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June 24, 2011

HMV offers discounts over StreetPass

The UK retailer has devised an innovative use for the 3DS's social application: take your system into a participating branch - see the source link for the full list - collect an HMV store Mii, show it to staff and get 10 per cent off the purchase of a 3DS game.
http://hmv.com/hmvweb/navigate.do?pPageID=5235
HMV


Thatgamecompany confirms Journey beta

The developer announces that its upcoming PSN title Journey will undergo a "very limited, private beta", with details to be posted to its Facebook page and the PlayStation Blog next Monday.
http://twitter.com/#!/thatgamecompany/status/84046392833748992
Twitter


Gamefest tickets on sale

Tickets for UK retailer Game's first consumer show, to be held at the Birmingham NEC from September 16 to 18, are now on sale, priced at £10 for those over 12 years of age and £5 for under-12s. Only Game reward card holders can purchase tickets - those without one can sign up at www.game.co.uk or at any Game store. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, THQ, Bethesda, Activision and Sega will all have a presence at the show, with attendees able to get their hands on those firms' latest wares. Click the source link for more.
http://events.game.co.uk/gamefest/
Game


Sony facing fresh class-action suit

Court filing accuses Sony of laying off security staff shortly before the attack.

Sony is facing yet another lawsuit over its handling of the April attack on PSN which resulted in the personal data of over 100 million users being stolen.

Reuters reports that the lawsuit, a proposed class action filed at San Diego federal court this week, makes fresh claims that Sony did not do enough to protect its customers' data, and knew it was at risk because it had previously suffered smaller security breaches.

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King Of Kong director to remake WarGames

Deadline reports that Seth Gordon, director of the 2007 documentary about Steve Wiebe's Donkey Kong world record attempt The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters, is to remake WarGames, the 1983 Matthew Broderick film about a computer prodigy who inadvertently hacks into US military systems and almost starts World War III. Wouldn't he prefer a nice game of chess?
http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/king-of-kong-director-seth-gordon-ready-to-play-war-games-in-mgm-reboot/
Deadline


Japanese PSN still offline

Western gamers have had full access to Sony's online service, PlayStation Network, for three weeks, but those in Japan are still awaiting its return. Andriasang reports that Sony has issued a brief statement regarding the continuing outage, in which it apologises and explains that more time is needed to make adjustments with various related parties. While declining to go into detail it seems safe to assume that Sony is yet to satisfy regulators that it has made sufficient changes made to improve PSN security to ensure no repeat of the April attack that resulted in the personal details of over 100 million users being stolen.
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/06/24/sony_psn_notice/
Andriasang


Japanese PSN still offline

Western gamers have had full access to Sony's online service, PlayStation Network, for three weeks, but those in Japan are still awaiting its return. Andriasang reports that Sony has issued a brief statement regarding the continuing outage, in which it apologises and explains that more time is needed to make adjustments with various related parties. While declining to go into detail it seems safe to assume that Sony is yet to satisfy regulators that it has made sufficient changes made to improve PSN security to ensure no repeat of the April attack that resulted in the personal details of over 100 million users being stolen.
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/06/24/sony_psn_notice/
Andriasang


Team Fortress 2 goes free-to-play

Valve's shooter the latest and highest profile game to embrace freemium.

Class-based multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 has made the switch to the free-to-play model, developer Valve has announced.

Valve recently opened up its Steam platform to free-to-play games, and just this week admitted it was at work on a free-to-play title of its own. Few expected, however, that an announcement was just around the corner, or that Valve's first free-to-play project would be one of the most popular multiplayer shooters around.

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Dungeon Siege III review

Obsidian's RPG can't match its competitors' polish, but it certainly doesn't lack soul.

To truly appreciate what Obsidian Entertainment brings to Dungeon Siege III, you need to speak to the automaton standing watch at the mechanical gates to the city of Stonebridge. His animation is limited, his character model is lacking in detail and, to tell the truth, the location he guards isn’t a particularly rewarding place to explore. Yet, if you ask him to tell you a little about his home town, along with the usual fantasy shtick about goblins and men forging alliances, he’ll also admit that Stonebridge is home to hundreds of feral house cats.

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June 23, 2011

Plants Vs Zombies hits Windows Phone 7

PopCap announces that its typically unique take on the tower defence genre is now available for Microsoft's mobile operating system through the Must Have Games promotion. The £3.99 download includes adventure mode, zen garden, all of the PC original's minigames, and two modes - Vasebreaker and iZombie - that are making a first appearance on mobile devices. It also supports Xbox Live for Windows Phone for leaderboards and achievements.
http://www.popcap.com/
PopCap


Valve takes Portal 2 to school

Gabe Newell reveals plans for a special version of the Portal 2 authoring tools for use in the classroom. "If you give us a lesson plan, we can give you a tool that allows kids to build content to lock down those lessons," he told Joystiq.
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/22/portal-2-authoring-tools-for-schools-newell-explains/
Joystiq


LA Noire headed to PC

Take-Two confirms that the Team Bondi-developed detective adventure game which was released last month for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will be released for PC this autumn. Developed by Rockstar Leeds, the PC version will offer keyboard remapping, gamepad functionality, and 3D support.
http://ir.take2games.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=86428&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1578005&highlight=
Take-Two


Levine wary of "enforced" motion control

Bioshock creator Ken Levine tells OXM that motion control should always be "firewalled off", and never forced on players. "Any experience that sits in the realm of motion play needs to be kept separate from the main experience," he said. "What you don't want to do is add something in and enforce it on anybody."
http://www.oxm.co.uk/30660/bioshock-infinite-dev-we-need-to-protect-traditional-gaming-from-motion-play/
OXM


Kojima: Japan needs to understand western tastes

Speaking to Famitsu - translated by 1UP - Kojima says that Japanese developers are wrong to expect western success from games that are resolutely Japanese in style. "To put it in an extreme fashion, Americans like games where you have a gun and you're shooting at space aliens," he said. "If you don't understand why that's fun, then you shouldn't be making games for the world market; you don't need to. I mean, Japanese people might say: 'Why space aliens?', but Americans will counter with: 'What's with these games featuring these feminine-looking boys fighting in Japan with these huge swords?' It's no wonder the target audience for a lot of games is getting so compartmentalised."
http://www.1up.com/news/hideo-kojima-japanese-obsession-overseas
1UP


GameSalad adds HTML5 support

The drag-and-drop game creation platform adds HTML5 support to a new version of its engine, dubbed GameSalad Arcade, which lets users reach a far wider potential audience than before. CEO Steve Felter writes: " By harnessing the power of an emergent technology like HTML5, GameSalad developers will have a distinct advantage in reaching a wider audience than any other development platform. We are very excited to put the GameSalad community at the forefront of such a disruptive technology." The firm has released a variety of tutorials on optimising games for HTML5, and will be announcing additional monetisation solutions in the coming weeks.
http://gamesalad.com/blog/2011/06/22/project-masala-%E2%80%93-html5-game-creation-for-everyone/
GameSalad


Apple likely to fail in Amazon lawsuit

California district judge Phyllis Hamilton says she is "probably" going to deny Apple's attempt to block Amazon from its use of the phrase "app store" in branding for its Android download marketplace, Amazon Appstore. The retailer argues that it is a generic phrase it should be free to use, but Hamilton said a more likely reason for her denial will be Apple's failure to demonstrate "real evidence of actual confusion" among customers.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-06-22/apple-bid-to-bar-amazon-appstore-will-likely-be-denied.html
Businessweek


Shadows Of The Damned review

A mix of Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami’s ideas proves more awkward than inspiring.

A patchwork, not a hybrid, Shadows Of The Damned is an awkward mixture of elements from the oeuvres of its high-profile creators. As executive director and writer, Suda 51 brings along many of the motifs that have typified his quirky, outlandish productions. From wisecracking protagonist Garcia Hotspur to blood-spurting finishers and a fetish for strawberries, it’s easy to mistake Shadows Of The Damned for his latest solo effort rather than his first major collaboration.

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Ian Livingstone to be honoured at Develop Awards

The Eidos life president will join Peter Molyneux, David Braben, Charles Cecil, the Gower brothers and Phil Harrison when he becomes the latest receipient of the Development Legend award at the Develop Awards in London on July 20. "To receive this coveted award is an honour," Livingstone said. "Recognition by the development community is particularly satisfying and I am very grateful."
http://www.develop-online.net/news/38101/Ian-Livingstone-to-receive-Development-Legend-accolade
Develop


Valve interested in Wii U

"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," Valve founder Gabe Newell told Joystiq. "It sort of fits better into the scalibity in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us...We've always loved Nintendo."
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/22/valve-interested-in-wii-u-it-fits-better-into-our-scalability/
Joystiq


Crysis 2 DX11 patch coming next week

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli tells Gamasutra that the introduction next Monday of DirectX 11 support is "a gift to the high-end community. It lifts up Crysis 2 and gives a sneak peak of how PC gaming will evolve in the future, if you support a high-end preference." He also admits some regret at the decision to have Crysis 2 run on a wider range of PCs, as well as consoles, saying: "Crysis 1's intention was, if I were to play it three years later, it looks great. And it does, actually, it fulfilled that. But it made it difficult for entry-level players. So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bit."
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35410/Cryteks_Expensive_Gift_To_Its_HighEnd_Players.php
Gamasutra


Activision: racing decline caused Bizarre closure

Speaking to Joystiq, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg breaks the firm's silence on the closure in February of Bizarre Creations - for some reason in the present tense. "The thing that Bizarre is best at and what they're known for and what their signature is is in the racing world," he said. "And the decision had as much to do with our assessment of what was happening to the racing genre as it had to do with anything specific to Bizarre. We just didn't think it was the best place for us to put our competitive energies. The racing genre had shrunk, pretty precipitously."
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/22/activision-publishing-ceo-eric-hirshberg-on-true-crime-bizarre/
Joystiq


Hard Lines review

Original, funny and intense, this score-attack game is anything but an idle distraction.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Hard Lines is its inspiration. Because Snake is rubbish. But Hard Lines puts that bare mechanic to good use, building a game around it that's anything but an idle distraction.

The big idea is simple: loads of lines, and loads of points. Depending on the mode, your line has to either pick a path through the intersecting mass towards points, kill those other lines and gobble up their 'bits', or simply keep scoring to stay alive.

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Microsoft's Nuads video

Enrique de la Garza, senior product planner at Microsoft's Xbox Live advertising team, shows off the new Kinect-powered interactive advertising platform that the firm officially unveiled earlier this week. He focuses on the five example implementations of the technology that we covered in detail yesterday - click the source link below for more.
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/microsoft-confirms-kinect-advertising
Edge


Q Entertainment hints at 3D Child Of Eden

Producer James Mielke says on the latest 8-4 Play podcast that Child Of Eden's PlayStation 3 release has been staggered because the developer is doing all work on the game in-house, and is now at work on the PS3 version. Saying it is "coming along nicely," Mielke hints at an improved PS3 release, with Move controls and 3D: "There's nothing I can really say about it, except that it will definitely be worth the couple months that people have to wait for the PS3 version to get finished. People with PS3s, people with nice TVs, people with all kinds of control options...it's going to be really cool."
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/the-reason-we-havent-heard-about-child-of-eden-on-ps3/3410/
Giant Bomb


Sakurai has "no plans whatsoever" for new Smash Bros

Series creator says the thought of gamers having to wait several years for game Iwata announced at E3 "makes me cringe."

Masahiro Sakurai has poured cold water on the suggestion that a new game in his Smash Bros series is around the corner, admitting that work has yet to begin on the project and saying that gamers may have to wait "several years" before anything is released.

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