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CES 2009: Hasbro Family Game Night

by: Dan -
More On: CES 2009
Sean and I had an appointment with EA Casual games and were able to take in several different titles. While he was checking out a different title, I was able to take a look at Hasbro Family Game Night for Xbox Live Arcade which was announced last week. I was shown small demos of Scrabble and Battleship, but didn’t have time to get into Yahtzee, Connect Four, Boggle and Sorry Sliders.

Your guide in your virtual Hasbro gaming room is Mr. Potato Head, and he helps you out on each of the screens which include the games, achievements, leaderboards and gameplay area. From speaking with the EA rep, it looks like Hasbro FGN will also get its own channel on Xbox Live Marketplace, allowing us to purchase the games individually from their own area. Each game will have normal XBLA achievements and online leaderboards.

Scrabble looked great and played easy. But the real gem I saw was Battleship, which is absolutely cool. It is fully interactive with your ships floating on virtual water. When the bombs drop, it either splashes with a miss or spouts fire from the hit. You get five shots per round to start, but lose a shot every time one of your ships is sunk. The graphics and interface for this are simply outstanding, and will be a must buy for me when it is released.  Unfortunately our schedule didn't allow for more demo time (other EA Casual titles took up time), but I am sure we will see it soon enough on XBLA.  We may try to head back to the Sands tomorrow morning, so we wil attempt some more hands on if we get over there.

EA was non-committal the pricing, but I was told it would be “in line” with current XBLA pricing titles. So that probably means a minimum of 800 points and potentially up to 1600 points. But, my speculation is 800 or 1200 depending on the title. There is a lot of good stuff here with a massive library of Hasbro titles that are hopefully in the works after this launches (Risk anyone?). Hasbro Family Game Night is scheduled to hit the Xbox Live Arcade service in Spring of 2009.