dice 2008
News
EA CEO Calls Spore The Greatest Creative Risk In The Industry
11:40AM Michael McWhertor | John Ricitiello started his DICE keynote with a list of games he’s currently playing—Burnout Paradise, BioShock, Portal. The one game he’s playing that we’re not is Spore, a title he said he’d become “fixated” on. While John got the crowd up to speed on his gaming chops, he admitted “Deep down, I’m a business guy.” That helps explain Riccitiello’s publicly expressed hesitance about the ultimate success of the Will Wright “SimEverything” game. More »
Viva Pinata Into The Pixel Piece Fetches Big Bucks
11:20AM Michael McWhertor | The Into The Pixel art showcase at DICE featured plenty of wonderful artwork from beloved games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life 2 and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids, each up for auction. The piece that looked to grab the biggest bucks was the Viva PInata digital painting seen above, which closed at $US 1400. The winner? None other than Epic Games’ Mark Rein, who hovered near the bidding sheet like a hungry wolf until the auction closed, growling at anyone who attempted to outbid him. My choice? It would’ve been the Team Fortress 2 piece seen after the jump. More »
10:40AM Michael McWhertor | AIAS Award Winners To Get Recognition At GameStops. Last night’s winners at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards will not only get a sales boost from those who caught the awards online, they’ll also get a kick in the sales pants from shoppers at GameStop. AIAS president Joseph Olin told DICE attendees today that the academy has partnered with the retailer to add special mention to games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rock Band, Assassin’s Creed and others with a sticker calling out each game’s win. That means you’ll see yet another sticker on display cases at GameStop and EBgames across the country, promoting each title’s “Game of the Year” status. More »
Riccitiello On How Not To Blow It, The EA Way
7:20AM Michael McWhertor | Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA’s most spectacular failures. “We at EA blew it,” said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, “To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it.” While Riccitiello was proud of his achievements at EA following his return to the company, he warned developers and publishers not to make some of the mistakes the company has made in the past. Those mistakes, he said, involved the stifling of creative talent and their ensuing departure. Riccitiello took DICE attendees to school this morning with his talk on Game industry Economics 101. EA, like Activision, Sony, Microsoft, will continue to absorb developers, as it did with Bioware Pandemic last year. And that presents a danger. More »
Orange Box, COD4, BioShock Dominate AIAS Awards
2:40AM Mike Fahey | The 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards were held last night at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, with twenty-six awards handed out honoring the best gaming of 2007. Sixteen of those awards were split evening between BioShock, The Orange Box, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, with COD 4 walking away with the coveted Overall Game of the Year award. Rock Band took home three awards including Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack and Family Game of the Year. Nintendo saw two awards – Adventure Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy and Handheld Game of the Year for The Phantom Hourglass. Puzzle Quest took home Downloadable Game of the Year, justifying all of those long hours I spent playing the damn game on the DS, PSP, and finally via Xbox Live Arcade. Along with the game awards, the night saw former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi given the Lifetime Achievement Award and Blizzard president and CEO Mike Morhaime entered into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Congratulations to all of the winners – we were so very surprised. No really! Hit the jump for the full list of winners. More »
Shane Kim On The Future Of The 360
4:30PM Luke Plunkett | Wired’s Chris Kohler got the chance to interview Microsoft’s Shane Kim while at DICE, and did not keep things brief. Good news for us, since Kim decides to talk about all kinds of things, from the challenges facing the 360 in Europe (”we’re going to ramp up the focus”) to the 360’s pre-eminence among developers (”Xbox 360 is the lead development platform for 80% of the titles, maybe more now, being developed in the industry”) to how they’re going to trump the PS3 with the launch of GTA IV (”We already own it, I believe, from a content standpoint, because we have the exclusive episodes”). All interesting stuff! But my favourite comes when discussing Crackdown, where Kim says that despite Real Time Worlds moving onto something else, Microsoft “still love Crackdown”, and are very aware that “customers would like to see more in that space”. You’re damn right we would. Hit the link for the full interview, it’s a good read. Interview: Shane Kim Talks Xbox In 2008 [Game|Life] More »
Afro Samurai Trailer Makes Surprise Appearance At DICE
2:40PM Michael McWhertor | Like Afro Samurai? Excited about the Namco Bandai console game of the same name? Buddy, have we got the ghetto captured, shaky-cam video for you. During Roger Hector’s DICE presentation today, the VP of Development at Namco Bandai Games showed off the first trailer for the game, which looks to stay true to the series’ trademark art style. Hector showed off work in progress versions of Afro, in 2D and 3D form, a transition the character seemed to make with ease. Hopefully, we’ll get a direct feed version of the above clip soon and put this whole bush league video capture job behind us. More »
Mizuguchi: I’m Too Artistic, I Know
11:40AM Kotaku US Edition | Tetsuya Mizuguchi, founder of Q Entertainment and best known for his work on Rez, Space Channel 5 and Lumines took the stage at DICE today to talk about the future of gaming and give attendees a quick history lesson on all things MIzuguchi. His talk, titled “Art vs. Commerce” focused on his career-long struggle to balance the artistic and the fiscally responsible. From the wildly successful Sega Rally—which sold 20,000 full-sized arcade units and 1.5 million on consoles and PCs—to the commercial underperformer Rez—a game for which he declined to offer sales data. More »
Microsoft’s Shane Kim Says The Console War Isn’t Over
9:20AM Kotaku US Edition | Microsoft Game Studios head Shane Kim was on the receiving end of a barrage of questions from the New York Times’ Seth Schiesel today at DICE. He probed the VP on a number of topics ranging from Bungie’s decision to go independent to who’s winning the console war to Microsoft’s potential entry into the portable gaming market. More »
