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by Published on February 16th, 2011 01:00- Categories:
- Apple iPhone
In case you weren't aware, Apple's newly launched App Store subscriptions aren't sitting so well with everybody. While the functionality could of course be a boon to services that have struggled getting paying customers, folks who have already been doing just fine, thank you very much, are balking at the new restrictions Apple has imposed. Rhapsody has issued a statement, which says that it's not going to play ball and even levels a bit of a threat: "We will be collaborating with our market peers in determining an appropriate legal and business response to this latest development." The big trouble stems from the fact that Apple requires anybody offering a subscription service to offer that service for the same price or less through Apple. That means you can still sign up folks through your own methods and get all the cash, but if anybody signs up through your app, Apple gets a 30 percent cut. In addition, Apple is no longer allowing applications to include a link to an external site for purchasing, which means vendors will have trouble getting new users to pay them directly instead of using Apple's simple but heavily-taxed option. Rhapsody claims that it can't offer its services at existing prices with Apple grabbing that much of the revenue, and it sounds like Rhapsody will be leaving the App Store soon if an agreement isn't struck.
Of course, this is just the shiny surface of the dirt Apple's new policies have scuffed up, and we might even have an antitrust case on our hands, according to the Wall Street Journal. Check out the more coverage link for more on that, and follow after the break for Rhapsody's statement in full.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/r...issues-statem/ ...by Published on February 16th, 2011 00:45- Categories:
- Android News
"In Barcelona, Google's Eric Schmidt has been revealing future plans for Google, saying that the next release will merge smartphone and tablet versions of its mobile operating system Android. Aside from bragging about Android's growth, Schmidt tiptoed around a question of Google acquiring Twitter, instead offering the very nebulous statement that YouTube doubled its revenues last year."http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02...nd-Gingerbread ...by Published on February 16th, 2011 00:30- Categories:
- PS3 News
Killzone 3 climaxes with the door left tantalisingly open for further adventures – and Guerrilla Games has confirmed that there's "ample opportunity" for a fourth instalment of the spectacular shooter series....
"There's still a lot of room in the Killzone universe to expand and to do new stories," senior producer Steven ter Heide told Eurogamer TV.
"We want to leave ourselves open like [the ending of Killzone 3] because Killzone's not going to go away anytime soon."
Guerrilla MD Hermen Hulst added that the studio had far from exhausted ideas for future games to work within "the mythic arc for the entire franchise".
He explained: "We've had our Pearl Harbour moment, our D-Day moment, but there are so many different types of war, different kinds of conflicts that have originated from different reasonings, from a different rationale."
In the meantime, Killzone is coming to the recently revealed NGP, with Sony Cambridge rather than Guerrilla on development duties. Will there be any cross-platform functionality? Hulst refused to be drawn, stating: "What can I say? I can say it's too early to talk about that."
Asked if there was anything the studio wasn't able to include in Killzone 3 – which scored an impressive eight in its Eurogamer review - Hulst revealed: "Maybe online co-op – but that was a conscious choice. We wanted to do one co-op mode very well instead of spreading ourselves thin in that regard. That's the way life goes."
Killzone 3 is out on 25th February.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-a-killzone-4by Published on February 16th, 2011 00:15- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
Tesco has ended speculation about its too-good-to-be-true Nintendo 3DS price, telling Eurogamer this morning's debacle was the result of an "error"....
"We are very sorry for the pricing error," Tesco said in a statement issued to Eurogamer this afternoon. "We have contacted the small number of customers affected to apologise and offer them a full refund."
The supermarket giant caused a storm this morning when it put the Aqua Blue Nintendo 3DS model up for sale at £157.60 - £40 cheaper than anywhere else.
Understandably, gamers descended on the shop's website, enticed by the promise of an ultra cheap Nintendo 3DS.
It then emerged that all was not as it seemed. At the bottom of its website Tesco said: "20% off selected gaming consoles, excludes the Nintendo 3Ds."
Despite this, the Aqua Blue model is still listed with the £157.60 price, although a short "Sorry, this is temporarily out of stock" message runs alongside it.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...sco-says-sorryby Published on February 16th, 2011 00:02
The game industry has reacted angrily to the leaks of two of 2011's most anticipated shooters: Crysis 2 and Killzone 3....
Over the weekend a near complete build of the PC version of Crysis 2, complete with multiplayer, hit Torrent sites. Reports then came in that the final version of Killzone 3 was online.
German developer Crytek this morning moved to reassure gamers of its commitment to the PC despite the Crysis 2 leak, but Gamers' Voice, the UK gamer pressure group, said it would not be surprised to see a third game in the science fiction shooter series launch as a console exclusive.
"It's hard to understand the reasoning behind video game piracy or the justification by those that do so," chairman Paul Gibson told Eurogamer.
"They might get a game for free, or early, but ultimately they are damaging the industry and hurting all the legitimate gamers who purchase copies.
"Consumers don't like DRM as it seems to only cause problems but publishers will continue to include it if pirates continue to steal their games. By doing this piracy hurts the gamer as much as any developer or publisher.
"The industry only makes money from game sales; losing these sales to piracy ultimately means no more games for us. We can already see this in the PC market and it would not be surprising to see Crysis 3 released for consoles only after this latest leak.
"We condemn all forms of video games piracy; there is no excuse for it. But we hope that publishers look for ways to fight piracy without harming those who legitimately purchase a game."
The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) added its voice to the universal condemnation of the leaks, saying piracy "poses a very real threat to the UK's games industry".
"The differences between a successful game and an unsuccessful game can be small and interactive entertainment businesses can go out of business off the back of poor sales of just one product," director general Michael Rawlinson told Eurogamer. "If these sales are affected by piracy it could mean job losses and fewer new games for consumers to enjoy."
UKIE recently claimed that for every one game sold at retail four are pirated - an estimate based on information received from "a number of publishers".
UKIE failed, however, to reveal which console formats were included in its estimates, or whether PC games were included.
In truth, the true impact of piracy on game sales is unknown. But publishers and developers are united in their belief that it is harmful.
Crytek and EA issued a joint statement condemning Crysis 2's availability to download online, although Guerrilla and Sony are yet to comment on the Killzone 3 leak.
"Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community," the duo said.
Nicholas Lovell, author of How to Publish a Game, said the leaks force publishers to consider alternative ways to sell their games.
"In an online, connected world, making one more copy of a game is trivially easy," he told Eurogamer.
"Building games that rely on a combination of DRM and copyright law will get ever tougher as broadband gets faster, competitive pressures drive down prices towards zero and, yes, many consumers conclude that when it costs nothing to make one more copy, it's hard to justify spending money on that copy.
"There are many successful, alternative business models to charging $50 for a game. These leaks only hasten the day when all publishers have to adopt them."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-only-crysis-3by Published on February 15th, 2011 22:58- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
UPDATE 2: Tesco has changed its mind, it appears. At the bottom of its website it says, "20% off selected gaming consoles, excludes the Nintendo 3Ds."...
Tesco's T&Cs, under section one, divulge this disappointing nugget: "If, by mistake, we have under priced an item, we will not be liable to supply that item to you at the stated price, provided that we notify you before we despatch the item to you. In those circumstances, we will notify the correct price to you so you can decide whether or not you wish to order the item at that price. If you decide not to order the item, we will give you a full refund on any amount already paid for that item in accordance with our refund policy in section 7 below."
Bah.
UPDATE 1: Eurogamer has just got off the phone with the Tesco press office, which said this is very much a real offer. Go nuts.
ORIGINAL STORY: Gargantuan supermarket Tesco is selling the Nintendo 3DS for £158 - £40 cheaper than anywhere else.
Tesco has the Aqua Blue model listed for £157.60, reduced from £197.
Order now, Tesco says, and it'll be delivered on 25th March – the day the Nintendo 3DS launches in Europe.
The price of the Nintendo 3DS has been a controversial topic since Nintendo announced it was up to shops to determine what they would sell it for.
Most went with £230 at the time, although £200 is the going rate at many shops.
Speaking to Eurogamer last month, Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton said: "It's still really good value. The fact it's a 3D entertainment device – you can't get anything that's 3D at that sort of price without having to wear glasses as well. Get that one in."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...3ds-for-GBP158by Published on February 15th, 2011 22:53- Categories:
- Android News,
- Apple iPhone
Major developers have offered their thoughts on gaming's slow move towards digital distribution.
While it has been argued in many quarters that smaller, casual games for mobile and social networks are the industry's future, Gaikai boss David Perry claimed in an episode of GameTheory (published onGamesIndustry.biz today) that "I see a lot of little teams trying to make simple games, and I'm a little worried... that's not sustainable.
"People who making Kleenex games – ones that you can blow your nose on and throw away – that's not necessarily a safe place to be betting your money. If your game design is two pages, unless you've found the next Tetris, I would start to worry."
Conversely, Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin worried that medium-scale projects may be the most risky. "There are some traps in the industry now for developers – one is to grow into the size that makes middle games on console, bigger than $15 million, but smaller than $30 million.
"That middle gap seems to right now be a financial weak point, and a lot of games in that budget aren't big enough to compete with the Call of Dutys out there, but there's also not small enough to recoup with lower sales."
The general sentiment was that the industry has become much riskier in recent times – as evidenced by Activision's dramatic cull of multiple studios and franchises last week.
Claimed Epic president Mike Capps, "Chris Taylor and I have had successful independent game companies running for a decade or more. But neither of us would start one now – it's just so hard to get moving and really do something you're excited about. I don't know how to do it anymore.
"There's a reason FarmVille and Zynga's games are so successful – it's advertising dollars. Not because FarmVille's design is particularly brilliant or they put a massive investment into it – it's advertising dollars, followed by metrics, and watching what their users are doing. So we're all playing bigger gambles and that's getting scary – for a studio like Epic, I can't have a lot of failures at the $15 million level and continue."
Remedy CEO Matias Myllyrinne, meanwhile reasoned that "You're only as good as your last game... but now the stakes are even higher, and the failures are more visible." Remedy's last title, Alan Wake, was last year revealed to have sold less than 200,000 copies in its first month of release.
Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder co-creator Jon Hare, now working on mobile titles as Tower Studios, felt that the division between large and small companies was only growing. "Boxed product is only alive if you are EA or Ubisoft... everyone's been so marginalised from retail that there's nothing in it for us anymore.
"The other 90% of the industry has looked to online and now there's so many options that nobody wants to turn back."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...be-sustainable
...by Published on February 15th, 2011 22:50- Categories:
- Android News
Adobe believes over 200 million smartphones and tablets will support AIR-based applications by the end of this year.
Runtime environment AIR allows, amongst other features, the operation of Flash-based apps and games on a broad range of mobile devices. Currently, Android is the primary platform for this.
It is the cornerstone of Adobe's cold war against Apple, with the latter famously refusing to support Flash on its iOS devices. However, it has recently relented – now at least allowing exported versions of apps that originated in Flash/AIR.
Adobe's senior vice president David Wadhwani told VentureBeat that over 20 million smartphones with Flash 10.1 were shipped last year, with the platform itself having been downloaded some 7 million times from the Android Market.
Of the 200 million device projection, Adobe believes 132 million will be smartphones, with tablets constituting a large portion of the leftover.
In addition, developers had created some 1500 AIR-based Apps during the first two months of its availability for Android.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-air-this-year
...by Published on February 15th, 2011 22:48- Categories:
- Apple iPhone
Apple has confirmed that it will be introducing a subscription package program for content-based apps such as magazines and video services, but will be taking 30 per cent of all subscription fees in return.
The move is presumably intended to encourage more bespoke content apps for the iPhone and iPad, mimicking The Daily, an iPad specific newspaper which launched earlier this year. Subscription fees will be paid via the same App Store account as any app purchase.
Different packages have been planned, according to length of commitment. Publishers will be entitled to offer subscriptions to the app externally, and keep 100 per cent of the revenue, but the same offer or better has to be available to purchase from the app itself too.
"Our philosophy is simple," said on-leave Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "When Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing"
"All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers."
It's not known at this time whether the offer could be extended to any future iPad specific MMO's or subscription based titles.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ption-packages
...by Published on February 15th, 2011 22:44- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
Disney has confirmed that the upcoming LEGO: Pirates of the Caribbean game will also be setting sail on the 3DS this May.
First announced in November last year, the game will be based in the world of the Pirates franchise, incorporating storylines, locations and characters from the first three films. It'll feature over 20 levels, 70 playable characters and two player co-op.
The 3DS version will also include support for the console's StreetPass and Play Coins features, with a 'Pirate Duels' mode that will have your pirates fight one another as you pass other 3DS users. The winner earns extra Play Coins in addition to the ones they get simply for walking.
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is due for release on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, PSP, DS and now 3DS in May 2011 alongside the film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
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