"This week Midway has revealed that a number of staff working out of its Austin studio are to be laid off - in what the company refers to as a strictly routine and minor action based on the completion of a project at the Texan studio.
The staff losses follow hot on the heels of Midway parting company with a pair of senior players, namely executive vice president and CFO Thomas Powell, who is moving on to another company, and also senior vice president Steve Allison, who will be stepping dow..."
It seems as though Midway Games is tired of it's financial slump and has a plan to turn it around by using it's Hollywood connections to develop movie tie-in titles during 2008.
Amazon is giving out amazing video game bundles for the next 10 days. If you buy a Playstation 3 40GB, you will also receive a Blu-ray remote control and Stranglehold Collector's Edition, free of charge! Not to mention you are still eligible for 5 free Blu-ray movies by purchasing the console. So if you don't have a PS3 and are looking for a sweet deal, here it is. Don't sleep on it.
Midway have announced that a download for 10 level Map Pack and 21 all-new multi player character skins will become available for Stanglehold on both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. In addition to this the Xbox 360 product will offer a new achievements worth 250 points available. This product will be available soon for the North American customers.
Games Releasing This Week: 10/29/07: Guitar Hero III, Battalion Wars 2, Manhunt 2, The Simpsons Game
As we continue on towards the holiday season, we see more and more games coming out trying to get a piece of the incredibly huge holiday pie.
Obviously, the highlight this week is Guitar Hero III, for Wii, PS3, PS2, 360.
Notables games this week:
Battalion Wars 2 (Wii)
Gears of War OSG (PC)
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (360, PS3, Wii, PS2)
Guitar Hero & Guitar Hero II Pack (PS2)
King of Fighters XI (PS2)
Hellgate: London (PC)
Manhunt 2 (Wii, PS2, PSP)
Naruto: Rise of a Ninj...
A few new Midway games should be coming our way in the next month! "Unreal Tournament 3", a sci-fi/military shooter, will be released for the PC and PS3 in November, followed up with a 360 version in 2008. "BlackSite: Area 51" , a military style shooter, will be released for the 360, PS3, and PC on November 5th. An "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" game: "Zombie Ninja Pro-Am" is due to be released on November 5th, only for the Playstation 2. Also, "John Woo Presents: Stranglehold" for the PS3 is going...
"Stranglehold is meant to be a sequel to Hard Boiled, a critically acclaimed masterpiece by movie critics everywhere. Its charismatic hero, Inspector Tequila is portrayed by Chow Yun Fat, star many Hong Kong action flicks. With these two talents, an interactive medium, filled with a tight story and too many bullets to count, you figure the game would be a no brainer, and for the most part, it is. But there are a few parts that keep it from being a great game."
"And this delay will only hurt sales in the long run as the game has received lukewarm reviews at best on the two platforms it has come out on so far. We are still looking to receive word from Midway about the delay, but no official word has been released yet."
Whilst the game only takes 12GB to download onto your hard-drive, actually installing the game onto your hard-drive is another matter. Taking a whooping 50GB to install on your computer, it really does take hold of your hard-drive, especially if you don't have that much space at hand. The good news (if you can call it that) is that once the installation is completed, you can remove most of the files.
"Looking at the highlighted section in the above picture (click on it for a full size window), there is a section of the .ini file where they have some stuff mentioned, like "DeathBySwing", "HardBoiledKiller" and "WinnerTakesAll". Each has a number value next to it, that looks like it could be a point tally."
"Well the demo came out today and it runs really good. Until you start to dig in and you realize that Midway is pulling a fast one on all of us. You have suspicions at first when you notice that there are not graphical options when you start playing. But good for us, the game is built on the Unreal Engine 3.0, which means we can garner a lot of info from the .ini file. And let me tell you, it really irritated me when I found what I found."
"Massive D, eh? Turning pristine environments into battle-scarred war zones
sure sounds like a whole lot of fun to GamerSquad. Lets see how the critics appraised Midways latest offering.
Check below for a cross section of review feedback and some seriously Massive D gameplay clips
"
Though the demo has been available on Xbox Live Marketplace for a few weeks or so, the full release version of Stranglehold will be available September 5, 2007 for the Xbox 360 and PC, and September 17 for the PS3 version.
The European PSN Store has been updated with a number of new additions. The exclusive Folklore playable demo is now available to download, but for a limited time only. The update also includes a number of trailers from the Games Convention in Leipzig.
Tired of shooting concrete pillars that show no ill effects? Sick of watching grenades leave room interiors all-but untouched? Frustrated by the lack or genuine firepower that developers give you in modern shooters? Sit back, put your feet up, sip a cocktail or two, and revel in the pure, undiluted destructive FUN of John Woo's Stranglehold.
Visit GamerSquad to soak up the MOST action you'll ever see in a three minute trailer. AWESOME!
"When it comes to Asian action flicks, you can bet your ass that videogame geekboys make up the vast majority of the genres Western fans; so in developing a game that picks up where John Woos kinetic classic Hard Boiled left off, Midways Stranglehold is a stroke of genius and shoo-in for chart-shattering success."
Midway Games Inc. a leading interactive entertainment publisher and develper, today announced the company's product line up for the E3 Media and Business Summit, taking place July 11 - 13 at Barker Hanger in Santa Monica, California.
This years line up is one that will get any gamer excited, and includes the following games:
Stranglehold - (PS3, XBOX 360, PC)
BlackSite: Area 51 - (PS3, XBOX 360, PC)
Unreal Tournament 3 (PC)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat (Nintendo DS)
Cruis'n (Wii)
Aqua Tee...
Joining Chow Yun-Fat will be Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns) and Randall Duk Kim (The Keymaker in The Matrix Reloaded and Dr. Crab in Memoirs of a Geisha) voicing various characters in Stranglehold. However they aren't the only stars that will be voicing various characters in the game, included in the roster for voicing are Russell Wong, Grant George, David Lodge, Lydia Look, Neil Kaplan, Stephanie Sheh, Michael Sorich, Danny Bernardo, Jin Kim, Phuoc Nguyen, Andrew ...
Midway may have aready announced an "exclusive" PS3 Collector's Edition for Stranglehold, but Xbox 360 is still getting its own special edition of the game. So how does releasing a collector's edition for 360 make the PS3 exclusive? Well, missing from the Xbox 360's bonus disc "jam-packed with extras" is the 1992 John Woo film Hard Boiled. This is going to be released on the same Blu-Ray disc as the PS3 game if you buy that version.
Xbox 360's slightly undercooked (not hard boiled) featur...
Midway Games reveals it will be including a high-definition re-release of John Woo's 1992 action film, Hard Boiled, in a special Playstation 3 collector's edition of Stranglehold. Hard Boiled will not be bundled as a bonus disc, but instead accessed in the game itself thanks to the PS3's Blu-ray media format. This makes Stranglehold the first video game (on Blu-ray media format at least) to include a full-length motion picture. The bonus will not be featured in the Xbox 360 version of the ...
"You love slow-motion to a fault, train white doves to hang around gunfights, and you own a special edition of Broken Arrow .Yeah, we know the type. You're a John Woo fanatic.
While the wait for Midway's upcoming Stranglehold seems longer than Tom Cruise's hair in Mission Impossible 2, you can shortly get your Woo-fix in a new short film contest, sponsored by Midway and Fox Interactive Media, and judged by the man himself."
![Box shot of Stranglehold [Europe]](http://i.neoseeker.com/boxshots/R2FtZXMvWGJveF8zNjAvQWN0aW9uL1Nob290ZXI=/stranglehold_frontcover_small_BJLEoKvswCHmZ7B.jpg)