If Warriors Orochi 3 is a testament to anything, it's to the persistent survival of franchises with loyal fanbases. Commonly the butt of jokes about single-button speedruns and a semi-retro approach to graphics, Omega Force keeps developing new entries in the Musou series of large-scale battlefield brawlers. And true to form, this second sequel to what started as a Dynasty Warriors spin-off remains true to the Musou template.
Streamlining needn’t always mean compromising, yet the task of bringing a complex and diverse PC strategy to touch devices without a certain amount of dumbing down is an unenviable one. In retooling Total War for iOS, The Creative Assembly initially seems to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. But after a period of acclimatisation to what at times feels as much a puzzle game as an RTS, it soon dawns that this is every bit as tactically engaging as its PC counterpart.
Nintendo has reported a ¥43 billion (£328.7m/$530.1m) loss in its full year financial report for the period ending March 31, 2012, the first annual loss in its 30 years in the videogame business.
The Japanese company's sales were down 36 per cent year-on-year at ¥647 billion (£4.9bn/$7.97bn).
DICE has a number of positions open, including front and backend developers for its Battlelog social network, a senior software engineer and a build manager for a new high-profile project. Find all DICE's jobs here.
The future will always catch up with you. I remember when I bought my PSP in 2005: it was a darkly shiny piece of magical technology smuggled back decades from a super-cool sci-fi age. There had never been a screen like that, and rarely a gadget so satisfying in its dense heft, its minimalist piano-black-and-metal aesthetic. Even the crosshatched metal of the analogue stick (or as people took to calling it, a bit disgustingly, the ‘nub’) felt good, roughing up my thumb in sweet punishment.
The future will always catch up with you. I remember when I bought my PSP in 2005: it was a darkly shiny piece of magical technology smuggled back decades from a super-cool sci-fi age. There had never been a screen like that, and rarely a gadget so satisfying in its dense heft, its minimalist piano-black-and-metal aesthetic. Even the crosshatched metal of the analogue stick (or as people took to calling it, a bit disgustingly, the ‘nub’) felt good, roughing up my thumb in sweet punishment.
Staff at STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World have set up a new studio, Vostok Games, confirming that development of the planned sequel to GSC's 2007 PC FPS was "frozen" when the studio was shut down last December.
The first 3DS Fire Emblem game sold close to a quarter of a million copies in Japan during the week ended April 22, as Vita sales dropped to a new low.
Fire Emblem Awakening moved over 240,000 units, beating sales of all other titles in the top 20 combined, Andriasang reports.
Code Of Princess, a 3DS action game from former Guardian Heroes developers, debuted in second place with just under 20,000 copies sold.
Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure retains the number one spot on the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.
Battlefield 3 is up two places to number two, followed by FIFA 12, a non-mover at number three, and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and FIFA Street. No new entries make the top ten.
01. Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (Activision)
02. Battlefield 3 (EA)
It says much about the perception of Vita’s place in the market that StarDrone Extreme’s original 79p level-skip option should prove so startling. On iOS, such features are commonplace, but the instant switch to the PlayStation Store upon pressing the button generated a sense of unease that ultimately led to the developer making it a free download. As Sony attempts to negotiate the monetisation minefield, this may be something Vita owners have to get used to; perhaps the pill would have gone down easier in a better game.
Nintendo has announced the launch of Nintendo Zone, a location-based interactive service that gives 3DS owners access to trailers, screenshots, demos and other content while on the move.
Users can access the service using one of 25,000 WiFi hotspots across the UK, locating the nearest ones by visiting hotspot.nintendo.co.uk; the Nintendo Zone icon will then flash when it is in range of a WiFi signal.
This year’s Gadget Show Live 2012 saw the culmination of nearly six months' work for the four development teams that secured a place in the Epic Games and Train2Game-sponsored Make Something Unreal Live game jam.
The European Commission (EC) has granted an extension to France's videogame tax relief, giving the country's videogame developers a 20 per cent tax break until December 31, 2017 and effectively giving the green light to the UK's own games tax break.
The European Commission (EC) has granted an extension to France's videogame tax relief, giving the country's videogame developers a 20 per cent tax break until December 31, 2017 and effectively giving the green light to the UK's own games tax break.
All video games are about morality. Yet few games seem to have been designed with an awareness of this fact, and least of all shooters, which use metaphors of death and war to adrenalise players. War is decoration: an aesthetic of winning, losing, and little else. Yager Development hopes to breach that unnatural separation between morality and play with Spec Ops: The Line, a thirdperson shooter meant to evoke moral uncertainty and discomfort.
For an App Store veteran, Fibble won’t provide many surprises: it’s another physics-based arcade game with short chapters and a snappy pinball-meets-crazy-golf premise. Your only goal is to get Fibble from the start of each maze-like level to the end as economically as possible; your only incentive to do so stylishly lies with the familiar muddle of stars and medals that are up for grabs.
Apple made $11.6 billion (£7.2bn) in profit in the three months ending March 31, an increase of 94 per cent year on year.
Revenue during the quarter, the second of Apple's fiscal year, rose by over 58 per cent, to $39.2 billion (£24.3bn), thanks to a dramatic increase in sales of iPhone and iPad.
The first game from Shinji Mikami's Tango Gameworks studio is a survival horror title codenamed Zwei.
Andriasang brings word from Famitsu that the creator of Resident Evil and Vanquish is executive director on the project, but is fully involved in development. He explained that he wanted to make a game that met player expectations, and understandably felt survival horror was the best way to do it.
Fifteen per cent of Facebook's revenue in the first three months of the year came from Zynga, according to the social network's latest financial results.