Tax cuts for Australian game developers. It’s not a big ask, and certainly a justified one; the industry rakes in around $136 million a year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We know the last federal government had little interest in the idea, and that Labor senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, promised a committee on the matter if his party was elected. It was.
It seems the Game Developers Association of Australia and the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia want to make sure our current government continues to investigate the issue and as such, the two organisations have joined forces.
Said Tom Crago, Tantalus CEO and GDAA president:
“Australian game developers cannot be expected to be internationally competitive when global market conditions are ‘not level’. We owe it to the companies themselves to offer these incentives and we also need to make an investment into Australia’s ‘smart economy’.”
We know how awesome tax rebates have been for game developers in other countries, so there are no problems as far as logic is concerned. The government just needs to get its act together.
Full release after the jump.
Remember Nyko’s wireless nunchuk controller for the Wii? Seemed kinda pointless to me. Not Nintendo! Thy don’t see it as pointless. They see it as an infringement on their patent designs and trademarks, and as such, are suing Nyko, claiming the company’s Kama Nunchuk “wholly appropriates the novel shape, design, overall appearance and even the colour and materials used in the Nintendo Nunchuk controller”. Nyko’s response? “We have not knowingly violated anyone’s intellectual property and we’re still examining this”. I don’t know whether “we accidentally violated Nintendo’s intellectual property” will hold up in court, guys.
Nintendo Sues Nyko Over Copies of Wii Nunchuk Remote [Bloomberg]
With over 1.1 million hardware units sold in the United States in May, Nintendo has a right to be pleased. Coincidentally, it is! It’s also relatively measured in talking about its success, describing excellent software sales of Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii “healthy” and indicative of a “strong consumer response”.
With seven of the top ten titles on Nintendo platforms and six of those published by the big N itself, we think Nintendo of America’s EVP of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway could stand to sex up sales talk beyond “continued consumer response”. But, hey, we don’t run the place.
Other things Nintendo seems pleased about besides May’s performance is its U.S. lifetime to date sales, with 10.2 million Wiis and over 20 million DSs in American hands. And 5.8 million copies of Wii Play in the wild? We expect the majority of games to have “Wii”, “We” or “Oui” in the title by Summer 2009.
Full and classy Nintendo gloat after the break.
Well, here it is – our first entry in “Game A Week“, an exclusive Kotaku AU feature where you guys come up with ideas for simple games and I try and code them in seven days.
This little guy is called Wizkill. It’s a roguelike, which means it’s nothing but ASCII graphics, letter-shaped monsters, gold and dungeons. Roguelikes are traditionally quite hard and have a steep learning curve. I’ve tried to minimise the latter by limiting the number of keys, removing classes and providing a single goal (killing monsters), but who knows, it might still take a while to come to grips with.
There’s a score component, calculated when you die or hit level 25. Feel free to post your highest score in the comments for this post. Oh, and if you notice any bugs or want to suggest some changes, add them here as well. If there are enough, I’ll make the appropriate tweaks and release a “final” version on Monday.
If you’d like to start playing, you can download the game after the jump. I’ve also included a write-up on the design and development process, and what I’ll be taking across to my next Game A Week project.
Sony fired first with a set of carefully chosen numbers that highlight its U.S. sales performance for the month of May. Responding to NPD sales data, the company was quick to point out that the PlayStation 3 eclipsed Xbox 360 hardware sales, achieving 155% year over year growth. Sony sounded pleased with PSP and PS2 sales, revealing that the latter moved 132,000-plus units in May.
The reason it had such a “solid” month? Enthusiasm! Specifically, enthusiasm for games like Grand Theft Auto IV, Singstar and (wait for it…) Haze. All told, 1.26 million units of PS3 software were sold, with Sony boasting that 32% of PS3 owners have picked up GTA IV.
Other notable Sony percentages include 234%, 6%, 6.7%, 46%, 98%, 20.4%, and 19.2%. Impressive!
Jack Tretton, president and CEO of SCEA said “momentum” twice and bragged about the “prized exclusive” Metal Gear Solid 4 in his official statement. Handcrafted corporate gloating, Sony style, is after the jump.
EA Sports head Peter Moore is not a man to mince words. That’s why we loved him so when he was at Microsoft, he cuts through the BS and gets straight to the point.
In a recent post on his blog over at It’s In The Game, Moore talked up his new studio alluding that EA Sports is primed to have one of the best years in its history. In particular Moore sings the praises of NASCAR, NBA LIVE, Madden and NCAA Football. He’s so sure that this season is going to be unrivaled, in fact, that he’s promising to get a new tattoo if they don’t deliver.
Big talk Moore, but lets put a little reality into this pie-in-the-sky promise. Why not say that if you don’t have an overall Metacritic increase (yes I hate review scores) on all four of those games you’ve failed to deliver and it’s time to ink up? We’ve even found this swell logo for your possible future use. Let us know.
Not Resting on our Laurels [Peter Moore's Official Blog]
Silicon Knights head Denis Dyack writes on his IGN blog that Too Human development is finally coming to an end and that the team expects to deliver a gold master of the Xbox 360 game after squashing a pair of bugs. A positive Dyack writes that “this is likely just days away”. He calls Too Human‘s development “a very rough road” but talks of “staggering” depth and an “awesome experience”, something we look forward to evaluating for ourselves when the game is finally complete.
In even better news, Denis writes that “there will be plenty of time for press to critique Too Human as they will receive evaluation copies well in advance of the release date”. We’re expecting to get a new preview build pretty soon and look forward to spending plenty of time with the game.
End Game Approaches [Silicon Knights Blog]
It looks like Alone in the Dark is going to make some pretty interesting use of the Wii remote and nunchuk, I mean besides letting people drive and beat people with them. This sort of adventure game seems like the perfect fit for that… if it actually works.
