Eutechnyx has secured a £6 million investment led by Amsterdam-based venture capital outfit Prime Technology Ventures.
The UK-based indie developer behind last year’s Supercar Challenge said that the money would help finalise the development of a new racing title, and enable it to develop its free-to-play infrastructure as it expands into the world of casual online games.
British Telecom has secured the exclusive rights to bundle the OnLive game service with broadband in the UK.
It has also taken a 2.6 per cent shareholding in OnLive, the cloud computing service due to launch in the US this summer. Details of its European rollout will be made available later this year.
Sony has reported a decline in sales and a slightly reduced operating loss in its Networked Products & Services Division for the financial year ended March 31, 2010.
The division, which houses the company’s PlayStation and VAIO PC businesses, saw sales decline 10.2 per cent to 1,578.8 billion yen (£11.6bn / $17.1bn) during the 12 month period, while it made an operating loss of 83.1 billion yen (£609m / $889m), a year-on-year improvement of 4.3 billion yen (£31.5m / $46.5m).
Bungie's Halo Reach Beta has surprisingly failed to top Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live's most played list.
Chart tables reveal that Activision's shooter remains in its spot at the top as Xbox Live's most popular online multiplayer game. It didn't come second either - Halo 3: ODST beat it, too.
Speaking in regards to Nintendo's plans with the 3DS, the firm's president Satoru Iwata says Japan and UK are the quickest nations to react to new trends.
US retailer Target has reportedly revealed that a new PS3 bundle to include popular US baseball sim MLB 10 The Show will hit shelves on June 13.
A leaked inventory listing sparked the rumour, which has apparently since been confirmed by Target personnel, who said the listing was in the retailer's database.
Ignition's London studio has licensed Crytek's CryEngine 3 to power its first game, a "uniquely crafted combat action-adventure" for Xbox and PS3.
Sony could be preparing to reveal the true sequel to PSP at next month's E3, according to speculation from a 'senior industry source'.
The anonymous speaker told MCV that two key publishers have significantly increased their marketing spend for Q4 2010, laying down the basis for suspicions they are preparing for the arrival of new hardware - PSP 2 or otherwise a fifth hardware iteration.
Last week, Charlie posted a summary of our 2 day Kodu training session with the Girvan Academy cluster schools. We had 2 teachers from the secondary school, 12 from primary schoosl and 1 from the local authority. After receiving some feedback on the event from the staff involved, I thought I’d share what we learned from what we hope will be the first of many Kodu training events.
We decided to start the training getting the teachers to use the terrain building tools in order to familiarise themselves with the Kodu interface and the controller. Trying to stay topical, we decided to model a volcano. However, as Charlie previously mentioned, one of the key difficulties we found, was that a number of staff had never held an Xbox controller or played a 3d computer game.
As it turned out, many of the teachers involved did find the 3D world difficult to navigate/play in. Just too much movement on the screen for them to deal with. While they all agreed that this wouldn’t be an issue for pupils as they are’ 3D native’, we needed to address this. So, Charlie and I changed track slightly and decided to focus on static world games.
By setting the camera position to fixed, we took the teachers through building games based on the classics such as Frogger and Space Invaders. This technique allowed the teachers to build worlds without that initial disorientation they experienced with the camera set to free mode. This allowed the teachers to focus more on game functionality and scripting.
It seemed obvious to then move to the Fixed Offset camera mode where the camera angle tracks the main game character; this allowed the teachers to engage a little more on the terrain building aspect of Kodu. During this task we set about making side scrolling games in the classic Mario / Sonic style.
It should be at this point we moved to the full Free mode option and get the teachers to create fuller 3D worlds and utilise the scripting techniques they gained during the Space Invader/Mario-esque games.
As for scripting, using creatables and making paths – all of which Charlie and I thought might be too much for inexperienced teachers, turned out to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the course. With the free motion 3D issue dealt with, the attendees got stuck into the mechanics of the games they were making.
That being said, there were of course a number of teachers who were familiar with the 3D free scrolling games of the Xbox generation. Their experience in this genre of game allowed them to carry out most of the tasks with little or no difficulty and illustrated the need for strategies to deal with such a diverse set of learners such as this. One welcome suggestion was that we should have training days especially for primary school teachers and secondary school teachers (in particular secondary Computing teachers)
So, what have we learned from our initial 2 training days when dealing with non experienced gamers?
Both Charlie and I will be out to visit and support the implementation on Kodu in this cluster and continue to feedback to you here and within GLOW, with a particular focus of Curriculum for Excellence. Within GLOW we will encourage the teachers involved will contribute to discussions, lesson ideas and resources over the next few months for all of us to use.
On the whole, it was a very rewarding couple of days, and those that attended gave really useful feedback in relation to their pupils learning experiences and curriculum for excellence, as well as how we can refine this training process. I will leave you with a few of thoughts from some of the teachers that attended our course.
I would like to give Kudo a go as soon as possible, it would certainly answer the outcome of making a game, also I can see it cross curricular potential. I found the course worthwhile and it opened up my brain to a different type of learning. The kids will love it.
I’d really like to develop the use of Kodu and link it with literacy as a school project.
Kodu is a wonderful tool to use in class and pupils would be highly motivated to learn how to make games. Training days were useful to show teachers what is available and how it can be used with pupils.
I think Kodu is a great tool and well worth doing with the P7s. Whether I could call myself capable to teach it after only two days is debatable. Possibly access to a helpdesk via e-mail or some such would be good as I fear a lot of problems may crop up of which I won’t know the answers.
I did learn a great deal from the two days as well as it being inspirational. I would also like to thank the presenters for their patience and hard work. They made it fun to learn. I will definitely use Kodu in Dailly Primary
San Francisco-based mobile publisher and developer ngmoco has continued on its expansion path by acquiring Stumptown Game Machine.
The developer is best known for iPhone and iPod pet simulation hit Touch Pets Dogs. Published by ngmoco, the free app has been downloaded more than five million times since launching in November 2009.
The UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has rejected multiple complaints about a series of TV adverts for Sony’s PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain.
The ads in question depicted a store owner being threatened by an armed man. They showed the various ways in which the player – in the role of bystander and private detective Scott Shelby - could deal with the situation, either by choosing to intervene, attack or negotiate.
Google is advertising for a new senior game-related post at the company, suggesting it’s looking to increase its focus on the market.
The company is searching for a product management leader for games who’ll “be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team”.
Don’t say that PopCap is one of the world’s leading developers of casual games. For a start, the company hates the C-word. And besides, its massive success at producing games that apparently effortlessly appeal to both broad audiences and committed gamers has made it one of the highest-selling developers in gaming history. Not bad for a company that, ten years ago, was testing its games on one of its three founders’ mothers.
Disney’s interactive media division, which houses the company’s videogame operations, has reported reduced operating losses for its second quarter and first half ended April 3, 2010.
Revenues for the quarter increased 20 per cent year-on-year to $155 million (£105m), while operating loss narrowed ten per cent to $55 million (£37.2m).
For the half year, revenues declined 15 per cent to $376 million (£255m), but operating loss shrunk 39 per cent to $65 million (£44m).
EA reduced its losses despite a decline in revenues during the financial year ended March 31, 2010.
Net loss for the year was reduced from $1.088 billion (£736.5m) to $677 million (£458m), while net revenue fell from $4.212 billion (£2.9b) to $3.654 billion (£2.5b). The company ended the year with $766 million (£519m) in deferred net revenue from packaged goods and digital content.
At its showcase event in Barcelona, Namco Bandai has announced that it has a fully-planned DLC timeline for Test Drive Unlimited 2.
EA has spoken of its plans for E3 during a recent earnings call, confirming it will reveal a new Need For Speed title, along with new games for Sony and Microsoft's Move and Natal controllers, and more.
EA has its eyes on reclaiming FPS dominance from Modern Warfare, and chief operating officer John Schappert has said the publishing giant is "not going to be happy" until it does so.
"We're not going to be happy until we've taken leadership back in the first person shooter category, and the tip of the spear is the combination of Battlefield: Bad Company and Medal Of Honor," he said during an earnings call tonight.
EA's Battlefield 1943 has become the best-selling PSN and XBLA game to date, with over 1.5 million sold, the publisher has revealed.
Back in March the squad-based shooter was crowned the fastest-selling game on Xbox Live, having sold a million. Gordon Van Dyke, the game's producer, said: "The reception of Battlefield 1943 continues to amaze us, even months after the game was released.
Squad-based online shooter, Battlefield Battlefield: Bad Company 2, has sold five million copies to date, EA has revealed as part of its fiscal year 2010 results.
"Battlefield: Bad Company 2 outperformed, which contributed to revenue at the high end of our guidance range, and we exceeded our expectations on the bottom line," said John Riccitiello, EA chief exec officer.
Microsoft has confirmed that it has partnered with LG to co-promote upcoming 3D TVs alongside 3D-capable Xbox 360 games in South Korea.
The platform holder’s UK PR department told us in a statement that the promotion is specific to the South Korean market, but added that 3D games on Xbox 360 “will continue to evolve” as adoption of the technology grows.
Ubisoft has announced the first official details about the much rumoured Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.
UPDATE 13/5/10: Mark Rein has contacted us regarding Capps' claim that Crysis: Warhead was intended as a console release. "Since Mike is away on his honeymoon and unable to comment on the conversation himself, on behalf of Epic I'd like to apologize for the misstatement and note that we're all looking forward to playing Crysis 2, which looks great!"
Epic president Mike Capps is surprised Crytek is being taken seriously as a crossplatform engine company before it has shipped a console game.
Format: PC
Release: 1992
Publisher: Infogrames
Developer: In-house
