Daily News Spin — May 2, 2001 (Wednesday)

Microsoft locks up Matrix exclusive

Microsoft has lent Interplay $5 million to make the Matrix game. In return, Interplay has agreed to terms that will make the game an Xbox exclusive for six months, and the Xbox will be the only platform with multiplayer options. GameSPyDaily has a good story with all the details.

Sounds like a good deal for both Interplay and Microsoft, though we're not thrilled by having to wait six months for a PC version. Thanks also to Jason for pointing out this story.

Testing...1...2...3

Interplay QA pro Joe Norris tells us all about what it's like to be a tester. To borrow from Mister T, we pity the poor fool who had to test Messiah!

First off, testing, real testing, is more than sitting around playing the game. It is about creating a product of known quality. What does that mean - Known Quality? It means that QA personal acknowledge that it may be impossible to find every single problem. What QA strives for is to produce a product that has a certain level of quality, and knowing, to the best of their ability what that level is.

We spotted this link at Joystick101.org.

Sierra is foxy

Man, is that a stupid headline or what? Anyway, Sierra has grabbed the rights to publish Fox Interactive titles. You may remember that Fox decided they didn't want to be a game publisher after they got hammered in the marketplace and lost money. According to this Eurogamer news story, Sierra will publish the following titles:

Titles included in the deal will range from a pair of new Die Hard titles and a game based on Fox TV show COPS to the Lithtech powered Aliens vs Predator 2 and a previously unannounced sequel to No One Lives Forever.

So Sierra's doing a NOLF sequel as well as Jonny Drama.

The Pirates of Orion

They're not the masters, but just some hard-working pirates. Interplay has announced a mission pack for Starfleet Command 2, proving that you don't really have to finish the original game before you start churning out mission packs.

Currently in development, Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates is a stand-alone mission pack that adds a new storyline and significant new features to the Star Trek: Starfleet Command series and will allow gamers the unique experience of playing as the ruthless Orion Pirates for the first time. Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates is scheduled for release in Q2, 2001

We suppose that the "unique experience" won't include a working Dynaverse.

3am

Computer Gaming World's William O'Neal is used as an example of someone with high-speed net access in this story in The Standard.

Gamasutra has an interesting interview with Will Wright.

Arithmetic Studios has been formed by an ex-Digital Anvil employee Robert Holm. They'll make Xbox and PC games. Everyone laughed at Ion Storm, but Digital Anvil is a much larger farce. We bet Microsoft wishes they hadn't sunk $20 million into them. We's also love to know just how that money was spent. They sure burned through it exceptionally fast.

CNET announced their quarterly results yesterday. They lost $11 million for the quarter and expect to lose up to $55 million for the year. They also said that they do not expect the advertising market to rebound this year, which is bad news for websites hanging by a thread.

GameSpy has posted the latest GameSpin.

This is funny. The Onion has a story about a gamer's long hard day of playing games. Thanks Andrew!

It's not about games, but it is amusing. It's the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History and man, are some of them dumb! Thanks Tim!

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