Archived News:
Stardock
announces a changing of the guard, as Derek Paxton has been promoted to vice
president and will be overseeing all future games development and production at
the studio. This is a role previously held by Stardock founder Brad Wardell, who
clarifies for us: "I'm not retiring or anything. We're just in the process of
expanding in a big way." Here's part of the announcement, which says we should
expect new game revelations next month: A modder-turned-studio-leader,
Paxton was most recognized for his work on the Fall from Heaven mod for the
popular Civilizations IV strategy game prior to joining Stardock as lead
designer in 2010. Derek joined Stardock after a decade-long career working with
Fortune 500 company Novell in the technology sector. Since joining Stardock in
2010, Paxton successfully brought to market the last two titles in the Elemental
franchise – both of which earned positive critical receptions from top
international games media and fans.
"Derek has really transformed the game studio," said Brad Wardell, President &
CEO of Stardock. "His experience at managing multiple projects combined with his
amazing design skills has resulted in not just better games but a better working
environment for our teams."
As part of the company’s 20th anniversary this October, Paxton and Stardock
Entertainment will announce a series of new projects from the studio which will
include new titles and more.
"I'm looking forward to the incredible opportunity to lead a studio with a
legacy of creating award-winning strategy games," said Paxton. "Games are a
passion for everyone who works at Stardock Entertainment and it's an honor to be
able to work with such talented developers, artists and designers. I look
forward to continuing the tradition of creating incredible games with the
amazing team at Stardock."
A tweet from
the Battlefield word that beta access for Battlefield 4 is to be had with
preorders of the Digital Deluxe edition of DICE's upcoming military shooter
sequel. They also offer a graphic with system requirements for the game:
A
Kickstarter from developer Effective Evolutions is looking to raise at least
$115,000 to fund development of U55 - END OF THE LINE, an "innovative horror
game" set in present-day Berlin steeped in the lore of H.P. Lovecraft. Here's
a trailer and here's
word: The sole focus of U55-END OF THE LINE is survival. Desperately
seeking for help, the player traverses through Berlin's widely ramified subway
system. Armed only with your smartphone display as your only source of light,
you have to push your way through the dark tunnels, looking for an exit. While
confronting an malevolent force below ground, little does the player know that
they‘ve become a cog in a mechanism that will inevitably change the fate of
mankind once and for all.
Continue here to read the full story.
Indie Czech developer
Keen Software House announces Space Engineers is their second game,
following up 6DOF shooter Miner Wars 2081 with a sandbox game that allows
players to construct space stations, pilot spaceships, and mine asteroids.
This trailer offers
alpha gameplay footage, this
developer blog has some background details, and here's a bit from the
announcement: Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering,
construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space
stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and
perform asteroid mining.
Space Engineers utilizes a realistic volumetric-based physics engine: all
objects can be assembled, disassembled, damaged and destroyed.
Space Engineers is inspired by reality and by how things work. Think about
modern-day NASA technology extrapolated 60 years into the future. Space
Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and doesn't use technologies
that wouldn't be feasible in the near future.
Continue here to read the full story.
Last week it
was revealed that Gearbox Software has picked up the rights to HARDWARE:
Shipbreakers for release as Homeworld: Shipbreakers, a new installment in the
space-based RTS series.
Kotaku notes a
tweet by
Randy Pitchford we missed at the time (thanks nin) where the Gearbox honcho
reveals that this means this is no longer planned as a free-to-play game:
Corridor shooter NeonXSZ is now
available on Desura, offering
Descent-inspired 6DOF gameplay for Windows, OS X, and Linux. This early release
of the alpha version of the game carries a 50% discount, providing players the chance to influence
development going forward, and giving reason to support their
Steam
Greenlight campaign. This
recent trailer
offers a nice look at the game's high-resolution graphics, and
this changelog
has all the details on the new version. Thanks Ant via
LinuxGames. Continue here to read the full story.
GameInformer has video interview with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot talking
about Ubi's publishing strategy as next-gen consoles approach. As noted on
Joystiq, he gives an outlook on sales of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon,
saying the "mini-AAA" title has sold more than one million copies since launch.
This was all via digital distribution, but Guillemot allows for the possibility
of a retail edition of the game, saying "maybe we'll go retail at one point so
we'll be able to achieve a bit more." Given the 1980s throwback style of the
game, we can only hope this is in a huge box, and will include a 100-page
manual, and maybe a cloth map, though 5¼" floppies are probably out of the
question. Thanks nin.
GfK Chart-Track offers their latest tabulations of U.K. game sales. Total War:
ROME II (or as they call it, Rome: Total War II) debuts at number one on the
full-price PC chart and the bargain bin shuffles itself a bit on their
budget PC chart. On the big
all platforms/all prices top 40 the new Total War game is number two as
Saints Row IV retains the top spot, with the console release of Diablo III
coming in at number three. Here's their
write-up: The
sequel to 2004’s ‘Rome: Total War’ tops its predecessor by over 4,000 sales for
week 1 and is the first of two event titles (Tuesday release) in our All Formats
Top 10. Originally released by Activision, Sega have taken over publishing
duties for the much anticipated sequel.
The second Tuesday release shows as a re-entry at No3 with Activision Blizzard’s
‘Diablo III’ making its first outing on Xbox 360 and PS3 following the PC
release in May last year. Ubisoft’s ‘Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist’
(-51%) drops two places to No4 while ‘Disney Infinity’ (-22%) slips a place to
No5. ‘Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition’ (-23%) slips to its lowest position since
launch at No6 but stays ahead of ‘Payday 2’ (+51%) which continues an impressive
week-on-week climb to No7. New at No8 is Sony’s ‘Killzone: Mercenary’ which
becomes the 5th best launch week for a PS Vita title. It’s also the second
outing on a hand-held for the Killzone series following the launch of ‘Killzone:
Liberation’ on PSP in W44 2006. Ubisoft’s ‘Rayman Legends’ (-16%) slips from No6
to No9 although it does receive a slight boost in the form of the PS Vita
version which arrived this week. The final new entry in this week’s Top 10 is a
first for home consoles as ‘Farming Simulator 2013’ arrives for both Xbox 360
and PS3.
Outside the Top 10, last week’s new releases ‘Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm
Reborn’ (-80%) and ‘Madden NFL 25’ (-51%) dip to No11 and No19 respectively.
There’s also a debut in the Top 40 for ‘Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate’ at No35 from
Tecmo Koei.
A new trailer from The
Evil Within is available from Sony in conjunction with the upcoming Tokyo Game
Show. The clip is mostly cinematics, though it also offers a couple of glimpses
of in-game skulking about. There is visible hitching in the clip, and the fade
at the end suggests this may have been cammed off a monitor, though if this is
the case, it is remarkably well-framed and steady. Continue here to read the full story.
Okay, my PC is bugging me with a crashing problem that's so intermittent it's
almost not a problem. I get a full on BSoD about once every week or ten days or
so. There's no warning for this, and there's no pattern that leads up to it that
I've been able to notice. This has happened since I upgraded the machine to
Win7, so it's a fresh software install, and I've since replaced the video card
and cleaned out the case, so it's not the card and it's not heat. The one
hardware element I may be able to identify is that the Win7 upgrade also
included new RAM, so it's possibly related to that, but I would think at some
point this would be identified by a log or something. One other thought is
perhaps I have a memory leak, which would explain the rate at which these occur
(since I hardly ever reboot/shut down). I think I'll investigate this further
today, but if I can't make any progress this may be my excuse for a Haswell
upgrade. It's not an emergency, only happening so often, but this is bothering
me a lot that I can't track it down.
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