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EA Details More of its Next-Gen Future
We'll be putting up an article on the Xbox One reveal later today, but for now, EA has announced a couple more things that are coming to next-gen consoles. There'll be a new Need for Speed, and apparently they'll be announcing their "plans" for Star Wars since they made that exclusive agreement with new LucasArts owner Disney to make Star Wars games. I doubt they actually have a game in development far enough to show anything but a logo, but at least Need for Speed should be in full display. Of course, EA will be going up against both a new Forza AND a new Gran Turismo this fall, and that duo is something EA's never had to contend with in the same season, so we'll see how that goes.
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Mclaren Outs Forza for Tomorrow's Xbox Reveal
McLaren's Facebook page talks about a game being revealed tomorrow, and I very, very seriously doubt that Microsoft will make the same mistake that Sony did by cannibalizing their own racing-game hype by unveiling Driveclub for the PS4 and (at least initially) relegating the much bigger Gran Turismo 6 on PS3.
Nope, McLaren is basically telling us that Forza Motorsport 5 is going to be shown for the first time tomorrow. This is probably my most anticipated game for next-gen reveals this year, even considering the possibility that the secret game Respawn Entertainment's been working on for years will be shown tomorrow. Or Alan Wake 2.
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Metro: Last Light Made In Third-World Conditions
Former THQ executive Jason Rubin - the guy brought in way too late in the company's life to try and get things back on track and then to get THQ's affairs in order during its sale - told Games Industry International about Metro: Last Light developer, Ukrainian studio 4A Games and the awful conditions that they made that game in. They had a budget that was a tenth of what comparable AAA games get, suffered through days-long power outages, the need for bribing border officials, a lack of space, overall discomfort, being snowed in at home and being unable to even get to the studio on some days, freezing temperatures in the building when Kiev's government-run building heating would fail, and a meddling THQ who tried to make them include multiplayer modes. Click "Read More" to see my thoughts on all of this.
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Gran Turismo 6 Announced ... for... PS3.
Please be excited: Sony has announced Gran Turismo 6 for release later this year on ... PS3. It'll have 1200 cars, apparently more customization options, new tracks, and a more aggressive DLC schedule. Thing is, if Microsoft announces a next-gen Forza 5 next week and it looks truly next-gen, then I feel Sony and Polyphony Digital might be getting trumped this year. Especially since I haven't found a single person yet that's excited about Driveclub on the PS4.
Update: This underwhelming trailer was released. Let's hope that something that actually shows the game's new features is on the way today?
Update 2: IGN reports that GT6 might be heading to the PS4 sometime after the November-ish PS3 release, but he seems rather non-committal about it. I'm not sure he really has any serious motivation to do so.
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Japanese Developer Raking it In on Mobile
GI.biz has a story up about Japanese developer GungHo and how they're making millions of dollars per day on their iOS/Android puzzle RPG Puzzle & Dragons. One in ten people in Japan are playing this game - that's insane. While games media rarely talks about the success of mobile games in Asia, this one should be getting people's attention. Think about it like this: their current rate of revenue means they'll be making over a billion dollars in a year. I'm a little doubtful this one game will last that long as most mobile gamers move along quickly, but decently-made sequels often do well on mobile platforms. I'd be interested to find out how much GungHo spent advertising and promoting the game, as their operating costs weren't astoundingly low...
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Serious TES Online Exploit Before Beta Even Starts?
Blue's News has a story up talking about Joe from Joe's Security blog finding an exploit in Skyrim that turns out to exist in Bethesda Game Studios-developed games all the way back to Morrowind. It's not really a big problem in these games since they're single player, but Joe makes the assumption that it could exist in the upcoming The Elder Scrolls online as well. The problem with his assumption is that Austin-based Zenimax Online Studios is making TES Online (not BGS), the GameBryo/Creation engines would need significant reworking to make online play work (ask how that went for the guys trying to mod multiplayer into Skyrim), and Zenimax Online's Matt Firor has has already confirmed that they went with a different engine called the Hero Engine, and then ditched it for their own technology anyway. The Elder Scrolls Online might not be living up to expectations based on some leaks from beta, but this is not part of those possible disappointments.
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New Wolfenstein Announced
Bethesda parent Zenimax has announced, through GameSpot, a new game: Wolfenstein: The New Order, as developed by Swedish developer MachineGames. This team was built by original founding members of StarBreeze (who made the excellent first-person shooter Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay quite a few years back) in 2009 and then acquired by Zenimax in 2010. They've been working on this game since then, and now Wolfenstein is set for release (using the RAGE-powering idTech 5 engine) on current- and next-gen consoles this fall. There's a cinematics-only trailer and a promise of more info later this week.
This makes the fourth main developer to try a 3D Wolfenstein game, not including the original 80s top-down classics by Muse Software. There was id back in 1992, then Splash Damage for Enemy Territory, then Raven Software in the reboot in 2009, and now MachineGames with this new one. Will Bethesda find the success comparable to what id originally found more than 20 years ago? We'll have to wait and see, but if this team includes a good chunk of the talent that made that first Riddick game a decade back, then I think it's OK to be optimistic about this.
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EA's Making Star Wars Games Now
EA has announced that they've made an exclusive deal with Disney to make Star Wars games.
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Knights of the Old Republic 3 for reals this time?
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The Sims 4 Announced
EA announced The Sims 4 today. The release date is set for 2014 and it'll be a PC and Mac game. Few other details are available, but it will be made by long-time developer Maxis and presumably it'll follow the same model of The Sims 3, which was a pretty big runaway success and spawned a million expansions.
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Shadow of the Eternals Details
Today we heard something about a spiritual successor to cult GameCube horror game Eternal Darkness. Now, the devs decided to say "screw the rumors" and release some more correct info themselves, which in general is a good move. Unfortunately, yes, this game will involve Denis Dyack, who after making Eternal Darkness, went on to preside over the rather catastrophic development of mediocre action-RPG Too Human. What's even crazier is that they plan on trying to raise $1.5 million via crowdfunding starting this next Monday - presumably from Kickstarter, but there's no mention of the site specifically. As someone who disliked the way Too Human was made, with Dyack and his team trying to blame and/or sue anyone but themselves for its failure (combined with the crowdfunding thing), this line from Pulp Fiction comes to mind.
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2K on Twitch at E3 - Disruption?
2K made the declaration last week on their forums that they wouldn't have a big booth on the E3 show floor this year, and while they did mention that users should subscribe to their Twitch.tv and YouTube channels, no one seemed to take much notice of that.
But at most of the shows that 2K has streamed to Twitch over the last couple of years, there has been behind-closed-doors content separate from these public showings that were for other exhibitors, the press, and the like. (I've been behind those doors to write about this stuff in a couple of cases.) But one thing I'm wondering is whether the lack of a show presence by 2K means that anything they've been working on will be funneled towards 2K instead? It's certainly possible. Not every publisher would want to do this, but 2K might...
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Sony Cuts Executive Bonuses
The Raw Story has word that 40 Sony executives, including CEO Kaz Hirai, will be cutting their bonuses in the company's continued efforts to return to profitability. It should be pointed out that executives at many American companies in the same situation as Sony would simply deploy their golden parachutes and bail out with millions in cash and stock, and while I'm sure Sony's top brass could have cut their pay even more, this is still a positive move that I think shows their commitment to coming down from what Killzone developer Guerrilla Games' CEO Herman Hulst described as the ivory tower in Tokyo.
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Call of Duty: Ghosts is Official
After numerous leaks, Activision and Infinity Ward are ready to start pulling back the veil on Call of Duty: Ghosts, which will be a new storyline separate from the Modern Warfare or Black Ops series. It'll be available on PS3/PC/360 as we can see on the preorder page. (No mention of Wii U.) It'll also come to both next-gen platofrms, but with these cross-generational games, at this point I expect the next-gen versions to only include whatever enhanced visuals the PC port also has. Update: The release date is set for November 5th, but that doesn't necessarily mean both next-gen consoles will be out by then, so those versions might come out a few weeks later.
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GTAV Trailers Show Story, Gameplay, Detail
Rockstar Games have released a new trailer for Grand Theft Auto V featuring three presumably playable characters in it, each with a different focus, each with both a peaceful side and a violent side to them. The only issue I have with Rockstar's characters like this is that it always seems silly for me to have a guy trying to be normal and "go legit" or whatever while also killing twenty pedestrians and thirty cops a day - the wild action of the game, including gameplay sequences scripted to have you perform these massacres, rarely matches up with the characters' motivations in the cutscenes.
Still, I couldn't possibly stay away. Look at that detail and lighting. Very nice for current-gen, yeah? (And let's hope for that PC port. I'm still salty about the lack of a Red Dead PC port.)
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League of Legends and Player Reform
Gamesindustry.biz has an interesting article up talking about how Riot Games, creators of League of Legends, are trying to use psychology and their own community to help reform bad players, rather than banning them (which wouldn't even do much good since it's a free-to-play game where anyone can make as many accounts as they like). It's been a while since I tried LoL but I did find that exact poisonous and vitriolic environment that has become a stereotype of the game's community. I welcome these new approaches to bringing out the best, rather than the worst, in players, and I do believe that there must be some angle that can be used to come to this goal. Whether this is the right one or not remains to be seen, though.
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EA Lays Off Even More
The exodus of EA CEO John Riccitiello has had serious implications within the company, it seems, as EA has announced another round of layoffs. Rumors indicate that the EA Partners program is ending with the exception of Insomniac's FUSE and Bungie's Destiny, and that up to 10% of EA's workforce is getting canned. EA spokespeople are apparently clamming up on the details, but after Peter Moore's mildly-insulting open letter, the Worst Company in America poll thing, and the SimCity debacle, maybe it's for the best. Let's hope they learn lessons from the last couple years' worth of mistakes and come back leaner in the next generation with some amazing games.
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Nintendo Skips E3 Press Conference This Year
Nintendo has announced at an investor Q&A that instead of holding a big press conference at E3 this year, they'll be doing more of their own, smaller Direct-branded events like they have over the last six months. Some see this as Nintendo giving up a part of the spotlight at E3 or as giving up entirely, but I think it's a great idea to spread out your news onto days that might otherwise have none, rather than trying pack it all into the whirlwind week of E3.
We're sure that Nintendo will still have a presence at E3 with plenty of booths and long lines for all of those industry professionals who don't have an appointment to cram into, but the press conference on that early Tuesday morning, like they've had for quite a few years now, will soon become a thing of the past.
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Microsoft Officially Admits Next-Gen Xbox Exists!
Well, they didn't just do that. Kotaku (amongst others) has the official invite from Microsoft to come see the next-generation Xbox in Redwood, Washington (MS' headquarters) on May 21st at 10AM Pacific. This does fall in with the rumors that MS' event revealing the next Xbox would come in May, although there were rumors for April, too, and either way it makes much more sense to have your own big reveal event before E3 anyway. (If you're curious, the 360 had a reveal event in May 2005, hosted by actor Elijah Wood and featuring the band The Killers, and it was broadcast as a half-hour show on MTV.)
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Leviathan Warships Trailer: Ship Just Got Real
After so many trailers with explosions and gunshots and orchestra hits, I have to say: this is obviously meant to be kind of a joke, but it's still a breath of fresh air.
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I Guess Skyrim DLC Is Done: Main Team Moves On
Eurogamer has word from Bethesda Game Studios that the main team making Skyrim DLC is moving on to their next big project, which is presumably the next Fallout game. It's reasonable to think that at least some of the team that made the original Skyrim - engine programmers and such - have already been in pre-production on it. Seems like that now the content creators - guys that do level and quest design, music, art, and such - are now over on the new game.
I guess that means there won't be any more Skyrim DLC. Shame, since it seems like there'd be a market for more, but maybe the devs are just sick of bumping into so many technical limitations on consoles - especially the PS3, which Skyrim had so much trouble with in the past.
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