Discount passes are now available for next month’s Edinburgh Interactive Festival, the annual industry conference and public videogame showcase.
Lens flare. Water effects. Bloom lighting and high dynamic range imaging. Breast physics. Over the decade or so that I’ve been attending E3, these have been some of the features that have taken their turn in the great-minds-think-alike spotlight. What trend would bring home the 2009 E3 Breast Physics Award For Shared Inspiration? Would it be hi-def kart racing games, like Joy Ride for Xbox 360 or Mod Nation Racers for PlayStation 3? What about Facebook integration, as promised at this year’s show by both Microsoft and Nintendo?
A number of senior staff have departed Sony Online Entertainment’s Seattle studio, the developer making The Agency for PC and PS3.
Studio director and executive producer Matt Wilson, art director Corey Dangel, and producer John Smith left in early July to form a new development studio called Detonator Games.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan has said that he is not inclined to delay the release of EA and Double Fine’s Brutal Legend, as requested by Activision, but delayed a formal ruling until next week.
Karlan told attorneys for Activision that he was leaning in Double Fine’s favour, but also noted that the decision is “going to be a close call," according to an Associated Press report.
Format: ZX Spectrum 48K
Release: 1983
Publisher: Quicksilva
Developer: Sandy White
Sony executive VP and chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda has revealed that PlayStation 3 manufacturing costs have been reduced by around 70 per cent.
“The cost reduction since we introduced the PS3 is very substantial and this is on schedule,” Oneda said during a conference call following the publication of Sony’s first quarter financial results.
Nintendo’s DSi comfortably topped the hardware chart in Japan during the week ended July 26, while Square Enix’s Dragon Quest IX continued to dominate software sales.
According to Media Create, sales of Nintendo’s handheld more than doubled those of its nearest rival, Sony’s PSP, while Dragon Quest IX sold 270,000 copies to take lifetime sales beyond three million copies.
Nintendo DS – 80,362
PlayStation Portable - 30,523
Nintendo Wii - 23,995
DS Lite – 12,385
Jeff Junge, who led the recent acquisition of Midway Games’ development studios and IP, has been promoted to senior VP of business management at the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.
As part of our look at id’s new multiformat shooter-cum-driver Rage featured in the new issue of Edge, out in UK shops on Monday, we saw that the frame rate of the PS3 version currently lags some way behind the 360’s.
The 360 version matches the PC’s 60 FPS while the PS3’s framerate runs at just 20-30 FPS. “The PS3 does lag a little bit behind in terms of getting the performance out of it,” Carmack acknowledges.
Capcom has reported record results for its first financial quarter ended June 30, 2009.
Net sales increased 19.2 per cent to 19,497 million yen ($204.5m/£123.6m), operating income jumped 23 per cent to 3,664 million yen ($38.43m/£23.23m), and ordinary income rose 2.3 per cent to 4,117 million yen ($43.18m/£26.1m).
“As a result, we marked the best net sales, operating income and ordinary income since quarterly release announcements began,” the company said.
Doublesix studio head James Brooksby has called on the platform holders to make digital sales figures publicly available.
Speaking as sales of the studio’s PSN arena-based score-attack shooter Burn Zombie Burn passed 70,000 sales, Brooksby said the current lack of sales transparency “is hindering the development” of digital distribution channels.
Format: PC
Release: Out now
Publisher: PopCap
Developer: In-house
Shane Kim, VP of strategy and business development for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, has moved to assure retailers that the new Xbox 360 Games On Demand service isn’t likely to cannibalise physical sales.
According to Kim, Microsoft is a big believer in both digital and retail distribution. "... Everything we've done in digital distribution spaces has expanded the market, [and] has not been a share-shift between retail and online. And we think the effect will be the same thing here.”
Capcom’s Monster Hunter Tri has shipped one million copies ahead of its Japanese release on Saturday.
In doing so it has become the first third party Wii game to have an initial shipment of over one million units, according to the publisher.
Promising enhanced graphics and online modes, the game will be available as a standalone title or bundled with Nintendo’s new black-coloured Wii, which also releases on August 1.
As game sales continue to fall at traditional retail outlets, a number of digital distribution platforms are enjoying significant year-over-year revenue growth.
While NPD reported that US games industry sales suffered a fourth consecutive month of year-over-year declines in June, Valve saw a 97 per cent increase in download sales year-over-year during the month, and competitor Direct2Drive recorded a sales increase of 56 per cent.
Nintendo has reported heavy profit and revenue declines for the first quarter ended June 30.
Net income, or profit, fell 60.6 per cent to 42.3 billion yen ($445m/£270.8m), while revenue declined by 40 percent to 253.4 billion yen ($2.7b/£1.62b)
Operating profit was down 66 per cent to 40.4 billion yen ($425m/£358.7m).
Wii hardware sales totaled 2.23 million units during the quarter, down from 5.17 million during the first quarter of last year. Lifetime Wii sales now stand at 52.62 million.
Sony posted an operating loss and revenue decline during the first quarter ended June 30, both of which extended to the firm’s PlayStation business.
Sony's company-wide operating loss totaled 25.7 billion yen ($270.5m/£165.4m), compared with a 73.4 billion yen profit a year earlier.
Net loss was 37.1 billion yen ($390.5m/£238.7), compared with a net profit of 35 billion yen the previous year.
Revenues also fell 19.2 per cent to 1.6 trillion yen ($16.83b/£10.25b).
York-based developer Revolution Software is to enter the handheld digital download market via a new division called Revolution Pocket.
The division will release new and classic titles for iPhone, iPod touch, Android, PSP Go and DSi, beginning with Beneath A Steel Sky – Remastered for Apple products this autumn.
French publisher Gameloft has reported a second quarter sales increase of 17 percent.
With first quarter sales also up by 22 per cent, revenues for the first half came in at €60.1 million (£51.5m/$84.3m), up 20 per cent on the first six months of last year.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to return to Lairdsland Primary School on June 23rd to see how Cooking Mama:World Kitchen had developed as a project in P3/4 with class teacher Catriona Calvert. I was enchanted and excited by what I saw and heard – quality learning, enthusiastic and confident children completely absorbed in the world of international food and cuisine!
Catriona explained to me that the project had started by choosing four countries; these were chosen to reflect the nationalities of families in the school. The children had then researched these countries and created a fact file. This had given them the opportunity to extend their geographical vocabulary and knowledge of sense of place.
Many contexts and opportunities for writing were facilitated by the game. These included writing biographies for imaginary chefs that were brought to life using Crazy Talk, booklets about the equipment used in the kitchen, instructions for making a chef’s hat and apron and menus for use in the Lairdsland Café (a role play area in the classroom where e.g. goods were priced and recipes costed out).
The class had collaborated to create a ‘Foods of the World’ recipe book and made a profit of £300! The children had written letters to parents appealing for recipes, they word processed the recipes, advertised the book and coordinated the sales including handling the money and keeping accounts. Catriona explained that the preparation of the book had heightened the children’s awareness of different cooking methods, the variety of foodstuffs and different cultures.
Health Week in the school had provided an opportunity for cross sector working – staff and pupils from Lenzie Academy had come and worked with the class and cooked ‘Tortilla Wraps’ with the children. I had the pleasure of being present at the first screening of the ‘cookery shows’ that the children had made with the help of pupils from P6. This process had involved writing a script, identifying props, accurately weighing and measuring ingredients and adopting the role of chef and presenter in front of the camera. The films had been edited by the P6 pupils and the results were fantastic! Everyone was given a copy to take home as a memento and to share with their families.
The visiting art teacher had explored working with different media with the children, a classroom assistant from Poland had talked to the class about her home country and what it was like to live there and the portraits of celebrity chefs were amazing! Children handled money confidently as they worked through shopping lists and easily navigated their way around the internet as they searched for information about their favourite foods and recipes.
I had a wonderful time in P3/4 at Lairdsland Primary school – I saw rich cross curricular learning, facilitated by creative and innovative teacher Catriona Calvert resulting in motivated, enthusiastic and confident children! Cooking Mama:World Kitchen – obviously a recipe for great learning!
I love watching the Grand Prix so it will be no surprise to learn I also love Mario Kart for the Wii. I could see an opportunity here for a great context for learning so I was delighted that Head Teacher, Gillian Penny at Gavinburn Primary School could also see the potential and was happy to trial it for me with a P5 class.
I visited on June 18th and class teacher Lorna McNicol had done a great job. The P5 classroom was festooned with pieces of writing, maths and art work all arising out of the context facilitated by Mario Kart. When I arrived the children were busy rehearsing advertisements about an up and coming racing championship. Later on these were captured on the computer complete with sound effects and music, ready to be burnt to CD to take home as a memento of the project, all done with the help of a P7 tutor. Nice to see ICT permeating through the learning!
The children had been organised into seven kart teams of four. The teams competed on Mario Kart and a championship had been created out of that. All the teams had names – Killer Karts, Wheels on Fire, Mega Mushrooms – and everyone had their own name badge. Team logos and pod stickers for their karts had also been designed.
Writing: Each kart team comprised a driver, a mechanic, a press agent and a manager and they had written biographies about imaginary characters who are drivers, mechanics etc. The children had interviewed each other in role as their imaginary characters and produced an account of that interview. They had drafted letters to a company asking for sponsorship and had also written reports about an accident at the race track. Lorna explained that drama had been used where ever possible to help with the writing process. She said that it had really helped the boys in particular to be immersed in this imaginary world with the visual aspect of the game helping them with a starting point for writing activities. One boy said, “ I don’t like writing but I liked writing The Accident Report. We had pictures of a racing car accident and imagined that we were there and of course we have crashes when we play Mario Kart!”
Maths: Problem solving in maths fitted easily into this context with opportunities to calculate fuel consumption, speed and costs. The children had looked at decimal places for lap timing using a model race track and had also investigated the cost of flights and accommodation to visit a Grand Prix location.
Art and Design: Logos had been designed, karts made from junk material, suits designed for racing drivers and a crowd scene witnessing the crash had been created.
Next week, the plan was to focus on Science and some of the science teachers from the secondary school were coming to get involved in the investigation of friction, air resistance, stream lining and water and fire proof materials in the classroom. Great – and an opportunity for cross sector working too!!
Lorna is a probationary teacher and this is her first experience of games – based learning and she has been delighted with the enthusiasm and motivation that the children have shown. The children were obviously still motivated, energetic and excited and were producing work of high quality – and there was only a week to go before the holidays!! Lorna has been enthusiastically sharing her experiences with other probationary teachers which is great news.
Much more had been planned for the project, but the end of term was looming. Drama, music, animation, web design and a trip to a kart track will all be on the agenda next time they run the project….(and Gillian says they will definitely be doing it again….!)
