Daily News Spin — May 7, 2001 (Monday)

Norm Koger to form new game company?

Fatbabies has this repost of comments attributed to Norm Koger about the recent upheavals at Talonsoft:

"Actually, remember what I said about Jim's reason for leaving Take-2? Nothing is official yet and I could still end up going the independent route, but at the moment it appears that Jim, Tim Ardoin (a very sharp ex-TS 3d programmer), and I (perhaps one or two others) will be forming a new game company focusing entirely on wargames. The technology rolls on - but think of this as a kind of reincarnation of the "old" TalonSoft. I suggested that a phoenix might make a good corporate logo. Jim didn't seem very impressed. He fired back with a joke about calling it "Clawsoft". At least, I think it was a joke..."

EA.com and AOL part ways?

Another story from Fatbabies. They're reporting that AOL has pulled out of their deal with EA.com. If true, this puts even more pressure on EA's online game division, which seems to be foundering a bit right now.

With many of EA.com's high quality content still years from debuting, and a continually slowly economy, business development executives at AOL have decided to "Explore new avenues of online gaming entertainment." EA.com executives are said to view the separation as "amicable" as they are poised to abandon small games in favor of the more lucrative massive-multiplayer titles.

Of course they just canned Ultima Online 2, so their committment to massively multiplayer games doesn't seem that firm, either.

Ubi Soft to publish Planetside in overseas

Ubi Soft has signed a deal with Sony Entertainment Online to distribute Planetside in Europe, Australia, and Japan. Besides this news, the press release notes that the release date for Planetside is not set for the second quarter of 2002. Previously, the game was scheduled for release this year.

Ziff Davis Media to lay off 50

We have no idea if this affects Computer Gaming World magazine, but the New York Post is reporting that Ziff will lay off 50 workers. They currently have about 1000. The reason seems to be the ad sales slump.

Last year, Ad Scope estimated that Ziff Davis saw ad pages on its 14 titles tumble 18.5 percent to 21,050 pages, while revenues slumped 13 percent to $508.8 million.

In the first quarter of this year, the ad slide worsened. Pages tumbled 28.7 percent to 4,149, while revenues fell 19.8 percent to $105.7 million.

That's a significant decline.

Games on the "Big Screen"

Here's a bit of an odd one. UCI is considering letting some movie theatre screens be used for gaming, according to this Independant news story.

UCI, the cinema group jointly owned by Paramount and Universal, is looking to open up its big screens to computer games players and the business market in a bid to boost revenues.

The cinema chain is reviewing plans to provide a wider range of non-film activities � such as video games and televised conferencing services � on the big screen.

Game testers

CNN has an article looking at game testers.

Curtis Creamer doesn't remember who discovered it, but suddenly everybody was using the big gun.

It was early last year, and eight game testers, including the 34-year-old Creamer, were putting the air-war game "Crimson Skies" through its paces. Before long, they all figured out that when you paired the highest-caliber gun with the biggest bomber -- and flew it upside down -- you could blow away everything in sight. The testers called the game's developers into the room at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. "All you have to do is take this plane, load it with the 50-caliber, fly close to the ground and you're just killing everybody!" Creamer yelled.

3am

CGO has a roundup of April's gaming news called The Historical Record.

CGO also has interviewed Dungeon and Dragon legend Gary Gygax. It's part of the new Computer Games Magazine which hasn't hit the stands yet.

Gamespot has profiled Strategy First, a game publisher who's been on something of a roll lately with quality titles like Kohan and Europas Universalis.

A new trailer for the Final Fantasy movie has been released.

Tecmo's ranking the Xbox as third on their list of platforms they want to develop for, even though Dead or Alive 3 will be an Xbox exclusive, according to this story at Computer and Videogame News.

Play Mysty for me. Myst 3: Exile should be arriving in stores today.

Microsoft has suspended the subscription plan they want to move to for Office XP for the rest of this year.

Click here to read yesterday's news