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June 21, 2011

Zelnick: Duke Nukem has a future

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, clearly undeterred by Duke Nukem Forever's dismal review scores, tells Forbes: "You will see future Duke IP coming from this company." However, Zelnick appears to be looking beyond games, to other media, saying: "The economic opportunities that interact with entertainment are so huge...If we can take some of our intellectual property and bring it to another medium in an extraordinarily high-quality way, that delights consumers and represents an interesting commercial opportunity for us, we will. Stay tuned."
http://blogs.forbes.com/davidewalt/2011/06/20/take-two-ceo-strauss-zelnick-our-dna-is-gameplay-our-clothing-is-cinema/
Forbes


Zelnick: Duke Nukem has a future

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, clearly undeterred by Duke Nukem Forever's dismal review scores, tells Forbes: "You will see future Duke IP coming from this company." However, Zelnick appears to be looking beyond games, to other media, saying: "The economic opportunities that interact with entertainment are so huge...If we can take some of our intellectual property and bring it to another medium in an extraordinarily high-quality way, that delights consumers and represents an interesting commercial opportunity for us, we will. Stay tuned."
http://blogs.forbes.com/davidewalt/2011/06/20/take-two-ceo-strauss-zelnick-our-dna-is-gameplay-our-clothing-is-cinema/
Forbes


Take-Two won’t annualise major franchises

"Quality is more important than quantity," says chief operating officer Karl Slatoff.

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two has no intention annualising it major game franchises, which also include BioShock, Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire.

Chief operating officer Karl Slatoff told VentureBeat that ‘beating franchises to death’ went against the company’s philosophy of nurturing long-term brands.

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June 20, 2011

Sony: No PlayStation 4 discussion “for quite some time”

Wii U announcement won’t accelerate Sony’s plans for a new home console as PS3 is “just hitting its stride”.

Sony Computer Entertainment America president Jack Tretton has said it’s far too early to begin having discussions about a PS3 successor.

The executive told Forbes: “PlayStation 3 is really just hitting its stride. And technologically, I don’t think it’s possible to provide any advancement beyond what we have.

“What we’ve seen from the competition is trying to add features that already exist in PlayStation 3. We invested heavily in that, we rolled a very heavy rock up a steep hill, through the launch period.

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Sega bolstered security before hack

Mike Hayes, CEO of Sega West, told Eurogamer last month that the firm had upped security in the wake of the PSN outage. "We did a security audit as a result...it was just a good housekeeping exercise," he said. "We made a couple of changes to our security systems. I'm sure most people have done the same...fortunately we seemed pretty solid so we didn't have to do too many additional changes." On Friday Sega admitted its Sega Pass system had been hacked, with the details of some 1.3 million users taken in the attack.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-20-sega-was-hacked-after-security-update
Eurogamer


Piracy forces Project Zomboid offline

Developer The Indie Stone has taken its zombie survival RPG offline for a day, after pirates released a version that downloads a new version of the game every time the Update button is clicked. "These 'auto updating' versions could kill us completely," Indie Stone explains. "We have a cloud based distribution model...We are charged money for people downloading the game."
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/06/sorry-weve-had-to-take-the-game-down/
Project Zomboid


Report: Sony beefs up security with new PS3

Source claims that, as well as being lighter and less power-hungry, new PS3 contains improved copy protection.

Sony has announced a PlayStation 3 hardware revision that is lighter and uses less power - and may, reports suggest, boast improved anti-piracy measures.

Sony confirmed the new model PS3, CECH-3000B, over the weekend. Andriasang reports that the unit, which is set for release in Japan on September 8, weighs 2.6kg, 600g less than the current slim model, with power consumption cut from 230w to 200w. However, Gamertell reports that Sony is also stepping up its copy protection.

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Avalanche "pretty sure" of new hardware in 2014

Studio says it has just cause to believe a new Microsoft or Sony console is three years away.

Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios has told Edge it is "pretty sure" that at least one new console from Microsoft or Sony will be on shelves in 2014.

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Bigpoint reaches 200 million users

German developer and social gaming network Bigpoint, the company behind games such as Battlestar Gallactica Online, Farmerama and Ruined has reached its 200 millionth user, placing it in-line with Twitter which also has an estimated 200 million users, according to Bigpoint's press release. The company reached the 100 million milestone just 18 months ago and is attracting an average of 250,000 new users every day. Earlier this year, Bigpoint announced that it would be distributing EA's Play4Free-branded range of free-to-play titles.
http://www.bigpoint.net/
Bigpoint


The highs, mids and lows of play

Randy Smith peels back the layers which make a game whole.

If you consider gameplay in terms of making progress through the game, you find that it typically exists on multiple levels. A very crisp example is Archon or similar ‘battle chess’ variation. On the high level, you play chess. 
On the low level, you have action battles to determine which of two pieces is victorious.

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The power of crowd funding

The ins and outs of asking fans to foot development bills up front.

Hey, can you give us $15 million? Impudent as the question sounds, it’s precisely what Zero Point Software is asking of the general public. With said cash, sourced straight from the community’s pockets, the developer hopes to fund Interstellar Marines – a firstperson shooter intended to rival the likes of Halo and Killzone. That may seem like quite a long shot, but the idea of crowdfunding has been around for years, and its successes in other industries are well documented, even for budgets extending into the millions. 

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Zumba Fitness back on top of UK chart

Ocarina Of Time 3D kept from top spot as Child Of Eden fails to make top 20.

505 Games' workout title Zumba Fitness is once again the UK all-formats number one, as last week's chart-topper, Duke Nukem Forever, drops back to third place.

The news means Nintendo's 3DS remake, The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D, fails to top the chart in its first week on sale, instead making its debut in second place.

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Halo remake to support Kinect

Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, told GameSpot: "We believe that Kinect will be important to all genres of games. Be it racing games with Forza, combat games like Ryse...even games like Halo Anniversary have Kinect integration." The remastered Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is being developed by 343 Industries and will be released for Xbox 360 in November.
http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6320281/interview-with-phil-spencer
GameSpot


Australia set for $1.9 billion R&D tax relief

State officials approve measure for digital creative industry in a bid to stem the flow of job losses: a February study claimed Australia's game industry had lost 1,000 jobs - more than half the nation's development workforce - since 2008. Rob Curry, CEO of the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, says the news "has already attracted the interest of many global game publishers." The bill is set to be enacted in July.
http://www.develop-online.net/news/38067/Australia-tax-relief-ignites-publisher-interest
Develop


Crytek denies new Xbox claims

The developer pours cold water on reports last week that it was in possession of, and developing for an Xbox 360 successor, telling IGN: "Crytek does not have any next generation hardware from Microsoft, nor do we know when Microsoft may announce future hardware or what that hardware will entail."
http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/117/1177072p1.html
IGN


Call Of Duty case to go to trial

A Los Angeles superior court judge has ruled that the former heads of Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vincent Zampella, have sufficient supporting facts for their lawsuit against Activision to go to trial, unless a settlement is reached. The pair accuse Activision of engineering their departure weeks before Modern Warfare 2 royalty payments were due; Activision's cross-complaint against EA - which alleges the rival publisher was courting Zampella and West while they were still under contract with Activision - is also to go to trial.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/call-duty-lawsuit-heads-trial-201970
The Hollywood Reporter


June 18, 2011

Sega opens new UK development studio

Solihull-based outfit to focus production resources exclusively on next generation platforms.

Sega Europe has opened a new UK development studio in Solihull in the West Midlands.

According to CVG, the studio has been born out of Sega’s nearby Technology Group team, which prototypes new ideas for the publisher.

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Sega Pass system hacked

Passwords, e-mail addresses and other user information stolen in an attack on the community service.

Sega has confirmed that hackers have stolen users' personal data from its Sega Pass system, which is designed to deliver community members information on the publisher’s upcoming games

Data obtained from the system includes passwords, e-mail addresses and dates of birth.

Sega said in an email to members: “As you may be aware, the SEGA Pass system has been offline since yesterday, Thursday 16 June.

"Over the last 24 hours we have identified that unauthorised entry was gained to our SEGA Pass database.

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June 17, 2011

Sega: New Wii U devkits on the way

Gary Dunn, Sega Europe's MD of development, told Eurogamer that the next generation of Wii U prototype hardware is just around the corner. "There's another generation of prototype hardware coming out in June or July that's going to give us more information [on Wii U's capabilities]," he said. He would not be drawn on how Wii U compares to Xbox 360 and PS3, saying: "It's too early to call...it's different. We're finding it to be quite powerful."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-17-new-wii-u-hardware-for-devs-in-june-july
Eurogamer


Unity looking to raise its game

New version of Unity Technologies' development tool aimed at supporting "triple-A productions".

Unity Technologies is readying the latest version of its Unity 3D development tool, aimed at bringing the quality of browser-based and mobile games much closer to those of high-end PC and console productions.

The company hopes to include a number of upgrades in 3.5 including multithread rendering for taking advantage of multi-core platforms, automatically generated pathfinding, a rewritten particle effects system and advanced lighting techniques such as light probes for lighting dynamic objects.

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Siggraph 2011 deadline draws near

Early bird rates for Vancouver's annual computer graphics conference expires tonight.

The Association For Computing Machinery's (ACM) Siggraph conference, the foremost international event on computer graphics and interactive techniques, takes place in Vancouver in August. With the deadline for early bird registrations hours away, now seems an ideal time to run through the likely highlights of this year's event.

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Kickstarting Jack Claw

Code style, renderers and asset importing: a member of Frozenbyte's crowdsource community explains what it takes to get an ambitious game project going.

Since Jack Claw, our crowd-sourced game development project, is driven by the community, we really wanted to give its members a voice in all aspects of what we want to do. So this article has been written by a very active member who goes by the name StevenT. He has been a pioneer in creating a lot of material from the very beginning, so he has a very good idea of where Jack Claw is at.

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Time Extend: The Legend Of Zelda - Ocarina Of Time

As Link makes his 3DS debut, we re-evaluate gaming's greatest adventure.

Over a decade after release, The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time has achieved a distinction reserved for a true classic. It’s been forgotten. Writing about it garners nothing but grandiose adverbs and scattered memories of Hyrule Field. It’s ‘unquestionably’ and (even better) ‘indefinably’ great.

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First Portal 2 DLC released

Unfortunately, it's only available with Razer's Hydra motion controller, available through Steam for $140 / €140. The 10 new levels were developed by Sixense Studios, not Valve, but involve portal rotation and object resizing: "Resize custom-weighted cubes to harness their size and mass properties to crush turrets, bridge gaps, and solve puzzles in a new and exciting way."
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/17/portal-2-motionpack
Rock Paper Shotgun


Zynga launches copyright suit

Begins proceedings against social studio Vostu for "blatant copyright infringement."

Social gaming king Zynga has begun legal proceedings against Brazilian developer Vostu for "blatant copyright infringement."

Zynga claims that Vostu, which has offices in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and New York and is, along with Mentez, the biggest social developer in Brazil, "has brazenly appropriated the copyright-protected aspects of Zynga's games (as well as almost every other aspect of Zynga's business) with scant effort to mask [its] strategy."

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