Wii U development has been "a little tricky," Darksiders II developer Vigil has admitted.

Speaking to CVG in a soon to be published interview, game director Marvin Donald revealed that development hardware for Nintendo's system "has been changing a lot," leading to "some instability" when working on it.

"[Wii U] will be at least as powerful [as PS3] if not more but honestly we don't really know because the hardware has been changing a lot," he said.

"We just got the generation two dev kits and there's no release date for the Wii U so we don't know how long the hardware development process is going to go on for, when they're going to stop and what they're ultimately going to be happy with. So it has provided some instability when working on it."

Donald added: "When we got the new kits there were some things in the old build that wouldn't work with the new hardware and we had to wait for updates. So it's been a little tricky in that regard."

The Darksiders lead added that he hopes the upcoming sequel finds an audience with Nintendo.

"I hope the fact that we're heavily inspired by and love Zelda very much helps," he said.

"when we marketed Darksiders we showed a lot of combat so people got the wrong impression about what kind of game it was. Now that it's a little bit more known maybe we'll have an audience there on the Wii U.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-admits-vigil/ ...

Last weekend Microsoft claimed its first-party games to date have been "superior" to Sony and Nintendo's - but Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter disagrees.

Responding to comments made by Xbox CFO Dennis Durkin, Pachter argued that Nintendo's first-party titles are "vastly superior" to those of Xbox 360.

Speaking to IndustryGamers, Pachter commented, "Dennis is a great guy, and is paid to be loyal to his Microsoft family. I think Nintendo's first-party content is vastly superior to either other console manufacturer's, and don't think that either Sony or Microsoft would really dispute that."

He added, "As far as who is better, Sony or Microsoft, I'm not sure why anyone cares about my opinion. I have all three consoles, and love Sony first party titles like God of War, Gran Turismo, Uncharted, Little Big Planet and the upcoming Twisted Metal, and I love Microsoft first party titles like Halo, Forza, Fable, Alan Wake and Gears.

"I'm sure that there is a scientific way to determine who is better, but that's like arguing about whether Ford is better than GM or whether Wal-Mart is better than Target. They're both good, and people have different tastes."

Last week Microsoft man Durkin said:" I would ask you to go and look at some of your data, just to compare first party performance over the course of this lifecycle, because I think our first party performance in terms of quality bars and units per title this shift has been superior to our competition's."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-does-analyst/ ...

Apple's sent over its picks of the new titles available on the iOS app store this week.

The biggest name on the list for us is Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard HD which can now be snapped up for five quid on the iPad.

On your iPhone or iPad? Click on the titles to be taken to the app store.

iPad:

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard HD - Gameloft
Games - £4.99 (Rated 12+)
Languages - English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese
Take command of a futuristic elite anti-terrorist unit, avoiding detection and saving hostages in adrenaline fuelled action.

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 - Warner Bros. Entertainment
Games - £1.99 (Rated 9+)
Explore the magical world of Hogwarts in Lego, reliving Harry Potter's first four years at the magical academy.

Reckless Getaway - Polarbit AB
Games - £1.99 (Rated 9+)
Put pedal to the metal and hit the road as you make your getaway using whacky power-ups as you speed from the scene of your bank robbery.

MONOPOLY HERE & NOW: The World Edition - Electronic Arts
Games - £5.99
Languages - English, French, Italian, German, Spanish
Try your hand as a global property tycoon, buying international landmarks and playing dirty by loading the dice and starting property grabs.

Special Enquiry Detail: The Hand that Feeds - G5 Entertainment AB
Games - Free (Rated 12+)
Languages - English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian
Investigate a homicide with an ever-growing list of suspects, solving puzzles and finding hidden objects in this murder mystery extraordinaire.

Eternity Warriors - Glu Games Inc
Games - Free (Rated 9+)
Unleash your inner barbarian in epic battles, wielding swords and axes against demon foe.

Pocket RPG - Crescent Moon Games LLC
Adventure - £1.99 (Rated 9+)
Languages - English
Embark on an epic adventure, sweeping dungeons of evil hoards and facing mighty end-bosses.

Trainz Simulator - N3V Games Pty Ltd
Games - £0.69
Play with a virtual model railway: sculpting the landscape, laying track and driving trains.


iPhone:

SuperRope - Craneballs Studios, LLC
Games - Free
Climb to the heavens, collecting loot and bonuses to the backing of funky music. Falling pianos, anvils, and awesome power-ups make this game comically hectic and simply addictive.

Special Enquiry Detail: The Hand that Feeds - G5 Entertainment AB
Games - Free (Rated 12+)
Languages - English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian
Investigate a homicide with an ever-growing list of suspects, solving puzzles and finding hidden objects in this murder mystery extraordinaire.

Reckless Getaway - Polarbit AB
Games - £1.99 (Rated 9+)
Put pedal to the metal and hit the road as you make your getaway using wacky power-ups as you speed from the scene of your bank robbery.

Eternity Warriors - Glu Games Inc
Games - Free (Rated 9+)
Unleash your inner barbarian in epic battles, wielding swords and axes against demon foe.

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 - Warner Bros. Entertainment
Games - £1.99 (Rated 9+)
Explore the magical world of Hogwarts in Lego, reliving Harry Potter's first four years at the magical academy.

Blobster - Chillingo Ltd
Games - £0.69
Fling a bouncy rubber blob across levels, collecting power-ups, avoiding hazards and defeating Blobzilla and the bad guys.

Hungry Chicks - Clickgamer Technologies Ltd
Games - £0.69
Languages - English, Russian
Collect worms and feed these hungry chicks by completing physics puzzles in this cute avian adventure.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-apples-picks/ ...

It was only a year ago that top-level industry execs were questioning the very viability and future of the console hardware cycle. Now, the move to a new breed of machines is near, it is being claimed.

And these claims come from the very top of leading publisher Ubisoft.

“The new transition is going to happen,” CEO Yves Guillemot told Gamasutra. “We're going to have new machines coming soon.”

Talk of successors to both the PS3 and Xbox 360 has accelerated somewhat in the last six months.

Rumours of a dev kit for the next Xbox emerged last month, and despite denials from all involved many remain doggedly insistent that early Xbox 720 IS in the hands of developers.

In addition, Sony has confessed that PS4 development is under way, though has stressed that there’s plenty of life left in PS3 at the moment.

As for when these new devices will emerge, that remains a guessing game with some saying as early as next year and others pinning 2014 as the likely launch date.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/guill...ng-soon/082349 ...

A top-of-the-range £249.99 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 headset will accompany the game’s release in November.

It’s one of four limited edition Turtle Beach headsets which will be distributed by Lygo to UK retail. The accessories have been designed by the Modern Warfare 3 audio teams at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games, and will be available for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

The £89.99 Ear Force Foxtrot has ‘high-fidelity amplified audio’, while the £129.99 Ear Force Charlie uses eight ‘acoustically-angled’ speakers for surround sound.

Going further up the range, the Ear Force Bravo (£169.99) features custom presets and the Ear Force Delta (£249.99) comes with a special case and voice prompts. The latter also boasts Wireless Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound and Bluetooth chat.

“Turtle Beach redefined gamers expectations when they released the PX5 and XP500 Headsets earlier this year,” said Lygo’s media manager Craig Morrow.
“The release of this new line of headsets shows its intention for future product. Having the games developer themselves creating sound presets means gamers will finally get the full gaming experience as it was intended.”

Activision’s Modern Warfare 3 and the headsets will hit shelves on November 8th. The game will go up against big EA rival Battlefield 3 which is due out on October 28th.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/lygo-...headset/082353 ...

A game narrative expert has urged studios to stop forcing human drama into established game templates, claiming the approach has consistently proven to be flawed.

Alexis Kennedy, the ‘chief narrative officer’ at the award-winning digital fiction company Failbetter Games, pulled no punches in his analysis of games such as LA Noire and, in particular, Heavy Rain.

“Try to make a film into a game you end up with this bastard half-child thing,” he claimed.

Speaking at a panel session at the 2011 Develop Conference, Kennedy said games that ape Hollywood narratives “end up looking like the inverted baboon that came out of the teleporter in The Fly”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/filmi...hildren/082354 ...

Develop Conference: TeePee Games CEO lauds free-to-play model for all Android games
CEO of London-based publisher TeePee Games Tony Pearce has said that developers of Android games and apps must consider the freemium payment model for their titles in the future.
Speaking as part of a Develop Conference panel discussing the issue of payment models for Android, Pearce looked up the top ten downloaded Android apps on stage, noting that nine of them were freemium.
“If you are a publisher of mobile games, you have to start thinking about freemium product,” he said.
“Of those that start freemium games, maybe about six per cent will start paying. Six per cent is a big number when you’re in the top ten apps on Android.”
Pearce also warned against complacency when making use of the increasingly popular model however.
“Don’t let the consumer down when they buy it [your app],” he said.
“Really start to drag them in.”

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...ifbh+(Develop) ...

Microsoft has reasserted that developers are not being forced to incorporate Kinect functionality into their Xbox 360 games and that Kinect functionality will not be forced on core gamers.

"I don’t think we’re trying to put any input paradigm, enforce that on anyone, unless it’s better,” Xbox CFO Dennis Durkin told IndustryGamers. “We’re not trying to force anything.

“If people want to do it and they think it enhances the experience, I think consumers will embrace it and they’ll do it, but that’s the bar that they’ll expect. And there will be a bunch of experimentation, some of it will work and some of it won’t. The things that work, people will emulate and they’ll chase and the things that don’t, people will try other experiments.”

"I think one part of Kinect is making sure that Kinect is relevant for whatever audience you have. We certainly have a core audience. We want to make sure that Kinect experiences are great for them. But the key word in that is experiences. And it’s got to be experience driven.

“So we’re not dogmatic about, 'Hey, no controller. It's go to be 100 per cent no controller’. What you’re seeing is a lot of experimentation across that spectrum of, 'Hey, here’s a totally controller based experience that’s been a controller based experience for 10 years, so people are very, very ingrained in how they interact in that experience’, to, 'Here’s the other end of the spectrum, which is a totally Kinect-based experience. You don’t need a controller’.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ms-no...-gamers/082340 ...

The global games market is getting pretty close to a 50/50 split between digital and physical revenue, according to a senior EA Sports exec.

EA Sports worldwide studio boss Andrew Wilson told attendees at the opening day of the Brighton Develop conference that the firm's research says last year digital content accounted for 45 per cent of games revenue in the industry.

Boxed games were 55% of the market.

The stat came as part of an overall message about the wider disruption the games industry - specifically games retail - faces as consumer habits change towards on-demand content and not games on disc.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ea-bo...-market/082343 ...