DCEmu Featured News Articles

Insomniac Games has teased fans with the possibility of a Resistance 3 reveal at German gameshow gamescom this month.

"It's been a long road since we launched Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time to your rave reviews last Fall. While we haven't had any new game content to show you since then, that's about to change in a big way," an Insomniac newlsetter read (posted by GamesOnSmash). "And yes, we realize we're announcing an announcement, and that we announced this newsletter announcement via a Twitter/Facebook announcement earlier this week. We feel a little bad about announcing the announcement of an announcement – but on the other hand, you're excited and so are we.

"With that, we're happy to reveal that we'll be announcing our newest game sometime between now and the Penny-Arcade Expo over Labour Day weekend. We're really excited to finally reveal this project, and we couldn't resist being the first to share the news with you. Even bigger news is that newsletter subscribers will be the first folks to see the trailer: the instant we announce the game – we'll be blasting a newsletter with the trailer for you to view at home."

"Couldn't resist", eh? How appropriate.

Gamescom takes place from 19th to 22nd August, and provides Insomniac with an ideal platform to show the world a trailer for a new game.

The Insomniac newsletter goes on to mention that Insomniac will actually demonstrate a new PlayStation 3 game at the Penny Arcade Expo. Whether these two games are the same is unknown. Could there be a Resistance 3 and a new Ratchet & Clank game?

Sony offered Eurogamer "no comment" this morning.

However, the whistle may have been blown on Resistance 3 already. Back in October 2009, a billboard advertising Resistance 3 was spotted on a Battle: Los Angeles film set. That movie belongs to Sony Pictures' and is due next year: perfect timing for a Resistance 3 advertising campaign.

Insomniac captured headlines by signing a multi-platform publishing deal with EA Partners earlier this year. It's the first time Insomniac and Sony haven't worked together in years. Having said that, Sony owns the rights to Resistance and Ratchet & Clank, which means any new instalments in those series' will be for PlayStation platforms.

Could Insomniac be big enough to handle three games at once?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/re...al-at-gamescom ...

Outspoken Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter has made a number of brave predictions about multiplayer gaming, claiming that he expects premium paid features to be added to a slew of major releases.

Pachter's latest round of projections follows Activision's firm rebuttal of suggestions that it might attach pay-to-play fees to current or in-development Call Of Duty titles.

His latest proclamation also maintains that, although he does not know exactly what form this new breed of monetisation will take, he expects it to bifurcate the online arena, with half of current players paying for premium versions and the rest sticking to limited free multiplayer.

"We expect somewhere around half of the current 15 million online game players to pay something for premium content, and expect the other half to play fewer hours online if the free experience is slightly less robust in the future," he said.

"Should the 7.5 million people who choose to pay generate only $5.00 per month (around 11.5¢ per hour), publisher revenues and operating profits would increase by $450 million," Pachter went on to appromixate.

"We think that premium online multiplayer content will be the event that turns the negative tide of industry sales around," he said, additionally claiming that those players who feel disenfranchised by charges would be likely to buy more games to make up the lost hours.

He cites multiplayer as primarily responsible for Modern Warfare 2's sales, claiming "Activision laments the missed opportunity to somehow monetise the incremental gameplay" and calculating that charging players the equivalent of $0.06 per hour would have raised an additional $120 million profit within six months.

Although Rockstar has yet to even announce its next game, Pachter has declared that the Red Dead Redemption developer/publisher's next title will include a new payment model - as would other impending big-hitters.

"We think that scheduled releases like Call of Duty Black Ops, Medal of Honor and Halo Reach, and unscheduled releases like Grand Theft Auto 5 all will contain the opportunity for gamers to pay more to the publishers," he surmised.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...or-multiplayer ...

Activision-Blizzard's hugely anticipated strategy sequel StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has gone straight in at number one in the UK all-formats chart, becoming the first PC exclusive to occupy the top spot this year.

In terms of UK boxed copies, the game sold more in the week of its release than the original did during its entire lifetime. The original StarCraft only managed the 24th spot in the week of its release in 1998, failing to even become the best-selling PC title at the time.

It's the only new entry to the chart in a week of few releases, as Toy Story 3 (Disney), Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar), Dance On Broadway (Ubisoft) and LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Interactive) all slide down a place to accommodate the RTS monster, filling spots two, three, four and five, respectively. Naughty Bear disappears from the top twenty all together, slipping to 25th place.

Ubisoft's Just Dance climbed two places from last week, with the rest of the chart made up from Dragon Quest IX, Modern Warfare 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Just Dance and Dragon Quest have seen sales bumped by 26 per cent and 27 per cent respectively, with Modern Warfare clocking a 37 per cent rise, and Bad Company 2 33 per cent.

The full top 20 reads as follows:

01 StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty
02 Toy Story 3
03 Red Dead Redemption
04 Dance on Broadway
05 LEGO Harry Potter
06 Just Dance
07 Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
08 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
09 Super Mario Galaxy 2
10 Battlefield: Bad Company 2
11 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
12 FIFA 10
13 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa
14 Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
15 BioShock 2
16 Wii Sports Resort
17 Wii Fit Plus
18 Crackdown 2
19 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction
20 Sniper: Ghost Warrior

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...tops-uk-charts ...

Apple Insider is reporting on a browser-based 'jailbreak' for iPhone 4. Hackers on Sunday released the first 'jailbreak' for the iPhone 4, a browser-based exploit that allows users to run unauthorized code. Unlike previous jailbreaks, which required users to run software on their Mac or PC and tether their iPhone to their computer, the latest hack is done entirely within the Safari browser. Users simply visit the URL to begin the process, which modifies the iOS mobile operating system found on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Some users have reported that the modification results in broken MMS and FaceTime functionality. This jailbreak does not work on iPads running iOS 3.2.1.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/0...one-4-Released

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._iphone_4.html ...

The most common complaint about 3D is that the glasses give you a headache, but that's not actually true, according to the man who teaches the pros how to make better 3D. Speaking at the BBC in London, Buzz Hays, chief instructor for the Sony 3D Technology Center in Culver City, California, explained: 'It's not the technology's fault, it's really the content that can cause these problems. It's easy to make 3D but it's hard to make it good — and by "good" I mean taking care to make sure that this isn't going to cause eyestrain.' He went on to detail some of the mistakes made by inexperienced 3D film makers, from poor composition of shots, through uncomfortable convergence settings, to overuse of on-set monitors without viewing their content on a big screen. But the biggest admission Buzz made was that not even the 'experts' know all the tricks yet, which is why 3D should only get better from here. In the same seminar, Buzz also explained why 3D glasses are here to stay — at least for the next few years."

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/st...-You-Headaches ...

Codemasters had let-out the first video for racing threequel Colin McRae's: DiRT 3.

The footage shows mud-track rally driving, tarmacked race-course racing and, eventually, a car drifting underneath a lorry that explodes.

What that tells us about this third game in Codemasters' rally driving series we're unsure.

DiRT 3's existence was confirmed by Codemasters in March. Publisher bigwig Gavin Cheshire told the world back then that DiRT 3 would be "fresh and new", and "if you don't innovate, you're dead".

No date has been annnounced for DiRT 3. No platforms have been mentioned either, although we expect PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 as with previous DiRT games.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...eiled-in-video ...

Bungie has warned budding Halo: Reach quitters that it intends to punish them for their transgressions.

The developer has drummed up new ways to boot out those who leave games early so upcoming FPS Halo: Reach will be free from their horrible griefing ways.

"I think one of the new things people will be excited about too, is how we're going to be able to penalise people who are habitually quitting out of games, which isn't exactly cheating, but it creates a really negative experience for everybody else in the game," explained Bungie's community director Brian Jarrard to X360A.

"We actually have new tools now to detect that and eventually, people who do this habitually will actually be penalised.

"We want to be able to remove them from the population so they can't make everyone else keep having a bad time."

Eurogamer spoke to Jarrard and campaign designer Niles Sanky recently and discovered all sorts of interesting gubbins about Bungie's final Halo game.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ha...o-be-penalised ...

He has predicted it, Activision has denied it – but now outspoken US games analyst Michael Pachter has published his most detailed argument yet as to exactly why he believes Call of Duty: Black Ops will offer an additional paid-for multiplayer component.
“Multiplayer online game play is as strong as ever, with an estimated 15 million people spending an average of 10 hours a week playing games such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Red Dead Redemption,” he said in a note to investors.
“While downloadable content (DLC) sales have been strong (we estimate that Activision has sold 8m map packs at $15 in the first half of the year), revenues from DLC are insufficient to offset the declines in packaged goods sales resulting from the online multiplayer time vacuum created.
“In our view, it is likely that multiplayer online game play will continue to be offered for free, but we expect the publishers, led by Activision, to devise a way to extract value from consumers who are playing online.
“We estimate that four billion hours of game play have been spent on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 online multiplayer alone. 20 million game purchasers would have spent around 250 million hours finishing the single player and co-op campaign modes. The incremental 3.75 billion hours spent playing online multiplayer dwarfs this figure, and represents the equivalent of 15 full-game equivalents that were not purchased from any publisher.”


That’s not it, though, Though Call of Duty: Black Ops will be the beginning, Pachter thinks a number of 2011’s biggest titles will ask for an online subscription.
“The premium services that we expect to be monetized are the sale of virtual goods, the opportunity to play in tournaments, the maintenance of achievements, the creation of ladders and leader boards, and access to value-added content,” Pachter added.
“We are not sure which direction that monetization will take, but expect to hear about future plans for charging for premium services some time between this earnings cycle and early 2011. We think that scheduled releases like Call of Duty Black Ops, Medal of Honor and Halo Reach, and unscheduled releases like Grand Theft Auto 5 all will contain the opportunity for gamers to pay more to the publishers. While we don’t think that anyone will be compelled to pay for premium content, we think that it is highly likely that the content will be offered for a fee, and that as a result, fewer hours will be spent playing these games for free than has been spent on their prior versions.”
Critics of Pachter’s theory argue that customers who have become accustomed to years of free console multiplayer will react in horror at the introduction of a new fee-based structure. Even if that is the case, the analyst argues that the model remains sound.
“Charging for premium content is important for two reasons: first, it should drive higher revenues and profits for the publishers who charge; and second, it is likely that the creation of premium content will limit the number of hours spent playing multiplayer games for free, thereby disaggregating a large number of consumers who will likely begin purchasing packaged products again,” he explains.
“At the margin, we expect somewhere around half of the current 15 million online game players to pay something for premium content, and expect the other half to play fewer hours online if the free experience is slightly less robust in the future. Should the 7.5 million people who choose to pay generate only $5.00 per month (around 11.5¢ per hour), publisher revenues and operating profits would increase by $450 million; should the other 7.5 million people purchase only one additional game per year to make up for fewer hours spent online, publisher revenues would grow by another $450 million.”
Pachter then goes on to conclude that the introduction of such fees could actually emerge as the catalyst that lifts gaming out of its current market slump.
“We think that premium online multiplayer content will be the event that turns the negative tide of industry sales around,” he blieves. “In our view, investors value recurring revenue streams far more than those from “hit driven” packaged products sales, and we think that once a premium service is established, likely by Activision, other publishers will quickly follow suit.
“As we said above, we do not think that charges for premium content will be mandatory, and we expect the publishers to continue to provide some form of online multiplayer for free. However, we think that the opportunity to charge something is too great to be overlooked by the publishers for much longer, and we expect to see Activision lead the way by creating a new system some time before the end of the year.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/40247/Pach...nline-COD-fees ...

Microsoft is offering those who have pre-ordered Xbox 360 RPG release Fable III the chance to design an in-game character who will appear in their quest when the game arrives on October 29th.
The Fable III Villager Maker, which is accessible via browsers, allows those who have pre-ordered the game the chance to create their own character.
Once the final game arrives the character will then present gamers with an exclusive quest, as well as supply them with 1,000 gold pieces. The character will also persist throughout the game.
2,000 variations are possible using the tool, including customisations to his or her appearance, back story, personality and homeland. Users will also be able to use the character is a custom PC desktop and share their creation on Facebook and Twitter.
“Whether you create a valiant ally, an evil villain, or perhaps the perfect spouse, let your imagination run free as you make your mark in the fantastical world of Fable III,” the press release reads.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/40251/Fabl...aker-goes-live ...