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by Published on March 8th, 2011 22:54- Categories:
- Xbox 360 News
A series of job postings from Microsoft have hinted that the Xbox firm is starting work on new console hardware.
Positions on LinkedIn (brought to light on Beyond3D) called for agraphics hardware architect to work on "next-generation console architectures from conception through implementation", plus a senior architect and performance engineer for the Xbox Console Architecture Group.
Also sought was a senior hardware design verification engineer, "responsible for the design verification and qualification of the Xbox console at the component, motherboard, and system levels."
With no further details available as yet, the positions do not yet confirm whether Microsoft is working on a new console, further revision of the current one, or something else entirely.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-architectures
...by Published on March 8th, 2011 22:52- Categories:
- Nintendo Wii News,
- Apple iPhone
Trip Hawkins, founder of EA and CEO of Digital Chocolate, took digs at both Apple and Nintendo during his a session at GDC last week, telling listeners that Apple was over-stimulating supply to the App Store and bemoaning the introduction of development licences by Nintendo.
The rant was part of a 'Social Developers Rant Back' session at the San Francisco event, which also featured luminaries Brenda Brathwaite, Scott Jon Siegel and Chris Hecker.
During his ten minute section, Hawkins rounded on Apple for over-crowding the market place, effectively dis-encouraging quality development for the platform by not helping to promote good titles well enough.
"A few months ago the local newspaper here had a story about what an incredible job Apple was doing, and isn't Apple amazing - they generate a billion dollars in revenue for developers," Hawkins recalled.
"They do such a great job for developers! And that's not all, Apple customers are happy because they have 250,000 applications to choose from, isn't that incredible?
"C'mon. If you're a self respecting journalist, how can you go to sleep without bothering to do the math? You take a billion dollars, you divide it by a quarter million you get... $4000 dollars each. Do you see the problem with that? That doesn't even pay for a really good Fussball table!
"So we have these platforms where there's too much supply, and then everybody wonders why there's a discovery problem but they can't leverage that because there's no curation. How is anyone supposed to find out what's good? How are they supposed to find it? How is anybody supposed to be able to scale?"
The session was a largely light hearted affair with some serious messages behind it, but Hawkins was the only speaker to address the concrete issues of the supply chain for social and mobile developers.
"Some of these platforms are really tough, for a whole variety of reasons. If you can't figure out how to make a healthy eco-system, it's not going to be a great business for developers to be employed in," Hawkins continued.
"This is what we need to be concerned about if we want to deliver great experiences for the public and be able to unleash our creativity."
Apple wasn't the only target for Hawkins' anger, either. The executive also berated Nintendo for its introduction, many years ago, of the concept of development licences for hardware, which Hawkins believes put the nail in the coffin of free and open development.
"We used to have a free and open games business, and then Nintendo came along and introduced a thing called a licence agreement. There's a whole lot of companies these days that have basically copied that model. How's that going for us? Well, let's take a look.
"It might be okay if the markets are really growing. There are, for example, a lot of Android devices being sold, but how about revenue on the platform, how much is that growing? Not very much.
"Some of these platforms are actually shrinking in terms of customer activity and revenue, and that's really concerning. So if we're gonna get involved in a community ourselves and chose a platform, these platforms have a tremendous responsibility to grow their market fast enough to justify our support."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ness-for-worse
...by Published on March 8th, 2011 22:49- Categories:
- Nintendo Wii News
Ratings board PEGI has defended the award of a 12 certificate to Ubisoft's adult party game We Dare, pointing out that although the marketing campaign has centred on titillation and suggestive themes, the game itself is fairly mild.
A trailer released for the title last month leaves little doubt as to the intended adult audience for the game, a stance which Ubisoft openly embraces.
"We Dare is intended for a mature audience and Ubisoft created its marketing campaign accordingly," the French publisher told Cubed3.
"The PEGI ratings system is decided upon by a pan-European body and the rating for this game was bestowed by the independent PEGI board. Ubisoft has added a 'Parental Discretion Advised' sticker to the game in order to ensure that parents are informed of the potential sensitive nature of the game content."
PEGI's response to enquiries from the blog were less forthright, claiming that it had to judge suitability based on content, not context, and also alluding to varying standards within the borders of its Europe-wide constituency.
"Since PEGI is a Pan European system, the questionnaire is designed to meet varying cultural standards in all the member states. So for example, mild violence may not be a very shocking element in your country, but the swearwords in some games may be," read a PEGI statement.
"PEGI does not take into account the context of a game when rating it, we only look at the contents of the game. [We Dare] has been rated as a PEGI 12 because it contains mild swearing, minor assault on a human-like character and words/activities that amount to obvious sexual innuendo, explicit sexual descriptions or images and sexual posturing."
Whilst the rating raises an interesting issue over intent vs content, the UK press have pounced upon the story as an example of lax content controls in videogame sales, with The Sun claiming that the game is marketing sexual content directly to 12 year olds.
Interestingly, Ubisoft has completely ruled out a US release for the game, even to the point of region-restricting the YouTube advertisements for the game to European territories.
The UK is currently awaiting a ruling on the nature of PEGI's ratings, a decision which has been delayed until further notice.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ares-12-rating
...by Published on March 8th, 2011 22:46- Categories:
- Android News
Google's Android has the largest share of the US smartphone market, according to a new survey from ComScore.
Android has 31.2 per cent of the market as of January 2011, up from 23.5 per cent in October 2010.
This means it has displaced RIM and its Blackberry handsets as king of the hill. RIM dropped from a 35.8 to 30.4 per cent share.
Apple held relatively steady, remaining in third place with a 0.1 per cent gain to 24.7 per cent, while Microsoft saw its share decline from 9.7 to 8.0 per cent. Palm rounded out the top five at 3.2 per cent.
Claimed ComScore's MobiLens division, "65.8 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in January 2011, up 8 per cent from the preceding three-month period."
ComScore's estimates held that 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices, with 23.7 per cent playing games on their handsets.
In addition, stats from IDC European Mobile Phone Tracker (seen by Mobile Magazine) claim that Android's European sales grew from 470,000 units in the last quarter of 2009 to 7.9 million for the same period in 2010. This constitutes a 1580 per cent boost.
By comparison, iOS-baed phones grew 66 per cent. Commented Francisco Jeronimo, European mobile devices research manager at IDC: "The last quarter of 2010 clearly shows the trends for the coming years in Western Europe. The Western European mobile phone market will be dominated by smartphones and Android will be king of the hill."
IDC also estimated that that Android's install base will grow by around 37 per cent per year between 2010 and 2015 in Europe.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...t-year-on-year
...by Published on March 8th, 2011 22:44- Categories:
- PC News
PC gaming portal Games For Windows was flawed from the get-go, custodian Microsoft has admitted....
Speaking in an interview with CVG, senior producer Kevin Unangst explained that though its intentions were good, the platform got off on entirely the wrong footing by attempting to replicate a console model.
"The service started with the right intent, which was to bring Achievements, friends, multiplayer gaming and matchmaking in a really great way to PC," he said.
"I think because it was designed originally as a partner to the console service more than the PC service, we had a rocky start.
"We also didn't back it up with the most important thing, which is doing fantastic games to take advantage of the service. A network by itself isn't valuable - there needs to be great games to take advantage."
He went on to insist that Microsoft has been incorporating feedback from developers and the future was looking much more positive.
"I look at it as like what Halo did for Xbox Live, where you had Bungie and Microsoft going back and saying 'to make a great multiplayer game here's some things I need in the service, here's my audience'.
"The Age of Empire team has got a lot of great input and the same can be said for Lionhead, who said 'we're going to build Fable 3 on the PC' and know what they want out of the service.
"I think the underpinnings are great, I think it's going to continue to get better," he continued. "We launched a new Marketplace which was great, we're selling Live and non-Live enabled games.
"We're also seeing developers get back to development. Epic did a great job of promoting Live with Bulletstorm. They're pleased with the platform and the service is going to continue to get better over time."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-windows-flawsby Published on March 8th, 2011 22:41- Categories:
- Nintendo Wii News
With only Kirby's Epic Yarn and Mario Sports Mix to shout about, it's been a lean year for Nintendo-published Wii titles so far. What's more, aside from than Zelda: Skyward Sword, it seems there's very little for users to look forward to either....
So what gives? Has Nintendo given up? Not at all, says Nintendo US boss Reggie Fils-Aime - it's just had its hands full with the 3DS.
"We have had to effectively prepare for the launch of 3DS as well as effectively prepare for the launch of Pokémon Black and White," he told IGN.
"Candidly, we've pushed out some Wii launches so we can focus on our handheld business. We're already juggling two big balls. To add a third would be a little bit challenging. Or a fourth or a fifth."
Reggie then offered reassurance that new titles were coming. Some will see the light of day before the annual E3 event in June, and some will be revealed there.
"We're waiting to space things out and let Pokémon Black and White and 3DS live and breathe out there. But there's content coming and we'll be sharing more in the weeks ahead. We'll be bringing some content out before E3 and then certainly at E3 we'll be sharing some news."
The only other confirmed Nintendo-published titles on the horizon are a new Kirby game and a new Rhythm Heaven title. Another possibility is Mistwalker's The Last Story RPG, though at present,Nintendo has announced no plans to localise it.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-release-slateby Published on March 8th, 2011 22:39- Categories:
- PC News
Battlefield Heroes - the cartoon, free-to-play, web browser MMO - has fired the canons to announce seven million registered users....
That's not seven million people buying extra moustaches or nifty Nazi-style digs, but simply seven million people who have access to the game. It's taken roughly one year and nine months to get there.
Battlefield Heroes demands little of today's machinery and presents a palatable, snack-sized dose of Battlefield gameplay to the masses. Skewering its way through is an MMO backbone that offers levelling, hotbars and character customisation. And what customisation there is, thanks to a vast wardrobe of pantomime-style war garb.
The whole package is wrapped up in advertising and micro-transactions
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ters-7-millionby Published on March 8th, 2011 22:38- Categories:
- PS3 News,
- PC News,
- Xbox 360 News
Kaos Studios has confirmed the leak online of upcoming shooter Homefront and hit out at those responsible....
However, it is still unconfirmed whether the leaked version of the game is playable.
Reports emerged last week that PC and console versions of the game, which has taken Kaos three years to create, were in circulation.
However, the game code does not appear to have been cracked, meaning the files in question are unplayable.
Confirming the leak to Eurogamer this afternoon, Kaos creative director and general manager David Votypka expressed his bitter disappointment at the news.
"There have been some files that have been leaked," he said. "We're still waiting for exact confirmation but I don't think it's technically playable. But you can put it on your machine.
"Obviously we're pretty disappointed in the people that did it. Those people obviously have no idea what it takes to make these games, or at least have no respect for it, if they're leaking them out for free.
"The consumer world and capitalism is based on, the company will spend money on a product so consumers can buy it, so the company makes a profit and can make more and better products down the road. So when these guys get involved they're just hurting that, which hurts everybody."
Homefront, due out next week, is the latest in a string of recent high-profile videogames to suffer a leak. Crytek's Crysis 2 and People Can Fly's Bulletstorm were leaked ahead of release earlier this year.
While Votypka doesn't know how Homefront was leaked, he did offer possible explanations.
"There are different ways," he said. "With past games it's been an internal source that leaked something to somebody out in the public. Other times, somebody's got a hold of the code in other ways.
"Half-Life 2 was leaked before it was released. It was somebody hacking into their network and actually grabbing the code. They're pretty inventive."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...homefront-leakby Published on March 8th, 2011 22:35- Categories:
- PS3 News,
- Nintendo Wii News,
- Xbox 360 News
No sooner has Activision pulled the plug on Guitar Hero and DJ Hero than another Hero shapes for the big-time - Dance Hero....
Remember Activision applying for the Dance Hero trademark three years ago? Well according toKotaku, Activision is ready to put that name to use.
Songs linked with the project include "2012" by Jay Sean, "Out of Space" by The Prodigy, "The Way I Are" by Timbaland and "Take Over Control" by Afrojack.
There's no word on a developer nor platforms, although Kinect, Move, Wii are a likely trio.
Guitar Hero founder Harmonix has, of course, found success with Kinect dancing title Dance Central. Here we go again?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ing-dance-heroby Published on March 8th, 2011 22:33
The PlayStation Network will go offline for just over 11 hours from this Wednesday, March 9 at 4:05pm GMT for "scheduled maintenance", Sony has confirmed.
The twist is you will still be able to play online during that time ONLY if you log into PSN via your PS3 before the scheduled downtime begins.
During the downtime, which ends at on Thursday, March 10 at 3am GMT, you won't be able to use the PS Store via PS3 or PSP, log in to PlayStation Account Management or register a PSN account.
But Sony says: "If you wish to play online during the maintenance, please ensure you sign in to PSN before 16:05 on Wednesday 9 March 2011."
It adds: "During this maintenance, you can continue to collect in-game trophies and these will be updated on your profile once PlayStation Network is back up and running."
So far, this has only been announced on the EU PS Blog so it would seem the US PSN will go unaffected.
[ Source: EU PS Blog ]
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