Saturday, February 4th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments
A recent statement by Electronic Arts lists Bioware’s upcoming RPG-Shooter Mass Effect 3 as having not only a console and PC release, but a mobile one as well. EA issued a follow up to that statement to Kotaku, stating that “There will be “handheld/mobile” products tied to Mass Effect 3…They are part of the Galaxy at War system. We will have more details to share soon.”.
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Saturday, February 4th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments
While the team at Bungie hasn’t been in the business of producing a Halo game since Reach, the company has still held the reigns to the massive amounts of game stats and player records. Bungie has been gradually passing the information onto 343 Industries, the makers of the upcoming Halo 4, since this past summer, with the last of these statistics scheduled to exchange hands on March 31st.
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Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments
Following in the footsteps of its sequel, which went F2P late last year, Sony Online Entertainment is marking the 13th anniversary of the launch of the original Everquest by taking the game into the free to play realm. The game will now offer the same three-tiered payment scale found in its follow-up, with a free (basic) option and both a one-time $5 (Silver) and $15/month (Gold) membership. The full index of what each membership entails can be found on the game’s official site.
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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 1 Comment
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that internet connections in war-torn Afghanistan kind of suck. It was his “disgustingly” slow connection that lead a stationed US Air Force officer (Reddit username: “bolivar-shagnasty”) to email Supergiant Games, the makers of Bastion. His attempts to download the critically acclaimed action-RPG timed out on both Direct2Drive and Steam, so the officer asked the company whether or not they had plans to re-release the PC/XBLA game at retail. The six-member team – who had no plans for a retail launch – instead emailed the officer, saying they would personally burn a copy of the install application for the game on DVD-Rs and shipped it to the officer’s post.
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Thursday, January 26th, 2012 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 3 Comments
VG247 reports that CD Projekt has confirmed that the console adaptation of The Witcher II will be making its way to the Xbox 360 on April 17th. In addition to a new control scheme, the Xbox 360 version will feature new cinematics and new content that comprises a total of three hours. Furthermore, the game features several new characters that will also be made available to PC users at a later date.
The PC version with the critically-acclaimed RPG was released last year, on May 17th, with the Xbox 360 version being announced on June 2nd.
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Thursday, January 26th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 2 Comments
A limited series run of dolls has been announced by the BigBadToyStore, officially endorsed with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer downloadable content. The characters of Mordin Solus, Garrus Vakarin, Legion, and Miranda Lawson have all been transmogrified into figurines ranging from 6.7″-7.25″ tall. No specifics have been released concerning the DLC, but the site does hint that it could be “…powerful weapons…character bonuses, weapon modifications, [or] weapon upgrades to make your multi-player squad stronger”.
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Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 | Posted by Michael Hunter | No Comments
Origin, EA’s digital distribution platform which launched early June of last year, has just added another eleven developers that are in support of the platform. Trion Worlds spearheads the list which also includes Robot Entertainment, CD Projekt RED, Freebird Games, Recoil Games, Autumn Games, 1C Company, inXile entertainment, Paradox Interactive, Core Learning Ltd and N3V Games.
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Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 1 Comment
InsideMobileApps.com reports that according to an unidentified source, Microsoft will begin phasing out its virtual currency before the end of the year. The Microsoft Points are currently used in the Zune Marketplace and on Windows phones, as well as in the Xbox Live Marketplace.
According to the source, Microsoft will have replaced the system with one that utilizes the actual currency that is associated with the region in which the system is registered. Any balance remaining on an account will be automatically converted into the local currency. Supposedly, developers and publishers have been informed of the upcoming changes and are advised to take this into account when planning their strategies.
Microsoft has declined to comment on the matter.
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Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 | Posted by Michael Hunter | No Comments
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will likely be receiving patch 1.4 by the end of January, with Bethesda currently finalizing the updated and sending it off for console and PC certification this week. Bethesda also plans to roll out a “beta” opt-in for future patches for PC players, through Steam, most likely to avoid globally rolling out a faulty patch.
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Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 | Posted by Robin Meijer | No Comments
Gamefront reports that several large, international publishers have been sending out letters to alleged European pirates, ordering them to pay sums of up to 800 Euro (approximately $1000) for every illegally obtained copy of their video games. Publishers that have been sending out these letters supposedly include Codemasters, Square Enix, Atari, and Ubisoft. According to additional information provided by TorrentFreak, these publishers are tracking down users based on IP addresses. No official statement regarding these letters has been made by the publishers.
Polish developer / publisher CD Projekt recently launched a similar attack on European pirates of The Witcher II, though it called these plans off after the company began facing strong opposition from the PC-gaming community.
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Friday, January 13th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments
While Ben Croshaw has achieved an impressive level of internet fame with his breathless review/rants on The Escapist’s “Zero Punctuation”, his longer career as a freelance game designer has remained somewhat in shadow. Building a background of mostly straight-forward adventure titles, Croshaw is going for a larger release with his next effort: the Metroid-vania platformer Poacher.
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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 1 Comment
Square Enix has announced that it has acquired the rights to make a platformer based on the independent graphic novel “ScaryGirl” by Nathan Jurevicius. Developed by TikGames (Ricochet, Texas Hold ‘Em on Xbox Live Arcade), the game of the same name will launch on January 18th on XBLA, the 24th on PSN, and sometime later for the PC. ScaryGirl will retain the series’ art style and aesthetics, but tell a supplemental story from the graphic novels and the upcoming film.
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Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 | Posted by Robin Meijer | 2 Comments
Though Blizzard has publicly stated it was exploring its options regarding a possible console version of Diablo III, this version has never officially been confirmed to be in production. However, in response to a question by a user on Twitter, the community manager for Blizzard confirmed that a console version is currently in the works. The project is headed by Josh Mosqueira, previously the Creative Director for Far Cry 3 and a former Design Director at Relic Entertainment. No further information is available at this time, though Blizzard previously indicated that if a console version were ever to be made, the release of the PC version would not be held back to facilitate a simultaneous release.
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Saturday, January 7th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | 3 Comments
In a rare show of open (if vague) accounting, Valve has released some impressive sales data for their Steam digital distribution platform in 2011. Sales increased over 100% for the seventh year in the row, and over 14.5 million games using Steamworks – a suite of production and operating services released three years ago – were registered. Overall, Steam expanded to 1,800 games and 40 million accounts, with 780 Petabytes of data sent globally.
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Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 | Posted by Gavin Greene | No Comments
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a 2009 class action lawsuit against Square Enix and its MMO Final Fantasy XI, the publisher’s US office recently announced. The suit, filed by San Francisco resident Esther Leong, alleged that the publisher used “deceptive advertising, unfair business practices, and fraudulent concealment with respect to the online games at the point of purchase”, and sought $5 million in damages. The plaintiff party has not released a statement in response to the Court’s decision.
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