Deal, to come to fruition later this year, marks end of O2’s two-year exclusivity and will double platform’s audience.
The news comes just three weeks after Orange proposed a merger with T-Mobile, which would make it the largest mobile network in the UK with 28 million subscribers compared to 02’s second position 22 million.
The deal, therefore, will mean that iPhone will be available to around 50 million customers in the UK, further expanding the platform's potential reach for App Store developers.
Bungie’s latest debuts in highest position while The Beatles: Rock Band drops out of top ten in week ending September 26.
It may not have thundered with a launch programme as loud as that granted to its older brother, but it hasn’t stopped Halo 3: ODST’s week one sales being the 12th highest sell-through ever for a single format title in the UK, according to GfK Chart-Track. Day one sales accounted for 65 per cent of the week’s total.
Over 25 game developers will receive funds designed to develop online gaming in the region, Korea Creative Content Agency says.
The investment is part of a £38 million (US$60 million) overall package disclosed by CEO Steve Ballmer in May. It will be spent over four years in a programme that includes Microsoft training software engineers, providing marketing and technical support and establishing new business enterprises.
New to the post!
A quick introduction; I am Brian McLaren and I am the new Consolarium Development Officer. Three weeks into the job and my head is beginning to stop spinning. I am amazed by the energy and application of everyone I have met so far and I am really looking forward to supporting and sharing the good practice going on in schools.
I am currently looking into the potential of a number of games for classroom use including “Little Big Planet” for PS3, “Wild Earth African Safari” and “SimAnimals” for Wii.
If you have any experience of using these games in your class or are keen to do so please feel free to contact me. I am also keen to hear of your experiences using Games Based Learning in your class and would love to see some pics of your success.
My email is B.McLaren@LTScotland.org.uk
Format: Nintendo 64
Release: 1998
Publisher: Gremlin
Developer: DMA Design
At the age of one, a child is on its feet and quite ready to walk around destroying things. In contrast, it took DMA Design nearly four years to prepare its own free-roaming rampage. Body Harvest is the sum total of all your fears. Not the game, but the nightmare of its development.
Ahead of his keynote speech at Games Convention Asia, Games Workshop co-founder and Eidos life president Ian Livingstone spoke with us about the future of UK game development.
Currently it’s more expensive to develop games in England than anywhere else in the world, he said. Without even considering outsourcing to Eastern Europe or China, it’s cheaper to make games in Japan and America.
Publisher Take-Two has announced that the sequel to 2007’s critically acclaimed BioShock is to release worldwide on February 9, 2010.
BioShock 2 is currently in development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC at 2K Marin in collaboration with 2K Australia, Digital Extremes and 2K China. It was originally scheduled to launch on October 30, 2009 in Europe and on November 3 in the US, but was delayed in July in order to “provide additional development time”.
We've another Collector's Edition to give away, this time for PS3!
For those that have so far held back from buying Batman: Arkham Asylum, you could be in luck. We're giving away a copy of the PS3 version of the Collector's Edition to the first Edge reader to demonstrate a little knowledge of Batman lore.
During a presentation at the Games Convention Asia in Singapore, Lisa Cosmas Hanson revealed some insights into the minds of Chinese gamers.
Niko Partners, the research firm Hanson runs, tracks the attitudes of Chinese gamers, and has noticed some recent changes: the Chinese are as hungry as ever for games, but they now want to dictate the content they use.
During the opening keynote of Games Convention Asia in Singapore, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Asia delivered a lecture on the subject of copyright protection and the human victims of piracy.
Using a translator, Tetsuhiko Yasuda - a veteran of the games business since launching Sony’s original PlayStation in 1994 - said: “It’s essential for the whole country to understand the protection of software is essential for the steady development of the game industry.
Format: iPhone, iPod Touch
Developer: Austen Chongpison
Direct App Store link
UK consumer show GameOn! London has been cancelled.
The event, which had attracted support from the likes of Nintendo and Capcom, was originally meant to take place in June before being pushed back to November and relocated from the Olympia National Hall to Earls Court.
Nintendo’s DSi knocked Sony’s PS3 from the top spot of the hardware sales chart in Japan during the week ended September 13.
Having sold over 150,000 units during its launch week, PS3 sales fell by 95,000 units to just over 55,000, while DSi sales were up by 6,500 units to 66,500.
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has refuted claims that PS3 consoles have an inherent defect after the BBC show Watchdog carried out an investigation into what gamers have dubbed "The Yellow Light of Death".
Watchdog says it has been contacted by over 150 PS3 owners whose consoles no longer work, all of them displaying the same fault indicator - a yellow flashing light. If outside of the one year PS3 warranty period, Sony charges £128 to rectify the problem.
Celebrated music game creator Masaya Matsuura opened the DICE Asia summit in Singapore on Thursday with the line that “games are becoming a global language of culture”.
Matsuura said that music was a previous global language. “I feel proud to be part of an industry that’s truly without borders.” The games industry, he says, has brought him lasting relationships with people from many territories.
One month after release on Xbox Live Arcade, Trials HD’s leaderboards are 320,000 entries strong, a figure that represents by far the greatest commercial success yet seen by this small, Finnish independent studio.
John Carmack's rocket company, Armadillo Aerospace, succeeded in its September 12 attempt to achieve level two in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge 2009.
The challenge awards US$1 million to the team that can lift off and then land a rocket-propelled craft twice for at least 180 seconds within a total time period of 135 minutes and record the most accurate landings. Two further attempts by competing teams are to take place before the challenge ends on October 31.
Sony has revealed that PSP Minis won’t support wireless multiplayer functionality, downloadable content or software updates.
SCEA senior account manager Justin Cooney said that the decisions had been made in a bid to "accelerate the approval process" of games for the company’s handheld.
Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2 has been banned from sale in Australia after being refused classification by the country’s ratings body.
Over five million unique users have registered for Sony Online Entertainment’s free-to-play MMO Free Realms, SOE president John Smedley said at GDC Austin.
Smedley also said that the family-friendly title, which has been live since April 28, will release for PlayStation 3 "in the “next year some time, toward the middle of the year." He went on to reveal that the PS3 version will likely support PlayStation Eye functionality.
Speaking at the DICE Summit Asia in Singapore on Thursday, Sony Computer Entertainment’s senior vice president of Japan Studio offered his views on how a developer must be global to succeed.
Using a translator, Yasuhide Kobayashi told the audience of developers and professionals that many issues face his group. “The Japanese market is really shrinking,” he said. Looking to the US and European markets, he asked, “How are we going to gain success in these markets?
Congratulations to @UpperEchilon, who wins with the right answer of Mad Dog!
For those that have so far held back from buying Batman: Arkham Asylum, you could be in luck. We're giving away a copy of the 360 version of the Collector's Edition to the first Edge reader to demonstrate a little knowledge of Batman lore.
Microsoft will release a 250GB Xbox 360 bundled with Forza Motorsport 3 on October 23.
The console will ship with a 250GB hard drive, two wireless controllers, a headset and a standard edition of 360 exclusive racer Forza 3 for an estimated retail price of £249.99.
The announcement follows the unveiling of a 250GB Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 earlier this week.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot expects a number of titles pushed to the first quarter of 2010 to face fresh release delays.
"Well, now we have a situation where there are a lot of good games due for release in the first half of next year, but I think some publishers will move again,” he told MCV.
Nintendo is to restructure its Japanese quality assurance division by turning it into a new subsidiary called Mario Club.
Nintendo's QA division currently employs 250 staff working to improve game quality through debugging and test play. Following the launch of the new subsidiary, existing part time employees will become contract employees and current contract employees will become full time employees, reports Inside Games (via Andriasang).