Nintendo has confirmed that the 3DS download store, eShop, will launch in Europe on June 7.
Users will be able to access the store through 3DS after installing a firmware update. Heading the launch day lineup is a 3D remake of NES classic Excitebike, which will be a free download until July 7.
With its multiplayer beta open to preorder customers for the last year, Mode7's game of tactics and shooting has grown a formidable reputation as a top-down, turn-based Counter-Strike. It's well deserved. Even now arriving at release with a substantial singleplayer campaign, it's easy to recommend on the basis of its multiplayer alone, in which players hatch plans for each turn separately but simultaneously, before witnessing how their intentions crash together and resolve.
Middleware firm Trinigy has released the NGP version of its Vision Game Engine, which it claims is the first engine to be made available for Sony's PSP successor.
The engine, which is also available for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and Windows, offers NGP developers the same range of tools available for other platforms, plus specific features to take advantage of the platform's unique capabilities. Trinigy promises an optimised character skinning system and renderer, support for multi-touch and dual analogue sticks, and improved multi-threading.
Sony has at last restored full functionality to its online service, PlayStation Network, with the return of the PlayStation Store.
The download store had been unavailable since April 20, when Sony took PSN offline after noticing an external intrusion on its servers. While certain elements of PSN, including online multiplayer, were restored on May 15, Sony kept the store offline while it tightened up its security systems. Now, six weeks later, that process has been completed.
In an official blog post, Microsoft has outlined its plans for a more entertainment-focused Xbox strategy this year. While promising to reveal more at E3 next week, corporate communications vice president Frank Shaw claimed that 40 per cent of all Xbox activity is spent on non-gaming activities. One such activity is video consumption, with each Xbox seeing an average of 30 hours of video consumption per month according to Shaw.
Lodsys, the patent firm which has been threatening app developers with lawsuits over alleged patent violations, appears unconvinced by Apple's intervention last week: rather than back down, it has begun legal proceedings against seven developers.
In a series of recent blog posts, Lodsys admits bringing forward its planned litigation "in response to Apple's threats, in order to preserve its legal options."
Casual gaming king PopCap is renowned for releasing its games on a wide variety of platforms, and prides itself on the fact that it tailors each game to a target platform's features and capabilities. While normally a smooth process, senior game designer David Bishop admits that developing for devices running Google's Android operating system has often been a struggle.
Carl Jones, director of global business development at Crytek, has said that predictions of a gaming future based in the cloud are unlikely to come to fruition until ISPs make improvements to network infrastructure.
In the unlikely event of today's consoles still driving the game industry in 2015, their reign will have endured for almost a decade - an unprecedented period of suspended animation for dominant videogame hardware. With the PC marching stubbornly on and handheld devices fast catching up, it's the licensed engine that's evolved the most. Games light enough to run on Xbox 360, flexible enough to port promptly to PS3, scalable enough to satisfy PC, and adaptable enough to spawn phone and tablet tie-ins cannot, by and large, afford to solve that conundrum from scratch.
Over the years we have worked with so many teachers and seen them use commercial off the shelf games in such a way that they are able to make purposeful, relevant and appealing links to traditional curriculum objectives. This has been the case in nursery, primary and secondary settings. We have found that handing over ownership of initial GBL ideas to teachers empowers them to bring their own idiosyncrasies to the table and to build experiences that can meet the needs of their learners. Here is another example of how teachers have done just that.
How would you use the context of Mario Kart to help P.2 and P.3 children develop a real interest in and understanding off the healthy eating plate? Well. I wonder if there is anything that we can learn from the children at Bargarran PS, Mario and his gang in Mario Kart?!:
Changing a Gran’s point of view…
This example of how childrens’ learning can be situated within an appealing context sits nicely with the thoughts of one of the children’s grannies that I had the pleasure of chatting with at Bargarran PS’ Mario Kart Open Afternoon. I first met Mrs Fortescue, who has a grandson in P.2, in the corridor just as the afternoon kicked off. Her first words to me were, “It wasn’t like this at school in my day – this isn’t school, they’re just playing!” As a result of this chat I I asked if I could come back and speak to her after she’d seen what has been happening in the class… Have a listen to what Mrs Fortesuce had to say 30 minutes later:
As you can hear Mrs Fortescue was somewhat taken aback by what she saw, by what her grand-daughter had been doing and what she was able to tell her Grannie all about. Some of Mrs Fortescue’s main points about what she had seen include:
A consensus from the grandparents on the day?
I also spoke with another Grannie to see if this was a lucky or pressured change of heart. Mrs Hall has a grandson at the school as well and her interview was equally as positive as Mrs Fortescue’s:
The main points raised about the positive aspect of what she had seen at the open afternoon included:
If schools can build purposeful learning experiences that can engender such buy in from the children, their parents and their grandparents then maybe we are doing something right? Let’s not lose sight of what some of the parents and grandparents have said – if the resource has appeal than why not put it to good use to help children learn?
Hopefully this series of posts has helped convey some of the industry, life and sense of excitement about learning that I witnessed in my time at Bargarran PS. Thank you to everyone involved with this project and a huge thank you to those who shared their thoughts with us. Do feel free to leave a comment, question or observation on any of these posts.