Another piece of weekend junk which turned out to be just that - junk - is a story about some supposed BioShock 2 artworks that popped up on some guy's blog. Given how cool they look, it's easy to see why they would be mistaken for "the real thing". But sadly the author of said artworks fanarts set the record straight over on That VideoGame Blog.

"The author behind these images [said] these are not official BioShock concept drawings. In his own words: “It was for a class at Art Center, the assignment was to design a sequel for a videogame or film. So I picked one of my favorite games from last year.”"

Taking into account that BioShock 2 prequel rumour from January, it would make sense to see (some of) its action taking place above the surface, so these arts do make some sense, even if they're completely unofficial.

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 Continue reading 'BioShock 2 Artworks Were Just Homework'...

Eidos' regiment of engineers blew the cover off Battlestations: Pacific, the sequel to last year's action-strategy WWII game Battlestations: Midway. Inside we found the first set of screenshots that you can see below, along with the usual game synopsis. Which goes something like this...

"The game features a massive U.S. and Japanese single player campaign that offers a unique blend of action and strategy. Players must plan their moves carefully on huge open-world arenas and fight in the air, above sea and underwater to relive some of the most hard-fought battles in WWII history. With the newly added Japanese faction, players will also gain insight into what could have been, should Japan have gained the upper hand against the United States. Battlestations: Pacific also features five new innovative multiplayer modes to strategically plan and battle against friends with all new maps and units.

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 Continue reading 'Battlestations: Pacific Announced For PC, X360'...

Which would explain why the vast majority of MMOs in recent years were relative failures, and why the situation won't change much for those upcoming hot-shots, either (I'm not giving names... *cough*). After all, who on Earth is so filthy rich to afford spending up to $1 billion, just to make a WoW-killer MMO, instead of buying a couple of African countries and playing a real-life war-game.

The billion-dolar figure was estimated by Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium 2008 Conference this Tuesday, as reported by GI.biz.

"We don't think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it. (...) When you... Look at all the money that's already gone to these businesses that have failed (ed. - EA, Microsoft, Sony & co.), there didn't seem a likelihood that even a well-managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit any time soon in this category."

When you look at it that way, Activision were really the smartest guys around. Honestly, why spend a crapload of money and waste people's time trying to develop a WoW-killer, when you can just merge with Vivendi-aka-Blizzard-aka-WoW itself. Kind of makes you wonder how much Funcom is investing in Age of Onan...

Yes, I admit, I've been shamelessly (though strategically) slacking for the past week, leaving my comrade to face the GDC madness on his own, while I turned my perverted eye to our flat-chested sister-website Animekon (some great new stuff there lately, by the way). But all good things must come to an end, so... back to gaming.

- Chief among our bypassed GDC news was the announcement of Gears of War 2, coupled with this teaser trailer teasing at a november 2008 release. CliffyB proclaimed that it's "going to be bigger, better and far more badass than the first one", with chainsaw duels and stuff. But no Gears of War comic after all.

- More recently, Motorstorm 2 was also revealed in a BBC article. It's "due out in time for Christmas and moves the action away from the desert locale of the original. Gamers will be able to race around a lush island environment, full of interactive vegetation". Interactive... vegetation. That's super. At least it will have 4-player split-screen.

- Still, the hottest topic these days remains EA's $2 billion bid on Take-Two, which was rejected, but will be taken under consideration once again on April 30, right after the release of GTA IV (not by coincidence). Meanwhile - new Take-Two details revealed.

- This year's Leipzig Games Convention might be the last one, as from September 2009 it could effectively be replaced by a new event called GAMESCom, to be held in Cologne, Germany. The Leipzig organizers are not amused, but still hope for a GC 2009.

- Telltale has just sent along the trailer for Sam & Max episode 204: Chariots of the Dogs, which is hereby officially unravelled. But where in the world is Carmen Sandiego Bosco? Find out in mid-March.

- The next Indiana Jones action game has gone into production. Yeah, just now. But you won't see me complain, since LucasArts spent more time with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which looks so cool in this GDC 2008 trailer.

- Offset Software, the guys who blew our mind with their Project Offset tech demos a couple of years ago (but kept mostly silent ever since) have been acquired by Intel. Five bucks to whoever can say what this will mean for their potential game. I'm clueless.

- Molyneux despairs at the "tragic" state of PC gaming, because "The Sims and World of Warcraft [are] sucking all the air out of the PC market". And I feel like I'm right in the ventilation duct, what with patch 2.4 coming up and everything... By the way, "Cliff's an idiot!".

- As of tomorrow, February 29, Phil Harrison is no longer the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. This week he resigned from Sony after 15 frustrating years with the company, leaving his warm chair to Kaz “Riiiidge Racer!” Hirai (who also remains President and Group CEO of SCEI). Where to next, Phil boy?

Every damned piece of industry, be it gaming, be it construction, being any kind of entertainment you could possibly desire, has its Doom heralds. And, thank God, we here in the gaming one, have plenty.

We have Jack Thompson, all-around would-be gaming Terminator, who likes to talk a lot about things like murder, GTA San Andreas, and the new Viagra bottle which he purchased recently. We have Mark Rein, who likes to think that CliffyB is “an idiot”. And last, but certainly not least, we have Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor, an interesting, to say the least, fellow who recently shared with us his (unnecessary) thoughts regarding the current state of our beloved industry.

It all happened at At Dave Perry's "Lunch With the Luminaries", a party also attended by folks like Peter Molyneux, Phil Harrison, Raph Koster or Neil Young, and it was awesome. For a good laugh. Mr. Taylor somehow thinks that PC gaming is completely dead, while our bright future will be carried forward by the Internet. And by... Flash! Which, according to him, is „the next console”, and that "the web is kicking the console industry's ass.". Riiiight.... Check the scoop on Gamasutra for more details.

We can all agree on the fact that Valve hit the Jackpot with its Steam service. Hell, even I use it sometimes, and I am certainly not a big fan of online distribution. I’d rather buy my games in their respective boxes, be it orange, pink, or be it the color of a big bad dump. But business is business, and it is going oh so well right now…

And since they have this area covered (I’m referring to game distribution), Valve decided to look further away. In an interview with Tom's Games, Valve’s badass Doug Lombardi confessed that they are looking to provide even more entertainment. Not just games, but music, movies, and anything that can be labeled as digital entertainment. According to his statement, before the end of the year, we’ll be seeing new stuff on Steam.

Mass Effect’s PC ass is getting as hyped as hell, and that is a good thing. Too few good RPGs are coming out lately, and from what we’ve heard, the X360 version of Mass Effect was actually pretty good. BioWare and their co-workers at Demiurge Studios promised lots of improvements in the PC version, a brand new UI, blah blah, yada yada, and various other things.

The latest news concerning this Sci-Fi title came recently – the game’s final release date – so prepare your itchy fingers for a long gaming session starting May, the 6th. Personally, I can hardly wait, and it seems that not even my huge stash of anime porn is able to compensate for this. Must... play... lesbian... intergalactic... chicks...

Excellent. According to this here press release, the girls at ArenaNet are proud to brag themselves with more than 5 millions copies of Guild Wars, sold worldwide. Congratulations, it sure is a big chunk o’ players stuck in their virtual world.

Let’s see now… World of Warcraft – 10 millions registered users. Guild Wars – 5 million games sold. Lineage – a couple of million dudes getting spanked by big breasted Dark Elven chicks there, too. This sure leaves some gaming space for upcoming MMORPGs… Yaright. Call me a grumpy and hateful old bastard, but I bet my (second) WoW account that some extremely hyped online games that are supposed to hit the market soon, will get totally pwned.

Ok, so Assassin’s Creed may have rocked some people’s worlds, but it’s sure as hell it didn’t rock my PC just yet. The incoming computer version, which *should* be up and running at the end of March, is said to use tons of DirectX 10 features, according to Charles Beauchemin, Ubisoft’s Technical Lead.

Even so, we won’t be seeing any visual difference between DirectX 10, DirectX 9, or any other X, be it direct or indirect, for that matter. The game only uses Shader Model 4 to provide us with increased performance. In other words, it goes something like this:

Charles Beauchemin: DirectX 10 enables us to make fewer calls to the API to perform the same actions. Therefore, it will be possible for the drivers to make optimizations making the game faster without any change to the game engine. Since most of the DX10 drivers are still young, we can expect a lot of gain to come from the optimization of these drivers.

The whole story.

While some companies have such a massive income that they can afford to purchase almost anything, others are, like... dying. Literally. And this seems to be the case of Perpetual Entertainment, also known as P2 Entertainment, the San Francisco based game developer that used to work on the already canceled Gods and Heroes.

Well, we all knew they had problems. Big ones. The said MMORPG got trashed like hell, in favor of some sort of Star Trek Online game. Then, in January, Perpetual announced that it will sell all their Star Trek things, including the last remains of Jean Luc Piccard’s hair, to another company, only to focus on it’s MMO software, called Perpetual Platform.

If this is true, companies like BioWare, that licensed this product, will probably be affected in one way or the other.

Warcry scoop.