Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year: November / December

Mark Rein – Vice President of Epic Games - 05/12/2007
Why Is Unreal Tournament 3 Slower on PlayStation 3?

December. The Christmas trees went up, the year wound down and everyone sloped off to the pub…

…everyone, that is, except for the chaps over at Activision and Vivendi. Nope, they were too busy forming a super-publisher to get up to any of that. So it was that Activision and Vivendi got together to form Activision Blizzard, soon to be the world's biggest third-party publisher.

Microsoft got around to telling us that video on demand would be coming to the Xbox 360 with a bit of help from Warner Bros. Then, on the 11th, it arrived. About bloody time...

More corporate news came our way from the Competition Commission. The acquisition of GameStation by GAME, it had provisionally decided, was OK. The two gaming retail specialists being under one umbrella is not damaging to the consumer, apparently.

But what about games? They were not forgotten. SPOnG had a chat with the ever-controversial Mark Rein, VP of Epic games, about Unreal Tournament III and found out, among other things, why the game is slower on the PS3.

Then it was back to hardware. A severe Wii drought was driving prices through the roof. Retailers were spotted selling Wii bundles, with no extra games, at prices of £300 and up. Sure, suppliers were blamed, but at the end of the day it didn't matter whose fault it was: eager-to-please parents were the ones paying the price. Of course, if they were paying 300 quid for a Wii because their brats were so demanding, they probably deserved it, but who are we to judge...

At least we had another GTA IV trailer to console ourselves with.

We were also happy to learn that Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was only using about a third of the PS3's processing power. Not, understand, because we like sloppy development. Nope, it's because we rather like Uncharted and if it's the product of just a third of the PS3s processing power, we imagine 100% of the console's processing power can produce something pretty special.

While we might have been having Wii shortages over here, out friends in America were having no such problem. In fact, we learned that in November the Wii had its best month ever in the US, topping even launch week in 2006. You'll forgive me a spot of bitterness, I’m sure.

There was a bit more Grand Theft Auto IV excitement when it started to look like the 360 was going to get previously unannounced episodic content in 2009. Alas, the gun had been thoroughly jumped. It was actually a slip of previously announced content out of 2008. Bah!

What did provide a genuine spot of pre-Chrimbo excitement was the Duke flexing his veiny (and faintly terrifying) muscles in the first showing of Duke Nukem Forever in, well... forever. As if from nowhere, a brand spanking new trailer appeared.

And then there were games... Most of the biggies had made it out by the end of November, but a few worthy of mention crept out in December. The aforementioned Uncharted was one, Tomb Raider Anniversary's Wii version was another, although it turned out to not be all it could be. Link's Crossbow Training also made it to these shores, bringing the Wii Zapper with it.

Oh, before we round out 2007 – one last thing to mention. One of SPOnG's most popular news stories of December was “Japanese Dating/Porn Games: Now In English!”. If you've been following SPOnG's review of the year, you'll know that we first published that story all the way back in April. April! Porn, it turns out, has legs. And that's what I'm going to leave you with. Have a good 2008.