2010 Game Developers Conference Europe organisers have added speakers from Rare, Blitz Games, BioWare, Obsidian, Sidhe and Newtoy to next month’s event line-up.
Rare’s Nick Burton and Blitz Games CTO Andrew Oliver will deliver a session entitled ‘Kinecting With A New Audience’. The 50 minute game design lecture will cover building games for the new motion sensing Xbox 360 platform from first and third party perspectives.
Viacom-owned MTV Networks has made its first foray into the social games business with the acquisition of San Francisco-based development studio Social Express.
It will develop social games based on original IP, as well as shows and characters from MTV, Nickelodeon and its other brands, with its first title set to be introduced in the third quarter of 2010. The company also plans to leverage Social Express' expertise to launch a publishing platform for independent game developers.
Social games maker Playdom has acquired San Diego, California-based virtual world game engine development studio Metaplace.
Take-Two has cut 20 staff at Sid Meier’s Firaxis Games.
That equates to around 15 per cent of the company’s workforce, but the move won’t affect the ongoing development of Civilization V or Civilization Network for Facebook.
The publisher labelled the move a “realignment of development resources at the studio” in a statement issued to Variety.
Media Create has released weekly and year-to-date hardware sales data for the Japanese market.
Nintendo’s handheld platform leads 2010 sales with 1,180,325 units sold, narrowly ahead of PSP’s 1,101,666.
Wii is the best performing home console ahead of PS3, although it's another close run race, with Nintendo’s system on 818,945 sales and Sony’s on 756,325.
Xbox 360 sales stand at 105,969 units and PS2 sales at 45,372.
Year-to-date Japanese hardware sales:
DS - 1,180,325
Microsoft has cleared up speculation over Kinect’s ability to detect seated players by confirming that the motion sensing camera is capable of doing so.
"Kinect can be used while sitting when an experience is developed with sitting in mind," a spokesperson told Joystiq.
While at E3, we spoke to president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida for an interview you can read in full in our latest issue, regarding Sony's evolution of its standard controller's motion sensing, what 3D can bring to gaming and the lack of PSP support.
Nintendo has reported a jump in UK DSi sales since the handheld’s trade price was lowered last month.
“Since the adjustment in trade price has been passed on to consumers, each of the previous three weeks have seen DSi sales increase by over 40 per cent week-on-week,” Nintendo’s head of communications, Rob Saunders, told MCV.
New research from ESSEC, one of France’s leading business schools, has found that playing sports videogames can increase participation in real sports, especially among young men and boys.
38 per cent of boys under the age of 21 who play sports games on “active" game consoles practice their favourite virtual sport in real life, while 75 per cent of gamers participate in some kind of real sport, according to the study.
Indie Fund is now accepting submissions from independent developers.
Announced in March and detailed later that month during a GDC session, Indie Fund is designed to help out small scale developers secure funding for their projects.
DS football RPG Inazuma Eleven 3 cleared half a million sales in three days to top the Japanese software chart during the week ended July 4.
The title moved 505,000 copies, outselling the rest of the top ten combined, according to Media Create data (via Andriasang).
Three other new entries made the top ten, with Taiko Drum Master DS in second place, BlazBlue Continuum Shift in third and Digimon Story Lost Evolution in fifth.
Despite the conservatism of the software Microsoft chose to represent Kinect's launch, it shouldn't be forgotten that the company is betting on a control scheme that offers no physical feedback. In an interview conducted at the event (which you can read in full in our latest issue, available in UK newsagents tomorrow), Kudo Tsunoda, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, told us that he was initially worried about the disconnection but now feels it was the right decision.
While critics have clearly taken to the 3DS, the system’s producer Hideki Konno says marketing the new handheld will be a “very tricky” proposition for Nintendo.
Introducing our latest issue, revealing Nintendo's plan to bring 3D gaming to the masses.
Our E3 special reports on gaming's biggest event of the year, with interviews with the men behind Nintendo's 3DS, Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's worldwide studios, and covers the games that made the show the best in recent memory.
Frontier Developments founder and chairman David Braben is sceptical about 3D gaming’s staying power, warning “it may well just be a flash in the pan”.
Sony and Nintendo have recently thrown their weight behind 3D technologies, the former pushing stereoscopic 3D gaming on PS3 and the latter glasses-free 3D on new handheld 3DS.
NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown has appealed a federal judge’s dismissal of a case he brought against EA over the alleged violation of his image rights.
Brown argued in 2008 that EA had illegally used his likeness in two historical teams featured in the massively popular Madden NFL franchise, but his case was dismissed last September.
id Software’s Rage and Nintendo’s 3DS were the big winners of the 2010 E3 Game Critics Awards, with publisher EA and the Xbox 360 platform also achieving notable success.
The most nominated product, Rage also took the most awards as it was named Best Action Game, Best Console Game and received a Special Commendation for Graphics.
The ambitions of browser-based games are gathering pace as companies like OnLive and InstantAction (see our recent interview with Louis Castle) are building services which provide streaming or rent to buy gameplay respectively, but a format choice must still be made, and the need to ensure your PC has the right plugins is unlikely to tempt console players from their own streamlined experiences or casual players from quick-fix sessions.
Xbox Live revenues cleared $1 billion (£661m) in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010.
Bloomberg reports that Xbox 360’s online service “probably” hit the new milestone, but a source has confirmed with us that’s definitely the case.
A new study conducted by EEDAR and the Southern Methodist University (SMU) has found that there’s a causal link between professional review scores and game sales.
Contrary to rumours, PS3 users hoping to sign up to new paid TV service Hulu Plus won’t require a PlayStation Plus subscription.
“With the launch of Hulu Plus there have been many rumours started and we are trying our best to remedy the situation,” read an email from a Hulu customer support agent.
Microsoft will launch a new Xbox Live Arcade interface in the US on July 14 in an attempt to make it easier to browse through the 250 games available on the service.
The Destination Arcade browser will allow users to sort titles by price, community rating and other unspecified criteria. Described as “another way to browse content on Xbox live Arcade”, it appears set to be made available alongside the existing XBLA interface, rather than replacing it.
Earlier in the week I was chatting with my neighbour's 23 yr old son about music. Somehow we got on to the subject of nightclubs and when I mentioned the fact that i hadn't been to a disco for at least 6 years the young whippersnapper sniggered and took great pleasure in telling me that, "No-one calls them discos anymore!" Sheesh, the ever marching nature of time and how it dates one (even when you don't think it isn't doing so) will catch up on you...as, it so appears, it has with me!
Well, if like me you don't get to go to discos now but still would like to 'get down' (dated disco reference from 1970/80s for younger readers) but in the privacy of your own home then you must get your hands on Just Dance for the Wii. You will be digging out the flares and dusting down your your old Tavares and Earth Wind and Fire records before you know it and show the younger members of your household that you can still do The Hustle!
This game is a huge load of fun and a really good way to exercise too. There are a number of really decent tracks in the game that accompany a choreographed programme of moves that you need to copy in real time in order to dance along with the on-screen dancer. The more accurate the moves the bigger your dance star power build (as with Guitar Hero) and then you can score extra points. Today we must have played this for at least 3 hours with Ring My Bell by Anita Ward and Pump up the Jam by Technotronic my particular favourites ;-)
Have a look at the game trailer:
This game does get the heart rate up let there be no doubt about that. Great exercise with proper movements required in order to score decent points. Check out this game play video. Apart from the engaging game play one does wonder as to the appeal that this may have with younger and pre-early teens/learners particularly in relation to the health and well-being agenda. Two things that have made me reflect on this are:
What about boys? Well I have seen 12 yr olds on stage dancing to their own choreographed moves as part of a Guitar Hero project. Not only were they swinging arms and legs but they had the serious face on too! They really meant it so I wonder if this might work for them...
There have been and are a number of exertainment games that require some degree of physical activity. These have worked to varying degrees for me but the fact that I spent so long playing this today and can't wait to get on it again tomorrow night must say something about its engaging game play. Or maybe it's just that I need a night out at a disco ;-)
SCE is hard at work on “future platform related activities”, and Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said that first-party game makes will play an important role in the development of new PlayStation consoles.
“When Ken Kutaragi moved on and Kaz Harai became the president of SCE, the first thing Kaz said was, ‘get World Wide Studios in on hardware development’,” the executive told Develop.
Highlights from our community-written blogs, including the App Store's lack of quality control, 'hardcore' Peggle and the results of bedroom coding.