DCEmu Homebrew Emulation & Theme Park News
wraggster
by Published on April 11th, 2011 19:17- Categories:
- Apple News
This month marks the 35th anniversary of Apple--and the 35th anniversary of the Apple I, its first computer. It was a single-board computer that was unimaginably more rudimentary than any modern Mac — it didn't even come with a case and keyboard standard — but in its design, sales and marketing, we can see the beginnings of the Apple approach that continues to this day. I'm celebrating with a look at this significant machine.http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/0...ng-the-Apple-I ...by Published on April 11th, 2011 19:14- Categories:
- DCEmu
Fate of the World developer Red Redemption believes that serious games - those that tackle real-world issues and aim to educate as well as entertain - can be done on a commercial scale, making them a viable business for publishers that are becoming increasingly risk averse.
However, as with all game development it's a struggle to realise the final product. Red Redemption spent as much as £200,000 raising £1 million from investors, faced death threats over the subject matter and had to work the system in order to score more finance through the R&D tax credits offered by the UK government, according to CEO Klaude Thomas.
You'd have a really hard time getting funding this way from a fantasy game or sci-fi game.
Klaude Thomas, Red Redemption
"I just felt that there was there was a market here, and it was actually feasible to develop serious games commercially," said Thomas, of his decision to leave big budget games development and enter the serious games market.
"We're still a way from quite proving that, but I think it's a high concept that I'd like to prove. We'd also like to get into a position where we can ourselves sponsor other projects in this area - that would be incredible."
As big publishers aren't yet convinced enough to invest in serious games, the easiest route to finance is through venture capitalists, according to Thomas, who warned of the high costs involved in raising money.
"Altogether, we raised about £1 million, but we didn't spend all of that on the game. I would guess that we spent at least £100,000 or £200,000 just on raising the money and administrating that," he said in an interview published today.
"This is a really important thing if anyone else is thinking of raising money this way. It takes a lot of work and time and money to do the administration. We spent quite a lot of legal and setting up our licenses and distributor. We spent something - not enough, probably! - on promotion. All told, we probably spent £500,000 or £600,000 on developing the game itself, probably about £400,000 on other things."
Red Redemption took advantage of R&D tax credits offered by the government in an environment otherwise deemed "terrible" for game development.
"That's quite an important component - that's usually enough money to run the studio for a few months. It's very important to do, and to be very assiduous about, and that will be more so in future.
"The UK is basically a terrible place to do games development work in terms of any advantages from tax and so on, but our experience has been that HMRC has been basically very cool to deal with on the R&D at least."
Thomas also believes that an interest in Fate of the World's climate change subject matter helped score the VC investment.
"No-one ever came by and put money in without looking at the business plan and what they might receive and return, but equally I don't think anyone came to us looking solely at making a straight game investment.
"It's definitely because of the hook, because it was of interest to the wider society. It wouldn't even necessarily need to be climate change, but I bet you'd have a really hard time getting funding this way from a fantasy game or sci-fi game."
Red Redemption has encountered some resistance from those that consider serious subjects inappropriate for videogames, but they are in the minority, according to Thomas.
"We had one person saying that we should either be locked up or executed. And we've had some people quite against the whole idea, but that's really the minority. I would say less than 5 per cent of respondents. Most people have been really positive about it."
As Red Redemption now looks to take Fate of the World to other formats - Mac, Android and iPad - Thomas highlighted the opportunity for game developers to make serious games where currently there is enthusiasm from academics who don't necessarily have the right background.
"I looked at a lot of serious games at the time, and essentially most of them were taking a subject and pushing it onto a game. That's not really the right way to do it. The gameplay has to emerge out of the subject, ideally, or map very tightly to it.
"I think that's because a lot of the serious games community are not people who are out the outset game-makers, but they might have been teachers, or someone with a particular interest in a subject. So what they're doing is often not really doing the job of fabricating a game, but taking a dressing of a topic or political point and then lying that onto an existing game - that might not produce a very good mapping.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...red-redemption
...by Published on April 11th, 2011 19:11- Categories:
- PSP News,
- PS3 News,
- PS2 News,
- Nintendo DS News,
- Nintendo 3DS News,
- Nintendo Wii News,
- PC News,
- Xbox 360 News
Wii and Kinect title Zumba Fitness is the new UK number one for the week ending April 9, with few other significant new entries in the chart.
Zumba Fitness was already the best-selling individual format title last week and this week takes the top spot in the multiformat chart as well. Although also released on the Xbox 360, with a PlayStation 3 version imminent, 92 per cent of sales this week were on the Wii.
The game follows similar success for the title in the US, although sales actually fell by 49 per cent this week. Previous number one Crysis 2 saw a drop of 57 per cent though, in what has been a quiet week for both sales and new releases.
Combined with the unseasonably good weather most other titles saw a drop in sales, with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 down 32 per cent, despite rising two places to number four.
Lego Star Wars III saw a fall in sales of 45 per cent at number three, with Shift 2: Unleashed down 45 per cent, Homefront down 46 per cent, and WWE All Stars down 41 per cent.
Portable titles Pokémon Black and White were the least affected by the weather, with the Black version overtaking its twin with just a 15 per cent drop in sales, compared to 27 per cent for White.
The only new entry of the week was Tecmo Koei's Dynasty Warriors 7, which took advantage of the sluggish market and achieved one of the best ever performances for the franchise, with a debut at number 10.
The rest of the chart is dominated by legacy titles and re-entries such as Dragon Age II and Bulletstorm benefiting from retail promotions. There are now no 3DS titles in the top 20.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-for-uk-charts ...by Published on April 11th, 2011 19:09- Categories:
- PS3 News
Sony Computer Entertainment and George Hotz have settled their hacking legal dispute, according to a joint statement.
Sony had been taking legal action against Hotz for publishing and distributing security circumvention for the PlayStation 3.
Hotz has now consented to a permanent injunction and said that "it was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier. I'm happy to have the litigation behind me." He added that he is not involved in any of the recent attacks on Sony websites and services.
Those attacks are from a loose collective of hackers linked to Anonymous - the settlement between Hotz and Sony was agreed in principle on March 31, days before Anonymous threatened Sony for its legal actions against Hotz and other notorious hackers.
Said Riley Russell, general counsel for SCEA: "Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal."
Despite a press release focused on cooperation, Hotz has now said he is boycotting all Sony products in the future.
Sony has not revealed any details of its pursuit of hacking group fail0verflow, which it was also taking legal action against at the same time as George Hotz.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...acking-lawsuit
...by Published on April 11th, 2011 15:19- Categories:
- Apple News
James Laird has reverse engineered the Airport Express private key and published an open source AirPort Express emulator. 'My girlfriend moved house, and her Airport Express no longer made it with her wireless access point. I figured it'd be easy to find an ApEx emulator — there are several open source apps out there to play to them. However, I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there's a private key hiding inside the ApEx. So I took it apart (I still have scars from opening the glued case!), dumped the ROM, and reverse engineered the keys out of it.http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/0...te-Key-Exposed ...by Published on April 11th, 2011 15:17- Categories:
- PC News
It appears as if Google has quietly implemented the SPDY HTTP replacements in Chrome (well, we knew that), and its websites. All its websites were recently updated with SPDY features that address some of the HTTP latency issues. The result? Google says the pageload times were cut about in half. SPDY will be open source, so there is some hope that other browser manufacturers will add SPDY as well."http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/04...In-Half-w-SPDY ...by Published on April 11th, 2011 15:16- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
Nintendo's stock prices in America have fallen by 12 per cent since the beginning of April, as worries over demand for the 3DS and the effects of the Japanese earthquake upset investors.
Nintendo's ADR stock (American depositary receipt - a representation of shares in foreign companies) closed at $30.10 on Friday, the lowest figures since late 2009.
Prior to the 3DS launch in Japan stock stood at $38.29, but despite an apparently strong launch sales of the new portable have quickly dropped away in the console's homeland. As a result the 3DS was outsold by its aging rival the PSP last week in Japan.
Although Nintendo has portrayed the US and European launches as successful no sales figures have been released for the former - just an announcement that the 3DS broke the one-day sales record for a portable console.
In Europe the system sold 303,000 units in its first two days, with 113,000 in the UK and 50,000 in Germany.
The UK total is significantly below the 140,000 pre-order figure quoted prior to launch. 3DS titles have also made little impact in the UK charts, with no titles in the top 20 this week.
Nintendo had originally predicted 4 million sales worldwide for the system by the end of March, but this figure now looks in doubt. The goal of 1.5 million sales in Japan in the first month has already been missed.
The earthquake disaster in Japan appears not to be a factor, with no Nintendo factories damaged and no reports of stock problems for the console.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...s-two-year-low
...by Published on April 11th, 2011 15:15- Categories:
- Apple iPad
Playing video games is the number one use for tablets such as the iPad, with 84 per cent of owners using it for the purpose - compared to 78 per cent for "searching for information" and 74 per cent for emailing.
The data comes from a new Google survey, which puts "reading the news" as the fourth most common activity at 61 per cent, followed by accessing a social network (56%), music and videos (51%), e-books (46%), shopping (42%), and other (19%).
The survey was conducted by Google's AdMob subsidiary and polled results from 1400 tablets owners in the US.
Other data included in the full report shows that 43 per cent of respondents spend more time on their tablet than with their desktop or laptop PC. A third also spend more time than watching television.
A total of 68 per cent of respondents spend at least an hour a day using their tablet, with 82 per cent primarily using it at home - mostly at weekends and in the evening.
Over three quarters admitted that their use of desktop or laptop PCs had decreased since obtaining a laptop, with 28 per cent describing the tablet as their primary computer.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...se-for-tablets
...by Published on April 11th, 2011 15:13- Categories:
- DCEmu
The newly streamlined Grammys are to consider video games as a medium on par with television and cinema in four major award categories.
"I think this could be viewed as a first step in the direction of video games getting their own category," said Bill Freimuth of The Recording Academy to IndustryGamers.
"Many people from the game community have been asking us to create a special category for games over the years, but the main reason we haven't is because we have received very few entries from game publishers."
Previously video game soundtracks were eligible for consideration in certain categories at the Grammys, but only as "other visual media". Now the award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media names the following applicable media: "Motion, Television, Video Game Music, or Other Visual Media".
The Music for Visual Media, Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, and Best Song Written for Visual Media are also described in the same way.
"This acknowledges that film, TV and games can stand side by side and be independently recognised," said Steve Schnur, worldwide executive for music at Electronic Arts. "Hopefully, this will create an even playing field when people vote next year. I expect there to be a tidal wave of submissions from the game industry."
Crysis and Fallout: New Vegas composer Inon Zur has led a movement within the games industry to encourage The Recording Academy to recognise games as an equal with cinema and television.
"Games today are a huge part of the entertainment industry and the music scores being created for them are very unique sounding in many cases compared to film," said Zur.
"I believe that music for games has to take its own place from other genres to gain respect by the mainstream audience and the Grammy category will help achieve this."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...sed-at-grammys
...by Published on April 11th, 2011 15:12- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
US market watchers are expecting the Nintendo 3DS console to have sold up to 750,000 units during its 5 days on sale in the region during March.
Doug Creutz of Cowen and Company predicted the highest number during the month, suggesting the console will be a "stabilising factor" for the handheld market which continues to decline.
Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter put the sales figure at a lower 500,000 units - at the cost of the previous DS models which are likely to be "cut in half" by the new handheld release.
Creutz expects Pokemon Black & White to be the biggest seller for March in the US, shifting 3 million units combined, but Pachter estimates a more modest 1.4 million across both titles.
THQ's Homefront and EA's Crysis 2 are likely to be the biggest home console games of the month, with 800,000 and 500,000 units sold respectively, according to Creutz. Pachter's guess comes in at 100,000 less for both titles.
EA's Dragon Age II, Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops and Ubisoft's Just Dance 2 are also likely to show success in March, when the NPD Group reveals sales data this Thursday, April 14.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ds-sales-in-us
...- Search DCEmu
- Advert 3
News Categories
- Links of Interest
Sony Consoles News
- Nintendo Consoles News
- Sega Consoles News
- Apple & Android News
- Xbox Consoles News
- Open Source Consoles News
DCEmu News Archive
- Advert
- Retro Consoles News
- PC News
- Latest DCEmu News
- DCEmu Network Sites
-
Menu 
Forum Stats
- What is the DCEmu Homebrew & Gaming Network
Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita