This one's not ostensibly about videogames, but Google's report on its energy consumption is an eye-opener for the in-the-cloud future of gaming we're headed towards. Gmail generates 1.2kg a year per user, which, Google rather convolutedly claims, equates to less than the energy it requires to drink a bottle of wine, stuff a message into the bottle and throw it into the sea.
Techland, developer of Dead Island, has apologised for a line of code that called a skill given to one of the game's female characters "Feminist Whore."
Sales of 3DS rose 260 per cent in the United States following the 40 per cent price drop last month, Nintendo has announced.
In total, Nintendo sold more than 235,000 units in August, around 185,000 of which were sold following the price drop coming into effect on August 12. That, Nintendo says, is a 260 per cent increase over the same 19-day period in July.
Overall more than 590,000 Nintendo systems - including 190,000 Wii consoles and 165,000 units of the ageing DS - were sold in August. More than 50 million games have been sold so far in 2011.
The theme of the latest Ludum Dare challenge was ‘escape’ - a little pedestrian given some of the previous competitions. With only 48 hours in which to make a game, ‘escape’ still worked its strange magic, though, and there were some fascinating – and often extremely polished – entries. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
Glissaria
Lee Miller
The theme of the latest Ludum Dare challenge was ‘escape’ - a little pedestrian given some of the previous competitions. With only 48 hours in which to make a game, ‘escape’ still worked its strange magic, though, and there were some fascinating – and often extremely polished – entries. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
Glissaria
Lee Miller
At first, it is as if scales are falling from your eyes. Fourteen years ago, no little imagination and faith were required to picture Star Fox 64’s rough polygons as an approximation of 3D, but now it is a reality: Fox McCloud and chums really are flying into the screen.
Market research firm NPD Group has revealed that US retail videogame spend fell 23 per cent last month.
Total US videogame sales in August were $669.9 million, a 23 per cent drop year on year. This is the fourth decline in as many months; only twice this year has NPD reported growth at retail.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was the month's best-selling game despite only being on sale for five days in the month, as overall software sales fell 37 per cent to $285.9 million.
Now available on Edge Jobs are a variety of roles at some of the world's premier game studios.
DICE is looking for a engineer to work on its bleeding edge Frostbite 2 engine, working in its 30-strong team.
Nolan Bushnell has made the boldest claim yet about his Speed To Learn educational project: he says it will mean students can complete high school in less than a year.
Bushnell, founder of Atari, was speaking at the Cloud Gaming Conference USA in San Jose, California. He is still yet to go into detail on his Speed To Learn project, a suite of educational games which he said at E3 would "change the way kids learn, both in and out of school."
It would be hard to improve on Geometry Wars 2, but that doesn't prevent a pang of sadness from the knowledge that Bizarre Creations is no longer around to try. Infinity Field comes close, however, and it does so due to an ace up its sleeve: it has easily the most responsive dual-stick controls of any shooter on iOS thus far, outmanoeuvring the competition so thoroughly that it's not even a contest.
THQ has defended its decision to close a number of internal studios this year, saying it was focusing on reducing costs and increasing profitability in line with its new "fewer, bigger" strategy.
Speaking to investors at the Citi Global Technology Conference today, executive vice-president and chief financial officer Paul Pucino was asked by an investor why no mention was made at THQ's annual meeting of the need to restructure when the publisher announced the closure of three studios less than two weeks later.
What a difference two years make. The original DrawRace created a new style of racing for a new control scheme that offered real precision – but it did so in a bright and cheerful cartoony style. DrawRace 2 makes it look like an amateur effort. Everything from the piano track that plays over its start screen to what lies beyond is comprehensive, exquisitely tuned and polished to a fine shine.