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June 28, 2011

Call Of Duty: Black Ops becomes UK biggest selling game of all time

Activision's latest Call Of Duty title, Black Ops, has become biggest selling game of all time, according to GfK ChartTrack. It's cumulative UK sales up until June 25 were 3,722,411 - Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the previous biggest seller, has reached 3,702,410. Activision’s UK managing director Andrew Brown said: “This is an outstanding achievement for the development team at Treyarch and the amazing Call of Duty community.”
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/45115/Black-Ops-breaks-UK-sales-record
MCV


Call Of Duty: Black Ops becomes UK biggest selling game of all time

Activision's latest Call Of Duty title, Black Ops, has become biggest selling game of all time, according to GfK ChartTrack. It's cumulative UK sales up until June 25 were 3,722,411 - Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the previous biggest seller, has reached 3,702,410. Activision’s UK managing director Andrew Brown said: “This is an outstanding achievement for the development team at Treyarch and the amazing Call of Duty community.”
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/45115/Black-Ops-breaks-UK-sales-record
MCV


IGDA to investigate Team Bondi working practices

The International Game Developers Association has revealed that it will investigate working practices at LA Noire developer Team Bondi, following recent reports of difficult working conditions, lack of overtime pay and excessive crunch periods. Though deliberately avoiding making an official statement until all the facts are in, IGDA board of directors chairman Brian Robbins said: "...reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole." The IGDA has asked Team Bondi employees to come forward by emailing qol@igda.org with "comments about the recent past and current situation - positive or negative."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-06-28-igda-to-investigate-team-bondi-allegations
Develop


Zinio offering discounted Edge subscriptions

Read our magazine on your iPad, iPhone or computer at 20 per cent off usual price.

Digital magazine provider Zinio is running a promotion offering 20 per cent off a selection of Future Publishing magazines, including Edge. A Zinio subscription allows you to read our magazine on you iPad, iPhone and on your computer.   

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1000 Heroz review

A platformer that provides a new level every day - does it have the legs to match its three-year lifespan?

Despite the faddy title, 1000 Heroz wants to be a keeper: it offers no less than three years of play, featuring a new level every day alongside daily and custom leaderboards, all from the design talent of the studio behind Trials HD. What could go wrong?

This is a precision platformer, built around learning how to slide, hop and leap each day's course in order to shave fractions of seconds off your time. All past levels are available to play if you've missed them, though global leaderboards are frozen after a single day's play. 

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Monster Hunter Dynamic Hunting review

Slimmed down and sharpened up for iOS, this beast's ripe for the chase.

Capcom's record with its major franchises on iPhone is spotty: Street Fighter IV makes a remarkably good miniature, while Resident Evil 4 just looks a lot smaller. Monster Hunter makes the transition in style, its core elements streamlined and focused – almost to a fault. 

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Monster Hunter Dynamic Hunting review

Slimmed down and sharpened up for iOS, this beast's ripe for the chase.

Capcom's record with its major franchises on iPhone is spotty: Street Fighter IV makes a remarkably good miniature, while Resident Evil 4 just looks a lot smaller. Monster Hunter makes the transition in style, its core elements streamlined and focused – almost to a fault. 

read more


CCP responds to Eve rebellion with emergency meeting

Developer invites player-elected Council of Stellar Management to Iceland for talks on microtransactions introduced in latest game update.

CCP, the developer behind MMOG Eve Online, has invited the members of the game's Council of Stellar Management to convene in Iceland for an extraordinary meeting, between June 30 and July 1 in response to a threatened mass exodus from the game's servers.

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CCP responds to Eve rebellion with emergency meeting

Developer invites player-elected Council of Stellar Management to Iceland for talks on microtransactions introduced in latest game update.

CCP, the developer behind MMOG Eve Online, has invited the members of the game's Council of Stellar Management to convene in Iceland for an extraordinary meeting, between June 30 and July 1, in response to a threatened mass exodus from the game's servers.

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Taiwanese App Store gets seven-day return policy

Taiwan App Store customers can now benefit from a seven-day return policy. Apple changed its rules in response to pressure from the Taiwanese government, which claimed the Cupertino company was in violation of the consumer protection law. The government accused Google of the same violation and ordered it to change its Android Market rules, too. Google has so far refused to comply. There is no word as to whether Apple will expand this policy to other territories, but it is unlikely that the option would be explored.
http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/27/apple-changes-its-rules-in-taiwan-to-allow-users-7-days-to-test-an-app/
9 To 5 Mac

http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/27/apple-changes-its-rules-in-taiwan-to-allow...


UTV Ignition no longer developing games in-house

The El Shaddai developer sacks console teams to focus on publishing.

UTV Ignition is dropping development to focus on partner-publishing. Speaking to Siliconera, director of business development Shane Bettenhausen revealed that the company's London studio - which was working on Project Kane, formerly known as War Devil - will cease to develop games.

Anonymous sources at Ignition revealed that the company has laid off its London-based console team. The sources claim that the project has now been cancelled.

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Capcom assures consumers that Resi save system won't affect resale value

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries features a save system that prevents players from resetting their game progress. While the design may well have been to increase tension, or even just an oversight, some parties have speculated that it may be a deliberate attempt to prevent second hand sales. This has led to the bizarre situation of a publisher stressing that the resale value of its game will not be dented, Capcom telling MCV that: "The game’s value at second hand in the UK is not affected by whether or not the game can have its data reset. Customers in the UK will not experience a reduced second-hand value should they wish to trade in their purchase."
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/45093/Resi-Evil-clear-for-pre-owned-market
MCV


Commodore dusting off 64 and Amiga

Commodore USA has resurrected its 30 year old Commodore 64 as a high-end PC - the C64x. The system looks just like the original, but houses 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor. The company intends to begin shipping the system between May and June this year. Better still, it includes an emulator to run original 8-bit games. Commodore is also planning to restore the Amiga name to its former glory, with three versions (the 1000, 2000 and 3000) currently in development.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/309181/news/amiga-reborn-as-high-end-pc-range/?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-News-RSS
CVG

 


Stringer: 90 per cent of PSN users have returned

Says attacks were due to Sony defending its IP.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer today told 8,360 shareholders at Sony's annual shareholders meeting in Tokyo that the hacking attacks against PSN were a result of the company defending its IP. "We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP, our content, in this case videogames," he said.

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Journey beta details announced

Sony is issuing invites for the beta of thatgamecompany's latest game Journey, but they are reserved for the "very earliest adopters" of the developer's output with PlayStation Plus accounts. "Whilst it’d be amazing to open this out to everyone out there who’s excited about Journey, unfortunately numbers need to be kept very limited for technical reasons," European product manager Alex Pavey wrote on the EU PlayStation Blog. "But as it progresses, this trial will be extended into SCEE – the existing Beta Trial community and selected PlayStation Plus members will receive invitations in early July. Look out for more information about selection criteria and timings soon." A limited number of additional spots will be given away on thatgamecompany's Facebook page, as well as the PlayStation Blog.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/27/journey%E2%80%99s-first-steps-post-e3/
PlayStation Blog

 


ESRB and EMA welcome Supreme Court's decision

While Senator Leland Yee says court is putting the interests of corporate America before those of children.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board and Entertainment Merchants Association have each issued statements voicing their approval of yesterday's US Supreme Court ruling against the California violent games law.

Yesterday's ruling threw out Leland Yee's bill, which looked to ban the sale of violent videogames in the state, and instead asserted confidence in the ESA self-regulated ratings system.

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EA restores Battlefield Heroes following LulzSec attack

EA has restored service to its free-to-play Battlefield Heroes following last week's attack by now disbanded hacking group, LulzSec. EA issued a statement to Eurogamer: "Service has been restored on Battlefield Heroes following a short hiatus related to a security breach. Our investigation is ongoing, however it appears screen names and encrypted passwords associated with an early beta version of Heroes have been compromised. To the best of our knowledge, it appears that no personal data was compromised – no emails, account history, credit card numbers or payment methods. Any further updates will be posted on this page. We apologize for any inconvenience."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-27-ea-restores-battlefield-heroes-after-hack
Eurogamer


June 27, 2011

Supreme Court rules against violent videogame regulation

Court provides first amendment protection to videogames; says law is "unconstitutional".

In a landmark case for the videogame industry, the United States Supreme Court has ruled against California's video game violence law in the Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, declaring it unconstitutional.

The decision of the nine Justices was announced today, the law ruled invalid with a vote of 7-2. The court's full decision can be read here.

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Former Team Bondi staff reveal troubled LA Noire development

Anonymous sources describe excessive crunch, no overtime pay and question leadership.

Former Team Bondi employees who worked on LA Noire have revealed the game's difficult seven-year development in a series of interviews with IGN.

The site interviewed 11 former employees - all of whom wished to remain anonymous - and studio head Brendan McNamara. Common themes that come up include complaints of constant crunch periods, a lack of overtime pay, a confused hierarchy within the team and criticisms of McNamara's leadership.

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Epic: making something Unreal

Epic's Mark Rein on UDK's major new update, Wii U and the difficulty with Android.

Samaritan. Not the most obvious name for a tech demo inspired by Blade Runner. But then you see who it’s by. Epic Games, whose Unreal Engine 3 sold many of today’s leading developers a ticket into this hardware generation. Whose Unreal Tournament games, furthermore, with their modding tools and contests, sold gamers tickets to development in general. Whose Unreal Development Kit, which incorporates the tech behind its latest triple-A games, is now handing out tickets for free.

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Zumba Fitness retains number one spot in UK chart

F.E.A.R. 3 makes it debut while Child Of Eden is still nowhere to be seen.

505 Games' perennial chart botherer Zumba Fitness has kept the number one spot it reclaimed from Duke Nukem Forever last week. The muscle-bound misogynist has dropped down to number eight, replaced by Warner Bros. Interactive's horror FPS F.E.A.R. 3, which debuts, fittingly, at number three.

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NPD: Digital gamers play nearly as much as core

Digital gamers also buy more games than core players on average.

According to market research company NPD, digital gamers are now spending nearly as much time as 'core' gamers playing and buy more games on average.

While core gamers remain out ahead when it comes to play time, spending on average 18 hours a week gaming, digital gamers spend just two hours less a week at 16.

Meanwhile, core gamers acquired 5.4 games on average over the previous three months while digital gamers were ahead with 5.9. When considering these figures, it should be remembered that digital games often cost less than retail titles.

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David Braben to give Develop conference keynote

The Elite co-creator and Frontier Developments founder will reveal the design process behind Kinect Disneyland Adventures.

Heading the Brighton-based conference's design track, David Braben will discuss the challenges Frontier's team has faced in creating an open-world Kinect game that takes place in a faithful recreation of Disney's themepark.

"You don’t get a better opportunity than this to work with a wide range of rich characters and stories that are genuinely loved by huge numbers of people the world over. It has been a great experience which I’m looking forward to discussing in Brighton in July," Braben says.

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Blizzard considering iOS development

Blizzard is currently considering iOS development with a view to porting World Of Warcraft to iPhone and iPad. That's according to Blizzard lead systems designer Greg Street, who revealed the interest in an interview with Eurogamer. "Everyone I know here has an iPhone or an iPad so we're huge fans of the hardware," he said. "If we could make the right game changes to make [iOS WOW] work, it's something we'd be interested in. It's not something you're going to see in the next week or two, but it's the kind of thing we're always looking at."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-22-blizzard-interested-in-ios-devices
Eurogamer

 


Mind Candy valued at £125m

Following a sale of stock in London-based Moshi Monsters developer Mind Candy, the company has been revalued at £125 ($200) million. "We think there is a long way to go for Mind Candy," said Thomas Teichman, chairman of investment firm Spark Ventures. "But after six years, when you see a return of 1,400 per cent, it's not a bad idea to take some profit. Since we last valued it, the volume of business has boomed in licensing, subscriptions, selling the magazine in the shops. That is why the value has gone up. What's interesting is that it's come from digital - online to offline, that's unique."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e2c2cfec-9e45-11e0-8e61-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QCkvZL50
The Financial Times


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