George Hotz, the man Sony is currently attempting to sue regarding his circumvention of PS3 security measures, has raised legal fees for his defence via online donations.
Hotz yesterday requested funds from the public, claiming that "I want, by the time this goes to trial, to have Sony facing some of the hardest hitting lawyers in the business."
Within the space of a day, he had closed down the appeal and felt that "things are looking up money-wise. Expect to see a few more lawyers on my responses."
Hotz also reiterated that his intent in hacking the console was not related to copyright infringement. "I am an advocate against mass piracy, do not distribute anyone's copyrighted work but my own, do not take crap lying down, and am even pro DRM in a sense.
"For example, I believe Apple has every right to lock down their iPhone in the factory as much as they want, but once it's paid for and mine, I have the right to unlock it, smash it, jailbreak it, look at it, and hack on it. Fortunately, the courts agree with me on this point."
In the event Sony were to attempt to settle with Hotz, he argued that "I want the settlement terms to include OtherOS on all PS3s and an apology on the PlayStation blog for ever removing it."
Hotz also claimed that "I have already racked up over 10k in legal bills" and that any surplus in donations would be given to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-via-donations
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Crytek executive producer Nathan Camarillo has revealed that therecent leak of upcoming shooter Crysis 2 was a dark day for the studio.
"It was a very traumatic experience because we're really excited about the game and the quality that we were able to get into it and what we were able to accomplish," he told the audience at the Guardian's Gamesblog Live last night (as attended by The Average Gamer).
"We're at the end and we're really excited about where we're at and your game gets leaked. And it's not even that the final version of the game gets leaked, you know? That build was already from the middle of January. So that version is like a really ugly version that we don't want anyone to see."
Camarillo was concerned about the possible financial impact on Crytek as a result of the leak. "People were downloading it and putting stuff up on YouTube. There's a real financial concern, there's a real morality concern... ...even some gaming press have posted video links to YouTube for the first 25 minutes. And you know that that's a business.
"When you go read that story, that they're making money off of the advertising sales that are on that page from readers going to the site to look at content that was from a pirated version of the game."
Discussing the morality debate around piracy, he claimed that "We tend to talk about it in simple terms – yeah, downloading hurts the industry but how does that hurt the value of IPs? How does that hurt the branding of games? How does that hurt the customer - the first experience of the customer?"
Camarillo described Crytek as having experienced the stages of grieving in its response to the leak. Following disbelief and anger, "everyone was walking around like Charlie Brown – really sad and shuffling their feet. It was really, really tough."
The studio retained some optimism, however. "I've asked people, if you wanna support Crytek; we're an independent developer... go out and preorder it because I will see those numbers the next week and then I can tell the team 'Hey, guess what? Our preorders went up by 200% 'cause everybody's really supporting us.' And then I'll see happy faces."
Nonetheless, "piracy is a real concern. The PS3 has been cracked now as well and people are downloading PS3 games and 360 games... so that's a threat to just the industry in general."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ancial-concern
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Politicians in the real-life town of Ciudad Juarez are petitioning for Ubisoft's upcoming shooter Call of Juarez: The Cartel to be blocked from sale in Mexico.
Chihuahua state politicians "unanimously" voted to request that the federal Interior Department ban the modern-day shooter, according to congressman Ricardo Boone Salmon.
Salmon told the AP that "It is true there is a serious crime situation, which we are not trying to hide. But we also should not expose children to this kind of scenarios so that they are going to grow up with this kind of image and lack of values."
Ciudad Juarez has seen 6000 deaths from drug-related violence over the last two years – a factor which also led to a number of senior Texas police recently expressing concern about the game's use of the setting.
State congress leader Entrique Serrano was concerned that the game might provide a negative inspiration to local youth. "Children wind up being easily involved in criminal acts over time, because among other things, during their childhood not enough care has been taken about what they see on television and playing video games. They believe so much blood and death is normal."
The first two Call of Juarez games were set in the 19th century, but developer Techland has relocated the third game to present-day Mexican ganglands.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-of-juarez-ban
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EA has formed a new internal studio, Victory Games, which is to focus on strategy games for the publisher.
In a relaunch of its Command & Conquer website – mysteriously now pulled, but seen in full by GamesIndustry.biz last night – the publisher revealed that Victory had locations in LA, Texas and Shanghai China.
EA's strategy portfolio in 2009 suffered a large round of lay-offs at internal studio EA LA, which had previously handled the publisher's Command & Conquer and Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth titles.
The new studio will apparently work on a fresh "AAA" C&C title, claimed Victory general manager Jon Van Canegham in a now-removed interview. "We're not just working on a game, though. Our general focus is on the future of Command & Conquer.
"That means updating a lot of the core technology to create a stable base for future development, and leveraging that work on this first game."
The new game will be a PC title and, according to the vanished site's About page, plans to "combine classic RTS gameplay with bold new technology, innovative new concepts and, as always, tanks by the dozen."
Van Canegham has previously worked on Heroes of Might and Magic games for Ubisoft, as well as holding executive positions at MMO publisher Trion Worlds. He was allegedly removed from his position as president and CCO at the latter in 2009.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-victory-games
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The first list of game firms appearing at this year's GamesCom in Cologne have been revealed.
Appearing at the August 17 - 21 show are the likes of EA, Nintendo, Ubisoft, 2K and Valve. A number of major names – such as Activision and Square - are not yet listed, while SEGA and Capcom, no-shows in 2010, are yet to appear.

The full list of confirmed publishers so far, as revealed by GoNintendo, is as follows:

• Electronic Arts
• DeepSilver
• Konami
• Namco Bandai
• Nintendo
• Ubisoft
• Warner Bros
• 2K
• Bethesda Softworks
• Frogster
• NCsoft
• Trion Worlds
• Valve Corporation
• Hama
• Razer
• Bigben Interactive

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-gamescom-2011 ...

Scribblenauts studio 5th Cell believes digital platforms XBLA and PSN make more sense for a developer of its size than attempting to move to full console development.
"We want to start small but we want smart growth," creative director Jeremiah Slaczka toldGamesIndustry.biz in an interview published today. "We're not hiring bodies and biting off more than we can chew. DS to XBLA makes sense as a next step. Whereas DS to Xbox 360 might be possible, it's maybe going to be a hard road. "
The studio is currently working on XBLA action-shooter Hybrid, which it has scaled up to 65 staff for as the bar for XBLA is so much higher than it used to be four years ago. We're seeing a lot of people go to XBLA with games that look like console games.
Although "When you break the math down we make far more money on Hybrid on XBLA that we would on a retail game," 5th Cell is conscious of the risks involved.
"I think there's opportunities but you've got to be careful about riding a whole company on it. Especially as experimentation, you can have just a few people on it. Hybrid's 30-40 people and even DS games are 30 people.
"Whereas with iPhone you can screw around, iterate, try different things. You're not making tons of money and bank-rolling the whole company but you can still make decent money."
For the full interview with Slaczka and 5th Cell's general manager Joseph Tringali, in which they also discuss being a third-party success on Nintendo platforms, why they won't lay off staff come the end of a project and their resistance to publishing deals, please click here.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-it-used-to-be
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via EverythingHQ


With all the recent price drops circulating Sony’s PlayStation 3 console and even reports suggesting the company may even introduce an official price drop, you can’t help wonder why Sony are really doing this for. If they really wanted to drop the price of their machine the best opportunity would have been at E3 last year. So, there must be a motive behind the recent price drops from major retailers – Sony are reportedly looking into a hack-proof PS3 SKU.

According to what I have been told by an anonymous source Sony are already deep into plans of developing a hack-proof PS3 system. This is mainly due to the recent leaks of Killzone 3 which has worried Sony of their console becoming a mainstream threat to piracy.

The hack-proof SKU will be a slim PlayStation 3 model and will contain a 300GB hard drive as an incentive to purchase the hack-proof system – the price of the SKU will be £186.99, my source informs me. The scheduled launch is unsure at this time due to Sony seeing if they can win the battle in the courts against the root of all the PS3 hacks – George Hotz.

Sony is essentially trying to get rid of all the old SKUs with these price drops – and even their own price drop incoming possibly – so it makes way for their new hack-proof model. ...

News via http://www.nintendomax.com/viewtopic...d7aca2a1860dcc
http://libbag.atfreeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10 ...

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