|
|
 |
Archived News:
The
Ilya Chudakov Q&A on Adventure Classic Gaming talks with one of the folks
from Step Creative Group, learning that the Russian developer has once again
shut its doors. In spite of this, they report Akella has expressed a commitment
to completing the much-delayed English edition of Inhabited Island: The
Earthling, Step's latest adventure game based on a science fiction novel by
the Strugatsky brothers. The conversation focuses on the game itself, but they
do also touch upon localization and support issues: To tell you the truth
I do not work in Akella, so I do not know if they take part in the game
localization. But what I know for sure is that we have collected all the
materials to be localized, and made a raw translation to English of all in-game
texts, when I was working in Step Creative Group as a game designer.
From the man bites dog file, the
Ubisoft forums have indications that in order to get around Ubi's own
copy-protection for the Direct2Drive edition of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
Vegas 2, a version of the game cracked by a piracy group may have been,
well, pirated and distributed. An examination of the internals of the executable
allegedly reveals the embedded tag from the pirate group. Thanks Chris.
Part one of a "destruction trailer" from Red Faction: Guerrilla
highlights the physics-based destruction and the stress system Volition is
creating for their shooter sequel, and how this sets the game apart from other
destructible environment games. The narrative in this developer diary also
outlines the issues that go into designing buildings in the game. The movie is
posted on ActionTrip
and AtomicGamer.
Eidos recently unveiled November 21 as the EU release date for Tomb Raider:
Underworld, and now offer November 18 as when to expect the return of Lara
Croft in North America. On a related note, a new trailer from the game is
online. Word is: "This new trailer takes you through the developer Crystal
Dynamics' vision for the game, with commentary from key team members: Erics
Lindstrom (Creative Director), Dan Neuberger (Lead Artist), Rob Pavey (Lead
Programmer) and Harley White-Wiedow (Lead Designer). The trailer reveals new
assets including early footage, screenshots and concept artwork from several of
the game's breathtaking levels." The clip is on
FileFront.
The ATI Drivers & Software page
is where to find new version 8.6 reference drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon series
accelerators.
These release notes outline what's new and different, including OpenGL
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support, OpenGL CrossFireX™ (QUAD)
support, and no reboot required upgrades. Update: These actually came out last month. Sorry about that.
Thanks Ant and Mike Martinez.
Here's the Watchmen trailer
(thanks Kxmode). I've been trying not to get my hopes up, but that looks pretty
perfect, and my hopes have grown so powerful they are now spending time brooding on Mars.
EA to Play in Knights of the Old Republic Portfolio.com's Technology Blog
seems to offer confirmations of a BioWare-developed Star Wars Knights of the
Old Republic MMOG straight from EA boss John Riccitiello (thanks DenonSix),
in what seems like an oddly low-key approach to such a highly anticipated
announcement: N. Evan Van Zelfden in Los Angeles warns, watch out World
of Warcraft. In an interview at E3 this week, Electronic Arts chief executive
John Riccitiello said that EA is working on the next version of Star Wars game
Knights of the Old Republic, and it will most certainly have a massively
multiplayer online component to it.
"We've got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development," said
Riccitiello. The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon.
"And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about -- in
partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly
the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get
closer to telling you about it."
Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online? "Yes,"
he said.
Moving into MMOs is an essential component for any gaming company, and it's a
big part of the reason Vivendi merged with Activision, for that company's World
of Warcraft MMO.
Riccitiello told Portfolio.com that he was interested in owning World of
Warcraft, and that he did discuss it, but it wasn't in the cards. "Because
[Vivendi] couldn't afford control of EA, and I wasn't giving it up."
But EA is firmly on that path now, with a KOTOR MMO, which would sidestep the
consoles owned by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. "Increasingly, people are going
to be talking about direct-to-customer in our business," said Riccitiello. "I
think we'll be talking about it louder than most."
The
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Website announces that
achievements will be added to World of Warcraft with the release of the
Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Here's a bit: World of Warcraft’s
achievements come in several varieties. Some simply require specific actions to
unlock, such as getting a haircut or defeating a member of each race in your
opposing faction in PvP. Others involve a progress bar and require you to do
something several times -- such as give out 10 hugs. Some achievements are
progressive; for example, once you complete an achievement to collect 10 vanity
pets, you might next be asked to collect 25. Finally, meta achievements unlock
when you complete other achievements -- unlocking all World Exploration
achievements (see below) unlocks a World Explorer meta achievement. Some
achievements, including those that involve quests, honorable kills, items
currently in your possession, skills (including professions), exploration, and
reputations, will be applied to your character retroactively.
HanbitSoft: "Flagship Is Selfish And Irresponsible" on Hellgate Guru
translates an article originally written in Korean where HanbitSoft lays into
Flagship management over the uncertain state of the Hellgate: London and
Mythos IPs ( story), and says they are considering legal
action to protect their interests and those of their userbase. Here's a
bit: According to HanbitSoft, they offered several methods and the means
to keep Flagship alive in consideration of the users, but Flagship majorly
lacked in effort. Hanbitsoft already has offered large amounts of investments
but Flagship replied with ridiculous counter-offers and the negotiations went
south. Even so, HanbitSoft continued to make investment offers which were all
rejected, leading to the lay-offs of all of the Flagship employees.
HanbitSoft also stated, “Flagship not only lacked effort, but were only looking
for personal gain. Firing all of the Flagship employees in order to protect the
personal interests of its founding members only shows how selfish and
irresponsible they are.”
IGN has word from Microsoft explaining the absence of PC gaming news at E3,
in spite of the staggering support they are throwing behind their "Games for
Windows" program that has so taken the gaming world by storm. Kevin Unangst of
the Games for Windows program describes the show as "the battle of the
consoles," as if somehow this is unrelated to the fact that they seem to be
de-emphasizing PC games. IGN also points out they've discovered that
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II will have "gold" level Games for Windows
matchmaking support for free out of the box. They question why they learned this
from Relic's community site, rather than a Microsoft announcement, getting the
following response: "Don't confuse a focus on the console at E3 with a lack of
news or impending announcements coming from us on the Windows side. E3
fundamentally is a console show and do you want to compete and rise above the
din or do you want to go on the cadence that we think is important to
communicate that out." While Kevin has "nothing to announce yet" about
whether the premium fee is to be dropped from the GFW program, the explanation
of what's going on with the Dawn of War sequel implies this may be the case:
It was important when we talked to Relic that they be able to bring that
full, unapologetic multiplayer experience to their gamers. They wanted to
announce the game coming to Games for Windows – Live at E3, so we have a
relationship with them and that's what we worked out. You'll continue to see
movement from us on this front relative to what else we may be doing with Games
for Windows – Live sooner than later.
Activision Blizzard to suffer job cuts on mcvuk.com has word that the merger
of Activision and Blizzard will lead to an "all-star team" of developers, but
that "overlaps" will result in "redundancies," meaning that some people are
going to lose their jobs: Here are quotes pulled from their
Thomas
Tippl interview: “With every merger, there is overlap and redundancy,
and so the same will be true here. Of course we’re going to go to our customers
with one face. We don’t need two sales forces,” he explained.
“Having said that, if you look at our industry, it’s rapidly growing – last year
it grew 30 per cent. So over time I expect our headcount to grow.”
“But in the short term we will exterminate some of our overlap through
redundancy – but we will treat people respectfully.”
“We will try to put the best team together – the all-star team. We’ll update
both companies’ skill and experience levels and become a formidable company,” he
added.
Microsoft explains Halo's no-show at E3 game conference on the Los Angeles Times
where they have word from Microsoft on why Bungie's announcement was dropped
from their E3 presentation ( story), in spite of a countdown that
teased the announcement in advance ( story). According to
Microsoft they upset their audience and the folks at Bungie due to time
considerations, but hey, as long as we got to see more of Banjo and Kazooie:
Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, who is
complaining? It sounds like they are planning on giving the game a separate
launch, as they quote MS's Don Mattrick as saying: "We had an embarrassment of
riches. We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event."
Eastern and Central European publisher 1C Company announces they are acquiring
Russian publishing and distributor BUKA: MOSCOW, Russia- July 17, 2008 -
Leading Eastern and Central European publisher 1C Company officially announced
today that it has signed an agreement in which it has acquired one of the
largest Russian publishing and distribution companies, BUKA.
1C and BUKA are two of the most well known brands in the Russian games and
multimedia market. Future cooperation opens new horizons for the strategic
development of both companies.
A merger is currently not planned, but managers of both enterprises will try to
make the best use of the synergy in their publishing, distribution and marketing
activities. This approach will give both 1C and BUKA a chance to develop even
faster, outstripping the market's rate of growth.
"BUKA is one of the oldest players on the Russian game market. I always admired
the company, its corporate culture, staff, management and operational
efficiency," said Boris Nuraliev, Director of 1C Company. "The mutual potential
of 1C and BUKA opens new unique opportunities and will help us to achieve
success on this challenging and rapidly growing market. It will be an honor for
us to develop such a well-known and popular brand."
"We have received offers from several potential buyers, however 1C's advantages
were obvious. 1C is our long-term partner. We have experienced firsthand what
1C's basic principles are - to be honest to partners, customers and employees,"
comments Igor Ustinov, Chairman of Board of Directors of BUKA. "We highly
estimate our staff and the brand that we were developing through all these
years. Therefore one of the main aims for shareholders was to leave the company
in good hands."
A new patch is now available for AVENCAST: Rise of the Mage, updating
ClockStone Software's their fantasy-themed action/RPG to version 1.04. The
multi-language update is available from the
Lighthouse Interactive Website, where they have details on what's included
in the new version.
Joystiq is highlighting a tidbit revealed during the E3 presentations for
Spore, EA Maxis' upcoming life simulation (thanks Mike Martinez). They say the outer
space portion of the game, which producer Thomas Vu refers to as its
role-playing phase, will offer 15-20 hours of gameplay. What this means is that
contrary to most of Maxis' previous games, which have often been likened more to
"toys," Spore will actually have an ending. If that's not enough of a curveball
in and of itself, Vu says the ending will involve a "twist." Here's a prediction
that we'll learn that Bruce Willis has actually been dead through the entire
story.
A direct feed of the E3 trailer for Dragon Age: Origins is now available,
offering a look at actual gameplay from BioWare's upcoming RPG. The clip
features melee combat and magic effects, lots of fire, and an enemy that's just
plain big. The clip is available on Tiscali Games.
The Borderlands presentation video from E3 is online. The clip features
narration, and the footage looks like a ShakyCam shot off a monitor, except it's
exceptionally steady. The references to the controller during the presentation
makes it clear this it a console version of Gearbox's co-op shooter being shown
off. The clip is posted on
AtomicGamer and
FileFront.com.
Just in time for all these E3 movies, my cable bandwidth was quietly upped, and
I am now getting staggering 31 Mb/s downloads, close to 4 MB a second. This
makes it more apparent than ever that in this brave new internet world, my old
1.5 Mb/s connection probably doesn't even qualify as broadband, as it was not
really capable of downloading a lot of these clips, much less streaming them.
Back in the day we had a joke about "Low Ping Bastards," but I think that's much
too kind a description of the connection I'm currently enjoying.
|
Twitter 
