Applications for the University of Abertay's Dare to be Digital competition have opened.
75 contestants from 16 universities, split into 15 teams, will each have 9 weeks to complete a working game prototype. Three of the teams will win a Bafta 'Ones to Watch' award.
“Taking part in Dare to be Digital is a life-changing opportunity for many young game developers, giving them incredible experience and access to leading industry experts from companies like Rockstar and Sony," says Dare to be Digital project manager Elaine Russell.
Hilmar Pétursson, CEO of Dust 514 and Eve Online developer CCP Games, has revealed that Sony Computer Entertainment is consulting on an in-game currency policy for virtual items on PS3.
The negotiations reportedly centre around establishing pricing tiers for virtual items and the resultant revenue split between developers and Sony ahead of the launch of Dust 514 - which will allow players to buy and trade items in-game - on the console.
Intel has reported that its full-year revenue reached $54 billion, of which $12.9 billion represented net income - a 24 per cent year-on-year growth.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, the technology company posted $13.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $3.4 billion, while non GAAP and GAAP results rose 24 per cent year on year.
This was despite plummeting sales of its low-voltage Atom processor which dropped 57 per cent to $167 million.
“2011 was an exceptional year for Intel,” said Intel president Paul Otellini.
NaturalMotion Games CEO Torsten Reil has countered claims last week that Zynga is losing $150 per new customer, instead believing the company to be making $30 on each one.
Senior game producer on Diablo III, Steven Parker, has left Blizzard, and the project, after working there for more than five years.
Parker made his announcement on Twitter, writing: "Hey Twitter, I'm no longer working at Blizzard or on D3. I've had a great 5 years there and those guys are going to kill it with Diablo."
Troubled UK retailer HMV's banking syndicate has given the group more time to reverse its decline.
The rescue package will see the syndicate waive HMV's January covenant test on the retailer's borrowings and agree to re-test the group with more 'headroom'.
HMV believes that if current trading conditions can be maintained, it will be able to shrink its debts by 50 per cent over the next three years. The group aims to reduce the debt to between £175-180 million by the end of its financial year, reporting a loss of £10 million for the full year.
This feature is also published in issue E237, which is currently on sale, featuring a look at Naughty Dog's latest game, The Last Of Us, tracing what's next for Mojang and much more.
PopCap has confirmed that developer ZipZapPlay's Facebook game Baking Life - which has 760,000 monthly active users - is to be axed.
The game will be taken offline on January 31 and customers have been told to spend their remaining virtual currency ahead of that date as it will not be transferable to other games. This includes real money already spent on in-game items.
“Unfortunately, we had to make a very difficult decision to shut down the game,” said PopCap VP of communications Garth Chouteau in an interview with Inside Social Games.
Each week, we'll be posting a round-up of the reviews that have been added to the site over the prior five days. Along with our assessment of all the most important new releases, we'll also be adding older reviews over time, eventually building up to a full archive of every review we've published.
This is a big job, but if there are any reviews you'd particularly like to see on the site sooner than later, let us know in the comments below and we'll prioritise those.
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Having made it through Christmas at the top of the Nordic all-formats chart - which collates sales data from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland - Battlefield 3 continues to hold the line.
In fact, the top four games remain unchanged with the first shift a reversal of last week's positions for Star Wars: The Old Republic and Need For Speed: The Run.
Assassin's Creed: Revelations falls to nine with NHL 12 rising from ten to fill the gap. Rage, meanwhile, exits the top ten.
Gaikai founder David Perry has revealed that the cloud gaming service is ready to go live with full games, not just the demos it currently hosts, within months.
Facebook remains the company's initial focus, with the service's launch on the social network imminent, but games will subsequently spread to other websites such as YouTube, Best Buy and those belonging to publishers such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft.
From the player’s perspective, five moves per turn are never quite enough in Robot Entertainment’s turn-based multiplayer strategy. From a design standpoint, five moves per turn is the perfect amount, ensuring that even expert tacticians will be forced to leave a niggling flaw in their masterplan.
FIFA 12 has enjoyed its fifth consecutive week at the top of the UK all-formats chart, making, "more money than any other FIFA title or indeed any other sports title to date", according to GfK Chart-Track.
Zumba Fitness has again held on to sixth spot, though Zumba Fitness 2 has fallen a place to eight - replaced by Saints Row: The Third which makes a return to the top ten.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has withdrawn its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) .
The reversal comes despite a statement issued earlier this month in which the association said that, while it was "mindful of concerns" over its support, it had no intention of dropping its backing.
Doublesix, it would seem, cares deeply about its players' enjoyment, but it doesn't trust them to have fun free from its guiding hand. Twin-stick shooter All Zombies Must Die! piles on new mechanics, ideas and systems at such a bewildering rate that at times it's hard to keep track.
Facebook gaming titan Zynga is apparently taking a loss of $150 on every new customer it acquires.
The claim comes from Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, who in an interview with Benzinga explained that Zynga spent $120 million on marketing in the first nine months of last year.
"Almost all of that is for acquiring customers," he said. "We also know that they had 3.4 million unique players in the September quarter, which is up from three million at the end of December 2010.
A Senate vote on the Protect IP Act (PIPA) scheduled for next Tuesday has been postponed.
Nevada Senator and Senate majority leader Harry Reid confirmed on Twitter that his decision had been taken following the overwhelmingly negative public response to the proposed legislation.
Websites including Wikipedia participated in a day-long blackout on Wednesday, and yesterday 18 Senators - seven of whom were originally co-sponsors of the bill - announced their opposition to it.
Those who don't find themselves breathless at the thought of a new Zelda, instead only seeing the series as hopelessly anachronistic and repetitive, maybe ought to read Michael Abbott's sharply concise love letter to the series. It captures much of its wonder; its blend of goofiness and melancholy that can raise both laughs and lumps in the throat, sometimes at the same time, its rooting in Japanese tradition and universal themes of growing into adulthood.
Revered Japanese bullet-hell shooter developer Cave has confirmed that two new games in the Dodonpachi series are in production for smartphones.
Microsoft apparently intends to speed up its certification procedure for game patches, with the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade release of Minecraft potentially the first game to feature constant updates.
"This is the price of gold: a heavy heart."
Whether you play Midas because it just won Ludum Dare 22’s Jam competition, or because it comes from the same team that made the truly ingenious lo-fi puzzler Impasse doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that you play Midas: it’s clever and precise and quietly thought provoking, and it’s even a little sad.
Shares in Electronic Arts fell almost four per cent yesterday morning after an analyst raised concerns about the potential success of BioWare's Star Wars MMOG The Old Republic.
Marketwatch reports that a Brean Murray Carret & Co analyst cut his price target on EA stock from $28 to $22 per share due to "creeping concerns" about the MMOG's prospects a month after launch.
Bethesda has confirmed that its latest patch for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, version 1.4, is now in testing for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
Microsoft's Entertainment And Devices Division, which includes its Xbox business, brought in $4.2 billion ($2.7 billion) in the three months to December 31, an increase of 15 per cent on the previous year.
Across Microsoft as a whole, revenue rose five per cent to $20.89 billion (£13.5 billion), setting a new record for the company. Net income, however, fell from last year's $6.63 billion to $6.62 billion (£4.28 billion).
Julian Gollop hasn't been involved in Firaxis' remake of X-COM: Enemy Unknown, his classic 1993 PC strategy game. He didn't even know about the remake until its public reveal just after New Year. "I would have liked to have been, because in a way I've been trying to remake that game for so long, without much success," he tells us.