With its big, bright screen, ability to sense touch and motion, and controls that mimic a home video game’s, Sony’s Playstation Vita delivers the sort of gaming that approaches what you might expect to experience in your den. But is that what gamers still want? More »
Excerpts from A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games And Their Players by Jesper Juul. More »
In an essay for Gamasutra last week, academic Lewis Pulsipher mused that games have become so complex as to feel like work, and the stratification of hardcore and casual gamers puts games in a far less inclusive posture than other entertainment. More »
Last weekend, the UK network Bravo – unrelated to the U.S. channel, BTW – launched something called “Game Face,” tilted toward casual gamers, presumably ones with wads of disposable income. More »
With more than 125 million copies sold on more than 30 platforms, Tetris is rolling into its 25th Anniversary with a bright future. More »
Sooner or later someone is going to have to give us a definitive answer in the “will gaming survive the recession” debate. This week, ‘analysts’ reckon that the answer for casual gaming is ‘maybe not’.
The casual gaming business could look to netbooks – those little tiny wee PCs like the ASUS Eee – to give the genre a boost, according to analysts.
Sega has quietly launched the beta version of their online gaming portal / social networking site PlaySega.com. The site features a handful of casual games to poke at, including Sonic at the Olympic Games, which seems to be a port of the mobile phone version of the Official Beijing Olympics tie-in. Visitors to the site will be able to create their own personalised escape using items purchased through the website’s ring currency, which you must play games to earn. I’ve already created my own escape, which is apparently a Swiss Chalet containing a small naked boy. Alrighty.
Mike Capps, el presidente of Epic Games, recently spoke at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle, saying that his company had lost some of its “nimbleness” as a blockbuster producing studio. With massive titles like Gears of War and Unreal Tournament on its plate, its looking to explore new franchises on the cheap, specifically through comic books.
Develop reports that Capps also expressed plans to utilise the recently purchased Chair Entertainment to increase its stable of intellectual property. “We want to learn from casual games”, he’s quoted as saying, telling casual game developers on hand “we’re really jealous of the things you do and we’re going to steal all your ideas.”
He then chainsawed them all in half and took their brains back to Epic Games science labs for further study.
Epic Games looks to comic books for building new IP [Develop]
