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by Published on August 15th, 2012 23:12- Categories:
- PC News
Three big PC brands are spearheading Ubisoft’s push into free-to-play.
The firm told MCV at Gamescom in Germany that it can use core games brands with freemium models to attract new audiences. The Ghost Recon, Might & Magic and Anno series are first up.
At Gamescom this week, the firm announced that a freemium version of city-builder Anno will launch before the end of the year. Later in 2013 that will be joined by two Might & Magic games, an MMO and an RPG. Lastly, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online has now come out of its closed beta and is open to all players.
“Ubisoft is taking the quality of core games and combining it with the best characteristics of online play,” explained Stephanie Perotti, Ubisoft’s chief operating officer.
She described the firm’s new wave of online games as “titles that will stand out from the crowd”.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ubi-u...y-push/0101320 ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 21:30- Categories:
- PC News
Epic Games says that Unreal Engine 4 is increasingly being adopted by major studios who have traditionally used their own tech as the next generation of hardware approaches.
Speaking to us in Cologne on the eve of Gamescom Mike Gamble, Epic's European territory manager, said that the increased scale of next-generation games had several companies thinking about using Epic's hugely popular engine over the proprietary tech they have used in the past.
"What we're seeing now quite rapidly as we approach new generations is that the guys who use proprietary tech are nearly all now thinking - they all have a decision to make," Gamble said. "Do they continue with their proprietary, or do they go with a proven engine?
"And we're seeing a lot of success in that space - a very surprising success, actually. It's nothing we can actually say yet but there's some people who you'd think, 'Oh my god, who would ever have thought they'd abandon their own technology?"
Gamble admits that there have always been clear advantages to developers using their own technology. Bespoke engines can be honed and tweaked to do exactly what you need them to do, and the resulting games will be visually distinct from games made using a widely available engine, as we've seen this generation with UE3.
"Of course, as you go through transitions, it gets more and more expensive to keep upgrading it," he explained. "And you've got to make sure that it's built and documented in such a way that when staff leave, it can continue, and that's a burden.
"At that point you may as well be thinking about buying, to be honest, because you get all of that as part of it."
All of which begs one obvious question: who could he be talking about? Bungie, perhaps, which under Activision's ownership is working on an ambitious project called Destiny and has already shown its willingness to licensing middleware by using Umbra Software's lighting tech? Maybe Avalanche, the Swedish developer of Just Cause 2 which is hard at work on an ambitious open-world game? Could Capcom, clearly aware of the ageing MT Framework's shortcomings, be looking to reduce development overheads by using a thirdparty engine?
We have no idea, of course, but Gamble's suggestion that some of the game industry's most technically capable companies are leaning towards Unreal Engine is an intriguing one. While it's been long accepted that a new generation of console hardware means increased development time and cost, many of UE4's improvements are aimed at making the game creation process more efficient. With that in mind, perhaps it's not so surprising that big names are prepared to make the switch to Epic's engine.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/epic...l-engine-deals ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 21:10- Categories:
- Playstation Vita News
The message from Sony's Gamescom 2012 press conference couldn't have been clearer: the company is taking Vita seriously. With a new Media Molecule IP, some of PlayStation's biggest franchises, and the arrival of PlayStation Plus and PSOne classics, much of Sony's 80 minutes on stage was devoted to its ailing handheld. Will it be enough to revive Vita's fortunes?
Media Molecule's Tearaway was the highlight, with studio co-founder Alex Evans on stage to reveal the company's first new IP since LittleBigPlanet. It's a 3D adventure starring Iota, a cartoony figure with an envelope for a head who has a message for you, but is stuck in his papery world. Helping him out of his world and into yours is the aim, a simple goal that lays the foundations for inventive uses of Vita's unique features. Rear touch featured heavily, with rhythmic taps on the back panel increasing airtime from trampoline-like jump pads, and stabs replicated on the Vita's screen, human fingers poking through the ground to clear enemies. It looks delightful, and has clearly been designed with Vita's feature-set in mind - AR was also shown off to good effect, the demo closing with the camera pushing up and out of Iota's world and into the Gamescom audience, captured by the Vita's rear camera.
Then came Killzone Mercenary, a Vita exclusive developed by Guerrilla Games using the same engine that powered Killzone 3. However, it seemed that the only justification for SCEE president Jim Ryan's claim that this was "an FPS that could simply not exist on any other platform" was a heavy emphasis on touchscreen melee kills. Guerrilla's hand could certainly be seen in the visuals, the quality of which was put into stark context when Ryan closed the show with a first look at Call Of Duty: Black Ops Declassified.
At E3, Sony had only shown a logo for Call Of Duty's Vita debut, and it seemed the company was trying to get away with it again when Ryan briefly discussed the game partway through his presentation. And having seen it running at last, perhaps that might have been the better option. Looking disctinctly rough around the edges for a game due in November, Declassified's multiplayer is capped at 4v4, and it's being developed by Nihilistic Software, whose last game was Vita's original great shooter hope,Resistance: Burning Skies, and we all know how that went. Despite Ryan's claim that the multiplayer would feature new maps designed from the ground up for Vita, the trailer leant heavily on Black Ops' Nuketown, a tiny map presumably highlighted to offset disappointment at the meagre online player count.
A look at Assassin's Creed Liberation was more positive, though concerns over crowbarred control options remain after heavy emphasis on touchscreen combat and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of protagonist Aveline riding on the back of a crocodile. It's in development at Ubisoft Sofia, and while there's no disputing that both Liberation and Declassified will be two of the biggest names on the Vita shelves at Christmas, neither dispel the notion that Sony's new handheld is repeating the same mistakes as its predecessor, playing host to cut-down versions of major IP farmed out to B-teams.
There was more LittleBigPlanet Vita, with Pete Smith - the man who revealed that Sony lost a potential Limbo exclusive because it wanted the IP - showing off Cross-Controller, using the Vita to play through a specially designed level on PS3, with the Vita showing objects and traps that are invisible on the big screen.
CrossBuy - where buying a game on Vita nets you a copy of the PS3 game, and vice versa - has previously been reserved for downloadable games like Motorstorm RC and Sound Shapes, but is now to be offered on full retail games. PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale will lead the charge upon its release in November, with Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time and Ratchet & Clank Q-Force to follow. The PlayStation Plus subscription service, whose appeal to PS3 owners will be further boosted next month with a free download ofRed Dead Redemption, was also confirmed for Vita.
A firmware update due on August 28 will finally bring support for PSOne classics on Vita, though it seems that compatibility will be restricted similar to current PSP support. The update will also bring Cross-Controller implementation and a host of minor tweaks including, at last, the option to control the home screen using buttons as well as the touchscreen.
It was a much, much better showing than Vita got at E3, and even though that's a low bar to clear Sony deserves praise for giving its ailing handheld the support it deserves - and one assumes there's more on the way, too, with its plans for Vita's Japanese recovery coming next month at the Tokyo Game Show. PS3 was hardly ignored, either, with two new announcements from Sony's Japan Studio and the Move-controlled Until Dawn. There was no Vita price-cut, despite predictions, Sony's hardware announcements limited to Black Ops, LBP and PS All-Stars bundles, with the ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 21:08- Categories:
- Apple iPad
John Gruber at Daring Fireball has a thoughtful piece about the design of Apple's smaller iPad, which the company is expected to announce on September 12. Simply shrinking the current iPad's dimensions to a new form factor is unlikely, he says, and the bezel surrounding the display is more likely to be a cross between an iPad and an iPhone. He also discusses evidence of Apple's PR team getting the rumor mill going immediately after the announcement of Google's Nexus 7, and how Apple has probably bet on having a thinner and lighter tablet than Google, rather than worrying about a better display. Quoting:"Apple product designs are true to themselves. Each thing has proportions suited to its own nature. Consider how the iPad doesn’t look like a blown up iPhone. They share a few similar design elements — a family resemblance, if you will — but the proportions are different. The iPad has a thick bezel surrounding all four sides of the display; the iPhone does not. Why? Because you need a place to rest your thumbs while holding an iPad. ... Should not the iPad Mini fall somewhere in between? Not as close to the aspect ratio of its display as the iPad-as-we-know-it, but also not as far away from its display aspect ratio as the iPhone. You might need more thumb-rest room on the sides than you do on the iPhone, but not nearly as much as you do on the full-size iPad. If that assumption is right, the proportions of a 7.85-inch 4:3-aspect-ratio display iPad Mini are likely not the same as the proportions of the 9.7-inch 4:3-aspect-ratio display iPad."
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/0...-the-ipad-mini ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 21:06- Categories:
- Apple iPad
We're starting to see a theme develop here. Now that it's Samsung's turn to present its case in the San Jose, California patent trial that regularly has the tech media abuzz, the company is taking an interesting approach. Rather than start out by arguing that its various Android smartphones and tablets do not copy Apple's designs or infringe on its patents, Samsung is arguing that Apple's IP is invalid to begin with. On Monday, Samsung argued that Apple's pinch-to-zoom patent was stolen from Mitsubishi's old Diamond Touch and on Tuesday evening, Samsung made a similar argument regarding the design of Apple's iPad. Samsung on Tuesday presented the jury with videotaped testimony from Roger Fidler, head of the digital publishing program at the University of Missouri. In his testimony, Fidler stated that he began work on a tablet design in 1981. 'Apple personnel were exposed to my tablet ideas and prototypes,' he testified, adding that Apple staff saw his designs in the mid-1990s
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/0...ouri-professor ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 20:59- Categories:
- Nintendo 64 News
You might know that the multiplayer mode for GoldenEye 007, the seminal N64 shooter, was only added to the game late in development. What you probably don't know is that the mode was also added unbeknownst to the management at developer Rare and publisher Nintendo. The revelation comes by way ofGoldenEye 007's director Martin Hollis, who delivered a postmortem presentation on the game at GDC Europe.
Hollis' presentation included stories from many of GoldenEye 007's developers, including Steve Ellis, who was responsible for programming the multiplayer mode, a feat he accomplished in a month. Wrote Ellis:One of the things that always strikes me as crazy in retrospect is that until something like March or April of 1997, there wasn't a multiplayer mode at all. It hadn't even been started. It really was put in at the last minute – something you wouldn't dream of doing these days – and it was done without the knowledge or permission of the management at Rare and Nintendo. The first they knew about it was when we showed it to them working. However – since the game was already late by that time, if we hadn't done it that way, it probably never would have happened.Hollis said that "quite a few features" were "snuck in" throughout development, which he chalked up to management trusting the team. "I'm sure there were six-month stretches where no member of Rare or Nintendo management came into the team offices," he said. "Which is really quite extraordinary, and all credit to them that they felt able to take that much of a leaned-back approach and place that much trust in the team."
So there you have it, GoldenEye 007's multiplayer mode – a vital, fondly-remembered component of a landmark game – was unplanned, coded in a month and might never have existed at all if it weren't for some serendipitous managerial oversight.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/go...unknown-to-ra/ ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 20:41- Categories:
- Playstation Vita News
PSOne Classics support comes to Vita on August 28. Along with it, Vita firmware 1.80 adds several new features to the platform – like actually using the Vita's buttons on the handheld's menu. We know!
The new firmware also adds fast rewind, fast-forward, and variable speed to the Video application. If you're using the thing to play music, you can now import playlists from PS3 or iTunes. The web browser supports rear touch for scroll and zoom, which actually seems like a worthwhile use of that rear touchpad. And there will be a new "Cross-Controller" icon in the Remote Play app to round up Cross-Controller supporting games.
That's the most noticable stuff: there's a whole list of tweaks at the PlayStation Blog.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/vi...o-home-screen/ ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 20:38- Categories:
- PC News
Now you can get your hands on the Diablo 3Starter Edition without borrowing a disc from someone else – we're speaking to the approximately one person who is interested in Diablo 3 and hasn't played it yet.
All you have to do is log into your Battle.net account and sign up through "Your Game Accounts" – or, if you're a non-Battle.net person, create a new account and you'll have the license automatically. You could be enjoying a limited sample of Diablo 3 in no time!
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/di...quires-a-disc/ ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 20:37- Categories:
- PS3 News
This week's PSN update is pretty substantial, headlined by the launch of Papo & Yo, the result of Vander Caballero's childhood with his abusive and alcoholic father. Papo & Yo is available right now for $14.99; $11.99 for PS Plus subscribers.
In addition to Papo & Yo, a revamped YouTube experience emerges on PS3 today, allowing users to control on-screen content using their phones. PS Plus subscribers will find two more free downloads available for their digital libraries: Outland and Bloodrayne Betrayal. The full list of this week's content can be found at the PlayStation Blog.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/14/ps...ps-plus-games/ ...by Published on August 15th, 2012 20:17- Categories:
- Playstation Vita News
Sony's cross-platform gaming service will be available on Vita and Android.
Speaking at the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Sony said that it will release Playstation Mobile this autumn in 30 countries including the UK, US, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
According to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan, the company is planning "bite-sized games" which will play on the Vita as well as PlayStation Certified devices, which include Android smartphones and tablets.
Games will be purchased from the PlayStation Store where they'll be tied to a user's PlayStation Network ID, meaning that one PlayStation Mobile purchase can be played on any certified device tied to that user ID.
In addition to the PlayStation Mobile news, Sony announced that ASUS and, surprisingly, Wikipad have been added as new PlayStation Certified partners.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...-autumn/019039 ...- Search DCEmu
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Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita