ALT+F4: Skewed Prices, Expanding Everquests, and more!

Ah, Monday, never really a messenger of exciting news on the gaming front. However, there are a few tidbits rolling over from the weekend. Epic games launches a new division in Korea, which is sure to help bring into existence more of what I love, UE3 MMOs. Everquest I and II both having expansions looming on the horizon, although not too much is known at this point. The Obsidian developed Aliens RPG quietly fades into the void, and Trine starts the controversy rolling with wildly differing price points for various platforms and regions. All of this can be found in ALT+F4 today, so check it out after the jump.

-Epic Games Korea Opens

Today Epic Games has announced the opening of their shiny new Korean division. It looks like the primary purpose of this extension is going to be serving their Unreal Engine licensees in South Korea. While there’s obviously some games over there using UE tech, such as Lineage 2 and Huxley, I’m sure we’re going to start seeing more and more of them crop up over time. Considering that they’re now going to have regionally available support I’m expecting we’ll start seeing quite a few other UE powered games coming out of South Korea.

Check out the press release right here.

[Source: Gameindustry.biz]

-Everquest I and II Continue the Quest, for your Money

Everquest Underfoot, announced at Fan Faire is going to be the 16th expansion for the original Everquest. The expansion is said to add 12-15 new zones to the game, judging by the art they showed it’ll primarily be focusing on subterranean environments while retaining a distinctly Everquest look to it. Underfoot will also be adding an achievement tracking system, a pre-requisite for everything now, it seems. SOE also announced that everyone attending Fan Faire is going to be able to participate in the beta, as well as receive the full expansion for free. Wahoo.

Additionally, Everquest II is also receiving an expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, the sixth expansion. The video footage they released looks very, very, green. The new environments have an apparent earthy focus. Also coming with the expansion is an achievement system, surprise! The expansion is going live in Februrary 2010, all Fain Faire attendees also getting a free copy.

If you want to hear and see all this information for yourself, check out the conference right here. I must warn you, it contains the most public speech awkwardness ever encountered in an 80+ minute long recording.

-Aliens RPG No Longer Bursting Through Chests, alternatively, “Game over,man! Game over!”

The Aliens RPG in development at Obsidian never really picked up too much steam in the hype department; hardly any details on the project were ever released. Falling in step with rumors that have recently been circulating regarding the cancellation of the game, it was confirmed in a forum post on the Obsidian boards on the 26th.

I can safely say that I’m not really stoked about this. I’m not sure Obsidian was really the right dev house to give this project to, given their relatively buggy history, but it would have been an interesting game nonetheless. I was more excited about this than either Aliens vs. Predator or Aliens: Colonial Marines so it’s sad to see if it fade into nothing without ever having really known much about it.

Check out the wonderfully sunny and uplifting news right here.

-Trine Prices Fail (to Compute)

Discussed in a previous ALT+F4, Trine is now available for pre-sale on Steam at $29.99. However, it was recently announced that it will be heading to Playstation Network at a slightly more reasonable $20. Just to add further confusion is the fact that the retail price point for the PC version is $39.99, this is also the cost for some other digital distro platforms other than Steam. Effectively, the game cost double on PC than what you can get it for on PSN, and presumably XBLA when it sees a release there. The logic behind this is beyond me.

After navigating through a three page thread in the Frozenbyte forums, it seems like they would do well to have some professional PR people handling the explanation for the prices varying so wildly. In a botched attempt to clarify why European audiences are having to pay a far higher price than the US consumers due to treating the Euro and Dollar as 1:1, we’re provided with, “I could blame our publisher, previous US president and a number of other ‘evils’ making simple, honest developer’s life such a pain …” from Frozenbyte staff member FB_Lauri, she continues with, “But I also see why it is that way, the euro price is the ‘correct’ price (we pay to our employees in euros) and the dollar price is a discount for US people so they could survive the economical crisis and maybe get usd:eur to 1:1 some very sunny day”. I’m a little concerned about this response coming from a developer.

Hopefully someone will make some sort of official announcement soon explaining away the substantial amount of confusion the pricing on Trine is starting to generate. I’ll be holding off on my purchase until someone clarifies.

Check out the incredible PR on display in this thread right here.