named after The Gadget Show, the popular Channel 5 TV series. The exhibition has been running since 2009 (the TV series from 2004), is held at the NEC in Birmingham and plays host to many companies from technology and gaming industries and has various talks and demonstrations topped off with a live show presented by the hosts of the TV series.
The show has been expanding year on year and this year was no exception with it expanding into a further 2 halls. After the jump you will find our highlights and thoughts on the show. Continue Reading
The Consumer Electronics Show 2012 (CES) is taking place this week from 10th to 13th January 2012. Here are some of the best products/brand announcements so far:
Samsung is bringing 3 new displays:
With two monitors and a HDTV/monitor as their line-up for the show it’s certainly one for the computer users amongst us all. The two Series 7 monitors will come in a choice of 24 or 27 inches and packing WiDi and MHL gear enabling you to stream content from your computer, smartphone or tablet with the HDTV version including a built-in HDTV tuner. They’ll both launch at the same time with the HDTV version being slightly more expensive. Continue Reading
BlizzCon 2011 started today with CEO and Founder, Michael Morhaime, making some big announcements, followed by a crowd favourite, Chris Metzen.
Biggest announcements for each of Blizzard’s big franchises include the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, which was leaked several months ago but has now been made official.
With the new expansion, there will be new PvE zones and general content, along with the new race (of Pandas) which can be played by both Alliance AND Horde, the new class, Monk, and the level cap goes up to 90. There will also be a new talent system, and more PvE content that will convince you to play more out in the world, rather than sitting around cities.
Diablo III is now “on the home stretch,” said Metzen, with still no official release date, due to Blizzard’s usual process of it being released “when it’s done.” Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition includes in-game items for D3, SC2, and WoW, as well as an art book, and a very awesome 4GB Soulstone USB device.
As of now, you can purchase a World of Warcraft Annual pass – a year’s subscription that you pay for monthly, but you get some excellent goodies, including a digital version of Diablo 3 for free, access to the new WoW expansion beta, and an in-game mount: Tyrael’s Charger.
With Starcraft 2, there has been various units released for Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, but the focus this year is on the expansion, Heart of the Swarm, which continues the epic storyline with Kerrigan in the campaign, as well as new multiplayer modes that are yet to be seen.
You can still purchase a BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket to see the upcoming panels, competitions, and tournaments, and still get the Murkablo WoW in-game pet and see Foo Fighters live tomorrow night. Blizzard have also released three EPIC trailers for each game that can be found online now, including the especially epic Diablo 3 trailer, The Black Soulstone.
Akardo
Blizzard Entertainment have announced Foo Fighters as the musical guests at BlizzCon 2011.
The press release was released yesterday, announcing the headliners for the closing concert of this year’s BlizzCon on the 21-22 Oct.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl said: “We’re pretty sure that in the future, music historians will look back at BlizzCon 2011 as the unquestionable pinnacle of Foo Fighters’ long and illustrious career,” which you can’t argue with, they had Ozzy himself only two years ago.
BlizzCon first started in 2005 with only about 8000 people attending, this year’s Con is looking more like 30,000+ people, and the guests for the closing concert included Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain, a comedian, and The Offspring. Since then, it has just got bigger and bigger, with Ozzy Osbourne, and the D (Tenacious D) rocking the halls of Anaheim – just as Foo Fighters will do next month.
As of BlizzCon 2009, it was available live via internet stream and covered both days as well as exclusive interviews and discussion, this was available for a much more reasonable price of around £25, and the system is much improved as you now have choice over four halls on what to watch and when, plus it counts as a front row seat to see the closing ceremony.
This year, expect to see some Starcraft 2 updates tournaments from literally the best players around, plenty of World of Warcraft coverage, and probably most significant this year, Blizzard’s third franchise which has just gone into closed beta, the much anticipated: Diablo 3.
BlizzCon will run over two days on the 21 and 22 of October, and there are still an unallocated number of virtual tickets available from the website, which will give you great views for developer panels, competitions, tournaments, and the closing ceremony, not to mention the World of Warcraft in-game pet, Murkablo!
I apologise for the lateness of this article, the weather looked like it was going to be nice over the Easter weekend (and it was wasn’t it!) so I took a trip down to Devon. Anyway, AJ, Akardo and I all went to The Gadget Show Live at the NEC this year.
This is my take.
Continue Reading
This year’s Gadget Show Live Gaming Zone was in a whole other hall to accommodate for the extra space, as well as the food hall, but there was still plenty to see.
The part the GTN crew found most interesting was the 18+ zone, which was hidden away in a big white tent, and was also where the Duke was hiding. Inside the mysterious tent, you could not only actually get to play a small piece of Duke Nukem Forever, but you were also able to get free exclusive T-shirts and badges.
As a game, it was quite fun, but wasn’t really enough to come up with a verdict and there wasn’t really anything that you won’t have already seen on YouTube, but it was still something to play the game if just to know for sure that it’s real – and trust me, it IS real.
