Ladies, gentleman and cyber geeks; the humble 3 and a half inch floppy is no more. In a move that will shock few and actually affect even fewer, Sony have revealed their intentions to cease production and sales of the aged storage format in Japan, effectively calling time on the floppy’s very existence. With Sony – the last major manufacturer of the 3.5″ wonder – all set to pull the trigger in March 2011, the firm’s …
There is going to be a new X-COM game!
And they’ve taken the hyphen out so it’s just XCOM now!
And it’s going to be developed by the very people we all thought it would!
Except not! At all! Nor will it resemble past X-COMs in any way, shape, or form!
Update: it transpires that XCOM is to be developed by Irrational’s other red-headed stepchild, 2K Australia.
Reading PCGamer today, new information about Portal 2 has begun to rear its head from the Valve parapet, with the game now taking place several hundred years after the first. The new changes announced so far include a two-player co-operative mode in addition to the single player, while players can now take advantage of physical effects that “bleed” through portals, such as air from vents or the use of tractor beams through the portals themselves …
Following on from Steerpike’s excellent news grabs relating to Infinity Ward’s internal staffing squabbles and to continue the sorry saga, you may not be surprised to hear that Jason West and Vincent Zampella have wasted no time in establishing a new studio under the dreary yet appropriate name of Respawn Entertainment. To pile further media misery onto Activision/Blizzard, two more of Infinity Ward’s staff are heading for the exits today, bringing the grand total to …
If you ever thought that the game buying public couldn’t possibly stoop any lower, you’ll be pleased to hear that Just Dance for the Wii has once again embedded itself at the top of the UK sales chart, toppling Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in the process. Not only did it surpass Bioshock 2, Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2 in the sales charts several months prior, it seems that this behemoth simply knows no bounds. No …
Wow. This is some seriously shocking shit, people. I mean… just… wow. It would seem that there’s going to be a Gears of War 3. And, like, it’s going to be a game. And a sequel to Gears of War 2 and everything. I bet there’ll be stop-and-pop gunplay in it, and snappy dialogue. And a giant black man nicknamed Cole Train. 1UP breathlessly reports that Gears 3 was accidentally announced due to some glitch …
I am really busy at work, which makes me sad. But developed-by-one-dude-in-Finland Sweden procedurally generated MMO Love was released today, which makes me happy. Even though I don’t play MMOs. Eskil Steenberg made Love all by his lonesome. He’s just one little guy! That’s pretty impressive. Part combat, part collective base-building, Love’s unique visual style and dreamy atmosphere – not to mention the fact that it was made by one little tiny person, have ensured …
For those of you not in the know about British politics, the Chancellor to the Labour Party, Alistair Darling (that’s the guy who controls all the money), has today announced the budget for 2010. Alongside a raft of half measures to cut our one trillion pound deficit (the government will borrow less than we expected this year, down from the £178 billion we expected- hurrah!) he has also announced, and acknowledge that: “the creative industries, …
Adelaide Now reports that South Australia Attorney General and game-hater Michael Atkinson has announced that he will leave Parliament in 2014, the time of the next election. Apparently the international outrage over Atkinson’s proposal to require – under penalty of a fine – that any Australian posting anything to a comment, blog, or forum be required to provide his or her true name and physical address prompted him to “fall on his sword,” as the …
You would not believe how many people – on a daily basis – assure me that videogames are no longer in serious jeopardy of being censored, content regulated, or banned outright. Tell that to Australia. Or, if you prefer, you can now tell it to Switzerland, which today passed long-feared legislation allowing Parliament to ban games that require “cruel acts of violence against humans and humanlike creatures for game success.” These are nations with free …
True story: since playing Heavy Rain I have heard the name “Jason” so many times that it has lost all meaning. It now registers simply as a blurred noise in my head, like the distant ringing of somebody else’s telephone or a car alarm down the street. Now, I loved Heavy Rain, but some of the voice acting was just awful. Press X to Jason pays homage to that with this simple flash game, which …
In an odd and eerie parallel to the recent Activision/Blizzard-fueled enema of Infinity Ward, Gamasutra reports that Quest Online, developer and publisher of the MMO Alganon, fired President/Founder Dave Allen for “insubordination” and now has new leadership. In the form of Derek Smart.
So in the wake of their bosses getting fired under increasingly suspicious circumstances, analysts ranging from me to Michael Pachter have predicted mass departures from Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward. Yet no one has left. A guy I know who’s in a position to be the bearer of such news tells me that the reason no one has left is because owner Activision/Blizzard still hasn’t paid Infinity Ward any royalties – not a dime – for the …
So check this out. It would seem some large and scary dudes showed up at Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward’s Encino offices and… lurked. Apparently they’re a gift to the studio from owner and industry goliath Activision/Blizzard. Meanwhile two of the company’s top dogs, Vince Zampella and Jason West, weren’t in the office – they were at Activision. In a meeting. Now we hear that CTO/CCO West, at least, has been fired. Activision recently made …
I was talking about Heavy Rain with MrLipid the other day and he asked me how I thought it’d wind up performing. It’s kind of a tricky question for this game, because general consensus seemed to be it’d either do quite well or go down in flames. I hedged my bets and said it would probably move a million units in the United States, which is very good – not blockbuster, but no one at …