It’s not surprising because of the install base of each console in Japan, but what shouldn’t be scoffed at is that each version of DMC4 had a 60% sell through. Here are the relevant numbers:

DMC4 PS3: 140k
DMC4 Xbox 360: 30k

With the price of DMC4 apparently $10/£10 cheaper on the Xbox 360, we expect this version to do very well.

In other news, Wii’s Super Smash Brothers Brawl smashes DMC4 to bits, selling 500k in an 80% sell through.

Source.

After about an hour of repeatedly playing the just-released demo of Devil May Cry 4, I’ve found myself effectively shot in the face with action-packed delight. DMC4 really is a return to form for the series, even though the protagonist is an all-new character.

Before I even begin, let me say that if you have broadband and access to the Playstation Store or Xbox Live Marketplace, go start downloading the demo right now. It’ll be a third of the way done by the time you finish reading this, and you’ll thank me for it.

Moving on.

There are two missions available in the demo: Exterminator and Executioner. Exterminator is a 10-minute timed game that basically involves running through gothic architecture while dicing up demons. Executioner is not timed and involves running through gothic architecture in the snow in order to get to what I think were mini-bosses, called Frosts, and then finally to the big fiery demon, Berial.

Nero finds the ripten logo to be quite sexy.

I played Exterminator first. I wasted about four of my ten minutes just screwing around, getting used to the controls, and just kinda looking at the environment. The first thing I noticed was how absolutely silky smooth everything ran. The framerate and animations were incredibly fluid.

The graphics themselves aren’t really what I would call “breathtaking”, but they were made all the more impressive by crisp textures and an overall lack of jaggies. The opera house where you begin the mission is plastered with intricate detail and shimmering gold trim. I futzed around with the camera until I could get to a position where I could see the textures close up, and they surprisingly still looked nice and not as blurry as most games tend to look.

Yeah, that little speck on the bridge is you.

I then ran off to find some bad guys to see if the engine can handle the extra stress. Again, the game really showed some muscle. Not once was there any slowdown or stuttering — it stood strong in the face of adversity.

Going into battle was easy as pie — whoop-ass pie, and my enemies were the filling. Right bumper locks onto targets, which shows a blue ring representing both the enemy’s health and the simple fact that you are locked on. The face buttons then have your sword and gun attacks, jump, and Devil Bringer.

The Devil Bringer is the only thing here that really needs an explanation. Basically, it’s some crazy mystical gauntlet that allows you to pile-drive enemies into the ground, snatch them from afar, and zip across gaps Legend of Zelda grappling hook-style. To be honest, I felt the grappling hook ability to be a usable gameplay mechanic, but somewhat clichéd and not really fitting in the context of the game. Maybe that’s just me.

Continuing on, I found myself surrounded by demons as the timer hit zero. I’m treated to a “Coming Soon” screen before being booted back to the main menu. I guess I’ll try out the other mission now — Executioner.

The mission starts on a snowy cliff-side path to a castle gate. I start heading down the path and this is where I notice another nice little feature. Running in one direction for about 3 seconds or so initiates a sprint. It makes it considerably less arduous to navigate around these huge environments when it doesn’t take so damn long to do it. Nice touch, Capcom.

I come to a bridge, which obviously has to collapse when I walk on it, and I fall to the ruins below. Two icy creatures, apparently called Frosts, appear in the obligatory cutscene, I fight them off with great skill because I am awesome. Upon their inevitable deaths, they unlock the guarded-by-red-demon-essence path, and I enter.

This takes me to a bridge, which I cross, and on the other side lies a huge castle door. Entering somehow transports me to a wooden old-west-looking shanty town, where a huge fiery four-legged demon, named Belial, appears and proceeds to set the entire place aflame by his mere presence. A nice conversation ensues, after which he totally destroys me and sends me back to the Main Menu.

I purposely did not include the scene where he kicks my ass.

Now, out of curiosity, I load up the first mission again to see how far I can get in the time limit. A few times I completely ignore some of the bad guys because I’m not obligated to kill them to move on, as I do have a time limit.

During this playthrough, I notice that Nero is too cool for ladders. Near the end of the stage, there is a switch you have to hit, and it has a ladder leading right to it. I try to use the ladder, I guess because I’m just an ordinary guy using ordinary guy logic, but Nero won’t have it. I instead have to jump onto a platform, and from there jump up to the switch. Using a conveniently-placed ladder is apparently not something a bad-ass would do. Okay, then… Anyhow, I hit the switch and run to the end of the stage.

Coincidentally, making it to the end of the Exterminator mission within the time limit actually starts you on the Executioner mission, albeit with absolutely no chance of actually fighting through it because of the time limit. That doesn’t really matter, though, since you can just start the Executioner mission over from the menu and not be restricted by the timer.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that these missions are not pulled right from the game. What I mean is, I don’t think there is a snowy cliff-side path on the other side of a door in a watery city, and I don’t think a door in a snowy castle courtyard would lead to a flaming wooden town. Maybe that just seems obvious, but the way these kooky storylines go, you never can be too sure.

I really only have one gripe about the game, and that’s the camera. Like pretty much all games that feature the dynamically shifting, completely uncontrollable camera angles, I find the transitions somewhat disorienting sometimes. Going around a corner and having the camera shift a full 90 degrees while you’re still moving in the same direction is uncomfortable.

I move forward while holding up on the analog stick, only to have the camera shift views and make it so that if I continue to hold up, I’m now going left. Maybe it’s my auto-correcting brain raised on role-playing games where confusion attacks reverse your controls, but this camera issue makes me walk in undesired directions, sometimes take hits that I should have avoided, and occasionally go back to an area that I had just transitioned out of.

I’m sure die-hard fans of these types of games don’t have this issue, but I do and I’m sure others do as well. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker, and doesn’t really detract from the game other than a few minor unnecessary frustrations.

So, minor annoyances aside, I think the demo overall can best be summed up with the words “fucking awesome”. To be completely honest, I wasn’t overly excited to play another Devil May Cry game. This demo, however, makes me feel like I’m playing the first Devil May Cry all over again, except it’s new and different from last time. You owe it to yourself to at the very least check out the demo now (it’s free and should already be partially downloaded, right?), if not the full game when it releases this February.

That’s the news we get from Capcom, formally letting the internet know that the demo will hit on Thursday 24th. Oh and after improving our Japanese translating skills, that’s the TGS demo on both Xbox Live and the Playstation Store.

The rest of the world will have to wait until the 31st for the demo, but you should have a Japan account by now anyway. Another recent goody on the Japan Playstation Store? A PixelJunkMonsters demo to get you ready for the Western release of the full game…go have a gander.

Update: We’ve got word straight from Capcom that the DMC demo will also be on the US PSN and XBL this Thursday 24th! That’s a week earlier than we expected. Sadly, us Euro folks will have to wait another week, but you should have US accounts anyway.

Chris Kramer, Senior Director, Communications and Community, of Capcom.

Warm those broadband connections. The Devil May Cry® 4 playable demo hits both the PLAYSTATION®Store and Xbox LIVE® Marketplace this Thursday, January 24, 2008.

The demo introduces gamers to the gothic-inspired supernatural world of Devil May Cry 4, new protagonist Nero and the awesome power of his Devil Bringer.

The demo consists of a sampling of sections from the full game, chosen to showcase Devil May Cry 4’s varied locales, allowing gamers to familiarize themselves with Nero’s unique abilities. Players will receive instruction on the various new actions that the Devil Bringer bestows, such as the ability to slam creatures to the ground, cover great distances in a single bound or even grab enemies while on the ground or in the air and pull them towards Nero to continue an attack combo.

The Exceed system allows Nero to “rev up” his sword as if it were a motorcycle throttle and unleash devastating attacks. Players will need to master all these techniques before the end-of-demo showdown with the mighty Berial.

Fully demonstrating the power of the next generation of consoles, the Devil May Cry 4 demo brings to life the coastal city of Fortuna and its surroundings in exquisite detail, such as the port and the snow-capped mountain ranges. Devil May Cry 4 delivers its intense action at a constant 60 frames per second at 720P resolution on HD monitors, ensuring seamless and breathtaking gameplay in stunning high definition.

Source: Capcom-fr.com and Capcom Blog

In Devil May Cry 4, players control the formidable Nero whose beliefs and allegiance are tested as he comes to grips with his newly found power.

Before we summarize the GamePro’s review, we have some new exclusive PS3 features for you to mull over.

HDD Install: When the game starts for the first time, Devil May Cry 4 game data (4.8GB) will be installed on the PS3 Hard Disk Drive (HDD), which will eliminate loading. It appears as though this installation will be compulsory, so start deleting some trailers.

Motion Sensing: DMC4 will also support Sixaxis motion control, in the form of camera movement from left to right, and centering the camera by shaking the controller.

PSN Support: To top it off there are also some interesting Playstation Network “accomplishments”, which are obviously achievements in disguise. You can view player rankings divided according to difficulty, as well as various accomplishments. This can be seen in the following scan from the PS3 Devil May Cry 4 manual.

Click to enlarge.

Finally, the first review of the game by the German GamePro magazine, gives Devil May Cry 4 85%. In comparison the magazine rated DMC3 87% and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 81%.

Below is a short run down of the review’s positives and minuses:

Graphics:
+Beautiful animations and effects, along with very good character models. However, shadows and edges to have a tendency to flicker

Sound:
+ A good mixture of Rock and Classical music, directional/ambient effects, but often repeating tracks.

Controls:
+ Good controls, camera and lock on system, though it can become slightly chaotic.

Game design:
+ There is non-stop action with a well integrate upgrade system, but level design lacks innovation, becoming tedious at times because of backtracking.

Story/Game world:
+ Beautiful Setting with cool cutscenes, but has a bland main villain.

Click to enlarge.

Via: Neogaf

The Capcom representative replied to a comment along the lines of “Why the hell won’t it be on PSN!?” with this:

“Wait a little while longer and the demo strategy will be clear.
I’ll say this: The information printed above and in that article as written is incorrect.
The news you’re looking for is not far off... a little more patience please.”

The implication here seems to be a simultaneous release of a demo on both the PSN and XBLM in December. Exciting stuff, since we’ve been waiting for this beauty for so long. At least Playstation3 owners have, for the game was only revealed to be coming to the Xbox360 earlier this year.

Whether the demo will just be released in Japan like the original article suggests, we can’t say. Still, this wouldn’t be a problem for PS3 owners, since they are able to download content from other countries.

The Official DMC4 website is said to be updating on December 5th with news of this demo, so we shall keep you posted. In the meantime here are some pictures of the demo mission from the PS3 version, alongside some notes about the mission.

(Please click on the images to enlarge: Source Ruliweb.com)

Notes on the demo:

*90% chance the demo will be the same demo as seen since January. A quick walkthrough of Fortuna. After you beat that area you get to go straight to the icy level and fight a group of Frosts. The final mission in the demo will be the fight with Berial. This type of pacing/level design is not at all a representative of the final game as the demo seems to be snippets of 3 missions worked into one package as a bare bones demonstration of Nero’s capabilities.

*These mini-missions are selectable from the start and you can choose whatever you want. The first image illustrates this.

*Do not expect Dante to be playable and do not expect the new jungle areas with Blades and Echidna or the new Lucifer/Gilgamesh weapon.
*No story driven cutscenes will be shown in the demo aside from perhaps the first cutscene of the game. Capcom is keeping the story underwraps very heavily.
*Nero will not have any abilities outside of Snatch, Buster, Exceed, his gun and sword combos.

Via Neogaf. Thanks goes to LordMe.