PopCap Games co-founder and creative director Jason Kapalka has told us that he’s delighted with the homage paid to the studio’s Plants Vs Zombies in upcoming World Of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm.
Facebook has outlined a number of changes it hopes will improve game experiences on the social network for both players and developers.
Speaking at an event for developers at the company’s California headquarters, Facebook executives said it was working hard to balance competing concerns as it revises the Facebook platform.
Format: 360, PS3, Wii
Release: October 5 (US), November 5 (UK)
Publisher: Konami
Developer: 4mm Games / Def Jam Interactive
Screenshot gallery
The US International Trade Commission is to investigate a PS3 patent infringement claim by leading Taiwanese LCD panel manufacturer Chimei Innolux.
The complaint alleges that Sony's console, Bravia TVs and Vaio notebooks infringe on Chimei patents relating to ways to eliminate bright spots and align liquid crystals for better picture quality, and for a cache memory system to improve performance, Bloomberg reports.
Halo game releases are likely to be a more common event now developer Bungie is out of the picture, according to comments from Phil Spencer, corporate vice president for Microsoft Game Studios.
"There's no explicit strategy that says we're to ship a Halo game every year. I will say I think one Halo game every three years - which was kind of our old cadence - is probably not frequent enough," he told IGN.
Sources familiar with Nintendo’s 3DS have apparently revealed new information about the hardware powering the upcoming handheld.
IGN reports that 3DS will boast not one but two 266MHz ARM11 CPUs, a 133MHz GPU, 4MBs of dedicated VRAM, 64MBs of RAM, and 1.5GBs of flash storage.
The site points out that early iPhone models were powered by the ARM11, which is currently used by Microsoft's Zune HD and a range of Android smartphones.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has branded the California violent game law due to be reviewed by the US Supreme Court this November as “beyond absurd”.
The 2005 statute, which aims to prohibit the sale to minors of any game containing content deemed offensively violent by the state of California, will go before the Supreme Court later this year despite being deemed unconstitutional at federal level on a number of occasions.
Codemasters is shipping two million copies of F1 2010 to retail in anticipation of its “biggest release to date”.
The PS3, Xbox 360 and PC racer launches in North America on Tuesday, in Europe on Thursday and in the UK on Friday.
Nintendo's Pokémon Black & White for DS sold 2.63 million copies in Japan during its first two days on shelves.
To put the numbers in perspective, Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver was Japan’s second bestselling title last year, moving 3,382,597 copies.
Pokémon Black & White isn’t due to release in the West until next spring.
Xbox Live Arcade games generated record monthly revenues in August, according to a new report from market research firm Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment (FADE).
Estimated monthly revenues came in at $17.5 million, up six per cent compared to last August’s then record-breaking $16.5 million, the firm said.
PS3 sales have overtaken those of Wii in Japan during 2010, according to data from sales tracker Media Create.
Between January 4 and September 12 Sony’s console shifted 1,017,094 units versus Nintendo’s 1,015,513, VG247 reports. Japanese year-to-date sales for all consoles follow:
DS – 1,637,461
PSP – 1,453,248
PS3 – 1,017,094
Wii – 1,015,513
Sony Computer Entertainment America has responded to a class action lawsuit launched after its decision to remove the ability to install alternative operating systems on PS3.
Grasshopper Manufacture’s logo says in big bold letters that ‘Punk’s Not Dead.’ That might strike some as a little try hard. But you can’t say the studio doesn’t try hard: think of GHM and you think of neon collages, sharp edges, and lots of gratuitous swearing. Its latest project, Shadows Of The Damned, is a collaboration with Shinji Mikami and Electronic Arts – and surprisingly GHM’s first attempt at HD visuals.
Highlights from our community-written blogs, featuring first impressions of Move and an online shooter starring Mario.
Following the release of Sony's new motion controller last week, Savage Henry provides a detailed analysis of the Move launch line-up, along with his first impressions of the device, what works and what doesn't. While impressed overall, he's not sure that it will revolutionise gaming just yet.
Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, is to leave the company on October 1 after accepting a post outside of the games industry.
One of NOA’s most visible faces, taking to the stage at events like E3 and commenting on monthly NPD sales results, Dunaway joined in November of 2007 to lead the firm’s sales and marketing activities in the US, Canada and Latin America, filling the position vacated by current president Reggie Fils-Aime.
Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has said that the company is targeting the ageing PSP at a younger, more casual audience as it looks at new technology.
182 parties filed amicus briefs on submission deadline day last Friday urging the US Supreme Court to find unconstitutional a 2005 statute which would deny First Amendment protections to games that California decides are "offensively violent”.
Support for the games industry was shown from a diverse range of groups including “First Amendment experts, national organizations, non-profits, associations, researchers and social science experts”, US trade association the Entertainment Software Association said today.
Revenues generated by PC game sales in the US during the first six months of 2010 were down 21 per cent year-over-year, according to a new report from the NPD Group.
Unit sales declined 14 per cent, the research firm said in its PC Games Digital Downloads: Analyst Report.
Meanwhile, digital PC game sales topped those of boxed copies in the US for the first time during the same six month period. Digital PC game sales totalled 11.2 million units, versus 8.2 million physical units purchased.
There aren’t too many things that I regret in life, but one of the few is that, as a first-year college student, I didn’t apply myself more diligently to my Japanese language class. It seemed like a great idea at the time, and as a game design consultant it would come in extremely handy today. But back then, the challenge of learning a different alphabet and new rules of grammar was far too daunting for me to stick with it.
[Update: Added Nintendo comment]
Nintendo has reportedly warned a number of prominent Pokémon fansites that they face closure under the terms of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act unless they remove images of Pokémon Black & White, which is out now in Japan but not until spring 2011 in the West.
Dr Richard Marks, one of the men behind Sony's new motion controller, says that conservative launch line-up is to be expected.
Speaking during an interview with Edge, Sony's Dr Richard Marks - one of the men behind PS3's new motion controller, Move - says that developers need more time to take full advantage of the device.
It’s easy to take hardware for granted. Whereas the constant drip-feed of concept art, screenshots and press releases ensures that software develops in front of our eyes, hardware tends to emerge fully formed, months and years of engineering forgotten in a moment of onstage fanfare. Dr Richard Marks is one of the people responsible for designing and bringing new hardware to life. Having studied avionics at MIT, Marks went on to receive a PhD from Stanford, working in underwater robotics, before turning his talents to worthier pursuits.
Halo: Reach has debuted atop the UK all formats chart for the week ended September 18, recording the biggest ever launch week for publisher Microsoft and the fifth biggest in UK history, behind only Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360 and PS3), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2) and GTA IV (Xbox 360).
The title improved on Halo 3’s launch week by 20,000 sales and Halo: ODST’s by almost 200,000 sales, according to sales monitor GfK Chart-Track.
Click here for your e-zine detailing Georgia as a hub for game development>>
To an outsider, it can be difficult to truly comprehend the vastness of the United States of America. With an area of 60,000 square miles, the state of Georgia alone is large enough to be a country - one which would represent the 28th largest economy in the world - and while North American culture implies a homogenisation across the states, each one has its own unique feeling.
Tokyo Game Show organiser CESA has announced record attendance figures for this year's event.
The four day show, which wrapped up yesterday, drew 207,647 visitors. It marks the first time in its history it has surpassed the 200,000 mark and follows a dip in attendance last year.