The researchers at Electronic Entertainment Design and…Research have been looking at console game sales patterns. Looking at how long it takes a game to enter “price protection”, which is a term used for when a publisher – having noticed a game isn’t selling very well – lowers the wholesale cost of a game so that retailers can keep it on the shelves at full price, even when the public are ignoring it. What they’ve found is that this practice occurs for 7.5% of 360 games. And 9.09% of PS3 games. But the Wii? It happens for 15.1% of titles.
Fancy pre-rendered sequences? HAH. Droning developer diariy talkovers? NO THANK YOU. No, this one’s pure gameplay. Enjoy.
If you hadn’t caught on when their boss resigned, they lost a ton of money or they started firing a ton of people, maybe we need to spell it out for you: once-proud publisher Midway are in trouble. Serious trouble. So much trouble, in fact, that on November 14 they got a letter from the New York Stock Exchange, threatening the company that they’d be removed from the exchange if they can’t sort themselves out in the next six months. Midway said, in a nutshell, “yes sir, we’ll sort ourselves out”, despite the fact they’ve spent the past 24 months doing little but making things worse.
Continuing the Street Fighter being unleashed by Capcom over the next few months is a special Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix themed Uno deck for the wildly popular Xbox Live Uno game. The deck adds Sagat’s stage from the game as the backdrop, places Street Fighter characters on the cards with animated moves on special cards, and adds a whole new card to the mix – the Hadoken card. When someone plays Hadoken, they choose a player. That player must draw cards until they pick up a block or jump card.
Let’s see, let’s see, what’s in the PAL store today…hrm, not much, unless you’re a big spender on Rock Band/GH tunes. If you are, GREAT, if not, there’s the offensively-priced Need for Speed content, some LittleBigPlanet costume stuff and…oh! There’s a LocoRoco 2 demo. Neat. Oh! And the PS1 version of SimCity 2000. Also neat. So not all bad, then.
Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes, narrative designer Andrew Walsh, and level designer Michael McIntyre discuss the challenges of balancing a rich, immersive story with the open-world nature of the new game. Past PoP games have been strictly linear affairs, making it much easier to know how long the characters have been together, what they’ve already accomplished, etc. I think their solution is rather interesting, but of course I’ll have to see it in practice.
Back when we thought the Large Hadron Collider was going to kill us all, instead of just hum for a few days then break down, we learned that an emergency package had been sent to the site. Within, everything that Gordon Freeman needed to save us from the horrors of an alien-spewing vortex. At the time, it was a cute joke, but there was always the lingering understanding that nobody at the LHC would actually get it. The package, or the joke. Turns out they did! Sandro Bonacini, who works there, got the joke, and eventually the package as well. He’s Gordon. Stefano Michelis also got the joke, and for his troubles, is about to get whacked. Oh, those wacky scientists.
Not much here in this trailer for the upcoming expansion that’ll look any different to Company of Heroes fans, but the emphasis on driving right up to buildings then shooting them must be indicative of something. Maybe the Krauts liked to see the whites in the building’s eyes before they blew ‘em up, who knows.
If you’ve ever read a copy of EGM or popped over to 1UP, you’ll know the name James Mielke. Guy’s been with Ziff Davis for a while now, and is currently Editor-in-Chief over at 1UP.com. Anyway, he recently proposed to his girlfriend. But didn’t just do the bended-knee thing. He went all video game nerd, roping in a couple of “friends” to help him make things special. Those friends? None other than composer Nobuo Uematsu and designer Yoshitaka Amano, both most famous for their work on the Final Fantasy series. Amano designed the ring (pictured), Uematsu a melody that Mielke had playing when he proposed. Girlfriend said yes, mission accomplished, thousands of FInal Fantasy nerds the world over find themselves getting all misty-eyed.
Howard Scott Warshaw, creator of Yars’ Revenge, has been tracking down the former game developers for the original Atari, the 70s company that gave us all of those great (and not so great) 2600 games. The resulting video interviews, Once Upon Atari, give us a glimpse into the chaotic, bizarre and drug-filled world of game development in the decade of sex, drugs and game development.
