Archived News:
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Website has news that the beta test for
Mythic's imminent MMORPG is now open to all applicants in North America,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. According to the
Warhammer Online Beta Page
they have received nearly 900,000 applications so far, and word is: "The Open
Beta will be level capped and content restricted. You will be allowed to choose
any of the game's 20 unique careers and advance through rank 20. You will also
be free to explore and battle across Tiers 1 and 2 of each army's homeland.
Please note that any characters created during the Open Beta will NOT carry over
into the live game as they will be wiped from the servers." Thanks
Massively. Update: Though it says "open beta," this is currently
still only available for closed beta participants and preorder customers at this
time. Also, The European
Warhammer
Online Website has word that registration for European applicants is
temporarily unavailable due to server maintenance. Thanks Ant.
As noted in
last week's Spore shipping announcement ( story), the global
rollout of the life simulation is now complete, as the game should be appearing
in North American stores today. On related notes, there's a
post-release Spore
interview on Shacknews talking with Morgan Roarty about how the game's
design evolved over the course of development and an interview with
Will Wright on MTV Multiplayer getting the game's designer's reaction to
early reviews, and learning about his personal playing style.
A
thread on EA's UK Spore Support Forum explores an issue with account
creation in EA's just-released life simulation. Users are having difficulty
creating more than one account for Spore, even though the manual states: "you
may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game." There are
differing opinions about what EA is actually promising with that statement, with
some suggesting that this may still require purchase of another copy of the game
for a new CD key, with others feeling they are being deprived of a promised
feature. According to one post one EA support rep said they were escalating
this question to their supervisor, suggesting even EA support is not clear on
how this should work. Thanks Stemot.
There's a
John Carmack Q&A on Computer and Video Games talking about Quake Live and
related topics in an interview that also gets responses from id executive
producer Marty Stratton. No conversation with the id Software Technical Director
is complete these days without asking his thoughts on the uncertain state of PC
gaming, and this one prompts an answer saying that developers need to appreciate "the PC as
a unique platform rather than a gaming machine that happens to be in your den
rather than your living room." He goes on to explain: "The traditional
big-budget, media-rich, single-player type games like we used to make at id
Software through to Doom 3, all that really has to be done cross-platform on the
consoles now, to basically cover the development expenses for something like
that. But the PC still has huge success stories, with things like The Sims 2 and
World of Warcraft, which have been bigger successes than any console game has
ever been, or possibly ever could be in the near future. At the end of the day,
you have to look at the PC as a platform with its own strengths and weaknesses."
Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft’s video game console woes on
VentureBeat is an extremely in-depth article by Dean Takahashi looking at
the hardware problems on the Xbox 360 that result in
the notorious "red ring of death." The article offers a pretty scathing look at Microsoft's approach to
the situation, saying they were well aware of hardware issues before launch, but
were too intent on beating the competition to the market to address them
properly, instead counting on their ability to improve upon the design as they
went along, but failing to allocate enough resources to properly do this. This
prompts a quote from an anonymous veteran manufacturing executive saying:
“Fundamentally, their thinking shows that they are a software company at heart.
They put something out and figure they can fix it with the next patch or come up
with a bug fix." The article talks about the extent of these hardware problems, and
Microsoft's extreme resistance to admitting to the problem, and even now
Takahashi says he contacted MS for comment on 35 specific points from the
article, and received a statement in reply saying: "This topic has already been
covered extensively in the media. This new story repeats old information, and
contains rumors and innuendo from anonymous sources, attempting to create a new
sensational angle, and is highly irresponsible." Thanks Mike Martinez and
Gizmodo.
This 4D Rulers Press Release announces
a new plan for the independent developer to cease attempting to compete with AAA
developers in the first-person shooter genre and to turn their focus towards
casual gaming. They outline a proposal to create Gore Arcade, a simple top-down
shooter based on the Gore universe. 4D Rulers is seeking a relatively modest
investment to create this game, and proposing a generous royalty arrangement
they say should net a 400% return.
Gametrailers has a
Jumpgate Evolution movie from PAX 2008 showing off some dogfighting in an
asteroid field from NetDevil's upcoming space MMOG remake. Thanks
Massively.
Tackle footballl is back, as today is opening day for most of the NFL. This is
why Thursday games like the Giants played this week bug me, by Sunday it already
feels like your team has the week off. Of course it was pretty sweet having sole
possession of the best record in the entire league, even if that only lasted
three days.
R.I.P.: Silent
movie star Page dies at 98.
|
Twitter 
