In this weeks Newswire, we take a look at the Wii U price drop, Suda 51′s comments on the PS4, the SimCity DRM petition and much more. Here’s a round up of the past weeks biggest and best gaming news.
Wii U Price Drops By 25%
UK retailer ShopTo has dropped the price of the basic white Wii U console bundle by £60 – approximately 25% of it’s original listed price. It’s believed that this is mostly due to the poor sales of Nintendo’s new console which are likely to continue with the PS4 on the horizon.
The Wii U has had an uphill struggle since it’s launch late last year. According to the report from a user on NeoGaf, Wii U games only accounted for 1.6% of total software sales in the UK in January with another report from the NPD showing that a maximum of 59,000 Wii U units had been sold in North America in the same month. Will Nintendo be able to survive with these figures once Sony and Microsoft release their latest next-gen contributions?
New Borderlands 2 Character Teased At SXSW
Footage of a teaser trailer shown at SXSW has hinted at the addition of a sixth vault hunter to Gearbox Software’s popular first-person shooter, Borderlands 2. This new character is teased to be “an escaped experiment” from below Pandora with what looks like a focus on melee attacks.
Gearbox have had a hard time recently with the generally poor critical and public reception of Aliens: Colonial Marines so a new kickass vault hunter just might be what the publishers need to get some of the gaming community back on side. Will you be keeping an eye out for the new addition?
SimCity DRM Petition Reaches 60,000 Signatures
Speaking of other gaming related goodies that have had rough launches, over 60,000 gamers have now signed the Change.org petition asking for the removal of the “Always Online” DRM from SimCity and future games.
The text on the petition started by Ryan Lashley reads that “When I, And millions of other people, buy a game that has a single-player experience. We expect it to work regardless of our connectivity to the internet, or quality of our connection. EA has made this impossible, so many people with an unstable connection will not even be able to play the game in the first place, let alone anyone who wants to play on the go/with no internet connection.”
How do you feel about SimCity’s always online DRM? Will you be signing the petition, or have you already?
Suda 51 “Horny” For The PS4
The slightly eccentric CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture, Suda 51, has commented that what Sony showed of the PS4 during the PlayStation Meeting 2013 “makes me horny.” He also noted his particular excitement about the systems cloud gaming features.
The CEO is confident in the PS4s ability, stating that “I think that in the future, cloud delivery will become totally commonplace” and that “To be able to play anywhere, on any device, with shared data – this will be an alluring new feature for games.”
You can read the full feature in this translation courtesy of Edge.
Battlefield 4 GDC Reveal Teased By Invite
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It would seem that EA are planning on revealing Battlefield 4 in San Francisco at GDC later this month. An invite sent to and posted online by IGN asks them to “save the date” for March 26th, 2013.
The invites theme and style is totally consistent with that seen in Battlefield 3 so it’s pretty undeniable that this is exactly what EA will be showcasing at the closed door event. At last years GDC they revealed Medal of Honor Warfighter and Battlefield 3 Close Quarters so it seems EA are keen to keep up the trend!
That’s it for this weeks weekly newswire! Have a great gaming week and be sure to check out this weeks features.
Newswire: Wii U Price Drop, Suda 51 “Horny” For PS4 & More StickTwiddlers