Yesterday, a new Beautiful Katamari demo released to Europe, New Zealand and Australia's XBLM (the same demo the US received back in August), but there seems to be a problem. Gold Live members don't have access to the demo, but silver members do. Oopsy.
This demo release goes in direct contrast to Microsoft's XBLM membership rule where silver subscribers get free XBLM downloads a week after gold subscribers. You know, since a gold subscription costs moola. But, we guess, Beautiful Katamari is all about the silver, snubbing the gold and does what it wants. Or someone in charge of the Marketplace flipped the wrong switch, thus locking out gold subscribers. See what you get when you pay for Xbox Live? Have you learned your lesson yet?
Posted Jan 10th 2008 10:30AM by Dustin Burg Filed under: News
Earlier this morning, Atari announced that Europeans will be getting their share of Katamari ball rolling in a few weeks when Beautiful Katamari makes its way to Europe.
Beautiful Katamari already released in both the US and Japan this past October and to be frank, we aren't exactly sure why it has taken an additional four months to come out in Europe. But that's how these things work sometimes and Europeans will get their Beautiful Katamari sometime in February, so we'll just have to deal. Though, one thing we can be sure of fellow European fanboys is that you'll never have so much fun rolling up cows, soda pop or people. Or at least we haven't, but maybe that's just how we roll.
Update: Per the ever so observant commenters below, the new DLC is only available to Asia and Japan regions, so we guess this isn't all that important. But we're still angry about the cost ... okay?
Just released some twenty-four hours ago is four brand new Beautiful Katamari downloads for you to experience and enjoy. And with any game that releases purchasable DLC to the Marketplace the same week the retail game launches, we end up feeling a bit cheated and annoyed. Because logic only tells us that the content should have been put on the retail disc, but instead the publishers wanted to make extra cash via the Marketplace. Grrr to you greedy companies, grrr to you! Ayway, we digress. The four downloadable missions include "Milky Way Constellations", "The Weaver Girl", "Shopping Spree" and "High-calorie Katamari" with each one costing 200 Microsoft points. Enjoy your new Beautiful Katamari DLC ... even if it should have been included in the game.
We're not sure how the hell it happened, but it seems like nary a week has gone by lately without at least one game that we have to buy. This week is no exception, as we finally get to sink our teeth (thumbs?) into Beautiful Katamari. Through some bizarre rending of the spacetime continuum -- portals may have been involved -- we have avoided every previous entry in the series (all 48 of them), so we're looking forward to rolling things up in our giant ball of stuff. Fear not if you're sick of Katamari though, because there are other games available too. Behold "The List."
Earlier today, Namco-Bandai made the announcement that both Beautiful Katamari and Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation have wrapped up development, went gold and are on track to make their respective release dates. Beautiful Katamari will be available on October 16th for the very beautiful price of $39.99 and Ace Combat 6 will be on retail shelves October 23rd for $59.99 or $149.99 for the flight stick collector's bundle. W00t, w00t!
So, as we see it, these two games coupled with Orange Box, Virtua Fighter 5, Guitar Hero III and Jericho (just to name a select few) should leave Xbox 360 gamers with quite the busy and expensive October. Happy Halloween gaming everyone!
We've been feeling colorful, Japanese and quirky lately so we figured we'd look up some Beautiful Katamari news and good thing for us, there is news to be had. Recently released is a brand new Japanese Beautiful Katamari trailer (viewable above) that was released for TGS and it features some gameplay, trippy visuals and a little Japanese boy narrating the action. Actually, we aren't sure what the boy is talking about and it's kind of creepy, but a good kind of creepy.
Also, Xbox360Achievements.org posted a complete list of achievements for the game and oddly enough they add up to a 1250 Gamerscore. Now, we aren't being naggy, but shouldn't the retail game's Gamerscore be capped at 1000 with an extra 250 possible via downloadable content? Unless they're including extra content in the retail version, but then again that doesn't make sense. Ah heck, it's 1250 and we don't know why. That's about it for Beautiful Katamari news, now your day will be 219% happier.
