Last week’s DICE summit kicked off with a game of golf in the Nevada desert. To keep things interesting, and raise a bit of cash for charity, Electronic Arts added microtransactions to the game.

We heard about the event through some of the coverage last week. It involved golfers buying power-ups that could move golf balls, allow you to kick a ball into the water or arm golfers with beach balls.

Hit up MTV’s Multiplayer for the full menu of options. They should look at adding this to the PGA.

EA Transformed Golf Last Week, Adding Beach Balls And Microtransactions [Multiplayer]

J. Paul Raines bravely faced a roomful of video game developers at this year’s DICE Summit, letting them know that the used game sales that butter the retailers bread do not hurt new game sales.

Raines, GameStop’s Chief Operating Officer, told DICE attendees that the company’s used game sales account for only 4% of sales of current titles, according to a report from G4. How it defines “current,” we couldn’t tell you right now, but he further spun the good news for devs by adding that the presence of new copies of titles has shot up 7% over the past six years.

The GameStop company man also said that trade ins on video games help contribute to purchases of new games, with 14% of new game sales “funded by trade in credit during the first 60 days of a game’s release date” and the majority of trade-in credit going toward the purchase of new titles. So, good news all around.

Just kidding. There actually is a bit of good news.

Raines told DICE attendees that “collector’s editions” of titles account for a healthy portion of overall new game sales, with 36% of Metal Gear Solid 4 sales being of the “limited edition” variety, with more than half of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe sold at GameStop sold to “collectors.”

That’s an extra tenner in your publisher’s pocket, at least! Congratulations to all involved.

Live Blog: DICE 2009 – J. Paul Raines, GameStop COO [G4]

Bruce Shelley is an industry legend. Helped Sid Meier make Civilization, created Age of Empires, then joined Ensemble. Now, though, Ensemble are gone. And Shelley is trying to explain why that happened.

Taking the stage at this year’s DICE get-together in Vegas, Shelley’s address was devoted to pondering aloud how a studio that had only ever made highly-acclaimed games would be shut down. And while he doesn’t settle on a single, over-arching thing that can be blamed, he does a good job of being honest and highlighting the flaws – both internally and at former owners Microsoft – that, combined, led to the studio’s demise.

These include:

- Failure to diversify. Ensemble were responsible for many of the finest strategy titles ever developed. And… that’s all they were responsible for. Strategy games don’t make money like they used to.

- The studio grew too big. It had always employed around 40 people, and those 40 were a close-knit team. But as the years progressed, staff numbers swelled to around 75, meaning that much of that strong feeling was diluted.

- Two major projects the company were working on – one the Halo MMO – were canned by Microsoft. Yet after they were canned, Ensemble didn’t downsize, which would have increased overhead and may have contributed to Microsoft’s decision to let the studio go.

You know what it sounds like to us? This is like when you see a couple who have been married for 20-30 years get divorced, and there wasn’t any one thing you could blame. Nobody slept around, nobody hit anybody, they just… grew apart. Weren’t as right for each other as they once were.

There doesn’t always have to be a reason.

Live Blog: DICE 2009 – Bruce Shelley, Ensemble Studios Post-Mortem [G4]

Talking at DICE 2009, Electronic Arts John Riccitiello announced that there would be another Alice game coming from American McGee to the PC and consoles.

More details, he said, would be coming later today.

Live Blog: DICE 2009 – John Riccitiello, Electronic Arts [The Feed]

Speaking at this week’s DICE conference in Las Vegas, Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi talked about Japan’s shrinking importance in the global gaming market.

Japan only makes up six percent of the total global market for game software, he said. Sales, Capcom decided, are made in North America and Europe, so Capcom has started pushing to make 70 percent of their revenue there.

During his talk, entitled Un-Japanese Games: Creating Entertainment for a Global Gaming Audience, Takeuchi walked DICE attendee’s through the precarious process of trying to court “foreign” gamers without losing your studio’s identity.

While struggling to come up with games that other cultures could enjoy, Capcom realised three things: risk reduction can actually create risk, you have to culturally invest in the market you’re wooing, it’s not always just about selling more copies of a game.

With Dead Rising and Lost Planet under their belts and apparent success headed their way with Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5, Takeuchi outlined Capcom’s Ten Commandments of development. Something, MTV’s Stephen Totilo summarises smartly over on MTV’s Multiplayer.

Live Blog: DICE 2009 – Jun Takeuchi, Capcom [G4TV] and DICE 2009: The 10 Commandments of Capcom Development [MTV]

Valve boss Gabe Newell just got done with his keynote address at this year’s Design Innovate Communicate Entertain conference in Vegas. It was great! Here are the highlights.

- He says some great stuff about combating piracy. Really seems to hit the nail on the head when it comes to the PC market. He says that people aren’t pirating because they’re cheapskates, they’re pirating because it’s a better service. No regional delays, no DRM, instant downloading, that kind of thing.

Which Steam is aiming to match. They’re not trying to stamp out piracy, they’re trying to catch up.

- The team currently working on Team Fortress 2’s excellent character videos are now working on comics. He didn’t specify whether they’d be Team Fortress 2 comics, though, but you’d wager it’d be something Valve-related, or he wouldn’t be mentioning it now, would he?

- Steam sales don’t increase sales. “Increase” is doing the benefit a disservice. Team Fortress 2 sales go up by over 100% when there’s a free update on the PC. And the recent Left 4 Dead sale? That saw sales of the game increase by 3000%. And no, that’s not a typo.

- The benefits of Steam as a retail platform don’t stop there. Newell also mentioned that for a particular third-party game (which goes unnamed), sales went up 36,000% following a weekend sale. Sure, that’s a hand-picked statistic (it’s just one game, and we don’t know how low sales were beforehand), but it’s also an enormous figure.

- Responding to audience questions, Newell believes that it’s inevitable that a service like Steam – which started on the PC – will eventually migrate to consoles.

Live Blog: DICE 2009 Keynote – Gabe Newell, Valve Software [G4]

Terminal Reality plans to start licensing the technology behind their upcoming title Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

The studio says that the Infernal Engine offers excellent cross platform support and is compatible with all of the “leading gaming systems” including the PC.

The developer plans to show off the engine at the DICE conference over the next few days. They also plan to release a tech demo featuring a revamped look at The Stranger from their 1999 game Nocturne. I wonder if that means we can expect a true sequel to their survival horror game.