Julien Merceron, worldwide technology director at Square Enix, believes that AI has been largely left behind in the current generation's charge towards realistic graphics and physics, telling us that it is such a complex discipline that it will be some time before we see significant advances in games.
"I think for many generations of platforms, people have been saying AI is the next thing," he tells us. "From my perspective, not a lot has happened. I don't think the leap will be as big as people believe, because it's a very complex area.
We are told that pre-owned game sales are bad for the industry: they deprive publishers of revenue, with the proceeds of the sale lining only the retailers' pockets. According to one retailer, however, pre-owned benefits publishers as well.
The claim comes from Mike Mauler, executive vice-president of Gamestop International. "I can understand the feelings," he tells us, "[but] we've sat down with developers and publishers and really gone through the data. I personally think there's a lot of benefit to the publisher.
“While developing LittleBigPlanet, and especially while making its sequel, we often ended up designing for creators and non-creatives as two distinct audiences. I also have no doubt that no matter how easy you make it for people to create there are some who will never make anything. The assumption goes that some people create and others consume.
Sometimes, what comes after the colon in a game’s title can be all too revealing. For example, I can exclusively reveal that the full title of Killzone 3, for some reason kept secret until now, is Killzone 3: Helghast Go To The Funfair. All that was missing, as I played through the campaign cooperatively with a friend, were the candy floss and toffee apples, the faint odour of vomit and the ambient threat of stabbing. Oh, wait: the game has an ambient threat of stabbing too.
Sometimes, what comes after the colon in a game’s title can be all too revealing. For example, I can exclusively reveal that the full title of Killzone 3, for some reason kept secret until now, is Killzone 3: Helghast Go To The Funfair. All that was missing, as I played through the campaign cooperatively with a friend, were the candy floss and toffee apples, the faint odour of vomit and the ambient threat of stabbing. Oh, wait: the game has an ambient threat of stabbing too.
Yes, it's still there. Despite an 18 per cent drop in sales from last week, 505 Games' Zumba Fitness is the UK all-formats number one for a tenth consecutive week, and the 13th since its release last year.
There's good news for Nintendo, however, with the 3DS price drop seeing The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D rise nine places to number four, with sales rising 59 per cent week on week.
With the Zelda series increasingly concerned with curation, it’s left to Mario to provide the focal point for pure creativity in Nintendo’s universe. Link’s ever-repeating adventures are never particularly short of invention, but his dungeon masters seem to have trouble letting go, turning even incidental rifts into ongoing lore. Mario, on the other hand, spares relatively little thought for history, and will shred good ideas with no obvious remorse – often after a single outing.
Microsoft has insisted it remains committed to the Japanese market despite Xbox 360's struggles, but admitted: "It's a challenging market."
Intricate and often intimate, room escapes make up one of the most pleasing genres in modern videogames. They’re the very close sibling of the literary world’s locked room mysteries, and they serve a similar purpose - as a sub-category aimed at connoisseurs who are looking for something extremely focused and specific.
“Swipe a bow across a cello in just the right way, and I'm assaulting the beach on the Silent Cartographer level in Halo: Combat Evolved. I even know where all the rocks are.”
Bitmob’s Rus McLaughlin considers the power of music in games to immortalise a moment just as easily as it can destroy one.
Markus "Notch" Persson admits he may have made a mistake in his choice of Quake 3 as a means of settling his trademark dispute with Bethesda, but describes the publisher's claim as "bogus" and says he is prepared to go to court and "fight for as long as it takes."