Electronic Arts is to relaunch its EA Store download service as Origin, offering direct to consumer titles including forthcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic as a digital exclusive.

Central to the rebooted service are new social and sharing features, as well as offering limited edition content for EA and EA Partners titles.

"Origin is a game service with two fundamental features," said David DeMartini, senior vice president of Global Online at EA. "It's a download service for the very best content from EA and its partners.

"It also offers a social function which, over time, will connect a player's profile with friends lists and a cross-platform feed that shows what your friends are playing and where."

The move sheds light on CEO John Riccitiello's statements in May when he described EA as not just a content creator. "Increasingly, we see ourselves as a software platform every bit as much as we see ourselves as a content maker for other companies' platforms," he said during a call to investors.

As well as selling all key franchises such as Need for Speed and Battlefield, BioWare's next Star Wars game is likely to be the biggest draw to the service as EA snubs other forms of download such as Direct2Drive and market-leader Steam.

Users can sign up for the Origin beta, a desktop app that allows communication with friends and to digitally download and play PC games, and access to exclusive trailers and game content.

"This is our first step in the evolution of Origin, and in the weeks and months ahead we will look to enhance the features and services as well as an expanded range of content," said DeMartini. "From exclusive demos to full-game downloads, Origin is the place consumers will go for the best game experiences."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...bution-service ...

BAFTA has revealed plans to take its successful Games Awards to the US as part of a major push to grow its presence and membership across the Atlantic.

The charity, whose film awards are recognised as the British Oscars, plans to launch its US games branch in Hollywood on June 5, at an event celebrating the career of Sims creator and Academy Fellow Will Wright.

Speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz, BAFTA COO Kevin Price said: "Having grown our Video Games Awards year on year in the UK since 2006, we now plan to take these Awards to a truly international audience.

We will expand our events programme to the US and then take the Awards, either in part or in their entirety to the US
Kevin Price, BAFTA
"The first step in this journey is to invite video games members from the US into BAFTA. We will then expand our events programme to the US and then take the Awards, either in part or in their entirety to the US".

The Awards are currently an annual event in the UK, with this year's ceremony held in March at London's Park Lane Hilton.

In a release issued this morning to announce the US launch, BAFTA further confirmed it would form an LA-based video games committee to "represent its activities in America and feed directly into the London-based committee".

Will Wright will be interviewed for BAFTA: Life In Pixels, the first in a new series of events reflecting on the lives on gaming greats. The event, due to take place 5pm PST at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, is supported by IGN and Best Practices Laboratory, and has been timed for E3 week to boost the charity's new membership drive.

Price added: "With a 64-year history and global recognition as an international awards body, BAFTA is perfectly placed to set the global benchmark for creative excellence in video games".

A limited number of games industry tickets are available to the Life In Pixels event by contacting [email protected].

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...rds-head-to-us ...

A study conducted by Divorce Online, reported in the Daily Mail this morning, suggests that 15 per cent of divorce proceedings initiated with the company are a result of video game addiction.

Further investigation by Eurogamer has revealed that of the 2941 divorce petitions handled by the firm in the period of the study (January-April 2011), 1176 were filed based on unreasonable behaviour. A random selection of 200 petitions were then filtered for the word 'video game' with approximately 30 positive results.

However, in conversation with Eurogamer this morning, Mark Keenan, managing director of Divorce Online, explained that at least three or four reasons are needed by the courts in order for a petition to be successful. While 30 of the 200 petitions cited video game addiction as the primary reason, the most common other reasons included a lack of love and affection, an inability to deal with debts, alcohol and drug problems, and a lack of common interests.

The firm's press release suggests that other, indirect factors may also be at work: "The increase could be a consequence of people staying indoors more because of the recession, or it might be being used by men in particular as a means of escape from an already unhappy relationship."

On 17th May the company placed an appeal on Facebook, offering £250 for stories used in the press. Keenan explained that these case stories were solicited "in order to add a bit more weight to the press release. We wanted people to give us some case studies".

Jessica Ellis, quoted in the Daily Mail report, is a recent client of the firm and had been in a relationship with her husband for four-and-a-half years. After two-and-a-half years of marriage, and shortly after relocation to the United Kingdom, the marriage broke down. In 2009 they divorced. In the Daily Mail report, Blizzard MMO World of Warcraft and Call of Duty are blamed.

Eurogamer spoke to her this afternoon.

"In my circumstances, it had nothing to do with the recession whatsoever," she explained. "My husband and I recently moved over from South Africa, so for him it was a connection to his friends back home. I think it was particularly bad during winter, so the staying home part might be relevant. But the main reason was to stay connected to his friends."

Did he have a network of friends in the UK or was he dependent on the game for social interaction? "No he didn't have any connections here, it was all South Africa. They had their own guild."

"Basically, WOW was the beginning of the end, so that was a breakdown of communication and a lack of a lot of different things. Obviously it wasn't the primary reason but it lead to all of the problems."

Blizzard declined to comment on the report.

Late last year games industry trade association TIGA hit back at BBC Panorama's high-profile investigation into video game addiction.

In 'Addicted to Games?' Panorama "hears from youngsters who've dropped out of school and university to play games for anything up to 21 hours a day".

"There is absolutely no proven link between video games and addiction," Dr. Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO, said. "The World Health Organisation has no official medical diagnosis of video games addiction. Playing games is a hobby and people can certainly become passionate about them. This is no different from a passion for a particular book, TV programme or sport. In addition, playing games such as Wii Sports of Xbox Kinect can improve fitness. Games can also be educational. A fifth of UK games businesses make educational or serious games."

Blizzard told Panorama in a statement: "Our games are designed to be fun... but like all forms of entertainment... day-to-day life should always take precedence. World of Warcraft contains practical tools that assist players and parents in monitoring playing time."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-divorce-rates ...

Aussie gamers - a bit miffed that you're spending over $100 for a new console game, even while the Aussie dollar is soaring? You're not alone: retail consumer watchdog CHOICE submitted a document to the Productivity Commission last week calling on "importers, distributors and retailers to pass some of the savings they are enjoying thanks to the strong Aussie dollar on to Australian consumers."


According to CHOICE, Australian consumers are able to save about 90% on the price of Portal 2 if they purchase abroad
At a time when the Australian dollar is sitting comfortably above parity with the US, gamers are increasingly turning to online stores based abroad to buy their games. "Who can blame them," CHOICE ask in a statement, "when Xbox and PlayStation 3 games cost 91% more from a major Australian online retailer than from an overseas online website based in Asia?"

CHOICE's director of campaigns and communications Christopher Zinn thinks Australian retailers are becoming complacent. "The pressure from overseas online competition is a much needed wake up for Australian retailers to be more competitive," he wrote.

"We need to move beyond a complacent culture of high prices, high margins and poor service."

The statement also dismisses the retail industry's claim that the GST-free threshold for products under $1000 is the cause of local grief. "Adding 10% to the cost of a product that is 91% cheaper is not an effective deterrent," CHOICE writes.

"This is a distraction from the real issue of excessive mark-ups and challenges the industry to offer realistic explanations on why prices are so high or - better yet - begin offering better deals for Australian consumers."

"The imposition of a GST on overseas purchases will not make the threat of far better deals overseas go away."

CHOICE's submission will not fall on deaf ears: the Productivity Commission's inquiry into the structure and performance of the Australian retail industry is currently under way, which aims - among other things - to explore "broader issues contributing to the increase in online purchasing by Australian consumers."

Stay tuned. In the meantime, do you buy your games locally or abroad? What is the appeal of shopping domestically?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Well its been a busy few days since Martin upgraded not only the server but upgraded the forum to the latest version of Vbulletin and installed many new security features, hopefully this will stop the hacking that has done damage to the name of DCEmu.

The last few days i have been posting like crazy and now we are back up to date and what a month it has been, if you follow the PSP, DS and Wii scenes you have seen so many new releases, infact i havent seen so much activity in a long time and some genuine great releases, the weeks away has really renewed my passion for homebrew.

One thing i am going to do is bring back the old sites for archive purposes so that releases especially older ones can be found easy, there are thousands of pages on those sites that form a major history of the site and whilst the new CMS is great theres a need to be able to relive those releases, that is my next task and an ongoing one until they are all online.

Over the last 4 days i have posted literally hundreds of news items and a couple of hundred Homebrew releases, so if you havent yet then check the forums to catch up on releases you may not have seen before.

The Homebrew scene seems to be coming out of a dark period where homebrew was just linked to piracy and its good to remember that Homebrew is and never wil be the same as piracy.

Long Live DCEmu and The Homebrew Scene,

thanks for your time

wraggster ...

You're probably getting excited about E3 (and who can blame you?) but it's a bit more difficult for us who've come to view the yearly event as "The One Week We Actually Have to Work Pretty Hard." But whether you're a jaded misanthrope like our staffers or a rational human who hasn't had their heart replaced with a heart-sized stone, there's a new can't-miss event at the conference: The 200th Video Games Live show, set for 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 8 at the Nokia Theater.

The slate of guests and material is large enough that you'll have to read the full list on the VGL site, but just for starters, the all-new show includes the live premiere of music from Red Dead Redemption, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Resident Evil 5. Also look for performances of Portal hit "Still Alive" and Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross themes, with composer Yasunori Mitsuda in attendance.

What is this feeling in our chest rocks? Is it ... excitement?

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/29/vi...-angeles-show/ ...

Hi all, we are back and ready to rumble, over this weekend theres going to be hundreds of newsposts, as i get the site back up to scratch, this means for me posting all the homebrew releases missed from May4th, im targeting news every hour for the next 4 days to get things back up to date, also although we have changed to a new format with the news i may bring the old sites back in a way so that if you need to find something you can, ill go over my plans with Martin over the next few days.

feels good to be doing something again. ...

Is Australia finally ready to implement a video game rating system that allows for classification of adult games? Draft guidelines have been released by the federal government which allow 'virtually no restrictions on the treatment of themes,' and violence in games 'except where it offends against the standards of morality, decency and propriety.' Last month, South Australian Attorney General John Rau said that the state was finally ready to adopt the long-proposed R18+ adult rating for games, but only if the lower MA15+ rating is eliminated and all games in the category pushed into the new, higher rating. However, this new draft has both the R18+ and MA15+ ratings available together."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/0...ame-Guidelines ...

Ex-Capcom developer Keiji Inafune has accused Japanese developers of dismissing digital markets and looking down on digital content created for consoles, smartphones and social platforms.

A long-time critic of the Japanese development attitude, Inafune also said that young development talent has the wrong attitude to creativity and lacks the stamina to create hit games.

"I think that one of the issues is that creators, the top-notch high-profile game creators, don't seem to want to do digital download titles because they're an afterthought, like it's below them," he told 1UP.

The younger creators of today, they just don't have that power, they don't have that strength, that creativity.
Keiji Inafune, Comcept
"The real 'rockstar' Japanese game creators are only going to do more expensive packaged products and a lot of times, even if the idea internally is to do a complimentary digital download game that goes with a packaged product, it's kind of a hassle to try and spend some of your team and resources on a digital download when you want to keep them focused all on the main project at hand.

"So it ends up being delayed or it becomes an afterthought; it's a self-fulfilling prophecy almost. Additionally, that's going to mean that consumers aren't really into those games because the high-profile people aren't usually making them. On top of that, because that's one of the issues, a lot of times digital games will not sell in Japan and therefore the sales teams in Japan tend to not put a lot of energy and time to pushing them and marketing them the right way."

He was critical of a younger generation of game development talent, suggesting a lack creativity and a deluded attitude that Japanese development is the best in the world.

"The younger creators of today, they just don't have that power, they don't have that strength, that creativity, they're all kind of born into 'Japan is number one in the gaming industry' so all they've got now is a lot of pride without the hungry go-getter attitude of trying to become the top.

"And so what that has done now is you've got a bunch of people that feel entitled, that feel they're already number one even though they're not."

Inafune also shed light on the two new studios he created since leaving Capcom. Comcept is a team acting as think tank for projects that can span different media, while Intercept will act more as a traditional publisher and developer.

"By forming two very separate entities as companies and saying OK, the one side that's going to do the creative concepts this is going to be Comcept, and they're going to focus on all the creativity and they're not going to be limited to games, they're going to be able to do comic books or movies or games, of course, but it's all going to be about ideas.

"And then separate from that, Intercept, they're going to be the game company, they make games, they're going to be the production side, they're doing what we've always done as game creators, they're actually making the product but they're more of a process, they're more building out the games based on the ideas the Comcept side has developed."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...panies-inafune ...