In his keynote at this year's Develop conference, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios senior director Mick Hocking looked back at a year in which the third place became the third dimension as 3D games arrived on PlayStation 3. We caught up with him at the event to discuss what 3D really adds to games, the importance of tuning it properly and why virtual reality really will take off this time.
2011 has been a pretty good year for fans of entropy, and for anyone with natural – or unnatural - gifts for reverse engineering. LA Noire’s already inverted GTA, putting you at the other end of a killing spree, and allowing players to pick through the human chaos of a crime scene, searching for that scarlet thread that connects the victim all the way back to the perpetrator.
With Insect Armageddon the EDF franchise heads west, relocating both its development and narrative. Vicious Cycle may be new to EDF’s world of giant bugs and big guns, but it’s no stranger to B-movie shooters, having delivered the clunky, silly Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazard a couple of years ago.
With Insect Armageddon the EDF franchise heads west, relocating both its development and narrative. Vicious Cycle may be new to EDF’s world of giant bugs and big guns, but it’s no stranger to B-movie shooters, having delivered the clunky, silly Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazard a couple of years ago.
Insurance firm Zurich American has asked a New York court to rule that it has no liability to cover defence costs in the mounting legal claims filed against Sony following April's PSN attack.
Reuters reports that the insurer has asked the court to declare that it does not have to pay legal costs related to claims "asserted in the class-action lawsuits, miscellaneous claims, or potential future actions institued by any state attorney general."
Microsoft said this evening that its full year profit soared on record revenue, thanks in part to the strong performance of its Xbox business.
For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, Microsoft reported record company-wide revenue of $69.94 billion, up 12 per cent year on year, while fourth quarter revenue was up eight per cent to a record $17.37 billion. Net income for the year rose 23 per cent to $23.15 billion, with $5.87 billion generated in the fourth quarter.
LA Noire has reclaimed the number one spot on the weekly Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
The title jumped four places to take the top spot ahead of FIFA 11, which had led the chart for the previous two weeks.
Duke Nukem Forever, Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean and The Sims 3: Generations rounded off the top five in a quiet week for new releases.
In part two of our interview with Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines, we discuss why bolt-on multiplayer isn’t part of the Bethesda formula, and how its games will stack up against the Call Of Duty behemoth.
Check back to part one for his account of the company’s unique structure and its recent studio acquisition spree.
Laura Fryer, general manager of the three studios that comprise Warner Bros Seattle, has said that studios should be built around creatives rather than producers, who "don't always know what they're doing."
Following their Develop conference keynote on pitching the original LittleBigPlanet idea to Sony, we sat down with Media Molecule technical director Alex Evans and art director Kareem Ettouney to find out how the Move Pack will make being creative even easier and where the studio is heading
Gareth Wilson, former design manager of Bizarre Creations, has said that the Liverpool studio's final game, futuristic racer Blur, was like having "bacon with cornflakes."
Demonstrated at E3 last month, Fable: The Journey sees the series embrace Kinect while for the first time straying from the familiar 'bloodline' theme that characterises the previous three games. Despite branching into brave new territory, however, its lineage remains instantly recognisable.
Pete Hines, vice president of marketing at Bethesda Softworks, has issued a stern warning to developers who are contemplating adding multiplayer to games that simply don't need it, saying: "Just drop it, don't bother…it'll make for a worse game."
Mark Healey, co-founder and creative director of LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule, has hit out at developers who are motivated by profit, arguing that those who view their audience solely as a potential source of revenue risk wasting their lives.
From a collaborative drawing exercise that spawned a monstrous pipe-smoking skeletal pilot to a video of a film concepts and CGI trials that never went into production, concept artist Iain McCaig’s session mirrored his evident personality - theatrical and charismatic. McCaig designed Darth Maul, but more importantly also drew the covers of several early Fighting Fantasy books, cutscene portraits for Secret Of Monkey Island and is now working with Respawn Entertainment.
From a collaborative drawing exercise that spawned a monstrous pipe-smoking skeletal pilot to a video of a film concepts and CGI trials that never went into production, concept artist Iain McCaig’s session mirrored his evident personality - theatrical and charismatic. McCaig designed Darth Maul, but more importantly also drew the covers of several early Fighting Fantasy books, cutscene portraits for Secret Of Monkey Island and is now working with Respawn Entertainment.