Daily News Spin — September 26, 2001 (Wednesday)

New superhero MMOG announced

Cryptic Studios has announced that they'll be publishing City of Heroes in the summer of 2002. From their press release:

City of Heroes is the first superhero themed online RPG and will offer a host of exciting and compelling gameplay features. Players create their own heroes, choosing from hundreds of different powers, skills, abilities, and items and design their own unique costumes. Then they can band together with other players to fight evil, build their own secret headquarters and strive to become the premiere hero group in the city.

Gamers will confront super villains, aliens, madmen, monsters, criminals, and other fearsome foes. They can take on personalized missions and rid the city of dozens of different evil organizations and hundreds of individual enemies. With success players acquire power, wealth, and fame and come to bask in the spotlight and rake in the rewards as their powers and fame grow with each successful mission and every defeated foe.

City of Heroes takes place amongst the skyscrapers, slums, sewers and streets of Paragon City, a sprawling online metropolis that offers unlimited adventure and countless surprises. Players become an integral part of many and varied different ongoing story arcs as the villain groups menace Paragon City and react to player victories and defeats.

Could be cool, but could also be a bit weird. Everyone's a superhero? How's that going to work? We spotted this at GameSpyDaily.

Xbox to rule in South Korea?

Red Herring is suggesting this very thing.

Japanese video game companies like Nintendo and Sony have failed to penetrate the market because of a virtual ban on Japanese products. Many Koreans still resent the 35-year occupation of their country by Japan; many expressed anger when Age of Empires identified the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan as the "Sea of Japan" instead of the "East Sea."

As a result, Microsoft has a chance to play the American card in South Korea. The advantage for the company is that the Xbox will be the first console to exploit high-speed Internet connections. As such, online games created for the Xbox could zero in on the passion for competitive play in the region.

And about this "passion for competitive play" in South Korea?

South Korea has become one of the world's most fascinating games markets over the past few years. The country has only 47 million people, but it boasts 4 million high-speed Internet connections. Online computer games like Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft have sold millions of units there, thanks to the popularity of game playing in the country's 25,000 Internet gaming cafes. StarCraft sales in Korea have even topped sales in the U.S., where the market size is about six times larger.

However, it doesn't look like Microsoft is targetting South Korea initially.

Don Coyner, director of marketing for the Xbox, says that the company's top priorities have to be the U.S., Japanese, and European markets because they account for such a huge proportion of overall sales.

"Korea is huge as a PC market," Mr. Coyner said earlier this year. "But we want to deliver value in the core countries first. After we get up to speed, we can spread out."

One more last and especially unbelievable tidbit.

In May, NCsoft paid $33.4 million in stock and cash for Destination Games, an Austin, Texas-based startup headed by Richard and Robert Garriott and Richard's former colleague Starr Long. These gaming legends are well known for creating and fostering the Ultima series of role-playing games. Now they're being bankrolled by NCsoft, which is collecting a cool $80 million a year in revenues from Lineage.

Destination Games had just started up. They had no product. They probably had no code, even. They just had Garriott and some ex-Origin people and a U.S. presence. That was worth $33 million to NC Soft. Unbelieveable.

Coolio GBA thingy

Sorry for all the technical terms, but check out this "frontlight" that someone's developing for the Game Boy Advance. Doesn't that make the GBA look really, really nice?

Thanks Greg!

Sony confirms PS2 price cut in Europe

Can a US price cut be far behind? Sony's cutting the European price from �260 to �199. We're never sure what an � is, but we think it's more than a dollar and less than a twelve-pack of Schlitz, which we hear is a popular beer in England. Ok, we made that up, but when a nation likes blood pudding, can Schlitz be far behind?

Portable gaming on the upswing

IE Magazine has a look at the growing PDA gaming scene.

While most previous efforts to support a portable software market�beyond Nintendo�s lock with the Game Boy in the dedicated system race�have lacked participation from major publishers, Synovial�s recent deal brings Sega�s familiar brands to portable devices. The first release out of the deal is being called Virtual Game Gear, in reference to Sega�s own handheld game system in the �90s. Synovial will emulate the Game Gear via software that can be loaded on a portable device, which opens up access to a potential library of 350 existing games originally created for Game Gear.

Might be kind of tough to play Sonic on those tiny cell phone screens. That hedgehog can scoot.

Timegate to do MMOG?

Timegate, makers of the very good RTS Kohan, are looking to hire someone with "Working experience with MUDs, MOOs, or massively multiplayer environments. Experience creating and developing persistent world environments (MUDs, MOOs, or massively multiplayer roleplaying games)." They're also looking for a network engineer for help with a "24/7 high-traffic Internet game presence."

Meanwhile, if you're interested in beta testing the new Kohan expansion, Timegate's looking for 100 good men or women.

Sure looks like they're interested in doing an MMOG. Thanks David!

Infogrames loses money

CNET dishes:

Infogrames' operating loss widened to 55.8 million euros ($51.38 million) in the year to June 30, 2001 from a loss of 47.1 million in the same period a year ago. In August the company forecast an operating loss of 50-60 million euros for 2000/01 due to the integration of recent acquisitions.

Its net loss after goodwill writedowns ballooned to 121.3 million euros from a loss of 27.1 million, which exceeded some estimates. It was mostly due to a 2.9 million euro tax charge tied to acounting changes, 20.6 million euros in goodwill writedowns and nine million euros in financial charges.

Infogrames is aiming for profitability this year, just like Amazon.com.

3am

Take Two is repackaging Myth II and tossing in a lot of fan mods and calling it Myth II Worlds. No pricing or availability yet.

An open letter to WWIIO players from the head of Playnet. Short version: "Please stay!" Long version's here.

Tothegame has five exclusive screenshots of Heroes of Might and Magic IV.

GameSpy's passed the two million mark in downloads of its game-matching software.

You can get into the open beta of Motor City Online if you're willing to brave the 400 meg download. Gentlemen, start your modems.

Blizzard has announced that the Diablo Battlechest will contain Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II: LOD, and an expanded strategy guide and will sell for $50.

The world's first cyborg fights back against intrusive technology, according to the NY Times. This guy is, as we used to say many years ago, a trip.

Dr. Mann fights technology with technology, wearing computers on his body and cameras in his glasses so he can "shoot back" by recording everything he sees. The billboards and advertisements posted on every public surface are a form of "attention theft," he says, so he has invented technology that replaces these messages with whatever he would like to see. When he is wearing his "eyetap" glasses, which project an image onto the retina of his eye, a condom ad in a bathroom becomes a picture of a waterfall.

"If the eye is the window of the soul," he argues, "then that window needs a shade. If the brain is a computer, then the eye is an open port, an unsecured opening against hackers."

Interesting read. Spotted this at Blues.

Click here to read yesterday's news