Publisher Mindscape has formed a new French game studio, Punchers Impact, which will focus on the development of downloadable titles for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
The online-focused studio opened in October with around 40 members of staff, including former EA and Free Radical employees.
The end of the decade is nearly here. To mark the occasion, in the decade’s last issue of Edge we will be recognising the games, the people and the events that have defined the past ten years, and this is your opportunity to be part of it.
Specifically, we'd like you to propose the following:
1. Your game of the decade
2. Your person of the decade
3. Your moment of the decade
Sackboy beats out competition from Boom Blox Bash Party, Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise and de Blob for best videogame.
This port from Wii to Xbox 360 and PS3 might have passed almost unnoticed if it was not for its context. Producing gamer-orientated games for Wii has been a distinguishing feature of Marvelous Entertainment's recent activity, from the excellent Little King's Story to Muramasa: The Demon Blade. After all, if the company can find a way to access the vast number of Wii units on the market, it would have big hits on its hands.
Put simply, this game was absolutely unimaginable a year before its release.” So runs the comment in our 100 Most Significant Reviews special on Gran Turismo’s ten out of ten score, and that ten has always provoked debate. Those for it agree there’s no question that The Real Driving Simulator redefined the console racing game, ripping it from its arcade roots, and set a new standard for the breadth, fidelity and flexibility of game software that would – and still does – cause ripples way beyond its genre.
Activision's shooter continues to hold off Assassin's Creed II and New Super Mario Bros. Wii in latest UK sales chart.
In a week with no new entries in the top twenty, the top selling three games are identical to the previous chart, despite Modern Warfare 2's sales dropping 32 per cent on last week's figures. FIFA 10, now in fourth, swops places with Wii Sports Resort, now in sixth. The only entry which wasn't on last week's chart is Codemasters' F1 2010 for Wii and PSP, up one place to tenth.
BBC sources reveal that Microsoft's Live paid content policy clashes with BBC's free model.
According to UK newspaper Telegraph, sources close to the BBC’s Future Media and Technology department, which runs iPlayer, have said that a deal between Microsoft and the BBC has been held up because of Microsoft's policy of charging for all content on Xbox Live.
Years ago, when TV was a source for the collective conscious, I remember sitting down with my folks to watch the Generation Game on BBC1. The willing contestants were always presented with challenging and nonsensical tasks to try out and one that sticks in my mind involved handbell ringing!
Somehow a visit to a school in Peterhead last week to see a game based learning initiative that used Wii Music brought that memory back to me as I watched groups of children swing their wiimotes and nunchunks in a campanology stylee but in so doing they really were ringing the bell for game based learning in schools…
I was contacted by Jonathan Cordiner from the Aberdeenshire Glow team some time ago to be informed about the work that he was doing with Esther Clark and her P.6 class from Buchanhaven PS in Peterhead using the game Wii Music for the Nintendo Wii. Now Wii Music involves a number of games that encourage you to ‘jam’ with the Miis on screen and in so doing play various instruments and learn a surprising amount about music.
When I mentioned the potential of learning about music through this game to some people they did not initially think that standing in front of a screen waving a game controller up and down or side to side could have any real substance or add value to learners experience in this area. Having visited the class and seeing what they have done for myself I can’t help saying just how incredible the skilled and informed use of this resource has been and just what a tremendous impact this has had on the learners in this class.
What have they been learning?
The first thing that struck me when I met the class was just again how excited and motivated the children were to show what they had been doing and to demonstrate their new skills.
For me the educational ethos in a class is so important if children are to be engaged by learning and here we saw a class bursting with enthusiasm, industry, skills and knowledge of their subject. I saw:
Above all I saw learning happening in a classroom bursting with life. We have videoed a lot of the work that the children have been doing but is just at the edit stage but have a quick look at some of the work that the children have done about the composers that they investigated:
Yet again we see how a game built for entertainment can prove to be such a rich source for learning when used by skilled and thoughtful teachers who know how to use game based learning in order to create the appropriate context and climate in which rich learning can thrive. There have been many requests to the Aberdeenshire Glow team for the plans that were used for this project. These can be accessed here:
Aberdeenshire Council’s Wii Music plans
This project was a sheer delight to see and many congratulations must go to Jonathan and Esther for their imaginative and thorough approach, an approach that has made this initiative such a success.
Format: C64
Realease: 1987
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Archer Maclean
The Call Of Duty franchise has surpassed 55 million unit sales since debuting in 2003, generating over $3 billion at retail.
That’s according to data from the NPD Group, Chart-Track, GfK and publisher Activision’s internal estimates.
The latest title in the franchise, Infinity Ward's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, broke box office and videogame records with a worldwide estimated five-day sale through of approximately $550 million.
I really do believe that interactions with characters are going to be a huge big deal in the future of gaming, a revolution that will permanently change things. I do not mean MMOs featuring new ways to communicate with real humans. Not cutscenes with superior rendering of facial expressions. Not dialogue trees with a kazillion branches. Instead, I mean the stuff I typically write about: some way to craft your relationship with an NPC with the same freedom you have when building your RTS base or attempting a combat tactic in an FPS.
Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live, expects Project Natal to “be the largest leap of TV experience since the remote control".
"I don't believe we are currently in the golden age of the television or the golden age of the game console or the golden age of the internet; frankly, five years from now I don't know that you'll be able to tell the difference between those worlds," Whitten said the Streaming Media West show, according to Yahoo Tech.
Nintendo’s is investigating a potential case of copyright infringement after a Nokia blog post showed a video of the handset maker’s new N900 smartphone playing emulated retro games.
“There’s already a bunch of great retro gaming emulator apps available for you to download,” says the video, which shows buttons that appear to open emulators for systems including Nintendo's Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES and SNES.
A US survey of 1,000 consumers found that 83 per cent of shoppers plan to purchase at least one electronic gift this Christmas, with videogame consoles the most in demand products.
60 per cent of those polled said that they intended to gift a console, while MP3 players, digital cameras and camcorders were also popular choices.
Brand will play a major role in the purchasing choices consumers make and is most important to those shopping for consoles, with 88 per cent of those intending to gift a console looking for a specific brand.
Nintendo’s DSi LL has made an impressive start in Japan, shifting just over 100,000 units in its debut weekend.
Media Create sales figures for the new handheld are consistent with those released by Famitsu publisher Enterbrain earlier this week. In comparison, DSi sold 170,000 in the same timeframe following its release last year, while Sony’s PSPgo moved just over 28,000 units on November 1, the day of its Japanese release.
Game review scores are one of the least important factors when it comes to making purchasing decisions, according to the findings of a new survey by Cowen and Company.
Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has said that Sony and Microsoft are already prepared for the death of the console era.
“In ten years’ time a lot of what we call ‘console games’ won’t exist,” the executive told MCV.
Genre veteran Jeff Strain has revealed that his new studio will “almost certainly” adopt a subscription model for its upcoming console-based zombie MMO.
December sees the opening of a new videogame art – or should that be art videogame? – exhibition at the FACT gallery in Liverpool. Otherwise known as the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, the venue will be hosting Space Invaders: Art in the Computer Game Environment, survey of works by a range of artists expressing themes based on and around videogames, or using videogames as a canvas for expression.
UK-based developer nDreams has struck a partnership with M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment to provide the advertising agency’s clients with non-traditional gaming based solutions.
The new partnership has its first global project in development and launch details are expected to be announced early next year.
Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver moved up one place to top the Japanese software chart during the week ended November 22.
Nintendo platform titles took the top five spots, with Tomodachi Collection placing second ahead of Wii Fit Plus, Inazuma Eleven 2 and the week's highest new entry, Taiko Drum Master Wii 2.
The Rock Band Network, a new initiative enabling artists and record labels to author their own original recordings into gameplay files and sell their music as playable tracks, is set to launch fully in 2010.
Announced in July, the Rock Band Network will work with Rock Band 2 and be native to Xbox 360, plus users will need to be members of Microsoft’s XNA Creators Club Online.
Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter expects Activision's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 downloadable content to generate in the region of $140 million next year.
Every week, the Edge Games Index, produced in association with Brandwatch, rates games according to the volume of positive and negative buzz they're inspiring on the web.
