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June 13, 2011

Tomb Raider preview

Lara's latest outing is more than a reboot, it's a rebirth.

In the early days of the project, when there was little else to go by, the team at Crystal Dynamics rallied around a single sentence: ‘You think you know me’. It 
was stark yet evocative, an elegant reminder 
of just how much work lay ahead.

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Microsoft updates WP7 APIs for Android ports

Firm pulls the same trick it did to encourage iOS ports in April: "We've added Android to the Windows Phone API mapping tool to help developers find their way around the Windows Phone platform," reads a post on the Windows Phone developer blog. "Think of the API mapping tool as being like a translation dictionary. For example, let's say that you're planning a vacation to France. Since you don't speak the language, you’ll bring a pocket travel dictionary.”
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2011/06/09/leveraging-your-android-development-expertise-to-build-windows-phone-applications.aspx
Microsoft


Bleszinski: Industry should embrace hackers

Speaking at E3, Epic Games' Cliff Blezsinski pointed to Kinect Fun Labs as evidence that the industry's attitude to hackers and homebrew developers is changing. "I was on a panel with Kudo [Tsunoda]," he said. "He was saying they're embracing a lot of the homebrew and hacker stuff that's going on with Kinect. Generally speaking, when it comes to hackers, you want to embrace a lot of what they are doing instead of fighting it. I think the industry is slowly learning that."
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2011-gears-of-war/715193
GameTrailers


Molyneux bemoans Fable "mistake"

Tells OXM of his regret at attendees of Microsoft's E3 conference inferring that Lionhead's Kinect title Fable: The Journey was on rails: "I made an horrendous mistake on the press demo of taking out the navigation allowing players to move. I'll just state on record now that Fable: The Journey is definitely not on rails."
http://www.oxm.co.uk/30071/news/molyneux-fable-kinect-demo-a-horrendous-mistake/
OXM


Lulzsec to attack Bethesda?

Prolific hackers turn their attention from the NHS and IMF, hinting at an attack on the Brink publisher and parent company Zenimax: "Big lulz coming up in the near future. Time to show these bitches how it's done."
http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/79944355640643584
Twitter


Mastering the puppet

Steven Poole wonders who's really in control: the player, or the game?

You’re a slave to love, the grind, or 
’80s metal, sure – but are you also a slave to videogames? It’s a familiar critique (“You’re not playing the game; the 
game is playing you”), but one that seems increasingly to the point. Take the fashion 
for motion control. If you are sprawled at princely ease, pressing small buttons to 
achieve dramatic effects, then you are in command.

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Develop conference programme announced

Full line-up revealed ahead of next month's conference.

Organisers of Brighton's Develop conference have announced the programme of events for this year's conference.

The main conference runs across seven themes, or tracks - Design, Coding, Production, Business, Evolve, Art and The Den. As we reported last month, a keynote address will be given by Mick Hocking of SCEE, in which the head of Sony's worldwide studios stereoscopic 3D team looks at the first year of 3D gaming on PlayStation 3.

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Develop conference programme announced

Full line-up revealed ahead of next month's conference.

Organisers of Brighton's Develop conference have announced the programme of events for this year's conference.

The main conference runs across seven themes, or tracks - Design, Coding, Production, Business, Evolve, Art and The Den. As we reported last month, a keynote address will be given by Mick Hocking of SCEE, in which the head of Sony's worldwide studios stereoscopic 3D team looks at the first year of 3D gaming on PlayStation 3.

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Charles Cecil awarded MBE

Broken Sword creator is named a Member Of The British Empire in Queen's birthday honours list, and tells Develop: "I have had the privilege, and good fortune, to have been creating computer games since the inception of this extraordinary industry, and am profoundly honoured to now be awarded an MBE."
http://www.develop-online.net/news/38000/MBE-for-Charles-Cecil
Develop


3DS sells a million in Japan

Nintendo's latest handheld reaches milestone 13 weeks after launch - significantly more than the eight weeks it took both the DS Lite and DSi to reach a million sales.
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/06/13/3ds_million_sales/
Andriasang


Duke Nukem Forever tops UK chart

LA Noire knocked from top spot by Duke's belated return.

It's taken him 14 years of development hell, but Duke Nukem is back on top of the UK all-formats software chart with Duke Nukem Forever.

The Take-Two shooter knocks another of its games, LA Noire - which had occupied top slot for three weeks - back into second place, with 505 Games' Zumba Fitness rising one place to third.

PS3 sequel Infamous 2 is the week's second-highest new entry at fourth, with THQ's Red Faction: Armageddon making its debut in eighth place.

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Nintendo and Epic Games hacked

Unreal Engine firm admits loss of personal data; Nintendo shuts websites down due to "possible phishing threat."

Nintendo and Epic Games have joined the growing ranks of videogame firms whose websites have been hacked, with the Club Nintendo website currently offline and Epic briefly taking down its websites and forums.

Epic admitted it had been attacked on Friday, with founder Tim Sweeney explaining: "The hackers may have obtained the email addresses and encrypted passwords of forum users. Plaintext passwords weren't revealed, but it's possible that those passwords could be obtained by a brute-force attack on the encrypted passwords."

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June 10, 2011

E3 2011 round-up

Here’s our round-up of the biggest announcements from E3 2011.

For all of our coverage from the event, visit the E3 topic page.

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E3 2011 round-up

Here’s our round-up of the biggest announcements from E3 2011.

For all of our coverage from the event, visit the E3 topic page.

read more


Ico & Shadow Of The Colossus Collection gallery

The most striking thing about these screens isn't the admirable job that has been done in updating Fumito Ueda's PlayStation 2 classics in HD and 3D. Rather, it's the memories of our first playthroughs, and the sudden, overwhelming urge to go back and experience them both again before the collection's release in September.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/07/coming-this-september-the-ico-shadow-of-the-colossus-collection-for-ps3/
Sony


Spanish police "arrest PSN hackers"

The New York times reports that Spanish police have arrested three suspected members of the 'hacktivist' group Anonymous - one each from Gijon, Barcelona and Valencia - in connection with attacks on PlayStation Network as well as various corporate and government websites around the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/technology/11hack.html?_r=2
New York Times


Codemasters confirms data breach

Dirt developer hacked last Friday; personal details, but no financial information, taken during attack.

UK developer Codemasters has today revealed that customer personal data was taken by hackers in an attack on June 3.

The studio has spent the intervening days identifying the scope of the attack and has ascertained that hackers gained access to its main and corporate websites, the Dirt 3 VIP code redemption page, the Codemasters EStore, and its customer database.

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LA Noire still on top of Nordic chart

Team Bondi's detective adventure on top for a third successive week.

LA Noire is the number one in the Nordic chart - which collates sales data from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland - for a third consecutive week.

In second spot is a re-entry, The Sims 3: Generations, which knocks Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean down into third place.

There's just one new entry in this week's top 20 - Bethesda's Hunted: The Demon's Forge, which makes its debut in a lowly 14th place.

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Runic CEO happy with Torchlight piracy

At E3, Max Schaefer tells PC Gamer that today's pirate is tomorrow's paying customer: "Millions and millions of copies of Torchlight downloaded from the illicit market in certain Asian territories. And that’s fine with us. We knew it was gonna happen. We’re building an audience. We’ve long since announced that we’re going to be doing an MMOG, and we kind of view it as a marketing tool for us. We’re going to have millions of people who are familiar with our franchise, familiar with our style, and who are going to be ready customers when we do a global MMOG."
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/09/e3-2011-torchlight-pirated-over-5-million-times-in-china-runic-ceo-thats-fine-with-us/
PC Gamer


XCOM gallery

E3 may technically be over, but no-one told 2K Games, who released the below screenshots overnight. 2K Marin's tactical shooter, the series' first instalment since 2001's X-COM: Enforcer, will be released for Xbox 360, PC and PS3 next March.
http://www.xcom.com/
2K Games


The art of CG cinematics

Movies based on games are rubbish. Movies based in games are incredible. Realtime UK explains how it creates the magic.

It stands to reason that as games approach realtime parity with cartoons, live action drama and Hollywood special effects, the job of the CG video maker might diminish. Why sacrifice a consistent look and a degree of creative control when you can keep it all 'in-engine'? But of course it's not that simple. So long as there are genres that can't emulate cinematic storytelling - the RTS, rhythm action game or gawky deathmatch shooter, for instance - the need for pre-rendered video remains. 

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Microsoft: All our games will use Kinect

"It's not a mandate that everything we do in firstparty has to support Kinect right now," said Phil Spencer of Microsoft Games Studios. "But I will say, specifically with voice, that there are some things that just seem to make navigating and playing games so much easier, that I would guess the answer will be yes in the end, that you'll see all firstparty games using some form of Kinect functionality."
http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6318951/e3-2011-microsoft-incorporating-kinect-into-all-first-party-games
GameSpot


Hunted: The Demon's Forge review

A cloud of bugs and sycophantic obsession with a certain Epic title can't spoil this high-fantasy romp.

Do-it-yourself conspiracy theory, step 1: write the word ‘Wargar’ – the name of the orc-like race at the centre of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge – down on a sheet of paper. We’ll wait here while you find a pen. Step 2: splice the word in half at the syllable break. Finished? Step 3: swap the order of these two words. If you’ve followed instructions properly, you should have arrived at the nonsensical phrase ‘gar War.’ Step 4: sandwich the preposition ‘of’ between the two words to get ‘gar of War’.

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Square Enix: our E3 lineup was "almost humiliating"

Koji Taguchi, senior executive officer, said on Twitter: "Because we merged with Eidos and had games like Tomb Raider, Deus [Ex] and Hitman, as a company we were able to keep face. But the decline in Japanese titles was almost humiliating. This has been a week where I worried daily about how we can fix this." Square Enix's Japanese E3 line-up: Final Fantasy XIII-2.
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/06/10/square_enix_japanese_showing/
Andriasang


E3 2011 attracted 46,800 visitors

Attendance was up by a thousand on last year's 45,600. Organiser and owner the ESA confirms next year's E3 will take place June 5-7 at the same venue, the Los Angeles Convention Center.
http://www.theesa.com/newsroom/release_detail.asp?releaseID=148
ESA


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