Three new keynote sessions for October’s GDC Online have been detailed by event organiser UBM TechWeb Game Network.
Raph Koster, VP of creative design as Playdom, will deliver the design track keynote. Titled ‘Classic Social Mechanics: The Engines Behind Everything Multiplayer’, it will focus on “the underlying mechanics and principles that drive sociable gameplay in everything from Facebook games to sports”.
Gameloft has reported significant profit and sales increases for the first half of 2010.
The French publisher reported a half-year profit of €5.3 million ($6.8m / £4.4m), up 140 per cent year-over-year, on the back of sales up 11 per cent to €66.6 million ($85.5m / £55.3m). It said that its iPhone and iPad game sales grew 82 per cent during the six month period.
StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty sold over three million copies worldwide in its first month of availability.
The sci-fi sequel is currently the best selling PC game of 2010 and the “fastest-selling realtime strategy game of all time”, according to developer Blizzard.
Microsoft has confirmed that Kinect’s voice-recognition software will only support three languages at launch this November.
The company told Eurogamer that the device will accept American and British English, Japanese and Mexican Spanish.
Madden NFL 11 was the bestselling game in North America last month, according to internal EA estimates.
Sales of the publisher’s latest American football title, which launched on August 10 in the US, were up five per cent year-over-year across all platforms during the month, with EA claiming a strong retail and digital performance.
Sony is reportedly set to reveal a new music and video subscription service today in Berlin at the IFA technology show.
The media offering will run across a range of Sony devices, beginning with PlayStation platforms, according to the Financial Times.
Tiga has announced that individuals working in the UK games industry will soon be able to join the trade body.
Launching this autumn, individual membership will be distinct from existing corporate membership options, offering a different range of benefits and services focusing on three core areas - career development, material benefits and networking opportunities – designed to help members "fulfill their career ambitions".
Japan-based publisher and developer Atlus has been dissolved as an independent entity by its parent company.
Index Holdings said on its website (via Gamasutra) that it's streamlining its business to focus on "profitable core areas", and that as part of the process the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona publisher has been brought under its direct control.
From a design perspective, ‘convergence’ is a dirty word. Convergence is a business concept that aims to bring about an overlap in otherwise diverse audiences by leveraging IP across games, film, toys, books and comics, TV or other forms of entertainment.
Peter Moore explains the reasons behind EA's decision to bring Online Pass to its sports franchises, citing escalating costs and improved service.
Peter Moore confirms that, while the publisher is interested in the technology, existing technical issues mean it won't be in any of its games yet.
EA sports president Peter Moore has clarified the company's position on 3D. Moore, who made the comments during an exclusive Edge interview, is cautious about rushing to use the technology for the sake of it.
In a feature on EA in issue 219 of Edge (available from UK newsagents today), we take an in-depth look at the company and how it has attempted to remodel itself to become a leaner, altogether more focussed operation. Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, has been responsible for the sports division since 2007 which, under his guidance, has seen the FIFA franchise steal Pro Evo's crown and NBA Live's reboot as Elite among other things.
Google has acquired social game developer SocialDeck for an undisclosed sum.
The Canadian-based firm was founded in 2008 and has launched several titles for iPhone, Facebook and BlackBerry including Shake And Spell, Pet Hero and Color Connect. The company's game's achieved more than one million mobile downloads last year.
EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich thinks that a $10 price increase for annual Xbox Live Gold subscriptions is unlikely to harm positive Xbox 360 momentum, suggesting that the online service still represents “incredible value to consumers”.
Take-Two’s Mafia II debuted atop the UK all formats chart during the week ended August 28.
The crime sequel registered the biggest domestic game launch since its publisher released Red Dead Redemption 14 weeks ago, with the Xbox 360 version accounting for 52 per cent of total sales, and the PS3 and PC editions taking 41 per cent and seven per cent respectively.
Nintendo of America will reduce the suggested retail price of the DSi and DSi XL by $20 each, to $149.99 and $169.99 respectively, effective September 12.
The DS Lite will remain at a suggested retail price of $129.99, the company said.
Microsoft is to raise the price of Xbox Live Gold subscription prices in the US, UK Canada and Mexico for the first time since the online service launched in 2002.
Effective November 1, 2010, the price for a monthly US subscription will increase from $7.99 to $9.99, the cost of a three month sub from $19.99 to $24.99, and the price of an annual sub from $49.99 to $59.99.
Organisers of the Montreal International Games Summit have announced the keynote speakers for November’s event.
Ed Fries, co-founder of the Xbox project at Microsoft, “will discuss beauty, constraints and the Atari 2600”, while 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel will examine the “crucial steps involved in developing an independent videogame”.
MIGS 2010 will also for the first time feature a keynote speaker for each of the event’s five tracks.
Cinema and videogames have been trading paint unsuccessfully for well over two decades now. Putting aside the ghastly hovering spectre of the licenced tie-in, the relationship most commonly expresses itself in the form of Hollywood reinventions of game IPs. These films can generally be distinguished because they star Angelina Jolie, an ex-wrestler, or somebody you had assumed was dead.
Sony Computer Entertainment Australia has been granted an injunction until August 31 to block the importation and sale of the new PS3 mod PS Jailbreak.
The ruling by the nation’s Federal Court requires sellers of the device to give their existing stock to Sony’s solicitors until the deadline passes, Kotaku reports.
California-based game PR firm Reverb Communications has been charged with deceptive advertising after members of its staff were found to have posed as ordinary consumers posting game reviews for the firm’s clients’ titles on the iTunes store.
Game designer and former Gamelab CEO Eric Zimmerman has been appointed as visiting assistant arts professor at the NYU Game Center, an independent multi-school center at New York University dedicated to the research, design, and development of digital games.
Xbox Live Arcade charity game Chime is to get a commercial release on PC via Steam at the “end of this summer”.
UK-based developer Zoe Mode, which created the original game pro bono for OneBigGame, has said that it will donate five per cent of the purchase price of royalties to the non-profit publisher, benefiting its charity partners Starlight Children’s Foundation and Save the Children.
For the best part of a decade, the RPG was the genre you would invoke when you wanted to talk about all that was predictable in gaming. With its loot, grinding, endless reams of dialogue and stoical pixies, the RPG symbolised videogames hemmed in by their own traditions, and stood for play at its closest intersection with work.
New research by Deloitte indicates that just two per cent of UK consumers plan to buy a 3D television in the next year.
A survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of Deloitte found that only 89 of 4,199 respondents polled were likely to spend money on a 3D-enabled TV in the next 12 months, the Telegraph reports.