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Scenes from a Mall Console Price Wars They'll never admit it publicly of course, but the fact that both Sony and Nintendo are about to slash the price of their consoles is probably not entirely unconnected to Sega's imminent launch of the Dreamcast. In the UK, a game-less PlayStation will be dropping from £99.99 ($160) to £79.99 ($130) while the N64 will also be cutting its RRP to a copycat £79.99. Although such moves were widely expected - there were similar price cuts around this time last year – Sony has refused to change its policy on full price titles, and £34.99 ($56) or £39.99 ($64) remains the norm. "We've been at number two with a £34.99 product and at number three with a £39.99 product, so I think the pricing level is about right at the moment," says Sony's UK MD Ray Maguire in trade magazine CTW. Of course, what he fails to mention is that Platinum releases (priced at £19.99) such as Gran Turismo and Colin McRae Rally have been dominating the number one spot in recent months. So much so that only the year's very biggest titles, such as Driver and FA Premier League Stars, have any chance of beating them. Surprisingly, Nintendo has been the one to make more of an effort on the pricing front. As usual though, it's a case of too little too late. Even so, the company's second wave of £29.99 ($48) Players' Choice titles is a truly impressive line-up, featuring as it does Goldeneye 007, Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, F-Zero X and 1080° Snowboarding. Although it is unlikely that such golden oldies will attract too much attention in the coming Dreamcast-tinged months, they at least give Nintendo something to work with. Sony was counting on the release of Gran Turismo 2 to keep the spotlight on the PlayStation, but thanks to some licensing mix-ups it seems a Western release is now unlikely until November. All of this gives Sega a fairly clean run at the goal for a good few months. Let's hope they don't screw this one up. Publisher Buying Spree
VIS Interactive is one shopper that will have to go home empty handed for the moment. The Scottish would-be super publisher appear to have been foiled in its attempts to buy Southampton-based SCi, publisher of naughty racer Carmageddon and its offspring. VIS was apparently particularly interested in acquiring Carmageddon's development team (Stainless Software) but SCi now denies that any such deal was in the cards. The desire of both VIS and SCi to float themselves on the stock market is thought to have been one of the main barriers to any deal. Nevertheless, VIS CEO Chris Van Der Kuyl has repeatedly gone on record, most recently at Develop! 99, to say he intends to increase the size of his £3 million company by 500 percent. It now looks as though he'll have to go out and buy someone else to make good.
Only weeks after being bought up by Gameplay.com, British Telecom's Wireplay will at last face some genuine competition in Europe. HEAT.NET is America's biggest online game service, with 500,000 users per month, and it's now making a belated appearance across the pond. Owned by SegaSoft, of all people, the service will enjoy the un-snappy name of Europe.HEAT.NET when it is launched next month. Affinity Holdings, a City-listed UK company that already runs its own game subsidiary, will be running the show initially and already has 22 games lined up for immediate use. Among the initial line-up will be current chart toppers including profane shooter Kingpin and Aliens Vs Predator. FIFA Loves Britpop
In one of the less obvious of recent celebrity endorsements, Britpop ambassador Robbie Williams has singed on with EA to promote the inevitable FIFA 2000. Only EA's second football game of the year - so far anyway - FIFA 2000 is expected to feature the usual microscopic changes to the very well established FIFA formula. In fact, so small have the yearly changes become that the game's theme tune now seems to be the only distinguishing factor. World Cup 98 had Blur's Song 2, FIFA 99 featured the recently wedded Fat Boy Slim and his Rockafeller Skank, while current number one hit FA Premier League Stars has ATB's Til I Come. The ex-Take Thater will be contributing his double-A sided single, It's Only Us - a tune hotly tipped to be the UK Christmas number one - to the latest game. But that isn't all, young Robbie is apparently a bit of a FIFA fan and has agreed to have a digital doppelganger placed into the game itself, presumably as some sort of hidden character. Robbie has already taken a trip to see EA Canada and meet the FIFA team. According to his publicists, he spent the whole day there giving his input on the game. No doubt this was more than enough time for all the changes to the 2000 edition to be implemented. If he'd only stayed for another few hours they could have gotten the Euro 2000 version done as well. |
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News
Analysis 
Buying
up external developers remains the perennial hobby of the big publishers,
and in the last few days 
Gameplay.com
Meets HEAT.NET
