Halo overseer, Frank O'Connor, confirms the big screen is still in the company's sights.
“There will be a Halo movie,” he stressed, while speaking to the New York Videogame Critics Circle. “Everyone wanted to do a Halo movie, the director, Microsoft, the highest placed people at movie companies.”
As the company continues to restructure, the long-term head of games announces that he is set to depart.
According to the the L.A. Times, Hopper announced his departure via an internal email, saying,"the time has come for me to move on from the company and set my sights on new horizons."
Following the government's dismissal of game industry tax relief, MP claims that the battle isn't lost yet.
Speaking at yesterday's TIGA event held to announce the findings of its recent survey on the state of the UK games industry, Labour MP and co-chair of the All Party Group for Computer and Videogames, Tom Watson, insisted to us that the industry shouldn't "lose heart" when it comes to tax breaks.
Format: 360, PS3 (version tested)
Release: Out now
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Game Republic
Ex-Electronic Arts VP signs up with Dave Perry’s game streaming service.
Nanea Reeves, who previously worked as vice president and COO of EA’s Global Online division, has joined cloud-based streaming service Gaikai as chief strategy officer.
Reeves also worked as VP of Consumer Solutions at EA’s mobile division.
Survey details declining workforce as 80 per cent of new companies focus on download rather than retail.
TIGA, a trade association which represents the UK game industry, has revealed new findings from a census of 278 UK-based studios.
The survey shows that over the last two years the number of people employed by the UK game industry has fallen by nine per cent.
Marvelous Entertainment estimates software could cost between $600,000 and $1.8 million to produce.
Japan-based media company Marvelous Entertainment revealed its projected costs for developing 3DS games in a financial Q&A session last week.
Irrational Games addresses concerns over the porting process for its multiformat title.
New entries from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit can’t topple Activision’s shooter in the latest chart.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops remains at the top of the UK multiformat software chart for the week ending November 20.
Activision recently announced that the game had broken previous sales records in its first five days of release.
Format: Xbox 360 (version tested), DS, PS3, Wii
Release: Out now
Publisher: MTV Games
Developer: Harmonix Music Systems
Screenshot gallery
Phil Harrison and Peter Molyneux join an international cast of speakers in Rome next month.
The programme for this year’s Italian Videogame Developers Conference, held at the LUISS University in Rome on December 3-4, has been confirmed.
Highlights of this year’s roster include Phil Harrison, former president of Sony Worldwide Studios, Avni Yerli, managing director of Crytek and Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios.
Social game platform manages to co-exist with Apple’s Game Center on iOS devices.
Peter Relan, chairman of mobile social game platform OpenFeint, says the platform is still going strong with 50 million users, despite the launch of Apple's own platform in September.
OpenFeint, which was established in February last year, has seen its user base double in the past seven months and had more than 125 million game downloads to date.
Executive suggests new device will be branded Sony Ericsson rather than PlayStation.
In a report published by the Wall Street Journal today, Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg discusses recent rumours regarding a PlayStation smartphone.
Unless you have been asleep for the last few weeks you will have heard that the latest development to the Microsoft xBox platform has been released. Its called Microsoft Kinect (code named Project Natal until fairly recently).
Kinect is a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console (in fact it contains three cameras!). It enables users to control and interact with their Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller.
Instead your entire body is scanned and digitized in real time by the camera in the Kinect sensor, and whatever movements you make, your on-screen character can mimic. You can also control your xBox by speaking to it or holding up objects that the sensor recognizes. It is surprisingly accurate and actually quite magical.
I was lucky enough to pick up a Kinect on launch day and after a quick go in the shop I was convinced that I just had to have one. We have also now received our delivery for the Consolarium and we hope to have a few of these devices out in schools soon.
I love some of the little features that are built into game play. For example I like it that you can collect accessories for your xBox Live avatar (I have a sweat band and a baseball cap already!) and that the Kinect camera takes pictures of you at different times.
Games for Kinect are a little bit limited at the moment but the ones suitable for education include:
Kinect Adventures (comes with Kinect)
Kinect Adventures uses full body motion to allow you to play a variety of minigames, all of which feature jump-in / jump-out multiplayer play.
Each minigame lasts about three minutes and titles include 20,000 Leaks, River Rush, Rally Ball, Reflex Ridge and Space Pop.
Kinectimals
In Kinectimals you can interact with virtual wild cat cubs after you adopt one in fur town. Once you have adopted your cub you can do a variety of things with it including teaching it tricks, guiding the animal around an obstacle course, feeding and caring for your animal.
I really can’t wait to explore this game more and I’m also interested in how it utilizes Microsoft Tag as an additional game play feature.
Kinect Dance Central
Dance Central comes from the creators of Guitar Hero (so it was always going to be a hit with the Consolarium Team) and considering our recent efforts on Just Dance for the Wii we have all be practicing hard!
In Dance Central gameplay involves performing set dance moves which are tracked by Kinect and represented on the screen by one of eight game characters. The game features over 650 different dance moves spanning over 90 dance routines.
I love the fact that it tracks your feet and hands and not just your legs (dance mats) and hands (wii).
Kinect Sports
Kinect Sports allows multiple players to engage in six different motion-controlled sports. The sports included are Bowling, Boxing, Track and field (Includes Hurdles, Sprint, Javelin, Discus Throw and Long Jump), Table Tennis, Football (Soccer) and Beach Volleyball.
As well as competing against a partner you can also play the game in ‘Sports Party’ mode and this allows you to rally a whole room (or class!) full of players into teams.
I’ve had an opportunity to spend a little bit of time with all of these titles now and they are great fun with loads of potential. I also think that one of the interesting things that the Kinect will do is change the location of the xBox in the home by bringing it from the bedroom into the family room. In the same way that you find Nintendo Wii’s in many people’s living rooms.
One of the reasons for this is space – you do need a lot of space to use Kinect. But the other reason is that lots of the games are really playful and will encourage inter-generation gaming and good honest family fun!
Really can’t wait to get this into a few classrooms.
Those clever people at Microsoft's Fuse Labs have released a fantastic new build of the Kodu Game Lab software which we have been using throughout Scotland. This post details these new features and shows some new screen shots of this great free software.
Pity the modern critic. The appetite and respect for authority that once existed now seem like relics in an age of Metacritics, Tomatometers, blogs, podcasts, walls, forums and Twitter. And some critics aren’t taking their devaluation all that well.
New casual game company acquires the license for the comedy group’s work.
UK-based social and casual game developer Zattikka has announced that it will release a Monty Python game on Facebook.
Introducing our latest issue, looking at World Of Warcraft's rebirth.
In issue 222 of Edge, which should be in subscribers' hands today and will appear on UK newsagents' shelves Tuesday 23, we visit Blizzard to find out about Cataclysm, the upcoming World Of Warcraft revision that will tear down the world of Azeroth. It represents perhaps the company's biggest gamble since it first allowed players to step out into its world in 2004.
Introducing our latest issue, looking at World Of Warcraft's rebirth.
In issue 222 of Edge, which should be in subscribers' hands today and will appear on UK newsagents' shelves Tuesday 23, we visit Blizzard to find out about Cataclysm, the upcoming World Of Warcraft revision that will tear down the world of Azeroth. It represents perhaps the company's biggest gamble since it first allowed players to step out into its world in 2004.
UK games association issues warning about forthcoming government plans.
TIGA, a trade association which represents the UK games industry, has today expressed concerns regarding a forthcoming announcement by the UK government on immigration policy.
UK developers target Bizarre Creations employees following rumours of an uncertain future for the studio.
Online game company Jagex, and producer and developer Codemasters, have announced that they will each be hosting a recruitment event in Liverpool next week.
The news follows rumours of the possible closure of Liverpool-based studio Bizarre Creations. No official statement has yet been issued by the studio or parent company Activision.
For Tim Schafer, it all began with ‘amnesia fortnights’. “I got the idea from Wong Kar-wai, the movie director,” says the founder of Double Fine Productions. “He was making an epic film with swords and armies that took three years to finish. Everyone was getting lost in the project, so he went to Hong Kong and improvised for two weeks, just his stars and his cameraman. They made two movies in those two weeks.
Developer hails new release date as an achievement in the company’s proud tradition of delays.
US-based developer and distributor Valve has made light of the delay to its forthcoming multiplatform sequel Portal 2.
In a statement issued yesterday the company announced a new release date of April 18 for the game, which “marks the shortest delay in Valve's proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time.”
Blizzard-appointed distributor gearing up for possible 2011 release as earnings are boosted by WarCraft.
GamePolitics reports that China-based internet company NetEase has submitted StarCraft II for approval to the Chinese government.
Nokia claims its version of Apple’s App Store now has 165 million users.
Finland-based telecommunications company Nokia has announced that its Ovi Store, through which users purchase apps and media content, has reached daily downloads of 3 million a day.