In the dawn of Mines of Moria, the fine ladies over at Turbine decided “Hell, it was about time” to open a new development office, right in the heart of Redwood City, California, U.S. Of A., Earth. And, since opening new businesses usually involves new job spots, some ex-Flagship employees were keenly lured to join forces, in whatever future project (or projects) the company has in mind.

The first one to join Turbine's military is Dave Brevik, “ex-chief visionary officer” at Flagship, followed by Jeff Lind and Matt McKnight. All these guys were involved with Flagship, while previously Brevik was president of Blizzard North and Lind did some nasty things over at Electronic Arts, involving franchises like the The Sims and The Lord of the Rings.

We wish them luck. And most of all, we wish they can actually do a better job here than that craptastic Hellfail: London, that nobody played.

Whenever you say Blizzard, you say Battle.net. Whenever you say Battle.net, you say free services and servers provided by Blizzard for their online community. This big badass company has been facilitating the virtual life of its fans for as long as I can remember, feeding them with decent and stable servers for their non-MMOish titles, such as the Warcraft and Diablo franchises. Fun times, indeed.

... Up until now. According to Big Download, things are about to change very soon. While covering a Diablo III gameplay panel at this year's BlizzCon, game producer Jay Wilson said something in the lines of:

"We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features. We kind of have to."

Obviously, this will piss off fans like never before. I mean, many of them already frowned when Blizzard started to stare more at their profits and less at their fan base, with World of Warcraft squeezing large amounts of money each day, and with Starcraft 2 being cleverly sold as three separate games. But now, this?

The "good" news is that we have no details about what this "monetizing" actually means, or if it is aimed at the gamers themselves, or at some random advertising companies. Will we be forced to pay a monthly fee? A one-time fee? Or will we be staring at Coca-Cola commercials on every fucking Battlecruiser, while wiping the floor with the Protoss forces? Time will tell.

By the way. I find it peculiar that all these "clever" marketing strategies, specially designed to bring more income at all costs, have started right AFTER Activision got their paws on Blizzard. Hmmm...

Sony Japan is taking the fist steps into the PSP online business, announcing that all future first-party products made for this tiny, yet classy and incredible useful console (at least while you're waiting for your booze partners to join you in an all-night alcohol session), will be also available for download. UMD releases will still ship, of course.


This probably comes as a self-marketing thingie for the PSP Store extravaganza, which was also confirmed. So, if you have a store, you are bound to have some games to fill that store. Or something. According to Gameindustry.biz, the first downloadable titles will be something alongside Secret Agent Clank, Patapon 2 and LocoRoco 2.

Japan only so far, though my bet is that a European and a North-American follow-up is soon to follow.

I somehow missed this yesterday, for various reasons. Mainly because of a bottle of vodka and some porn movie in the background. Still, it might prove useful for some - YouTube, the almighty, Google-owned “watch illegal anime episodes here” website, is shaking hands with Amazon and iTunes, providing users with the godlike ability to purchase games, songs, and various other things while watching streamed videos.

It's simple, really. Let's say you are casually browsing the web in search for that oh-so-hot new video of your favorite band. Or for that new trailer you were waiting for. Going to YouTube, you will have a link there (somewhere) that will link you to the respective product on Amazon - if available. Obviously, money gained this way by said companies will be shared and devoured like a fresh, juicy, ichigo pie.

Google has also launched its betatest for the in-game advertising software, based on Adsense. I guess most of us were expecting this:

"Google is initially targeting the sweet spot for its technology: games based in Adobe's Flash platform and which run in a web browser with no download. Google's advertisers can use the software to insert ads into games or videos for YouTube, making the ads more versatile. Developers of games can use Flash software development kits to designate the points in a game that make an 'ad request'."

Since we were previously talking about Japan, games, and various other things (actually, we always talk about Japan and various other things), let's take a look at some figures from the Tokyo Game Show, courtesy of Gameindustry.biz.

It seems that this here event is set to break tons of records, including the number of games exhibited – no less than 879 titles, for every platform available. To get into even more details, we have around 19 percent DS games (actually, 18.7, but who's counting), 18 percent mobile games, and around 17.5 PC games. The top of the bottom is gloriously held by the Playstation 3, with a mere 3.5 percent.



And while we're here, let's get into genres. Most of the titles (around 20 percent) will obviously be action-adventure oriented (no wonder, kids seem to like easy stuff these days), with the roleplaying awesomeness of true gaming reaching only 9 percent, followed by simulation and puzzle titles.

And they say cheap whores don't sell. Well, I beg to differ, in my country at least, cheap is the actual true meaning of a good marketing and sales department. Microsoft seems to be learning a bit from this, since they recently announced that their X360 sales have gone up faster than a horny teenager browsing his porn magazine, increasing with 62% in good ol' Europe.



While Microsoft's console is also becoming a good hit in Japan (the place you want to check out first when it comes to games and jail-free loli porn), it still hasn't managed to top down the Wii – no matter, though, the (high school) girls in charge of the company are estimating good sales for the Japanese 360 titles, up to 1 billion USD until the end of the fiscal year.

Ah well... They are doing good so far, even if the X360 is starting to become of age. But with the upcoming titles that will probably make many a gamer droll, things are looking shiny and pink fo Microsoft.

A very interesting move from Nintendo – the fellows of Kotaku just received a press release wich states that the Japanese company will be kindly skipping Leipzig’s Game Convention this year. The reasons are plenty – and not that, God forbid, GC would somehow totally suck ass, but because, well, “the country where the sun shines” (to quote an illiterate and extremely retarded ex-colleague of mine, who, sadly, is not dead yet) already hosts too many similar events that Nintendo has attended so far. And will probably do so even more, as the time casually passes by.

And the results, being the positive results they are, convinced Nintendo to skip this year’s most awesome European gaming gathering. So, after E3, they will stick their heads back in their asses and return to Japan and their daily routine, because:
1. Japanese girls are the best.
2. Japanese girls look the youngest.
3. Local legislation is many times tolerant regarding doing various things to Japanese girls.
4. Akihabara.

This decision should only last one year though.

As of today, the new president of Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) is Shuhei Yoshida. "Who?!", you might ask for various reasons, and I wouldn't blame you. For various reasons. Luckily, for all of us ignorants who haven't been following Sony's constant leadership changes over the past couple of years up close and personal, they provided us with a quick bio of Yoshida-san, which we're generously copy-pasting below.

"Yoshida joined SCEI in 1993, and was one of the initial members in establishing the PlayStation business. He was appointed Producer of the Product Development Department in April 1996, and joined Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. as Vice President of Product Development in April 2000, where he held various positions in product development, producing many global best selling franchise titles. In February 2007, Yoshida was promoted to Senior Vice President, US Studios, SCE WWS."

Commenting on the appointment, the group's CEO and president Kaz "Riiidge Racer" Hirai said that "SCE WWS will accelerate the software development for the PlayStation 3 and PSP platforms and vigorously expand the gaming market", under the leadership of Yoshida. Yeah, like, ganbatte!


Habemus President!

Take-Two are continuing to keep themselves busy these days... and so are Electronic Arts' bidding artificers. Clearly incapable of waiting until the agonizing (for them) release of GTA IV at the end of April, EA is making another move in the hopes of taking over Take-Two. Only, this time, they are trying to bypass the company's board and head straight for the shareholders, luring them with an offer of $26 per share in cash. Not that tempting, but who knows... Just to be on the safe side, Take-Two's board urged its shareholders to hold their horses, promising to properly advise them within 10 business days.

So while we wait for the next chapter of this bidding saga, let's get back to Take-Two's games for a bit. My personal most-wanted, Mafia 2 is now planned for release (...)

 Continue reading 'Take-Two About Dates, Max Payne 3, New EA Bid'...

You have to just love the guys and gals at Gamasutra. All the info they provide comes in such huge detail, that I seldomly forget to read some piece of news from top to bottom, either because I am in a middle of a wanking session, either because I get bored reading quotes from the developers.

Anyway, here is some interesting stuff. Dudes behind titles such as Fallout or Medal of Honor have teamed up in an attempt to show recent crappy developers ze finger, forming WhiteMoon Dreams, a new and, hopefully, stupendous studio, which focuses its interest on Wii, PS3, and X360. For starters, they work on a title for a certain Japanese publisher.

Great news, indeed! The guy pulling all the strings will be Jay Kootarappallil (pronounced “koeiwruweoiudiojfsod”), which, at some point, used to be a technical art director for EA. Now why does it seem familiar to me that EA dudes have all the money?

While Loli WhiteMoon Dreams wants to mainly focus on original, in-house, series, they do not bash the possibility of working alongside major publishers, in an attempt to boost some of their francizes. What can I say, good luck to them, and may your titles live long and prosper.

Gamasutra scoop.