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The Xbox One Uncertainty Principle
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Review: The Titan Descendant
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Surprise! Dying Light Is A New Free-Running First-Person Zombie Game
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Xbox One's Live TV Will Not Be Available In Australia At Launch, Requires A Separate Device
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Everything You Need To Know About Xbox One
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Xbox One Is Not Always Online, But It Seems To Block Used Games
Regulars
Rage Creators Weren’t Prepared For Tough Questions
Diagnosing Completion Anxiety Disorder
Some of you may remember, way back in my blurb introducing myself to Kotaku, I mentioned I’m bad about not finishing games. I wasn’t kidding. I have completed an embarrassingly low number of games, and I always though this made me a bit of a freak amongst my fellow gamers. But according to an opinion piece by Leigh Alexander of Gamesetwatch and Gamasutra, I may not be quite the abnormality I thought I was. She argues that gamers on the whole are completing fewer games now than they did in the past.
Mag Announces Top 50 Developers
A new study from Gamasutra and sister divisions Game Developer magazine and Game Deveolper Research division has selected the top 50 developers in the gaming industry today. It was based on reputation and sales data, through anonymous surveys and assessments of sales charts in the US, the UK, and Japan, the number of games released each year, and the average metacritic rating. While the sales data is handy, the all-encompassing approach taken by the study to include reputation, as well, makes this study interesting. According to Gamasutra, “the resulting report is the only multi-input empirical ranking available for game development studios.”
Hit the jump for the top 20 devs on the list.
Big Publishers to Distribute Online First, Ship to Shelves Second?
WildTangent is home not only to a games development studio, but an online publishing platform as well. Companies such as PopCap, Atari and Reflexive already enjoy the benefits of WildTangent’s Game Console, an application installed by end users that allows them to browse and download titles provided by WildTangent and its affiliates.
Gamasutra has just posted the results of a recent fat-chewing with WildTangent CEO Alex St. John. Of note is St. John’s talk of getting more “big-name developers” onboard to distribute their games first via WildTangent, followed by retail shelves:
You talked about working with Vivendi to bring some of their games to WildTangent, and you also talked about how this is somewhat of an alternative to traditional publishing, but have you been working with any developers of large-scale projects, to be able to deliver them?
AS: Yes. We’re talking with a number of what you would consider “famous, big-name developers” for taking their content online. I think you’re going to find some big-name titles released for pure online distribution — as well as boxed titles released very quickly — in the next year or so.
So you’re talking about games that have never come out before in a box on a shelf.
AS: That’s correct.
There’s no doubt that online distribution has come a long way since the days of a prepubescent Steam, and more support from big publishers is only going to help it prosper.
St. John has quite a bit more to say, and you can catch the whole interview over at Gamasutra.
Q&A: WildTangent’s St. John Talks PC Distribution’s Future [Gamasutra]
Gamasutra Catches Up With Alexey Pajitnov
Gamasutra has a great article up right now in which they pay a call on gaming pioneer Alexey Pajitnov. For the uninformed, Pajitnov is the creator of a a little game called Tetris. They caught up with him at the GameCity conference in Nottingham, England before a viewing of the documentary Tetris: From Russia With Love to discuss his views on such subjects as the casual gaming scene (including Katamari Damacy), his new projects and the history of Tetris. It’s some terrific weekend reading if you have some free time if only to hear the perspective of a true old school gamer on the modern gaming scene. Also, if you have never seen one of the several documentaries that follow the long arduous history of one of the most addicting games ever made, do yourself a favor and check one out. It’s an amazing story filled with more drama and intrigue than most soap operas.
Catching Up Casually: A Chat With Alexey Pajitnov [Gamasutra]
Gamasutra’s Top Five Developers Of 2007
What a great list this is. Not for its content, necessarily (though the choices are fairly sensible), just for the fact that this one’s not about games. Instead, these are Gamasutra’s picks for the year’s top five developers. Note the following observations, which will save you precious seconds between realising yourself and commenting angrily: Nintendo are not on the list, and every developer who is released their games on the 360.
5) BioWare 4) Bungie 3) 2K Boston/2K Australia 2) Harmonix 1) Valve
Gamasutra’s Best Of 2007: Top 5 Developers [Gamasutra][Image]
Gamasutra Lists Top 5 Trends of 2007
We love Top [fill in number][fill in noun]of [fill in year]lists around here. And Gamasutra’s was no exception. They sum up this year’s trends with just five points.
5. Consolidations 4. Catering to the Wii Audience 3. The Rise of the Shooter 2. Indies Going Major 1. Mainstreaming of Handhelds
It’s a solid list. Who would have thought that Blizzivision would be born? Or that all three of the biggest consoles wouldn’t touch handheld sales? But I’d probably swap 3 or even 4 to something more like, a “Rift between casual and hardcore gaming.” Hit the link for their pretty convincing arguments. Gamasutra’s Best of 2007: Top 5 Trends [gamasutra]
On the State of Game Reviewing
Everyone’s been buzzing this weekend about the Gamespot shakeup involving Jeff Gerstmann and there’s been plenty of talk flying around in various places. Gamasutra, for instance, has a good editorial up entitled Numerals, Game Reviews, And The Game Media on some of the problems with the review structure in the gaming industry; Destructoid has a brand new look to let us know exactly what they think of Gamespot; people are planning a boycott of Gamespot and other CNet sites; our very own Crecente posed a question to all the reviewers out there: Have you been forced to rewrite a review due to advertising pressure? We’ve been inundated with examples of bad journalism, bad bosses, and big, bad, mean companies. And of course Mark Wilson wrote his own take on the problem with game reviews.
There are a couple of themes from all of this, both the personal accounts that have wound up in our inbox and the wider discussion as a whole: this is nothing new and the ramifications are a little further reaching than a single reviewer, game company, or site.
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