Gaming News

Otacon

gizmo wrote: »

From the Gamasutra Twitter...



:eek:

His last day will be the end of the company's fiscal year. Something tells me it won't be good news for the share holders.

degrassinoel

2k games PAX streaming on twitch here right now if you're interested.

Disappointed in blizzards announcment today Also XCOM developers Firaxis have an announcment involving XCOM:Enemy Unknown planned for saturday

http://www.twitch.tv/2k/old

Deano7788

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-22-mighty-switch-force-dev-wayforward-remaking-duck-tales-for-capcom

Wayforward are remaking Duck Tales

gizmo

Deano7788 wrote: »

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-22-mighty-switch-force-dev-wayforward-remaking-duck-tales-for-capcom

Wayforward are remaking Duck Tales

*squee*

CastorTroy

Own up! Who proved they had no soul by not singing along?

Brought a smile to my face when saw the news and a bigger smile watching the video.

That theme song is great anytime

Deano7788

Thank God you put the video up ,the story was updated after I posted and I would've missed it.

Of course I'm now going to be singing the song to myself for the rest of the day

Woo-oo!!!

Gunmonkey

I tried not to sing along, thinking "I'm 30 now, can't be doing childish things like this!!"


Broke down and joined in 2 syllables in

FutureGuy

Gunmonkey wrote: »

I tried not to sing along, thinking "I'm 30 now, can't be doing childish things like this!!"


Broke down and joined in 2 syllables in

I just sang it from memory. The gf heard about 3 notes and sang the polish version!

degrassinoel

Firaxis panel showing live now

http://www.twitch.tv/2k

degrassinoel

man, the XCOM teaser was awesome! I'm guessing it's 'Enemy within' considering the footage they showed.

calex71

FutureGuy wrote: »

I just sang it from memory. The gf heard about 3 notes and sang the polish version!

I got the Bulgarian version........ 24 hours later she's still at it, weird thing is even i couldn't understand it or know it was duck tales and heard it out of context with out music I would immediately know it was the Duck Tales theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-BKg6NQL4k

It's called Патешки истории or Pateshki Istori there

degrassinoel

um okay..

So yeah, CIV 5 and XCOM on mobile devices looks pretty decent

Kiith

So, EA "won" the Worst Company in America award again. Which is pretty ****ing stupid, considering some of the companies that could have won. Here's their response...

Peter Moore - Chief Operating Officer - EA wrote:

WE CAN DO BETTER

That’s an expression I frequently use when asked to defend EA’s place in the gaming industry. And it comes to mind again this week as we get deeper into the brackets of an annual Web poll to name the “Worst Company in America.”

This is the same poll that last year judged us as worse than companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars. The complaints against us last year were our support of SOPA (not true), and that they didn’t like the ending to Mass Effect 3.

This year’s contest started in March with EA outpolling a company which organizers contend is conspiring to corner the world market on mid-priced beer, and (gulp) allegedly waters down its product. That debate takes place in bars – our audience lives on the Internet. So no surprise that we drew more votes there.

Let me cut to the chase: it appears EA is going to “win.” Like the Yankees, Lakers and Manchester United, EA is one of those organizations that is defined by both a legacy of success, and a legion of critics (especially me regarding all three of those teams).

Are we really the “Worst Company in America?” I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate – like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don’t hold water:

Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.
Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong.
Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.
We’ve seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really…
In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.
That last one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that.

We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. We owed them that. We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.

I expect the debate will include a lot of comments under this post. But here’s the truth: each year EA interacts with more than 350 million gamers; Origin is breaking records for revenue and users; The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3 are at the top of the mobile charts; Battlefield 3 and FIFA are stunning achievements with tens of millions of players; and SimCity is being enjoyed by millions of passionate fans all over the world.

Every day, millions of people across globe play and love our games – literally, hundreds of millions more than will vote in this contest.

So here’s my response to this poll: We can do better. We will do better. But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them.

The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed.

The comments on the page are about what you'd expect really.

humanji

A new Jagged Alliance game may be in the works. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/11/space-hulk-studio-to-make-turn-based-jagged-alliance/

The people currently working on the new Space Hulk game will be moving on to Jagged Alliance when they're finished. Although the last JA game failed to match up to the originals, I still enjoyed it and can't wait for the next one.

That_Guy

Adam Orth gone from Microsoft after last weeks Twitter debacle. Forced resignation or voluntary. You decide.

ShadowHearth

OMFG!!!!!! YES YES YES!!!!! **** YESSSSSSS!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/11/space-hulk-studio-to-make-turn-based-jagged-alliance/

degrassinoel

interesting website here with interviews with various game industry celebs

http://thank-you-for-playing.com/

Tomk1

http://www.geek.com/games/id-software-in-trouble-doom-4-nowhere-near-finished-rage-2-canceled-1551051/

finish Doom 4 in a year or they will take drastic action.

Rage2 cancelled, not into FPS and hated rage1 but still it's annoying to see game-devs in trouble.
http://www.geek.com/games/disney-closes-down-lucasarts-marking-today-as-a-sad-day-for-video-game-history-1550997/

Star Wars 1313, the gritty third-person action game where players assumed the role of a bounty hunter, the game has been canceled. However, it’s entirely possible another studio will pick up the license and give the game a second chance.

LA will no longer develop games but license them out.

Genghiz Cohen

Bohemia started sending out invites to the first 500 ArmA3 Supporters to put your name in the credits.

I got one

ShadowHearth

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Bohemia started sending out invites to the first 500 ArmA3 Supporters to put your name in the credits.

I got one

Ladies will be all over you now m8!

gizmo

There's been a couple of interesting articles over the last few days relating to the money side of game development, both in terms of the full blown indie and AAA-ish side of things, something which often comes up in other threads. I'm not sure they're worth a thread of their own (I'm open to correction from the mods of course) so for now I'll just post the links and a brief comment on them.

Dustforce sales figures
This is a rare insight into exactly how much the new breed of indie titles not only cost to make but also what they can take in over a prolonged period from initial launch through various sale periods. There's some really interesting figures in there most notably the original $100k budget, expectations, sales and revenue per unit sold.

Driving ambition: pCARS, crowdfunding and the FSA
This saga has been going on for awhile but Eurogamer have given it a rather comprehensive write up here. Again, there's some interesting figures in there, notably the €25m (projected) profit from 1m sales of a boxed title, the €3.5m budget Slight Mad are looking for, the lack of consideration for licencing and marketing/distribution costs, the Shift series numbers and of course, the amount individuals were willing to invest.

Heavy Rain cost €16.7 million to make and made Sony "more than €100 million"
Another delightful example of how marketing costs can rapidly inflate your budget. Here's some figures on the PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain. This one seems to contradict the figures in the pCars article though with Fondaumiere saying that Sony made about €100m on the back of over two million sales. Perhaps the lack of platform holder and testing fees incurred helped?

P.S. Go buy Dustforce, it's awesome.

degrassinoel

Gearbox bid highest on Homeworld and Homeworld 2 and i guess the entire franchise from THQ.

they plan on

making them accessible on today's leading digital platforms.

source here http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/community/articles/1029/homeworld-acquisition-and-plans/

ShadowHearth

degrassinoel wrote: »

Gearbox bid highest on Homeworld and Homeworld 2 and i guess the entire franchise from THQ.

they plan on

source here http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/community/articles/1029/homeworld-acquisition-and-plans/

when word "Gearbox" comes up in gaming forums i tend to take it with a FECKTRUCK Loads of salt...

degrassinoel

ShadowHearth wrote: »

when word "Gearbox" comes up in gaming forums i tend to take it with a FECKTRUCK Loads of salt...

meaning what? they still own the homeworld franchise.

ShadowHearth

degrassinoel wrote: »

meaning what? they still own the homeworld franchise.

gearbox is great at bull**** and destroying franchises.

degrassinoel

You can be a pessimist about it all day long but it wont change the fact that they own the homeworld franchise now. THQ had it since relic went under and what did they do with it since HW2? S.F.A.

to me, that's even worse than a company who specialises in FPS's getting it at a fair and square auction for just over a million dollars.. i mean ffs, that's the price of a house in foxrock for probably the best space rts ever concieved.

I know you're talking about ACM, and i agree with you on that. But gearbox also released borderlands and it's brilliant sequal. and here you are tarring an entire company with the same brush. Seems a bit harsh considering that gearbox plan on rereleasing homeworld/2 on digital platforms as well as listening to people who have an interest on their forums.

ShadowHearth

degrassinoel wrote: »

You can be a pessimist about it all day long but it wont change the fact that they own the homeworld franchise now. THQ had it since relic went under and what did they do with it since HW2? S.F.A.

to me, that's even worse than a company who specialises in FPS's getting it at a fair and square auction for just over a million dollars.. i mean ffs, that's the price of a house in foxrock for probably the best space rts ever concieved.

I know you're talking about ACM, and i agree with you on that. But gearbox also released borderlands and it's brilliant sequal. and here you are tarring an entire company with the same brush. Seems a bit harsh considering that gearbox plan on rereleasing homeworld/2 on digital platforms as well as listening to people who have an interest on their forums.

Thats why i said "I will take it with **** truck loads of salt". gearbox can be fantastic when it comes to games like borderlands and then just plain retarded when it comes to Duke Nuken and ACM. I wont buy anything from them untill I see reviews, gameplays.
In away I agree. Its like Selling Starwars franchises. It was rotting away dead and now with it being picked up, there is a chance it will be reborn again and we will see more awesome Starwars content. THQ did feck all with homeworld and if Gearbox will turn on "Borderlands brain" then we might get a fantastic reborn of awesome old franchise. Though the track record of them picking up old franchises and making good games out of them is quite ****.

gizmo

ShadowHearth wrote: »

gearbox is great at bull**** and destroying franchises.

A bit of pessimism is one thing but let's not get carried away with the hyperbole here. They ****ed up Aliens: CM as a project, hard, and deserved every bit of legitimate criticism they got. DNF, on the other hand, had been royally screwed by 3D Realms before they ever got near it.

Outside that you have the Borderlands series which is excellent, a string of Brothers in Arms titles of varying quality and a bunch of port work which trails all the way back to their excellent first title, Opposing Force. What their back catalogue is a perfect example of is an independent studio who take on a whole range of projects in order to pay the bills while waiting for a break to make their own title. In this case, it was Borderlands so one can happily argue it was worth it.

As for Homeworld, well as I said in the other thread, I can't see them working on a sequel directly if that was their plan at all. More than likely they'll do some port work to get it onto Steam and GoG, hope the IP becomes more financially viable because of it and then sell it on for a profit in order to fund their own projects.

As an aside, the IP went for a reported $1.35m in the end which is a decent chunk of money all things considered.

degrassinoel

They are planning on re-releasing it. It cant be sh*t if it's the original game/s taped together with a gearbox logo and online support.

As for a third installment (cataclysm was an expansion) given gearbox's failing with as you said, duke and aliens. I'm fairly certain they will be adamant about getting their next project 100% right. They have the cash and the resources to do it. What if EA won that auction? Hell i'd be just as pleased to see a decent rerelease if it were them too.

VinLieger

As far as homeworld is concerned all i care about is getting access to the original games again, my worry is for Darksiders being picked up by Nordic Games