It's time for you to decide which are the best games of the year by voting in the Golden Joystick Awards.
Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida thinks Microsoft and Nintendo will need to release new consoles before Sony.
Frontier chairman David Braben thinks efforts by the UK games industry to secure tax subsidies haven’t been helped by problematic terms such as tax breaks and tax relief, which he feels can have the undesired effect of coming across as “special pleading” from a needy industry.
We recently caught up with Frontier Developments’ founder and chairman, David Braben, to discuss the UK game development tax breaks situation, the studio’s experience creating Kinectimals for Xbox 360’s upcoming motion sensing peripheral, and whether he thinks 3D gaming is here to stay. We also asked how The Outsider and Elite IV are coming along, but on those subjects he was less forthcoming.
Harry Potter: Years 1-4 remains in top spot while Naughty Bear sneaks in at ninth.
For those confused by the disappearence of the original story, we accidentally posted the wrong chart earlier. Apologies to those who commented on it.
2010 Game Developers Conference Europe organisers have added speakers from Rare, Blitz Games, BioWare, Obsidian, Sidhe and Newtoy to next month’s event line-up.
Rare’s Nick Burton and Blitz Games CTO Andrew Oliver will deliver a session entitled ‘Kinecting With A New Audience’. The 50 minute game design lecture will cover building games for the new motion sensing Xbox 360 platform from first and third party perspectives.
Viacom-owned MTV Networks has made its first foray into the social games business with the acquisition of San Francisco-based development studio Social Express.
It will develop social games based on original IP, as well as shows and characters from MTV, Nickelodeon and its other brands, with its first title set to be introduced in the third quarter of 2010. The company also plans to leverage Social Express' expertise to launch a publishing platform for independent game developers.
Social games maker Playdom has acquired San Diego, California-based virtual world game engine development studio Metaplace.
Take-Two has cut 20 staff at Sid Meier’s Firaxis Games.
That equates to around 15 per cent of the company’s workforce, but the move won’t affect the ongoing development of Civilization V or Civilization Network for Facebook.
The publisher labelled the move a “realignment of development resources at the studio” in a statement issued to Variety.
Media Create has released weekly and year-to-date hardware sales data for the Japanese market.
Nintendo’s handheld platform leads 2010 sales with 1,180,325 units sold, narrowly ahead of PSP’s 1,101,666.
Wii is the best performing home console ahead of PS3, although it's another close run race, with Nintendo’s system on 818,945 sales and Sony’s on 756,325.
Xbox 360 sales stand at 105,969 units and PS2 sales at 45,372.
Year-to-date Japanese hardware sales:
DS - 1,180,325
Microsoft has cleared up speculation over Kinect’s ability to detect seated players by confirming that the motion sensing camera is capable of doing so.
"Kinect can be used while sitting when an experience is developed with sitting in mind," a spokesperson told Joystiq.
While at E3, we spoke to president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida for an interview you can read in full in our latest issue, regarding Sony's evolution of its standard controller's motion sensing, what 3D can bring to gaming and the lack of PSP support.
Nintendo has reported a jump in UK DSi sales since the handheld’s trade price was lowered last month.
“Since the adjustment in trade price has been passed on to consumers, each of the previous three weeks have seen DSi sales increase by over 40 per cent week-on-week,” Nintendo’s head of communications, Rob Saunders, told MCV.
New research from ESSEC, one of France’s leading business schools, has found that playing sports videogames can increase participation in real sports, especially among young men and boys.
38 per cent of boys under the age of 21 who play sports games on “active" game consoles practice their favourite virtual sport in real life, while 75 per cent of gamers participate in some kind of real sport, according to the study.
Indie Fund is now accepting submissions from independent developers.
Announced in March and detailed later that month during a GDC session, Indie Fund is designed to help out small scale developers secure funding for their projects.
DS football RPG Inazuma Eleven 3 cleared half a million sales in three days to top the Japanese software chart during the week ended July 4.
The title moved 505,000 copies, outselling the rest of the top ten combined, according to Media Create data (via Andriasang).
Three other new entries made the top ten, with Taiko Drum Master DS in second place, BlazBlue Continuum Shift in third and Digimon Story Lost Evolution in fifth.
Despite the conservatism of the software Microsoft chose to represent Kinect's launch, it shouldn't be forgotten that the company is betting on a control scheme that offers no physical feedback. In an interview conducted at the event (which you can read in full in our latest issue, available in UK newsagents tomorrow), Kudo Tsunoda, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, told us that he was initially worried about the disconnection but now feels it was the right decision.
While critics have clearly taken to the 3DS, the system’s producer Hideki Konno says marketing the new handheld will be a “very tricky” proposition for Nintendo.
Introducing our latest issue, revealing Nintendo's plan to bring 3D gaming to the masses.
Our E3 special reports on gaming's biggest event of the year, with interviews with the men behind Nintendo's 3DS, Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's worldwide studios, and covers the games that made the show the best in recent memory.
Frontier Developments founder and chairman David Braben is sceptical about 3D gaming’s staying power, warning “it may well just be a flash in the pan”.
Sony and Nintendo have recently thrown their weight behind 3D technologies, the former pushing stereoscopic 3D gaming on PS3 and the latter glasses-free 3D on new handheld 3DS.
NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown has appealed a federal judge’s dismissal of a case he brought against EA over the alleged violation of his image rights.
Brown argued in 2008 that EA had illegally used his likeness in two historical teams featured in the massively popular Madden NFL franchise, but his case was dismissed last September.
id Software’s Rage and Nintendo’s 3DS were the big winners of the 2010 E3 Game Critics Awards, with publisher EA and the Xbox 360 platform also achieving notable success.
The most nominated product, Rage also took the most awards as it was named Best Action Game, Best Console Game and received a Special Commendation for Graphics.
The ambitions of browser-based games are gathering pace as companies like OnLive and InstantAction (see our recent interview with Louis Castle) are building services which provide streaming or rent to buy gameplay respectively, but a format choice must still be made, and the need to ensure your PC has the right plugins is unlikely to tempt console players from their own streamlined experiences or casual players from quick-fix sessions.
Xbox Live revenues cleared $1 billion (£661m) in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010.
Bloomberg reports that Xbox 360’s online service “probably” hit the new milestone, but a source has confirmed with us that’s definitely the case.
