Activision’s Dan Amrich spoke about the various complicated licensing issues surrounding the iconic 1960’s spy shooter No One Lives Forever, revealing that he doesn’t know who currently owns the license. In fact, no one at Activision or Monolith seems to know.
“The person who I normally talk to about that stuff does not believe that we currently have the rights,” said Amrich. “They’ve never seen it. They’ve never been given the permission to put that stuff on Good Old Games. They basically said, ‘if we had it, I would love to have been able to reissue those games.'”
Fans of the hard to find shooter have asked for it to be made available again in digital form for years.
Blizzard has purchased the IGN Pro League and will be bringing IPL staff onboard to bring web and mobile content in support of Blizzard games.
“This new team will help us to further develop the rich media experiences that extend the fun and engagement of our games online,” said Itzik Ben-Bassat, Blizzard’s executive vice president of publishing. “This is a team of passionate gamers with a proven track record, and we’re looking forward to now leveraging their expertise and technology to support a variety of online efforts.”
Blizzard had denied any intent to purchase the IPL after IGN announced that they would cancel the IPL 6 tournament that was previously scheduled for Mar 28th.
Paul Thurrott, technology blogger and media analyst for everything Windows, has a few things to say about the next Microsoft console. Following the Twitter incident with Adam Orth, Thurrott confirmed that he’s been told by his sources that the next Xbox will require an always-on internet connection.
More to the point, I think that an always-on Xbox is directly in keeping with Microsoft’s strategy for all next-generation platforms, including Windows Phone (all versions) and Windows 8/RT, which are designed to work as if you are simply connected all the time. Yes, they do work offline, of course. But the apps platform on these systems – which will be replicated on the Windows 8-based next Xbox – assumes a connection. Microsoft’s new platforms are integrated conduits for online services.
He also addressed this issue in his latest What the Tech podcast and talked about pricing strategies he believes Microsoft will use.
The next Xbox is code-named Durango. And we have talked for a while about this notion that there might be another version of the Xbox that was just aimed at entertainment – a non-gaming device. That device was code-named Yumo and they’re not making it. They may make one in the future, but it’s not happening this year.
So the new Xbox that comes out this year will just be the Xbox. I mentioned before that they’re also going to sell a new Xbox 360 code-named Stingray that will be $99. And you might look at that as two things: backwards compatibility, obviously, suggesting – I don’t actually know this for a fact, but based on the fact that they’re making one – I don’t think that the new Xbox will play 360 games. But that I don’t actually know. That I’m guessing. But, the other one is that, $99, that’s a real cool price. And so we know that the Xbox 360 does Netflix, Hulu Plus… and you can make the argument that it’s kind of a low cost entertainment device, too.
Durango is going to be expensive, you know $500, $300 for the subscription, that kind of thing.
This week, the French studio that made the Trackmania games releases Shootmania Storm. As much as I’d like to commend the community support and wild track construction that made Trackmania stand out, I don’t see how that’s supposed to work for an online multiplayer shooter that looks like pretty much any other generic shooter since Unreal Tournament. The only other threat to your wallet this week is a map pack for Halo 4. I nearly fell asleep while typing that.
Microsoft announced that it has sold its Mediaroom IPTV platform to Ericsson allowing Microsoft to refocus its consumer TV strategy on Xbox.
With the sale of Mediaroom, Microsoft is dedicating all TV resources to Xbox in a continued mission to make it the premium entertainment service that delivers all the games and entertainment consumers want – whether on a console, phone, PC or tablet. And with 76 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world with 46 million Xbox LIVE members, it is a mission that gets us out of bed in the morning.
It is not a mission that we can achieve alone. We want to partner with the industry to deliver the next wave of innovation in games and consumer entertainment. We will partner with content creators, studios, labels, networks, content aggregators, operators and distributors to make this happen. We believe the future of home entertainment is one where TV becomes more simple, tailored and intelligent. We believe the best is yet to come for this industry.
Our vision and energy for the future of entertainment is more focused than ever. Stay tuned.
This week we see the R-rated, CG-less, soul-swallowing, horror reboot, Evil Dead. At the 54-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 is about smoke.
Next week: The Place beyond the Pines
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Two highly publicized role-playing game Kickstarter campaigns were recently funded. Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar raised $1.9 million which allowed backers to hit stretch goals including pets, seasonal weather, and a prequel novel written by Tracy Hickman. InXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera raised over $4 million dollars, becoming the most funded game Kickstarter ever. Stretch goals reached for Torment included the ability to create male or female player characters and writing contributions from Monte Cook and Chris Avellone.
Both games are tentatively scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014.
I remember hearing an odd sound in the wind at certain points in Tomb Raider, as if the wind was blowing over broken glass pipes, as if someone was running a wetted finger along the rim of a wineglass. It sounded almost like stringed instruments playing a single keening note, but very faintly. It was off somehow, unresolved, eerie. It didn’t belong. It might have even been a music cue. So much of Tomb Raider’s music is subtle.
And what I most remember about that sound is that I’d heard it before. It was from some other movie or game. Where did I hear that? I couldn’t figure it out. Until today.
After the jump, mystery solved Continue reading →
Microsoft officially responded to questions about a series of posts that Adam Orth, a Creative Director at Microsoft Studios, made on Twitter regarding the rumored always online requirement of the next Xbox console.
“We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.”
Orth had stated on Twitter that his exchange was part of regular informal lunchtime banter with Manveer Heir, a Senior Gameplay Designer at BioWare, but that didn’t stop gamers from using the posts as proof that Microsoft would require an internet connection to play games on the next console. The conversation included the following:
Adam Orth: Sorry, I don’t get the drama around having an “always on” console. Every device now is “always on”. That’s the world we live in.
Manveer Heir: Did you learn nothing from Diablo III or SimCity? You know some people’s internet goes out right? Deal with it is a shitty reason.
Adam Orth: Electricity goes out too.
Manveer Heir: You’ve lived in LA, SF, Seattle… very connected places. Try living in Janesville, WI or Blacksburg, VA
Adam Orth: Why on earth would I live there?
Orth’s Twitter account has since been made private.
And the results are in for the Nemo’s War Tom vs Bruce, in which me and Bruce Geryk played a year in the life of Captain Nemo. The graphics (pictured) may not look like much, but the soundtrack is amazing. The game starts here.
When you die in Defiance, you can rez yourself every so often. If you’ve self-rezzed recently, then other players can rez you so you don’t lose any of your spacebucks. It’s very forgiving. Death is a non-event, partly because it happens so rarely and partly because it doesn’t matter one whit when it happens. Basically, if you have any questions about how Defiance works, just imagine Borderlands as an MMO without a subscription fee and without Gearbox’s loving care.
So there I am, doing one of the story missions alongside the creepy Grant Bowler character model (pictured), fighting more of those bugs — there are only about two or three kinds of things you shoot in the first 20 hours of Defiance — and I get killed. I’m crawling around on the ground, bleeding out, my vision fading. And there’s Grant Bowler. Grant Bowler played Richard Burton next to Lindsey Lohan’s Elizabeth Taylor. Grant Bowler played Randian hero slash steel baron Hank Rearden in the Atlas Shrugged movie that no one saw. Grant Bowler played someone named “Cooter” in True Blood. And now Grant Bowler is standing on top of me, plinking away at bugs, not rezzing me. I bleed out and die and have to pay 180 spacebucks to rez myself.
In Gears of War: Judgement, even Colonel Loomis, the a-hole officer who all but twirls his mustache as he court-martials the pluckily heroic gears, will rez you during the last mission. But Grant Bowler? He can’t be bothered. Thanks, Grant. I hope you’re more helpful to your companions on the Defiance TV show, which starts next week.
The more important thing I learned in the Defiance game is that you can make an entire open world around shooting a gun and not much else. As long as there’s enough shooter, and enough guns, you don’t really need anything else. Defiance is, in many ways, an absolutely miserable half-assed amateurish attempt at game design that I can’t stop playing.
In response to The Consumerist’s 2013 Worst Company in America poll, which appears to be on-track for an EA “win” for the second year in a row, Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore defends EA and points out that some of the poll responders may be uninformed or overstating their case. He concedes that EA “can do better” but suggests that EA catches more flak because of its enormous success.
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.
EA is currently facing off against Ticketmaster in the bracket.
Warren Spector reflects on his time at Disney to GamesIndustry International and talks about Junction Point, Oswald, and what’s next for him now that he’s no longer in the Mickey Mouse Club.
Well, I’ve learned that I don’t play politics very well, that’s for sure, and I’m not great with bosses, generally. I’ve learned that anyone in the game business who thinks they understand how big, publicly traded companies work because they’ve worked for EA or something have NO CLUE. Disney’s a BIG company, and things change when you have that many divisions and employees. I spent a lot of time saying to myself, ‘There has to be a reason for this… There has to be a reason for this…’ I just didn’t get how a lot of decisions got made – but I think that was my problem, not Disney’s. Overall, the company’s pretty amazing.
The closure of the studio? I don’t know that I learned much from that, to tell the truth. I don’t really understand it, but it is what it is. Junction Point had a good eight year run. We built a great team. We worked on a bunch of cool stuff, even if a lot of it didn’t see the light of day (Sleeping Giants… Ninja Gold… some other stuff I can’t talk about). And we shipped two triple-A titles which, Metacritic notwithstanding, sold better than any games I’ve ever worked on and about which I received more – and more heartfelt – fan mail than I’ve ever received. I’m good with all that.
Congratulations, Blizzard! StarCraft beats the NHL. I guess that’s something, right? Mike Morhaime and Itzik Ben-Bassat told PC Gamer that they could see their eSport favorite support a full 24-hour broadcast channel five years from now.
We were just told the other day that by numbers, StarCraft is bigger than the NHL. If you look just as the last month, we had several live broadcasts, MLG Dallas with record breaking concurrent viewers. Even the Heart of the Swarm release was really successful, with high viewership numbers.
The numbers this year are double the numbers of last year, and we hope to see this trend continuing. If we’re able to double these numbers again next year, we’re getting into very interesting mass market entertainment numbers – especially in the US.
Continue reading →
