This week it’s a two-fer, with The Great Gatsby discussion for the first 31 minutes, followed by a Star Trek Into Darkness discussion until the 1:14-minute mark. At that point, we drop into this week’s 3×3 for a discussion of horrific falls in movies.
Next week: The Fast and The Furious 6
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Nintendo’s Wii U may not be getting any EA games in the near future, but they will be getting exclusive dibs on Sonic! Nintendo and SEGA announced a partnership for three exclusive Sonic games for the Wii U and 3DS systems.
“The onetime rivalry between Mario and Sonic has grown into a friendship that has never been closer,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “These announcements in conjunction with SEGA demonstrate the commitment we have to bringing great games to the Wii U platform, and set the stage for our upcoming announcements at E3.”
Two of the exclusive SEGA games announced for the Wii U are Sonic Lost World (pictured) and Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. More SEGA Game Gear games will be coming to the Virtual Console service for Nintendo 3DS.
Additionally, Nintendo announced during their Nintendo Direct video stream that in lieu of holding an E3 press event this year, they will be showcasing some upcoming Wii U titles at participating Best Buy stores for the public to try out. Details about which games will be shown and which store locations will have hands-on demos are forthcoming.
Dracogen. You’ve probably never heard of it, but you should remember that name if you’re interested in indie games. Dracogen is the company started by Steven Dengler “committed to helping fun and awesome things happen.” Dengler’s funding helped Hidden Path Entertainment meet their Defense Grid 2 goal when it fell short on Kickstarter. Dracogen has invested money in The Banner Saga, Double Fine Adventure, Torment: Tides of Numenara, the Child’s Play charity, various fan films, and many other independent projects.
GamesBeat profiled Steven Dengler and Dracogen, revealing the mystery donor for the first time. Dengler spoke about why he took an interest in Defense Grid 2 and other indie efforts.
“I don’t have rights, and I am not a publisher,” Dengler told GamesBeat. “I did smaller financings for fun. But I see that the thing that is broken in the industry is that publishers want your soul. Self-publishing has to become a better option. Jeff didn’t have to twist my arm.”
“I’m not in this to make my fortune,” he said. “This gets a game out there that people want to play. I don’t want to own part of the company. I want to help make a game.”
Defense Grid 2 is scheduled to launch in 2014.
We’ve known for quite some time that Electronic Arts wasn’t going to port their upcoming Frostbite engine games to Nintendo’s Wii U console, but this is a different beast altogether. EA has officially confirmed to Kotaku that they have absolutely nothing in development for the Wii U.
That means no casual games, no family games, and no licensed games using any engine at all from EA. Nada. Zip. Zilch. While EA didn’t rule out future development, they’ve obviously cooled on the console since E3 2011 when then-CEO John Riccitiello said “We look forward to seeing great EA content on this new platform.” Insert sad trombone sound here.
Happy Birthday Diablo III! Blizzard’s hack & slash economic simulator has turned a year old! Blizzard is celebrating by giving all players a 25% boost to their Magic Find and +EXP stats until May 21st. Get in there and start grinding for loot to sell on the Auction House before it goes down again!
Diablo III is also on sale until the the 21st for 33% off, so you’ll only have to sell a few Legendary items to make your money back.
The battle between YouTube, video game creators, and content uploaders took an interesting turn with Nintendo. GameFront reports that Nintendo has begun issuing “Content ID Match” claims to YouTube for users’ Let’s Play videos. The filing allows Nintendo to essentially take over the ad revenue of the video, denying the user any income for that upload. Nintendo issued the following statement regarding the claims.
“As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”
As the statement points out, other companies like Activision/Blizzard and EA, have issued copyright claims to YouTube for Let’s Play uploads that resulted in the videos being completely taken down.
Prolific YouTube Let’s Play producers have protested the move saying that Nintendo’s actions denies them the ad revenue they deserve for their creations. They claim that they add commentary, reviews, and even help to sell the games they showcase. The YouTube FAQ points out that purchasing or hosting media content does not give the user the right to upload it.
This week’s Qt3 Games Podcast comes to you from the distant future! Jason, Nick and Vickie discuss games we’re looking forward to in the year 2013, games we’re currently enjoying in the year 2013 and news we’re currently news…ing? You get the point.
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Electronic Arts is discontinuing the Online Pass program. GamesBeat reports that EA is doing away with the program entirely due to negative feedback.
“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”
“Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format,” Reseburg said. “We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”
The Online Pass system was controversial because it required gamers pay an extra fee to access multiplayer features of games previously owned by another consumer.
In their neverending quest to destroy gamers’ lives and wallets, Valve has introduced Steam Trading Cards. Cards are gained by playing games, or trading with fellow players. Once earned, cards can be crafted into badges. Badges can earn XP, contributing to your overall Steam Level, and be turned in for in-game rewards.
The end is nigh.
You want cars? We got cars! Sony announced that Gran Turismo 6 will be available for the PS3 by the holidays. All the stuff from GT5 will return with additional cars and tracks putting the automobile count over 1200! That’s a lot of car collecting.
New features include an include course-maker function, GPS data, and a new physics engine. A new user interface will allow players to extend some of the gameplay and community features to smartphones, tablets, and PCs.
“It is amazing to think that it is 15 years since we first released Gran Turismo,” said Kazunori Yamauchi, during the announcement at Silverstone Circuit. “Things have changed a lot since then and now Gran Turismo 6 is a further evolution of my dream. We’re pleased to deliver GT 6 to PlayStation 3 as we have a very loyal community on that platform. However, we have refactored the game to make it very flexible and expandable, with a view to making many future developments.”
A demo release on PS3 is planned for July.
Warner Brothers Interactive announced Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure. The 5th Cell developed game will feature Maxwell and his sister Lily in the comic universe spelling out solutions to puzzles with the help of over 2000 licensed DC superheroes.
Speaking to Polygon, senior producer Caleb Arseneaux said that even Scribblenauts vets will find surprises in the game.
“So when you play Scribblenauts for the first time and you spawn a cat, that’s usually when people are like, ‘Oh my god, this game has a cat! That’s awesome!’ Then you type in dog, and the dog appears and starts chasing the cat,” he said. “In Unmasked, we have a Red Lantern that is a cat – Dex-Starr – so if you spawn a dog, and then you spawn a cat, Dex-Starr will appear, and when the dog tries to chase him, he’ll beat up the dog.”
There’s no word on what will happen if you type “keyboard cat” into Maxwell’s notebook in this game.
Per the official site, EA is working on a mobile version of its in-house graphics engine called Frostbite Go.
One of our most exciting current projects is called Frostbite Go, a mobile division empowering EA game developers with Frostbite’s proven excellent workflows and features to bring true Frostbite experiences to all major mobile platforms.
Despite the engine being devoloped to scale down to the mobile platforms, it appears the Wii U is still out of luck. The site notes elsewhere that “diverse targets from XBOX360 and PlayStation 4 to iOS and Android” are supported. EA and DICE have said that the absence of upcoming Wii U versions of Frostbite games was due to technical difficulties in porting the games over to the less robust hardware. As late as last week, DICE technical director Johan Andersson tweeted that they were not able to get the Frostbite engine running on Nintendo’s Wii U hardware which was the reason why they abandoned that effort.
With at least 15 games on EA’s schedule slated to use Frostbite, the Wii U could be left out of many EA games.
It’s been 37 years since Atari made a blocky ball bounce from a paddle to a wall of blocks. Pull up Google Image Search, type in “Atari Breakout” and get ready to waste some time.
Coincidently, (or perhaps not) Google I/O 2013 will be starting tomorrow in San Francisco. The event will showcase what Google has been up to for the past year. The event announcements are rumored to include a push into gaming with something called Google Game Center. This will likely be aimed at creating an unified achievement and matchmaking system in the Google Play ecosystem much like the service already present on iOS.
RIFT is changing to a free-to-play model on June 12th. Rumors had been swirling around Trion World’s MMO for months, but now it’s official. You’ll be able to download and play RIFT without spending a dime as soon as the Empyreal Assault update rolls out.
All players will be able to explore the entire world of Telara for free and will have access to the expanded in-game RIFT Store where a variety of services – mounts, boosts, wardrobe items, and more – will be available for purchase. An optional subscription will still be available that grants a slew of “Patron” benefits and bonuses to maximize the RIFT experience. Trion will celebrate its current and previous subscribers with loyalty and currency rewards for their time spent playing RIFT thus far.
Owners of the original paid client will get additional loot bags and character slots over the regular F2P players. Owners of Storm Legion will unlock the expansion Souls (Harbinger, Tempest, Tactician, and Defiler) on their account permanently.
Twitch, the gaming streaming service, is getting an app for Xbox Live today. Now you can stream StarCraft II onto your TV and trick your friends into thinking you’ve somehow gotten a console port of the game! The Twitch blog notes that the app will only include access to the top 300 channels and will only be available for Gold subscribers. The good news is that it’s Kinect enabled! Wait until your friends see you waving your hands around like a maniac while League of Legends plays on the big screen! You’ll be the hit of the party.
Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb posted that Twitch will get an exclusive broadcast on May 21st after the Xbox press event.
The app will be available to download later today.
