TGV previously reported that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the highly anticipated PSP title from Hideo Kojima, got the rare 40/40 score from the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. Now it seems this score possibly can’t be trusted.

After the score was announced, Kotaku‘s editor in Japan, Brian Ashcraft, reported that Famitsu may have a conflict of interest. Not only do they appear in the game’s in-game advertising, the president of Famitsu’s publishing company, and former editor of Famitsu, appear in magazine ads and on the website of the game. The review mentions nothing about this conflict of interest.

Further complications surfaced today, when both Konami and Famitsu contacted Kotaku Japan (who are owned by a different company, but republished the article in Japanese), disapproving of it. Konami also uninvited them from a press event about Peace Walker. Not a very professional reaction, in my opinion.

Famitsu, the biggest and most influential Japanese video game magazine, have gotten their hand on the latest installment of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, Peace Walker, and awarded it with their highest score possible.

Famitsu are notorious for only giving the 40/40 score to the very top game, so when you saw it, you would know that the game has merit. To achieve it, all 4 reviewers looking at the game have to give it a 10. Among the few titles that have gotten the famed 40 are the original Soul Calibur, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the first title to get the score since the magazines’ inception in 1986.

The scores seem to be more lax lately, though. Out of the 13 titles to have gotten the score before Peace Walker, 7 of them are from 2008 and 2009, which leads to gamers saying the score is more diluted than before.

How do you think this PSP game will play? It DOES have the full Kojima machine behind it, but is it as good as, say, Vagrant Story or MGS4, two other top-scoring games?

Here’s a type of DRM I can get behind. The japanese dating-sim Cross Days was recently released, and was of course quickly put up on various piracy sites. However, some versions of the pirated game comes with a little extra surprise.

The installer comes with a trojan that will fish out personal info from your computer, and via a survey, then it takes a screenshot of your desktop, and uploads it to a website. The only way to get the information removed? Apologizing sincerely for trying to pirate the game.

The best part? The installer said in the EULA that it would do all of these things. So next time you install something, maybe you should glance through it after all…

via TorrentFreak

You ever wanted to be manly?

So manly that you punched things so hard that they go into other dimensions?

Hell yeah, you have!

Well, Tecmo Koei’s rendition of popular manga Fist of the North Star will be seeing Japanese shores this month, but will also be released in Europe in the summer.

Needless to say, you get to punch things.

Full PR after the cut.

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In an announcement that will surprise nobody, the PSP is going strong in Japan right now – in fact, it’s currently the highest selling piece of hardware in the country.

Last week, the PSP sold over 37,000 units, with the Wii coming a close second with just 36,000 units sold. The PS3 comes in third with just over 27,000 consoles sold this week.

Full list after the break.

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According to a recent report by Nikkei, Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros. Wii has managed to sell over 10 million copies worldwide.

3 million of these sales come from Japan, with more than 4.5 million units being sold in the US, and over 3 million in Europe.

That’s a lot of copies for one singular game to sell.

Looks like Mario still has what it takes to beat the best.

The latest Japanese hardware charts have just come out, and the results are quite surprising – the PSP has topped the charts for a second week in a row.

The PSPgo, on the hand, came last, selling a stellar 2K units in the process!

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The latest Japanese software sales for October 12th – 18th, courtesy of Media-Create. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver topped this week’s charts, to the surprise of… absolutely no-one.

1. Pokemon DS (DS, Ninendo) – 165,000
2. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) – 118,000
3. Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 63,000
4. Inazuma Eleven2 DS (DS, Konami) – 60,000
5. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, Sony) – 54,000
6. Okami (Wii, Capcom) – 24,000
7. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 23,000
8. Gran Turismo (PSP, Sony) – 22,000
9. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS, Atlus) – 20,000
10. Love Plus (DS, Konami) – 19,000

Sony have announced their line-up for TGS at the end of the month, which predictably contains a large amount of games that everyone is dying to stick into their PS3s and push their buttons.

There’s no mention of The Last Guardian, but there are two unannounced games. We don’t know what they are, however, because they haven’t been announced. Obviously.

There’s also something called Golden Sword And The Vanished Fleet: Drakes Fortune, which is an enigma. Your guess is as good as ours.

You can see the list after the break.

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According to a recent report on Siliconera, Square Enix is only now “considering” the release of Dragon Quest IX outside of Japan.

Sort of. If it happens, don’t expect it until 2010 at the earliest, apparently, Company boss Yoichi Wada has stated.

Considering that Dragon Quest IX has already shipped more than 3.5 million units in Japan, you’d think a western release would be a given…

According to figures printed in the most recent issue of Famitsu, Nintendo’s DSi handheld has now sold more than 3 million units in Japan,

Nintendo hit this impressive milestone fogire on August 2: the machine is currently sitting at 3,062,920 DSi units sold in the country.

The DSi went on sale in Japan on November 1, 2008, so this number of units in this short a time is quite the impressive feat.

Oh look, the ridiculously popular handheld franchise has managed to achieve ridiculously high sales.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite PSP The Best have apparently shipped more than 3.5 million units between themselves in Japan, Capcom said in a press release today.

The game originally launched March 2008 in the country, and hit western shores earlier this month.

The Dragon Quest games have always been famously challenging titles, and according to Square Enix, Dragon Quest IX is going to be one of the most challenging yet.

“We made the games to be quite hard,” series creator Yuji Horii told Touch-DS. “It’s harder than any of the previous titles, and the enemies are also powerful… We strengthened the bosses, stuff like that.”

Dragon Quest IX is due out in Japan later this month, so expect it to hit western shores around about sometimes in… oh… 2020 or so.

Capcom has just confirmed on its official website that Lost Planet 2 will be seeing release in Japan this “winter”.

So don’t expect it until 2010 in the west, at the earliest.

Update - Alright, it was clearly an April Fools joke. Click here for a right good chronicling!

Courtesy of PS3Vault:

Our inside sources at Sony have Confirmed (via email) the follow up to the PS3 is in the works which, in itself, isn’t too surprising. However, the real shock is that the PS4 will be release in the first half of Sony’s 2010-2011 fiscal year (if you’re Japanese, anyway).

Said the first of our sources (who wishes to remAin anonymous, for obvious reasons):

“They’re definitely working on the PS4. There was a small meeting about it, saying that it would be using a newly developed chipset, codenamed ‘Spiral Rift’, alongside Cell 2, neither of which they explained in any more detail. It will release in fiscal year 2010-2011.”

Our second source (we assume neither source Knew the other would be giving us a leak) went into more detail about the date;

“The PS4 will release in the first half of Sony’s fiscal year starting 2010, using both brand new technology and advancements on the Cell engine. They did not mention backwards compatibility.”

So there you have it. Sony are working on thE PS4 and it’s releasing much earlier than you could have ever expected. This begs the question… what will happen to the PS3? Will it fade out with it’s follow-up releasing so soon or will it continue going strongly like the PS2?

Only time will tell.