Edinburgh Interactive has earned a reputation as one of the most low-key and high-minded conferences in the gaming calendar. Since 2003, the event has attracted game industry figures like Ian Livingstone (returning this year) and former president of SCE Europe, Chris Deering (who acted as the event’s chairman for four consecutive years).
Communications regulator Ofcom has revealed that the average maximum speed of UK broadband connections is just 7.5Mbit per second. While 68 per cent of UK residents have a broadband connection, there is a significant disparity across the nation.
If games were judged in terms of project management rather than entertainment value, the world would be a topsy-turvy place. Valve and Blizzard would be near the bottom of the heap, pummelled by that troublesome inability to meet deadlines, while, at the gleaming pinnacle of the industry would sit Telltale Games, a studio that meets every milestone and ticks every box - except, perhaps, the one for genuine enjoyment.
Tales Of The Abyss is the new number one in the Japanese software chart, and interest in the Namco Bandai RPG has also propelled 3DS to the top of this week's hardware chart.
3DS has had a slow start in Japan, regularly outsold by PSP, but this week it has knocked Sony's ageing portable from the summit, albeit with the most slender of leads: 30,233 units sold to PSP's 29,871.
Sony has confirmed plans to introduce an online pass system, which will see new copies of select firstparty games ship with a single-use code required to access their full online feature set.
After rumours of a PSN Pass surfaced earlier this week, the company said in a statement released today: “We are always evaluating new programs for our online offering, and starting with Resistance 3 this September, we will be instituting a network pass program for PS3 games with online capabilities.
Microsoft Japan today outlined its business strategy for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, which includes changes to the way it will run its Xbox business.
Its console operations will now be handled by the newly formed Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB). Previously, the Xbox business was part of the company’s Home & Entertainment division, headed up by Takashi Sensui, who will remain in charge of games as general manager of the IEB.
When we saw that name, we certainly did a winci. Fortunately daWindci is far superior to its punning: this is a balloon-em-up from the highest level of the atmosphere, casting you as a wind-controlling god guiding a hot air balloon through gorgeous landscapes.
Kami Retro's a smart and stylish platformer that belies its retro bells and whistles. The aesthetic is the familiar brightly coloured blocks n' bloops so popular on the App Store, with all the obligatory cap-doffing to the Mushroom Kingdom, but Kami Retro's style of bouncing 3D pixels is all its own.