PlayStation Home is proving itself as a viable revenue stream, with virtual items sold in Sony's online environment now making the platform "quite profitable," according to director Jack Buser.

While some quarters of the industry remained aloof when the platform was first launched, Buser believes the numbers now speak for themselves.

"Home is new," he told Gamasutra. "We're doing a lot of really new stuff that I think the industry is still wrapping its head around - we're seeing a lot of innovation in the space, and some of us have hit success.

"And I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general. I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation.

"With numbers like we have, it goes without saying that Home has been a huge success for our company, something that we have been very proud of."

Specifically, he revealed that over 5000 virtual items have been released into Home, which he maintains become profitable as they reach maturity.

"You see us creating a tremendous amount of virtual items, because it is such a high margin business for us to be in," he explained.

"In fact, I would say that it is a very good business model for PlayStation, and quite profitable, I might add - I like to say it's one of the highest-margin businesses in the games industry."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ofitable-buser ...

Epic Games VP Mark Rein has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes the iPad will become an obvious destination for well-known, triple-A games.

Speaking in an interview at last week's GameHorizon conference, Rein explained that the march of technology meant that platforms like the iPad - which bring an increasing sense of immersion to games - change the gaming environment for good.

"It's inevitable, because once the genie's out of the bottle, it's out," he explained. "You can't un-shoot a gun, right? Once people get a taste a something higher quality, they can't go back.

"You're not watching a lot of black and white, 4:3 television at home, are you? Sure there's some nostalgia factor there, but for the most part people aren't going back and playing 20 year-old games because the technology surpasses them and now they have much better experiences that are more immersive.

"And once you have a taste of immersion, your suspension of disbelief that you had before when you had clunky 16 bit pixels on the screen, it goes away. You just don't go back and watch silent movies in black and white. I'm not saying there's no market for that, but it's not mainstream."

He also underlined the importance of marketing for anybody hoping to see commercial success, as the company's Unreal Development Kit passes 250,000 downloads.

And he agreed that there was a risk with UDK games that, like the App Store, a small number of games might download in droves, while beyond those a vast mass of titles would be seen by only a handful of people.

"Absolutely," he explained. "And that's what I was trying to address in the talk [at GameHorizon] - distribution without marketing is just distribution. You have to have marketing, you have to have a conversation with the customers."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-for-ipad-rein ...

The iPhone vs. Android wars are in full swing, but no one talks about the mobile operating system that most of the world uses: Symbian. Part of the reason, perhaps, is that the Symbian developer infrastructure is so different from the Wild West approach that Apple and Google take. Over at O'Reilly Answers, Paul Beusterien, who is the Head of Developer Tools for the Symbian Foundation, talks about why Symbian gets ignored as a platform despite the huge number of handsets it runs on. Quoting: 'Another dimension is the type of developer community. [Historically, Symbian's type of developers] were working for consulting houses or working at phone operator places or specifically doing consulting jobs for enterprise customers who wanted mobile apps. So there's a set of consulting companies around the world that have specialized in creating apps for Symbian devices. It's a different kind of dynamic than where iPhone has really been successful at attracting just the hobbyist, or the one- or two-person company, or the person who just wants to go onto the web and start developing.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/...ne-Talks-About ...

Nintendo wants to work with third-party developers to create 3DS games targeted at "serious gamers".

Such partnerships would be "good for both Nintendo and the software developers", Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told Japanese news service Nikkei (reported by GameSpot).

Nintendo's phenomenally successful DS only caters to those who do not play games, Iwata admitted, and this is something the Japanese company wants to rectify with its new handheld.

The 3DS was unveiled during E3 2010 last month along with a long list of third-party developed games, including Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D – The Naked Sample, Dead or Alive 3D and Resident Evil Revelations.

Iwata told Nikkei that Nintendo went to great lengths to incorporate software developers' requests when making the 3DS and called on these developers to make games for the new system.

Also buried within the report is apparent confirmation from Iwata that Nintendo plans to "make the successor to the Wii 3D compatible".

But there's still no word on when Nintendo will release its next home console. "A full-scale entry into this field will take some time because 3D televisions will not catch on right away," Iwata said.

Nintendo hasn't priced or dated the 3DS. However, Nintendo of America's Reggie Fils-Aime has said the handheld will be out in all "major markets" by 1st April 2011.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ni...ious-3ds-games ...

Crackdown 2 developer Ruffian has said it wants to make a "disruptive" game that advances the openworld genre in a way that its peers so far have not.

"One of the things that we think about games like inFamous, Prototype and Grand Theft Auto - not to denigrate them in any way - is that they're all doing the same sort of thing," producer James Cope told IGN.

"We're going to do something to really bring the genre forward."

Creative director Billy Thomson said a key word for the Dundee-based studio's next game is "disruptive".

Crackdown has "got one foot in reality and one foot in complete madness," he said. "What we would like to do in the next project is go further in that direction and go completely nuts. We think there's a lot that can be done with our engine."

There's no word yet on whether that game will be a sequel to Crackdown 2, which is due out this Friday, 9th July in Europe and will be reviewed on Eurogamer today.

However, Ruffian senior engineer Neil Duffield offered an indication of the team's thinking when he spoke to Digital Foundry last weekend.

"We managed to increase the NPC crowd count by around a factor of eight from CD1 to CD2, so who knows what we will have for Crackdown 3," he mentioned casually in answer to one of our tech guru's questions.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ru...tive-openworld ...

Apple Prophet writes
"Just a few short weeks after BitBlot released the source to Aquaria as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, Andrew Church hacked up an ambitious homebrew port of the game to the PSP. He wrote a detailed synopsis of the technical challenges in an article on the Wolfire Blog, and of course, contributed all of the patches back to the project so anyone with a homebrew-equipped PSP can try it out. Check out the mercurial repository for the source."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/0...ria-To-the-PSP ...

Developers have said that a 2D game made for 3DS could use the extra processing power not used rendering 3D to churn out nicer graphics and better physics.

3D games essentially have to rendered twice - once for each eye - which puts extra strain on the processor. If someone chose to bin the 3D effect, that game could potentially look better.

"Developers working on the system say that if they were developing a 3DS game that didn't use 3D, they could theoretically use the extra processing power for additional texture passes and more complex object and environment geometry, or even up a framerate from 30 frames per second to 60," reports IGN.

But could Mario Kart, which runs at 60 frames per second, run at a mighty 120fps in 2D? No, as IGN explains: "There's no benefit to raising a frame rate from 60 to 120 since the LCD displays of the 3DS (as well as the DSi, DS Lite, DS classic, Game Boy Advance...even the PSP) are limited to 60Hz."

Would you really want developers to start making 2D games on the 3DS? We think Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D look amazing enough.

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

Sinister Twisted Metal clown man, Sweet Tooth, is on his way to an all-round more playful game in ModNation Racers.

Sony will launch an official model for Sweet Tooth and his gun-equipped truck into the cartoony kart racer this week for the pocket-money price of $1.99 - in the US at least (as the US PS Blog confirms, while the EU blog is yet to awaken from its weekend slumber). See screenshots of him on this page.

Sweet Tooth will, of course, turn up again next year in his more brutal form when the new Twisted Metal game hits PS3. We played it at E3 and you can read about the carnage we witnessed right here.

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

A law that threatens to classify adult video games as X-rated entertainment in the US has been slammed by bosses of major games publishers.

The US Supreme Court agreed in April to review a motion prohibiting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.

The law would allow individual states to impose sales restrictions on violent games - effectively putting them into the same category as pornography, and preventing their sale to adult citizens.

The Supreme Court is reviewing a federal court's decision to throw out California's ban - which was originally signed by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"It's very, very surprising that the Supreme Court is hearing the case," Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar parent Take Two told CNBC.

"I'm worried about it, and I think everybody in our business should be really worried about it."

Graham Hopper, EVP and general manager of Disney Interactive added: "It's not about having a dramatic impact on our bottom line. It's going to make our retailing abilities a nightmare."

Other games industry figures spoke of their fear that other states would push through their own version of the bill - meaning developers would have to create multiple version of games to suit each territory's individual criteria.

"One of America's great exports is entertainment," commented John Riccitiello, CEO of EA. "The implication of Schwarzenegger v. ESA (the case before the Court) is we could end up with state level bureaucracies that define what's marketable in 50 different jurisdictions across the U.S.

"I can imagine [the government] trying to tell Steven Spielberg 'We need 50 different cuts of your movie for each state.' It will screw us up in a real way."

Sony's Jack Tretton was more positive about the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case.

"We believe as an industry that the primary reason the Supreme Court is hearing it is despite the fact that this law has been struck down, [the issue] has come up 12 times [previously]," said Sony Computer Entertainment of America CEO Jack Tretton.

"I think the Supreme Court is looking at it to potentially see if there's something to it or to put an end to it once and for all."

The court will hear arguments in this case in the autumn.

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