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by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:31- Categories:
- PS3 News
More people are splashing more cash on the PlayStation Store than ever before, Sony has revealed....
Your frivolous spending lead to a 70 per cent fatter annual take for Sony's virtual shop last year than in 2009, Sony America's Pierre Gravereau divulged at GDC (reported by Joystiq).
The upward surge can be attributed to various things. For instance, there are more PSN accounts and therefore potential shoppers: Gravereau puts the PSN account number at 70 million. There were also 60 per cent more shoppers nosing around the PlayStation Store last year.
That's because over 80 per cent of the 41.6 million PS3 owners around the world are connected to the internet. Psst, Pierre, there are actually 47.9 million PS3 owners around the world.
Also, the weekly PlayStation Store updates these days offer an enviable, coordinated stack of content. Take a look this Wednesday's update - it's stuffed.
No concrete figures from Gravereau to mull over, unfortunately, but percentages make for a nice pie-chart. And I really like pies.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-up-70-percentby Published on March 4th, 2011 00:30- Categories:
- Apple iPad
We've sliced open the iPad 2's belly, heaved its guts out and labelled each part.
What follows are the complete specs of the Wi-Fi only iPad 2.
These come from the Apple website. We've left some of the less interesting bits out.
- Size: 9.5 inches high, 7.31 inches wide, 0.34 inches deep
- Weight: 1.33 pounds / 601 grams (3G model imperceptibly heavier)
- Storage: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB
- Wireless: Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology
- Screen: 9.7 inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen multi-touch with IPS technology, 1024x768 resolution at 132 pixels per inch, fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
- Processor: custom 1GHz dual-core Apple A5 chip
- Back camera: video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still camera with 5x digital zoom
- Front camera: video recording, VGA up to 30 frames per second with audio; VGA-quality still camera
- Battery: rechargeable 25-watt-hour lithium polymer batter (lasts 10 hours web browsing, watching video, listening to music), plug and USB charger
- Ports: 30-pin dock connector port, 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack
- Sound: built-in spearker, microphone, frequency response from 20Hz to 20,000Hz, user-configurable maximum volume, Dobly Digital 5.1 surround sound with Apple Digital AV Adapter
- Sensors: three-axis gyro, accelerometer, ambient light sensor
- Video: up to 1080p with Apple Digital AV Adapter or Apple VGA Adapter (cables sold separately)
- Digital compass
- Dock Connector to USB Cable
- 10W USB Power Adapter
- http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...2-specs-a-to-z
by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:28- Categories:
- PS3 News
First-person shooter phenomenon Call of Duty: Black Ops is the best-selling PlayStation 3 game ever, Activision has claimed.The gargantuan game company cited data from NPD, ChartTrack and GfK as it announced that the First Strike downloadable content had hit the PlayStation Network.
Activision failed, however, to reveal specific sales for the PS3 version of the game.
Black Ops beats PS3-exclusive simulation racer Gran Turismo 5 (6.37 million), Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (5.2 million), Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (4.75 million), Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (over 3.8 million copies worldwide) in the illustrious list of PS3 best-sellers.
Black Ops is the fastest-selling videogame of all time across all formats.
The Treyarch created military shooter made entertainment history in November last year when it shattered theatrical box office, book and videogame sales records for five-day opening worldwide sell through in dollars, selling more than $650 million.
The PS3 console first went on sale in November 2006.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-ps3-game-ever...
by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:26- Categories:
- PC News
John Romero, legendary designer of seminal first-person shooters Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, has had his fill of making games for the hardcore....
Now, he says in a new interview, he's turning his attention to a new type of gamer – Facebook gamers.
"We have satisfied hardcore gamers for decades," the id Software co-founder told Venture Beat.
"Now it's time for the rest of the world. Our opportunity is to teach the rest of the world how to play games."
Romero hopes to achieve his goal through the California-based developer Loot Drop. Its small team plan to publish games for multiple social game publishers.
Loot Drop has funding from social game publisher RockYou, which will publish Romero's first game soon.
But Romero's already tasted sweet success in the social game space with Facebook game Ravenwood Fair, which a whopping 10 million people play every month.
Romero's new role as the designer of the next big social experience is a far cry from the one that made his name.
Romero co-founded id Software with John Carmack, Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall, and designed some of the most influential games of all time.
Romero left to start Ion Storm and created the controversial Daikatana. In 1997 he appeared on an advert for the game that said: "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch....Suck it down." That didn't go down well, and some 10 years later Romero apologised to fans for it.
After Ion Storm closed in 2001, Romero formed mobile game developer Monkeystone Games. After leaving that company, he joined Midway Games in 2003. He left two years later, starting MMO developer Slipgate Ironworks, which became the core studio of Gazillion. That didn't work out as planned, either.
Now the 43-year-old has a very different outlook on the creation of videogames, and believes in experiences fuelled by virtual item purchases. "The game industry is dropping down on top of social," Romero said. "We don't have a view of strip mining the players for cash. When a player gives you money, you want them to feel good about giving you that money."
Romero will launch four Loot Drop games this year, to be published and marketed by other companies.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ardcore-gamersby Published on March 4th, 2011 00:25- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
SEGA has revealed the five Game Gear games it will make available to the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console when it launches in May....
They are Sonic & Tales 2, Sonic Drift 2, The GG Shinobi, Dragon Crystal Shirani's Maze, and Columns.
SEGA failed to reveal pricing while announcing the lineup, according to Andriasang.
At the Game Developers Conference yesterday Nintendo announced that a worldwide 3DS update will roll out in late May that adds the DSiWare service and the ability to transfer your existing DSiWare games to 3DS.
The Nintendo 3DS web browser and eShop will also be added. At the eShop you will be able to buy Virtual Console games - like old Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, Game Gear and TurboGrafx games - as well as 3D Classics, which are fully remastered 3D versions of old games.
"This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Game Gear system, and we believe that releasing these titles on the groundbreaking Nintendo 3DS is a great way to commemorate the occasion," said Haruki Satomi, vice president of Digital Business at SEGA of America.
"Both new fans and those with fond memories of time spent playing their Game Gear will surely find something to love in our upcoming lineup of Nintendo eShop titles."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-3ds-vc-lineupby Published on March 4th, 2011 00:23- Categories:
- Playstation Vita News
Sony has confirmed the size of the proprietary memory cards used in the Next Generation Portable, revealing that games will come on cards with 2GB and 4GB capacities.
The two SKUs at retail could suggest that boxed games would sell for two different price points. A high end Next Generation Portable game will use 4GB of memory - compared to 9GB for an average PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, according to David Coombes, platform designer for SCEA.
The system will also support removable memory cards for downloadable content such as music and video, "and they will come in a variety of sizes, probably quite a bit bigger," offered Coombes.
Showing off a number of tech and game demos at GDC in San Francisco today, Coombes was not prepared to detail internal memory for the system, stating only that it would be closer to the PlayStation 3 in terms of RAM rather than the current-gen PSP.
The NGP itself will come in at least two different models, one supporting 3G services, the other just wi-fi. Interestingly, Coombes claimed that for location-based gaming and services, the wi-fi model would be a better solution in built-up areas where it can hook up to wi-fi hotspots.
"For the wi-fi models you can still do pretty accurate positioning. In urban areas that ends up being more accurate than GPS, because GPS needs to see the sky so inside a shopping mall it won't work, where wi-fi would," he said.
While some areas of the specialist press have reported that the NPG is comparable to the PlayStation 3 when it comes to performance, Coombes said that from a design perspective Sony has to be "constantly worried about battery life, we have to be constantly worried about power use."
"It's not going to be as powerful as the PS3 because the battery would last five minutes. And probably set fire to your pants," he joked.
As well as Uncharted for NGP, Bigbig Studios demoed the system's back-mounted touch panel with their Little Deviants game, and augmented reality features was highlighted with a giant "next generation dinosaur" superimposed in the conference centre amongst attendees.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ngp-game-cards
...by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:21- Categories:
- PS3 News,
- Nintendo Wii News,
- Xbox 360 News
Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe believes that home consoles are pushing away users through bad, restrictive design choices that delay the game-playing experience.
Checking for new downloadable content, updating software, cut scenes and the time between turning a console on and actually playing the game are just some of the problems that turn customers to more immediate portable experiences and social networks, said the outspoken designer.
"Portable game time is going way up, but why? Those of us in the console space are actually making choices that push our customers away. The time it takes to power on your console and be in the game playing takes too damn long. The gap of time from pressing 'on' to actually beginning to play is getting longer and it's annoying customers," he told an audience at GDC.
"Cut scenes, installs, updates, load times, system boot-up times - a lot of the stuff can be designed around. For me there are times I've wanted to play a new console game but I just don't because I don't want to deal with all the ramp-up time. Maybe that makes me lazy but look at all the other stuff that's competing right now for my leisure time.
"The one thing that they all have in common, the best thing, is that all of these pretty much have instant payoff. Literally seconds after thinking about doing these activities I can be doing this activities. Why would I put up with 3-15 minute wait times when I can be entertained otherwise, instantly?" he said.
These delays were tolerated in the past, said Jaffe, because console gaming was the better experience, but the evolution of portable, mobile and social gaming now rivals a traditional home console.
"If we're talking sheer fun factor, for the first time handheld, mobile phones, internet games, they're just as good, in some cases better - and in all cases cheaper - than the console options," he said.
"If I've got 5-30 minutes to kill and I want to do something it makes total sense that I'm going to reach for instant gratification. The gameplay on my DS, PSP and iPad is just as good as it is on my console."
Jaffe reeled off a list of possible solutions to some barriers, using tech and design choices to avoid annoying the player and turning them off from the experience.
"Can anything be done? What about if you have a disc in the system and there's a save file on the hard-drive for that disc, the instant I power up it shows me a prompt and says 'do I want to go to my latest save?' If I say 'yes' it bypasses everything - hardware logo, dashboard, XMB, game logos - all of it, and I'm in the game much faster.
"Another thing is, why can't - if it's technically possible - I have a sleep mode on my consoles like I do on my Mac and I do on my game devices. All I have to do is hit a switch and within seconds I'm back in the game."
To applause from the crowd he also called for a limit to the number of updates a game should have over the internet, forcing better design and completion of a game before it's released.
"Hardware manufacturers, I feel, should only allow 1-4 updates to the software per game every year. And none of them should come in the first one or two months of the game shipping. When I first started in the business the games we shipped was our last chance off the bat.
"If game developers could make it work then, we can at least make sure games don't have to be updated the same f**king week they hit shelves, thus causing more wait times for the consumer."
Discussing game length, he called for shorter games - not titles that are artificially lengthened to justify a high price point.
"Some of these games on console are just too long. They run out of gas in the first four hours and they should - I want them to. I want to finish stuff and feel a sense of accomplishment. I want to go from start to end of a story in a weekend.
"Ultimately what happens is these console, story-based games putter on for 3-12 hours just because the business model demands it. With portable, most of them focus on the purity of play and not story, it's less of an issue. And a fluid pricing system is acceptable for portable and phone games and story-based games on those platforms are shorter and can be priced accordingly."
And he saved his final criticism for multiplayer gaming on console, that according to Jaffe, has upped the number of players online purely for the sake of it.
"Competition I feel is best when it's one-on-one, and worst case when it's small teams versus small teams. Console multiplayer has lost sight of this just because technically speaking they've been able to. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should do something.
"The spectacle of a massively multiplayer war will never get old, but the experience of the game in such a battle usually just feels like just chaos to the player. But console games rarely stop to think about this. Instead they just throw more virtual bodies at the issue and the result is often mind-numbing and empty.
"I still love console games," he concluded. ...by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:19- Categories:
- PC News
OnLive publisher and developer relations head Chris Donahue has said that the cloud streaming service has to adopt new payment methods for Europe, including cashcards and mobile payments.
Speaking after a presentation to developers at GDC yesterday, Donahue told GamesIndustry.biz that a global operation would mean an integration of global payment methods.
"Absolutely. There's no doubt about it," said Donahue when asked about the possibility of a freemium or microtransaction model in the service's future.
"Our economy engine is a little bit limited at the minute but we're looking at it. We're launching in Europe later this year, so we've got to change. They don't accept US credit cards there. There's pay by mobile and all those other billing things.
"I want to get cash cards, so I can get little kids' money. I want everybody's money," the executive joked.
"That's the thing - the platforms are now irrelevant, we upgrade the hardware - all you need is something you can view OnLive on, then you can play. When it comes to the economy stuff, people expect us to have, what is it, 215 different currencies worldwide? Then also other billing methods."
"We're definitely working on it, we'll have all that for whatever regional roll-outs we do."
OnLive has been very light on its feet in terms of adapting its business models to changing market conditions far, opening a service last month which allows players to access most older games on the service for $10 a month.
Originally, OnLive had planned to charge $4.95 a month to access the service at all, but that wasdropped in October last year.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...els-for-europe
...by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:16- Categories:
- Nintendo 3DS News
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has acknowledged that the company's online services must improve, and has stated that there will be a raft of improvements coming with the launch of the 3DS.
Speaking during his GDC keynote, Iwata stated his belief that the new handheld's connectivity options would "will make owners want to carry their 3DS systems around with them, just to find out what new game elements have been passively transferred to them."
But he conceded that so far, the company's efforts had been disappointing.
"I must admit that in the overall area of wireless communication and digital downloads Nintendo can do better," he said. "To date our WiiWare and DSi services have not operated as well as they should."
During the keynote, Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime announced two key partnerships for the US in an attempt to boost its offerings, with 10,000 AT&T wireless hotspots to be created, while Netflix members will be able to stream movies and other content via the 3DS platform.
Additionally, he noted, 3DS owners will be able to seamlessly transfer their viewing from the handheld to their Wii console and big screen, should they so desire. A new 3D Super Mario title was also teased, with more information set to follow at this year's E3.
The Nintendo 3DS launches in the US on March 27 - shortly after Europe - with a retail price of $249.99.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...nline-failings
...by Published on March 4th, 2011 00:14- Categories:
- PSP News,
- PS3 News,
- PS2 News,
- Nintendo DS News,
- Nintendo 3DS News,
- Nintendo Wii News,
- Xbox 360 News
New 3DS titles have made a significant impact on the Japanese sales charts, but the number one selling game of the week is Sega's Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity for the PSP - a new iteration in the popular Monster Hunter-esque series that sold 206,654 on its debut.
The second highest new entry, at number two, is Namco Bandai's SD Gundam G Generation World on the PSP with 192,981 sales. The Wii version charted at number 12 with 28,119 units sold.
As a result the highest-selling 3DS title was Level-5's Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle at number three, with 119,591 units sales. An impressive figure considering the charts only take into account the first two days that it, and the 3DS itself, went on sale.
The second biggest seller was nintendogs + cats at number five with 64,213 sales, followed by Samurai Warriors: Chronicles at number six, (49,327) Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition at number seven (44,649), Ridge Racer 3D at number eight (38,226), and Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D at number 15 (26,345). Pilotwings Resort was not part of the Japanese launch line-up.
With the weekend total for the 3DS hardware put at 374,764 the total of all software sales for the format suggests an overall attach rate of almost exactly 1:1.
It has been a generally busy week by any standard, with Nippon Ichi's Disgea 4 also debuting at number four with 79,425 sales and THE iDOLM@STER 2 on Xbox 360 squeezing into the top 10 with a creditable 34,621 unit sales.
As a result there is only title from the previous week in the top 10 (Monster Hunter Freedom 3 at number nine, and only four overall in the top 20.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...3ds-debut-week ...- Search DCEmu
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