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RAGE for MAC.. Without Multiplayer?
id Software and famous Mac port people Aspyr have announced that a version of RAGE for the Mac has been released. The weird thing is that it's called "Campaign Edition" and while it includes the full single player game, it axes the multiplayer. It actually makes sense, as they probably didn't want to go through the effort to do cross-platform multiplayer with the PC, plus pretty much no one is making use of the PC version's online play anyway.
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THQ's Big Challenges
There hasn't been a hell of a lot of great news in the world of publisher THQ over the last year. They've spent a lot of money on flagship games that only garnered lukewarm sales, and they spent another fortune to bring the UDraw tablet - a successful Wii accessory - to Xbox 360 and PS3, and it didn't sell well at all on either HD platform.
Recently, it's only gotten worse: THQ's stock price is trading under a dollar, the NASDAQ stock market has warned them they might get delisted in the next six months if they don't turn the company around, and now THQ is laying off hundreds of employees - on top of the hundred-plus people that they've already had to let go in the last year. Their immediate hopes are set on the upcoming games UFC Undisputed 3 and DarkSiders II, both of which look excellent in my opinion, but neither franchise has proven to be a terribly consistent goldmine in the past.
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EA Does Well, Loses Money Anyway
EA has done an investor call detailing the last quarter of 2011. They say that both Battlefield 3 and FIFA '12 sold 10 million copies, and Star Wars: The Old Republic sold 2 million copies, 1.7 million of which are still subscribed to the game after the first month. And despite all this, the company still posted a loss. Ouch.
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EA Playing with Online Pass
David Collins over at GameFocus has word that EA will be playing around with their Online Pass (the idea of used copies having to pay to get access to online play) system that most major publishers are now doing. In the upcoming snowboarding revival SSX, all players will have access to a couple of online modes, even without the pass. In addition, the in-game cash you earn in online play to customize your character or participate in special events can not be redeemed without the online pass. It's good to at least see publishers trying to figure out ways to make this system work in a way that allows more people to get more of the game while still having the intended effect: of getting people to spend the extra five bucks at GameStop to get a game brand new in order to support the publisher and developer (rather than GameStop's profit margins).
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Mass Effect 3 Voice Actor Trailer
BioWare has released a new Mass Effect 3 trailer featuring the game's voice actors. What's revealed here is that Jessica Chobot, seen in a bunch of IGN videos as well as stuff like G4's Attack of the Show, is playing a role in the game. Plenty of recurring actors and characters are back as well.
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Radeon 7950 is AMD's 'Budget" Card for $449
AMD has released the Radeon HD 7950, a "budget" version of the $550 7970 that came out earlier this month. Unfortunately, AMD still wants $450 for this card. [H]ard|OCP has the review, and it's not really pretty. Yes, the card's faster than an nVidia GTX580 and for a single card solution, you might be better off with the Radeon, but we should point out that AMD still hasn't released finalized 79xx series drivers - the drivers are still in beta and exhibit the odd problem, many of which show up when using two cards in Crossfire - and the release date for finalized drivers is set for March. For a card that came out in January. As [H] put it, this is some the best silicon AMD has put out, and its potential is being spoiled by poor drivers.
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Online Pass for Offline Content
Online passes that charge buyers of used games for online content are now a generally-accepted way for developers to get people to buy new, but what about an "online pass" for a single player game's content that's available on release? RAGE did it with sewer missions, and I doubted the wisdom of adding sewer levels - a bad FPS stereotype - to a game as the reward for buying new, but the upcoming action-RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will have something similar. Ex-baseball player and studio founder Curt Schilling defends their use of the pass here, and I think he makes a good point.
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Street Fighter X Tekken Gets New Characters...
But only on PS3 and PS Vita, due to an exclusive agreement. Yes, this new fighting game from Capcom which pits Namco's characters against Capcom's will now include Pac-Man (controlling that tree dude from classic Tekken games), Mega Man (in a terrible form, akin to the original US box art from the original), Cole from inFamous, and wacky Sony characters Kuro and Toro. And they'll only be on PS3 and PS Vita. Yes, I do believe a shark is being jumped right... about... now.
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Steam Mobile App Goes Into Beta
Valve has announced that a version of Steam for iOS and Android has gone into beta, allowing those whose Steam accounts are enabled for it to use Steam chat, check out sales and buy games, read news, and play around in Steam communities. (No gaming - or at least, not for now.) Note that this is still a closed beta for now, but installing the app and logging into your account will vastly increase the chances of you being added to the beta so you can actually, well, use the app.
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New Neo Geo Portable!
Shacknews has word (originally from Japanese blog Famitsu Plaza) that SNK Playmore is delivering a new Neo Geo portable console to play their classic games on. It'll be a little bigger than an iPhone with a hybrid D-pad/analog-looking control scheme along with four face buttons, four shoulder buttons (not sure what those are fore), 4" screen, and an SD card slot. It will ship with about 19 games on-chip, mostly from the earlier generation of Neo Geo games. Click "Read More" to see a picture and get into some discussion!
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Next Gen Rumors Abound
Over the last year or so, you've probably seen one or more rumors about the kind of hardware that will go into the next generation of consoles Microsoft and Sony are making. Admittedly, the Wii U was announced almost a year ago and we still don't even know what hardware's in that, but it's important to point out that all of these rumors, when you add them together, start to coalesce into something that just makes sense. Let's talk below, shall we?
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Real Money on Microsoft Stores?
Tech site InsideMobileApps (via GameSpot) has a pretty solid rumor going that Microsoft will be ditching their points system on Xbox Live and other stores for real-money transactions all over the world. Apparently this comes with the introduction of the Windows Phone store into the full Microsoft buying-stuff ecosystem. While this probably means the end of discounted points on eBay and such, I think this is still a step forwards.
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Skyrim Patch Detailed, PC Creation Kit Soon
Bethblog has details on the upcoming 1.4 patch for Skyrim, which includes a bunch of quest fixes, some minor optimizations on PC, and, probably most importantly for all those PS3 users seeing dire issues with big save files, an improvement to keep the PS3 version of the game running acceptably for more than twelve to fifteen hours. The Creation Kit for PC is still on track for January release as well!
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'1999 Mode' Announced for BioShock Infinite
Irrational Games has announced a mode which will be available in this year's BioShock Infinite, dubbed "1999 Mode". It will be a toggle that's separate from the difficulty setting, and it forces players to more carefully manage resources, make permanent decisions about the protagonist's advancement, and only get limited use out of what would normally be the infinitely reusable respawn chambers. It's an homage to the first person shooters of old and a wave to the FPS gamers who want an additional challenge, and it's a very welcome addition for us here at AtomicGamer.
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Max Payne 3 Trailer
This just-released trailer by Rockstar will be the first in-game footage of Max Payne 3 that many will have seen. It includes briefings on how the third-person camera and action work, pinpoint accuracy, weapon switching, and more. I'm a little concerned over the use of cover, but if the enemies become very aggressive when you get behind cover, then we should be fine. And oh yeah, diving and bullet time are well-represented, too!
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Star Trek Online Now Free to Play
Perfect World has announced that Star Trek Online, the once-subscription-based MMORPG, is now free to play with premium paid features.
[Update: The latest client is now mirrored here]
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Max Payne 3 Delayed until Mid/Late May
GameSpot has word that Rockstar's Max Payne 3 is getting delayed. The console versions are coming out on May 15th, and the PC version will follow two weeks later.
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Yesteryear's Games Teach You How to Play
How many times have you seen a recent video game interrupt the action and talk to you like you've never played a game before? How many tutorials have you just mashed buttons through, wondering when you're going to get to the action? It wasn't always like this. There were games made in years past that intelligently taught you how to play by showing you what to do in a more natural way, that would illustrate upcoming dangers and allow you to figure out how to overcome them while sitting there safely. GamaSutra has a wonderful article up explaining how Super Metroid did this, but I'd also like to point out this Sequelitis video (NWS language) about Mega Man X.
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Mojang Staying Busy
This feature by Edge Online has word that Mojang AB, the company behind Minecraft and the upcoming Scrolls, also has three unannounced games in the works, one of which is by Notch, the original Minecraft creator. The best part? It's possible that two of them will be available to the public by the midpoint of this year. Notch's own game is still in such rudimentary stages that he doesn't really know what it is yet, and I imagine that any public releases will be in a pre-alpha or alpha state like Minecraft was a couple of years ago, but either way, it's good news for fans of Mojang.
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Notch Says: Pirate Minecraft if you can't afford it
An interesting exchange happened on Twitter in the last day or so. When a user tweeted Notch to ask for a free account since he couldn't afford Minecraft (and suggested he'd pirate it if nothing else), here's now Notch replied:
Just pirate it. If you still like it when you can afford it in the future, buy it then. Also don't forget to feel bad. ;)It's different when Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails tells an Australian audience to pirate his last major record label CD, as Trent knew that Aussie customers were getting ripped off with high prices, and almost none of that money was going to him or his band. But here, this is a direct sale, and while it seems silly for a developer to tell a fan to pirate his game, what other choices are there? All I can think of is copy protection or DRM, which no one (including Notch) actually wants to see implemented...
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