This October will see the launch of GameCity, a new interactive entertainment festival designed to bring the games industry and gamers together through a series of debates, seminars, workshops and cultural events.

GameCity will take place in Nottingham during half-term week, running from 25th-29th October. Planned events include European premiere film screenings, game presentations and art exhibitions, including LA's Museum of Arts exhibition 'Into the Pixel'.

"GameCity will entertain, inform and educate individuals, industry and the public sector on the value and the potential of interactive entertainment for everyone, said GameCity director Iain Simons.

"With the phenomenal growth in this sector, we believe it’s the right time for the industry to start challenging itself in this way."

TT Games co-founder Jonathan Smith added: "The GameCity initiative brings together the broadest possible group of people who can shape the future of interactive entertainment, from industry professionals to young children; the game-makers of tomorrow.

"Making this exciting digital world accessible to such a wide audience, in a fresh and imaginative context, creates a real platform to extend opportunity and catalyse innovation. Most importantly, it’ll be a huge amount of fun for everyone involved, showcasing the power of gaming in an engaging and energising way."

Awesome news and even better its in my home city
via gamesindustry ...

Strategic decisions made this year could have a fundamental effect on the future of the games industry, according to a survey conducted by organisers of the Develop Conference and Expo.

Tandem Events surveyed 70 industry professionals due to speak at next week's event to gauge opinion on current development strategy and the challenges facing the industry as a result of the current hardware transition.

"The survey highlighted that 2006 is requiring a number of senior managers to make some crucial decisions," commented event director Andy Lane.

"Over half of the respondents said that strategic directions taken in 2006 will have fundamental implications to the long term future of their businesses."

The imminent launch of both Nintendo and Sony's next-gen consoles offers a wealth of opportunity for the development community, but there are also a number of obstacles to overcome, not least in terms of financing the substantial increase in development costs.

"Many of the sessions at the Develop conference have been designed to help the industry focus on the fundamental topics that are affecting the industry and give developers an alternative input into their decision making process," Lane added.

"What’s really impressive is that over 85 per cent still found the industry exciting to be in, and wouldn’t change their jobs. There simply aren’t that many industries where that level of passion exists."

Scheduled to run over three days from 11th-13th July, The Develop Conference and Expo will feature more than 70 industry speakers and over 40 companies from around the world.

The conference will include 47 sessions, with tracks covering coding, design, art, audio, business and next wave. Confirmed speakers include Chris Deering, Phil Harrison, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Peter Molyneux, Mark Rein, Andrew Oliver, Miles Jacobson, Jonathan Smith and many more.

Attendees will also be granted free access to the IGDA workshop, Develop Mobile conference, Serious Games workshop, an ATI developer day and the Develop Industry Excellence Awards.

Full details on the programme of events, confirmed speakers and exhibitors and registration information can be found by visiting the official Develop Conference website.

Via GiBiz ...

Since the PS3 official unveiling, we've been hearing Sony execs extolling the virtues of the machine in increasingly astonishing ways. Most memorably, Ken Kutaragi telling gamers they should start working harder, because the console's going to be pretty damned expensive.

It seems that Sony's attitude hasn't escaped those on the development side of the industry and now videogames luminary Jeff Minter - of Llamasoft fame - has stepped up to give Sony a piece of his mind.

Writing in the latest issue of Edge magazine, Minter describes Sony's attitude as seeming "incredibly arrogant". Says Minter, "They seem absolutely certain that even when they say that it's going to be considerably more expensive than existing consoles, and that maybe there won't be that many titles actually available at launch, nonetheless us eager customers will rush out in droves to buy it because, hey, it's a new PlayStation."

Minter argues, "Just making the shiniest, most expensive harware doesn't cut it these days. Sure the PSP was beautiful, shining, pretty and posh, whereas the DS was definitely the ugly sister. But hey, the ugly sister is better in the sack".

For Minter, you see, it's all about the games and, at the moment, he feels the PS3 is distincly lacking in that area: "Yeah, you've got the lion's share of the current market, but don't get smug, Sony. Nobody likes smug, and it's not an attitude that has served companies well in the videogames industry."

He continues, "We need games, not smugness, games that will make me want to get hold of the PS3 rather than a bunch of stuff either identical or broadly similar to what I'll be playing on my 360. I want sweet Feisar temptation, not a bit of snotty attitude." ...

DCEvolution.net now hosts ready-to-burn Dreamcast images of bWWd's awesome BattleToads mod:





The game took eight long months to create and contains 5 completley different game modes and 5 playable characters !

>>I hope this will inspire someone to start his own mod or make his mod better. Have fun with it.<< - bWWd

BattleToads US/JP NTSC Version [Dreamcast]
BattleToads EU PAL Version [Dreamcast]

Printable covers and a full DCEvolution webpage for BattleToads will follow this weekend. Big thanks to Samurai X for updating the Dreamcast port to OpenBoR v2.0047 ...

An Xbox 360 version of physics-laden race 'n' smash title FlatOut is in the pipeline, apparently.

According to reports, the existence of Flatout: Total Carnage, as the 360 game is called, has been revealed in financial statements issued by the series' publisher Empire.

There's no other information at present, but with the recently released FlatOut 2 being reasonably well received further details on a next-gen outing for the series are worth keeping 'em peeled for.

Essentially a destruction derby-style racer where you score big points for ramming other vehicles, FlatOut 2 also features mini-games that include the likes of propelling your rag-doll driver through the windscreen. Funny. Nasty, but funny.

We imagine FlatOut on Xbox 360 will stick to the same model but, as the subtitle suggests, ramp up the carnage factor. ...

Despite World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment having yet to officially confirm projects for next-generation consoles, what we'll describe as 'a very strong suggestion' that the studio has plans for the new machines has finally emerged.

In a job posting for the role of Senior Producer on console games appearing on Blizzard.com, accompanying word on the responsibilities and requirements attached to the position is a note that "Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii production experience" is a plus.

Unsurprisingly, there's no mention of games in the job posting, but it's speculated that the position could be linked to StarCraft: Ghost meaning, possibly, next-gen versions of the game are planned. Earlier in the year, Blizzard announced it was indefinitely postponing production on Ghost - confirmed only for current-gen - and weighing up options.

.For anyone not familiar with StarCraft Ghost, it is/was an offshoot of the StarCraft sci-fi RTS games and stars a female stealth operative called Nova, who's charged with undertaking the usual dangerous set of missions in the StarCraft universe.

Anyway, all we can do is keep bums parked in seats and await official word from the developer on next-gen initiatives. ...

Popular strategy game The Settlers is coming to the Nintendo DS, publisher Ubisoft and developer Blue Byte have announced. It should reach the shops before the end of the year and, amazingly, it will be the 13-year-old franchise's first outing on a handheld.

The game will start with a Roman ship landing on an apparently uninhabited island - and in true Settlers fashion, you will have to establish a settlement - and then train an army to defend it.

Naturally, The Settlers will make extensive use of the DS' touch-screen for designing and organising your settlement. The game will include two campaigns - Roman and World - and there will be a free mode in which you can play against the CPU. It will have 30 different occupations for characters, six types of soldiers and four races: Romans, Vikings, Nubians and Asians.

We'll let you know when a more concrete release date emerges.

Screens Via Comments ...

DCEvolution is proud to anounce that we now host a true Dreamcast classic from the early years of Dreamcast freeware:



Delicious by Yodel is a very impressive piece of art with some incredible looking visual effects and an awesome soundtrack, running on the Dreamcast hardware in real time.

The download is located at this page ...

Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSPVBA the GameBoy Advance Emulator for PSP.

What's new in version 1.0.5 :

- New turbo modes (more speed and less graphic artefacts)
- Add SFX enable/disable option (can be used to increase speed)
- Fix in BMP screenshots (no more need to flip the image)
- Improve a bit the sound quality (the "ARM tick" can be changed to prevent sound distorsion)
- The SELECT key is now available for user keyboard mapping (but don't forget to map a psp key to enter in the emulator MENU !)
- File requester use now two directories for keyboard and rom files
- Fix the bug that made games like Pokemon Fire to crash

How to use it ?

Have a look to the README.txt file !

Two binary versions (for 2.x and 1.5 FW) and sources are included in the zip archive.

This package is under GPL Copyright, read COPYING file for more information about it.

This should be the final release for 2.x FW (only if major bugs are found) :

- In my option this version is usable for many games, with acceptable performances
- I will downgrade to 1.5FW soon and may be try to use kernel mode to improve the speed a bit more.

Enjoy,

Zx.

*This emulator doesn't work with the Tiff exploit on 2.0, so please use the GTA exploit instead. *

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...