I heard, I heard that a new XBox is in the works. Yuppies are calling it the 720, which i think it’s lame but nonetheless, word has it that Microsoft is in the process of making a new XBox.
No way….really 720? That’s the most awful name ever. And rumour has it that it might be round LOL. I am just speculating of course. But i’d be damned if it looks like this:
hahahha….it looks futuristic and stuff but…..i dunno, a ball for a console?
The co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons have passed on. You can consider him to be like the father of RPG because before all these high tech RPG games start appearing with fantastic graphics, there was Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax passed on from heart failure at the age of 69.
The news was first announced on the forums of Troll Lord Games, the publisher of Gygax’s most recent works. It has since been directly confirmed by the company, which will post an announcement on its Web site later today.
Gygax was best known for helping create Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and pioneered tabletop RPGs. The first D&D rulebooks were released in 1974 by TSR, Inc., the tabletop RPG company Gygax founded with Don Kaye the year prior. Since then, there have been three full-fledged reworkings of D&D, numerous revisions and updates, and dozens of additional rulebooks, settings, and campaigns.
The D.I.C.E. 2008 summit was held in Las Vegas on the 6th of Feb to 8th of Feb 2008 and the largest, meanest, biggest giants of the gaming industry were all there to discuss all things important and related to games. Of course.
Events included:
• The EA Sports 5th Annual D.I.C.E. Summit Golf Tournament : The tournament will be held on Wednesday, February 6 at the beautiful TPC Canyons Golf Club, host to the SENIOR PGA TOUR’S Las Vegas Classic.
• The 3rd Annual Poker Tournament at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino: The Texas Hold ‘Em tourney will be held on Friday, February 8 following the close of the speaker sessions.
• Interactive Achievement Pre-Awards Party: Comcast/Game Invasion will host the pre-awards party at the decadent Cherry Nightclub and private Cherry pool and cabanas. This party sets the tone for the red carpet, awards and the post-awards party. Party goers can enjoy music, dancing, cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.
• Interactive Achievement Post-Awards Party: The 2nd Annual post awards party will be held at the Red Rock Resort, in their state-of-the-art VIP bowling alley. Cosmic bowling with dancing lights, fog machines, glow in the dark lanes, pins and bowling balls will be offered for an evening of fun and festivities.
• Into the Pixel™ (ITP) Exhibit and Auction: ITP is an exploration and celebration of the art of video games. The exhibit enables published game artists to be reviewed and recognized by the public and by their peers. ITP features a representative sampling of video game art, selected by a panel of jurors from a field of submissions. Funds raised at D.I.C.E this year will benefit the AIAS and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
The emcee for the event was Jay Mohr.
Read the entire press release, HERE.
The marriage between Ubisoft and Gameloft has spawned DS’ version of Assassin’s Creed. Frankly, I am not sure about playing the game in such a little screen but I guess it works for those on the go.
Last July, Ubisoft unloaded the entirety of its holdings in mobile-game developer Gameloft in an effort to refocus the reportedly $112 million in funds on other growth opportunities. However, as noted by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot at the time of the transaction, the two companies would remain in cahoots, though now only at an operational level.
It now appears that one of the offsprings of that relationship will be the Nintendo DS edition of Assassin’s Creed, as revealed by box-art scans obtained by enthusiast blog Go Nintendo. The game–which has yet to be officially announced, though retailer listings and its appearance on Nintendo’s 2008 release lineup have all but confirmed it–will apparently be a prequel to its console counterparts, and go by the subtitle Altair’s Chronicles. In the course of telling the story of the titular medieval murderer, the game will allow players to use the DS stylus to “interrogate informers” and pickpocket strangers.
Altair’s Chronicles will be the second version of Assassin’s Creed developed by Gameloft. The France-based developer also created the mobile edition of the game last year–a demo of which is available on Gameloft’s Web site–as well as the Xbox Live Arcade revamping of the classic platformer Prince of Persia.
It looks a little like Troy.
Also check out the movie update:
I’ll forgive his making of Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End even though it’s the mostly wasteful 2 + hours i have spent in my life but he did direct Armageddon…one of my fav. movies. But word and work has it that Jerry is making Prince of Persia, that wonderful game that evolved from PC, into a movie. Gah…should I anticipate or should I digress?
Jerry Bruckheimer has a style, and that style is big and loud. The producer has helped create films from Top Gun to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and TV shows like C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation and The Amazing Race, developing a reputation for unapologetically entertaining fare and blockbuster hits.
Now Bruckheimer is following fellow filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and John Woo into the world of game development. MTV Games today announced that it has partnered with the producer to launch Jerry Bruckheimer Game Studio. Described as “a game incubation studio,” the operation will conceive games but won’t actually develop them.
“It’ll be an idea [house],” Bruckheimer explained to GameSpot. “We’ll work with other developers and studios to hire an executive team and come up with something we feel is interesting. We’ll work with them just like we do with writers and directors [in film] and television–it’s about getting the best and the brightest.”
As for who the best and the brightest could be, MTV Games isn’t ruling out anyone. The publisher’s vice president of electronic games and interactive products, Bob Picunko, said the deal allows them the leeway to secure the best talent they can find, whether that means working with an independent studio or going through fellow publishers to get access to their internal teams.
That flexibility appears to be a theme incorporated throughout the agreement. Picunko said Bruckheimer’s team could wind up making console games, PC titles, handheld, or even mobile games.
“We’ve left the palette relatively open,” Picunko said. “Our hope is to have the first effort be a big game that people will be lining up at midnight to buy it the night before it comes out, but all options are on the table right now.”
His style may be loud, like in the PoC:AWE, it was really just loud and nothing else. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to see when it goes post production.
The game sale hiked up 2.63billion dollars worth just in November alone!
Earlier this week, analysts weighed in with their predictions of the US game-industry sales for the month of November. Today, the industry-standard research firm NPD Group weighed in with the real deal, reporting a staggering $2.63 billion in non-PC game hardware, software, and accessory revenue for the month. The total pushed the game industry’s year-to-date total to $13.12 billion, and puts it on track for a record annual total of $18 billion to $19 billion, according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier.
“If the year had ended on December 1, 2007 would be up 5 percent versus last year,” said Frazier. “Thanksgiving fell earlier in the reporting month this year than it did last, which certainly helped fuel part of the incredible 52 percent increase over last year.”
Though Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all tried to spin their “Black Friday” sales last month, the latest dispatch from the console-war front leaves no doubt as to the victor. Over 981,000 Wiis were sold during NPD’s November reporting period, besting the Xbox 360’s 770,000-unit total and more than doubling the Playstation 3’s 466,000-unit tally. Sony’s most venerable platform, the PlayStation 2, continued to outpace its younger brother with 496,000 units in sales.
Nintendo’s dominance of the handheld space was even more staggering, with the DS’s 1.53 million-unit haul almost tripling the 567,000 PlayStation Portables sold during the period.
Japanese efficiency, I tell you. Nintendo moved 1Million system in one week. Yes, 1 million Nintendos sold from Xmas shopping already. Gawdd…no other consoles have done that. But that’s because Nintendo is significantly cheaper than the PS and XBOX. Oh well…
The 2007 holiday-shopping season is less than one week old, but console makers are already beginning to spin their sales numbers. Yesterday, Sony reported that North American PlayStation 3 sales have tripled since the period beginning November 2–when the new $399 40GB model was introduced–through November 24. Though the company didn’t report exact sales numbers, extrapolation from NPD’s October report puts the figure at somewhere around 322,000 units sold in the US and Canada in three weeks.
Now, Nintendo has revealed its sales figures in the US for the “Black Friday” week of November 18-24. The seven-day period was Nintendo’s best ever in the US, with over 1.03 million systems sold in the 50 states. Of those, 350,000 were $249 Wiis, and 653,000 were $129 DSes. The latter figure eclipsed the record set in 2005, when over 600,000 Game Boy Advances were sold during Thanksgiving Week. On November 23, two new DS colors–rose and gold–were introduced via bundles with Nintendogs and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, respectively.
I am waiting for Mass Effect to arrive on my doorstep. Mass Effect is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare for the Xbox 360, which was released worldwide in November, 2007. The game takes place in the year 2183, with the player assuming the role of an elite human soldier named Commander Shepard, set out to explore a vast universe on his/her ship, the SSV Normandy.
Check out the trailer, gamers:
Not only are the visuals closest to the human facial feature ever, the game will be a blast. I just know it.
A little delay on Epic Games’s latest, Unreal Tournament III. For those of you waiting for the game, read on:
After yesterday’s delay of Haze, it looked like the only third-party PlayStation 3 exclusive left on the 2007 release schedule was Namco Bandai’s Time Crisis 4. Today, though, owners of Sony’s recently discounted console got a welcome surprise: After being all but officially postponed to 2008 last month, the PS3 version of Unreal Tournament III is now confirmed as shipping this year.
“We got news last night that Unreal Tournament III has been approved by SCEA and has been released to North American manufacturing,” said Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein in an e-mail to game journalists. Earlier this month, the outspoken executive said that, despite Midway’s pessimism, he was “confident” the game would arrive in 2007. Sony also continued to list it as arriving this year in its release schedule.
Rein went on to say that UTIII publisher Midway Games was currently weighing its release strategy for the shooter, which arrived for the PC this week. (Check back later today for a full review.) However, since many in the US have already left for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the company doesn’t have an official release date for the game.
“My guess is that Midway will start shipping the title to North American retailers on Monday, December 10th,” said Rein. “It could show up in stores as early as December 11th but more likely toward the middle of that week.” Unfortunately, due to “localization-related tasks,” Rein doesn’t expect the PS3 UTIII to arrive in Europe until early next year.
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