Pocket God Sees 3 Million Downloads

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Bolt Creative announced that Pocket God has been downloaded 3 million times. The popular App remains on the top 50 Paid App list on iTunes.

“We can’t thank the fans enough for all their support, enthusiasm, fan sites, YouTube videos, suggestions for content, and everything else,” said Bolt Creative CEO Dave Castelnuovo. “Since day one we ve embraced our community and we re ecstatic to see that feeling reciprocated. We’ll continue to push Pocket God into new realms and keep giving the legions of PG fans out there more tools to become great deities. Deities great at offing the little islanders that is!”

Bungie Prepared For Hardware Switch

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Bungie has its next IP planned out in some fashion for the next 10 years. That means that there’s probably going to be a hardware switch somewhere in the middle, and Bungie is prepared for that too.

“I don’t know if developers aren’t ‘ready’ to kick off a new generation of hardware, but not knowing exactly when that shift will happen is definitely challenging as you begin mapping out a future title,” said Bungie’s Brian Jarrard. “Our next project after Reach has to be planned, engineered and designed to potentially span multiple hardware generations considering we are working on a decade’s worth of storytelling and game experiences.”

Source: IndustryGamers {link no longer active}

3DS Game Producer Says Going Back To 2D ‘May Be Very Difficult For Me’

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Masahiro Sakurai is currently working on Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS. The producer of the Super Smash Bros series thinks that going back to 2D after working in 3D will be hard for him to do.

“Yes this is indeed my first 3D game but I have a feeling that it’s going to be hard to go back [to 2D], said Sakurai. “For example when you watch Avatar in 3D you take notice of the 3D element initially but then as the movie goes on you forget about the 3D novelty as your eyes get used to it and simply enjoy it for what it is.

“That’s the nature of the way we get used to things as they become familiar. The problem is that when you go back to 2D after 3D it feels flat. So in terms of game development I would think that going back to 2D after working on a 3D project may be very difficult for me.”

Source: Official Nintendo Magazine

Google Wave Goes Flat

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Google announced today that it was shutting down its Wave division. The technology was designed to create applications where users could chat, edit documents, videos and photos, and play games together.

“We were jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication,” wrote Urs Holzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow. “The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.”

“But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked, he continued. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily ‘liberate’ their content from Wave.”

“Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.”

Source: Google Blog

Brandon Routh Interested In Warcraft Movie

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Actor Brandon Routh is appearing in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, an adaptation of a comic with many built in video game references. As if that weren’t enough, the star of the 2006 film Superman Returns has another confession.

“I’m kind of a gamer,” said Routh.

As a consequence of this, he’s really excited about what Sam Raimi is doing with the World of Warcraft movie. “They just announced that Sam Raimi is directing, so that’s very cool,” said Routh. “My friends over at Legendary are working on that. … So I’m looking forward to what’s going to happen with that.”

When asked directly about whether he’d appear in the movie, he’d only say, “You might get a little action — a little sword fighting — that would be a lot of fun.

Source: MTV

Batman Comes To Arkham City

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Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment confirmed today the title to the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Titled Batman: Arkham City, it will release for PS3, PC and Xbox 360 in Fall 2011.

Being made by Rocksteady Studios, who developed Batman: Arkham Asylum, the setting has switched to a maximum security facility designed to house the worst of the worst of Gotham’s criminally insane, set in the heart of Gotham City. New gameplay features are promised, and the villains inside will include Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Talia al Ghul, the Riddler and Catwoman.

Shogun 2: Going To War

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The original Shogun: Total War used simple sprites to represent units on the field, with preset animations for walking and fighting. As is evident from this trailer, crafted from the in-game engine, things have gotten much more detailed.

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Itagaki Apologizes For His Difficult Games

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Tomonobu Itagaki, by contrast to most Japanese game designers, is not humble or understated. It was with some surprise then that he admitted faults in some of his prior games.

“Look, I’ll say it: the boss character in Dead Or Alive 4 was definitely too difficult. I’ll apologize for it. I’m the one who did that, and I’m sorry,” he said.

“But, look, Ninja Gaiden, it was absolutely intentional that it be that difficult. That game was a revival version of a classic game for old-school gamers, so I wanted to make the hardcore happy,” he continued. “Ninja Gaiden 2, though, I really wanted more people to enjoy that, but… we ran out of time for balancing. That was a tragedy. Really.”

Itagaki, however, returned to form when he returned to talking about his latest game. “For Devil’s Third, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. We’ve got support from THQ’s testing team, and we’re going to work really closely with those guys to balance out the game.”

“It’s going to be the best game ever,” he added.

Source: CVG {link no longer active}