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King's Bounty: Princess
An expansion to bury Heroes V deeper still
An expansion to bury Heroes V deeper still
    | With GDC 2007 now behind us, we can safely say that Sony stole the show with Phil Harrison's keynote. During his speech, Home was announced as a free 3D online service for the PlayStation 3, along with the highly innovative game LittleBigPlanet by Media Molecule. These two alone gave Sony a huge PR boost, just in time for the European launch of their next-gen console; only ten days left, by the way. So now that they're back in the (good) news, they go with the fl0w and reveal even more details about the PS3 Home service. Thanks to GI.biz, we found our way to a PDF document titled "Home Development Q&A", uncovered on Sony's developer website. The document answers plenty of pre-emptive questions, some more technical than others, but also several noteworthy for us mortals. Arguably the most important bit of info to surface is the rollout schedule for the Home service. The first (closed) beta testing phase will take place from April to August, and will host around 15,000 users. The next (open) beta will allow for some 50,000 users, and will continue from August until October - when the Home service is planned to go live. Below, we tried to pick just a few other details contained in the document:
On an interesting note, an MTV interview with Sony Worldwide Studios boss Phil Harrison reveals that Home was actually born on the PlayStation 2, as "a very simple 3D lobby system that could connect a bunch of [PS2] games together". Then they realised the power of it, and thought: "actually this should be a platform initiative and this is something we should bring to all PlayStation 3 games and all PlayStation 3 users". So they did. Or will do. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Construction complete! The latest Command & Conquer strategy game has finally reached Gold status and it's now ready for mass production, says Electronic Arts, after seven years since the Tiberian Sun: Firestorm add-on left us yearning for more. The announcement holds true for the PC version only, which should invade North American stores on March 28, with the European landing set for a couple of days later. EA's communique failed to give a precise launch date for the Xbox 360 version of Command & Conquer 3, simply stating that it will be available "in the coming months". For the time being, this means that it should be out in early May 20007. The publisher also reminded fans about the recent C&C 3 demo, available locally or on the official website, which they say has reached an amazing 1 million downloads in its first week (1 million times 1.2 GB... oh dear, you do the math!). The demo includes one tutorial mission, two single player missions featuring live action video sequences, one skirmish map with varying difficulty settings, and one live action trailer montage featuring Tricia Helfer (the hot Cylon from Battlestar Galactica), Josh Holloway, Joe Kucan (good old Kane), Michael Ironside, Jennifer Morrison, Billy Dee Williams, and Grace Park (the other hot Cylon from Battlestar Galactica). Along with the regular edition of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, there will also be a "Kane Edition". As described by EA, this is "a definitive collectible for any Command & Conquer or Real-time Strategy fan and will feature an enormous amount of exclusive content including a bonus DVD with a behind the scenes documentary, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, a series of gameplay strategy videos, and more. The Kane Edition will also feature exclusive in-game content and wallpapers." Now... how about that new C&C shooter? UDPATE: EA also sent out three new "gone-gold" screenshots that you can see in our local gallery. Great looking stuff. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Mar 13, 2007 Even after last week's GDC, where Sony insistently denied rumours of a redesigned PlayStation Portable in the making, the same rumours stubbornly keep on coming. Or at least they do on Kotaku, who claim that there's "no denying it" and that the new PSP2 could be released this year. According to their "various third-party and highly placed sources", third-party publishers are already hoping to sync their games with the launch of the PSP2 - even though they have absolutely no idea when that will be, since Sony is still in the denial phase. That (passing?) phase might come to an end at this year's chopped-down E3, where Sony is expected to unveil the redesigned portable console. Actually, redesigned and technically enhanced, because Kotaku's hearsay lists the following features for the supposed PlayStation Portable 2:
Keep in mind that all this is coming just days after Sony has last denied the age-old "redesigned PSP" rumour. According to IGN's report from GDC, "Sony officials refuted the idea that that PSP was in need of a DS Lite-style remake, stating that the system will see no physical alterations. The design will stay the same, but the way [it] interacts with consumers may change". Downloading movies directly to the PSP is one of the most desired features, although other websites are less pretentious and only foretell a new set of colors being made available for the PSP in the future. The platform is sure to go through some more changes, we just need to wait and see how drastic they turn out... (N.B. Archive text, links removed) There is still much to write about last week's GDC 2007, but right now we'll take a lucrative break in order to announce the winners of the 7th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. This is supposed to be "the only peer-based, open nomination awards program in the industry where honors are bestowed to developers by developers", and as usual the ceremony took place at the Game Developers Conference. The finalists were announced over one month ago, with five games battling it out for the "Best Game" distinction: Gears of War, Okami, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports. From these, Oblivion was the only one to walk away without a single award in the end, in any of the other categories. The latest Zelda game for the Wii (and GameCube) won a single award, for "Writing". Okami and Wii Sports won two awards each. But ultimately they were no match for Gears of War, who garnished a total of three awards, including the highest distinction of all: "Best Game". Other winners were also Guitar Hero II and Line Rider, along with Iron Lore as the best new studio, and Shigeru Miyamoto for his lifetime achievements. The complete list of winners is as follows:
(N.B. Archive text, links removed) [GDC] Miyamoto Confirms Super Mario Galaxy For 2007 The Nintendo Wii lost some serious ground at GDC 2007 last week, with not much worth reporting about it - especially compared to Sony's pleasant surprises, namely Home and LittleBigPlanet for the PS3. What little we have to say about the Wii is mostly thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto's very personal keynote speech. Nintendo's playful guru didn't make any big announcement at the event, however, continuing the Japanese company's tradition to only talk about game development in general at GDC, rather than wow the world with novelties. On the other hand, as reported on GI.biz, it's speculated that Nintendo is on the virge of a major transaction in the firm's stock, and that their lips are forced shut by Nikkei trading rules (something about announcements potentially influencing its share price in this period... bureaucratic stuff). So even if they wanted to reveal something big, they probably have to wait a bit longer. Anyway, getting back to Miyamoto's speech, this was his first appearance at GDC in the last eight years. He had obviously a lot to talk about regarding Nintendo's recent history, and you can read some reports about this on GameDaily BIZ and Gamasutra for instance. One of the last things he touched upon was Mario's history, and in particular Super Mario Galaxy (see the new screenshots). Miyamoto confirmed that the eagerly anticipated Wii game will be released in 2007, and showed a new Galaxy trailer that you can watch on this Gamebrink page (check the last two clips). Aaand... that's pretty much about it. You can watch the entire keynote on Gamebrink, and if you can bare with the terrible sound quality, it's certainly worth listening to Miyamoto talking about his gaming philosophy; and how he turned his wife into a gamer. In conclusion, he proclaimed: "If we can convert my wife, I believe we can convert anyone". (N.B. Archive text, links removed) [GDC] Gears of War PC, No GoW 2, No Unreal Engine 3 On Wii Epic Games went home with more than just three GDC Awards for their Gears of War Xbox 360 shooter, after last week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Several rumours have also stuck on to them, but luckly they're already trying to clear them up. One issue that's actually been bothering them - and us most of all - for a very long time now is the supposed PC version of Gears of War. Of course, everyone expects it to come out sooner or later. But the problem is neither Epic Games nor Microsoft have announced any firm release date. And judging by Mark Rein's comments from GDC 2007 (via The Inquirer), the PC conversion is not the studio's priority right now. Epic's vice-president reportedly said that Gears of War would come to the PC Even less certain is the existence of a Gears of War 2 sequel - another obvious (though still unconfirmed) future project for Epic. A couple of days ago, various websites (including Gamespot) said that the sequel was quietly announced at GDC last week, by Epic lead designer Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski. But Mark Rein was quick to respond on the Epic Games forums, claiming that "The Gamespot article is wrong. Cliff didn't confirm anything of the sort.". So until further announcements, this is as official as it gets. On a related note, GameDaily BIZ has a detailed report about CliffyB's GDC session, as he talked about designing Gears of War and how the game came to be, from their initial idea of a FPS focused on large scale battles and territory control, titled Unreal Warfare. And finally, during another, more private talk at GDC 2007, Mark Rein also talked about the studio's Unreal Engine 3 technology and the (im)possibility of it being used in Wii games. They don't intend to do anything for Nintendo's console with Unreal Engine 3, or to support it, but Rein is sure that "one of our licensees will at some point squeeze it down into the Wii, the way Ubisoft squeezed Unreal Engine II into the PSP". That sounds like a very distant prospect... (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Angry mobs of fans and ruthless reviews aside, Gothic 3 remains one of the best PC games in 2006, and certainly one of last year's top three RPGs - along with Oblivion and NWN2. Once the dust settled over the initial invasion of bugs, the game began to sell like hot cakes it seems, as the total number of units sold worldwide has passed the 500,000 mark by now. Considering we're talking about a single-player role-playing game here, the figure is pretty impressive, and the publishers are mighty happy with it. Over the weekend, JoWooD and Koch Media laid down their bottles of champagne and took the time to share their enthusiastic thoughts with the gaming world:
If you still haven't gotten around to playing it, there's a Gothic 3 demo available for download locally, and several trailers, too, where that came from. Finally, don't forget that an add-on should be released later this year (at best). (N.B. Archive text, links removed) Jack Thompson must be giggling with a huge evil grin right about now, because Take-Two's CEO, Paul Eibeler (also "America's worst CEO" in 2005 and Jack's imaginary enemy) may be facing a "coup d'état" pretty soon. According to multiple reports summed up on Gamasutra, some of the company's shareholders are trying to take down the current CEO. Under Paul Eibeler's (partial) administration, Take-Two recorded an appalling net loss of almost $185 million in fiscal 2006, despite having several successful releases under its 2K Games and Rockstar Games brands. This isn't the first time that the company faces a forced change of chief executive officers, however, since the previous one - Ryan Brant - had just resigned in October 2006, after a nasty shares stock scandal and other corporate irregularities; not to mention the investigation from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that eventually uncovered the publisher's frauds. And of course the notorious "Hot Coffee" thingie which caused Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to be re-called and re-rated in the U.S. With just a few months under his CEO belt and apparently unsatisfying results, Paul Eibeler is now also facing a similar fate. A New York Post report from yesterday claims that the complotting investor group began forming in early February 2007, and is being led by veteran activist Carl Icahn (though he doesn't intend to become the new CEO). The group owns 46% of Take-Two's stock, so it's quite likely that they'll succeed in overthrowing Eibeler, and also in "reviewing the employment status" of CFO Karl Winters. The outcome of this corporate battle is expected to be decided on March 23, at the company's annual stockholders meeting. UPDATE: Jack Thompson has just sent us a correction, noting that his "evil grin" is actually "a grin of vindication", and quoting some Biblical wisdom that basically translates to "All good things come to him who waits". "It's about time", says Thompson, who has been calling for Eibeler's forced ouster for more than a year. And he ends triumphantly:
Believe it or not, I actually loled. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) [GDC] Spore Dev Says 'The Wii Is A Piece Of S***!' Spore may be headed for the DS as well in the future, but apparently one of the game's developers isn't too happy about Nintendo's other new console, the Wii. Either that, or he had some really disgusting things in mind when he opened his GDC speech by saying that "The Wii is a piece of s***!". The outraged guy in question is Chris Hecker from Maxis, one of the people currently working on Will Wright's latest gaming extravaganza. And according to IGN, his talk was clearly targeted against Nintendo, who he feels isn't taking games seriously enough. Hecker's talk, titled "Fear of a Wii Planet", was part of this week's GDC session "Burning Mad - Game Publishers Rant". So his vehement tone shouldn't be too surprising. What strikes us as ironic, however, is that he criticizes the Wii's technical inferiority, despite that the fact that he's working for a studio whose (Sims) games are much more about great gameplay, than great graphics. He went on to say that the Wii is nothing more than two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape, and is a "severely underpowered" system not just because of its modest graphical capabilities, but also because the Wii doesn't have the power to process things like complicated AI. IGN also adds:
Before you start throwing rotten eggs at him, I'm sure he actually meant to say "a console that doesn't suck technical ass". UPDATE: Hecker apologized for his GDC "thought provoking" rant. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) [GDC] Sony Announces PS3 Home, A Free 3D Online World I couldn't decide between calling this a "3D online community", or "service" or whatever, so I finally settled for what it really looks like: an entire world, where PlayStation 3 users will be able to meet, talk, dance, show off their avatars, their virtual homes and game trophies, share private content, check a movie, join for a game of LittleBigPlanet for instance, or whatever user-centric features Sony will implement in the future. The sheer number of options they revealed is already staggering, and all of these will come together in one big 3D online environment simply called "Home". The PS3 Home was basically the main announcement made by Sony's Phil Harrison during his keynote at the Game Developers Conference this week, before introducing LittleBigPlanet, Media Molecule's new PS3 game. Best of all, Home will be available as a free download from the PlayStation Store, and will launch directly from the PlayStation 3's XMB (XrossMediaBar). So Second Life, eat your heart out! And just like in Second Life, you can bet that regular users won't be the only ones showing off, as companies will also promote their stuff or hold virtual conferences in public places. To get a better idea about Home, we now have a trailer and plenty of screenshots ready for a closer inspection. And here's a bit more about it from Sony's press release:
All of a sudden, Sony seems to be rapidly gaining ground (and even winning?) the next-gen online battle, with a unique - and free - 3D online service that Microsoft might have a hard time countering. They'd better move fast, though, because Home will already go into a closed beta test this spring, with a full launch targeted for autumn 2007. (N.B. Archive text, links removed) | Top stories Filter news Search news Latest comments
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