While Killzone 2 was heavy on its technical achievements graphically, some said the story was a bit insubstantial. That seems to be changing with Killzone 3, with Malcolm McDowell and Ray Winstone taking the role of Helghast leaders.
While Killzone 2 was heavy on its technical achievements graphically, some said the story was a bit insubstantial. That seems to be changing with Killzone 3, with Malcolm McDowell and Ray Winstone taking the role of Helghast leaders.
Star Wars is still, after all these years, a cultural milestone and cash cow. Thus, this trailer was a disturbance in the Force felt my millions worldwide.
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 got its latest two fighters, and one fulfills the demand for more Marvel heroines. To go along with everyone’s favorite wrestling mayor, Final Fight’s Mike Haggar, there’s Jean Grey as the Phoenix who takes on a darker form when pressed.
The digital publishing scene is undergoing a transformation right now, between being almost exclusively low budget titles to the rising importance of high-quality titles now possible on the increasingly powerful smartphones. NaturalMotion is riding the rising tide with their technologies and with their games. We talked with Torsten Reil, CEO for NaturalMotion Games / NaturalMotion.
Absolutely. We released it on iPhone a year ago and released Backbreaker 2 in December. We never could have expected the response we got to the first, which was one done internally in Oxford and Backbreaker 2 that was done by IdeaWorks in England.
The reason we did that was to create a game that’s high end in graphics and animation. Our technology makes animation look realistic and Endorphin for iPhone makes tackles look that much better. The U.S. is our major market, but we’ve found that if you make a successful game it can appeal anywhere; for instance, Backbreaker has its highest penetration percentage level in the U.K. and sales in other European countries like France and Germany aren’t bad either.
It’s getting more and more popular, and we have NFL games in Wembley Stadium that sell out almost immediately. The important part is going beyond the sports following and appealing to a larger crowd.
The way we design our games is [for users] to be able to hand off the phone and have fun straight away in the game. That was exactly the idea behind Jenga; people know how to play it and we thought we could contribute to something to it. [Jenga is] difficult to make because it relies upon realistic physics, but that’s what we do as a company. We see something with potential and we picked it up for the project.
The other other thing with Jenga and Backbreaker is we use console quality pipelines; it comes pretty close to what you can do on console version.
I totally agree. What’s fascinating is seeing something like Infinity Blade get to the top of the download charts. Even people who haven’t seen the game before are impressed when they get their hands on it; there’s an even bigger market than people think for high quality content.
It’s added to it. It hasn’t necessarily changed, because our technology business is important to us as well. It’s changed things because we’re using our own technology and creating something that’s successful and creating believable physics technologies is our goal and the feedback we’ve gotten is great, whether it’s from the pipeline or something else.
Making them miss.
What’s changed over the past three years is that mobile games can run console style games and it opens up new possibilities, that’s for sure. It doesn’t diminish consoles but it opens up a whole new market. We’ve been extremely positively surprised for the demand for these sorts of games on iOS.
The way we look at it, it has to be the right brand and contribute to the game. KFC worked really well, and we were able to have some gameplay elements incorporated like the Chicken dance. We got a ton of feedback on that, and it also meant a great deal for sales of the game, so it was extremely encouraging.
I think so, yes, from feedback and anecdotes and customer reactions. For Backbreaker, we’re at 3.4 million downloads. And we find that people know us and that’s helped with exposure for the company and it’s helped with both businesses.
A bit. On one hand, we’re trying to think of the ways to combine the three things we want to do. They have to fit our technology, be easy to pick up and be socially accessible. We thought [Jenga] was beyond what most devs can do, and we saw and opportunity because of our physics background. We’re familiar with sports, but Jenga was too good to pass up. Choosing to do Backbreaker was more of a strategic decision, based upon where our technology was.
I think the biggest lesson is how much polish and word of mouth make a difference. The game was on the charts and still is and we know that’s [a byproduct of] people showing it off. They hand it off to their friend and they get a kick out of it. That’s what you get out of Backbreaker 2 right off the bat and the same with Jenga and that’s important to us — making sure the game grabs you from the start. We’ve also gotten our games featured at launch, which has helped.
What’s happened with Backbreaker is it gave us experience development-wise and knowledge of what people want. People are also approaching us, like KFC, and what we’ll hopefully find, is that we’ll build up more experience and momentum with the next game.
We’ve have a pretty packed released schedule, and I can’t talk specifics, but we have very big plans. It’s an exciting time for us and it’s great to see all the momentum that we’ve gathered.
It’s interesting because there’s really two sides of it. We’re historically an engine company for games like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV, but we’re also seeing digital publishing companies looking at our technology and I think that’s a really strong [business opportunity]. It’s a big trend on the technology side. On the NaturalMotion Games-side we’ve focused on socially connected games and we’ve also learned how to see how people play and reflect on that. We can see what people say about the game immediately on the App Store. What people were looking for we gave them for Backbraker 2, like hurdling and the like.
You’re right in that with digital feedback you can act upon it easily. We knew the difficultly was good for some people, but some people asked for a pro mode and we added that in two or three weeks. Seeing customers’ reviews allowed us to react to customer feedback and we saw a major sales surge. Seeing positive feedback from people, that’s crucial with digital publishing to keep your game in the minds of people. We’re following the same strategy of free updates over time for Backbreaker 2.
It is really interesting what’s happening in the game industry right now with digital publishing and console quality hardware. There’s a huge amount of commercial opportunities . . . When it comes to in-game sponsorships, I think you’ll see more games get exposed to more brands, and if there’s value it’s a win for the game maker, the customer and the brand.
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Zynga today announced that it has acquired Flock, a site designed to integrate Twitter and Facebook and other social networking sites while navigating through the web. Their product has over 10 million users world-wide, though it is unknown what will become of the software after the acqusition.
With over a quarter of a billion users, Zynga has captured the imagination of the world. Their dedication to understanding what social game users want and to delivering a wildly popular gaming platform is already legendary. And, they ve only just gotten started wrote Flock Chief executive Shawn Hardin. Our team will help Zynga in achieving their goal of building the most fun, social games available to anyone, anytime on any platform.”
Source: Flock.com
Retailers have listed their various pre-order bonus content for the recently announced Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12. Those who pre-order from Amazon will receive the “Georgia Classic Putter” worth an extra +10 in a putting attribute that is usable both online and in career mode.
GameStop is offering two pre-orders, with Xbox 360 owners getting Bethpage Black and PS3 owners getting Turnberry, site of the 2009 U.S. Open and British Open, respectively. The $69.99, PS3-only collectors’ edition includes another five exclusive courses.
Apple has opened their Mac App Store, featuring over 1,000 free and paid apps, available to Snow Leopard users through Software Update as part of Mac OS X v10.6.6. Games are believed to be the most popular category, making up roughly 17 percent of the apps available.
With more than 1,000 apps, the Mac App Store is off to a great start, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. We think users are going to love this innovative new way to discover and buy their favorite apps.
Source: Distimo
2K Sports has confirmed that the Million Dollar Perfect Game challenge is returning with MLB 2K11. The contest has been opened to children aged 13 and up, and will start on opening day of the regular season and not the first day the game releases.
“I don’t know if we’re smart or just insane,” Jason Argent, the vice president of marketing for 2K Sports. “The million-dollar bounty’s back. I just walked out of a meeting with our chief financial officer; budgeting for this sort of thing is a bit of a challenge when you can’t say exactly when you’re going to pay it.”
Tying into this is the cover athlete Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies. The National League Cy Young winner threw a perfect game on May 29 and no hit the Reds during the National League Division Series.
“When we finished the deal to put him on the cover and were talking with him about the game, the first thing he said was, Man, you’ve got to change that perfect game contest,'” Argent said. “He said, My son is going crazy trying to throw a perfect game and win a million dollars, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was ineligible because he was too young last year.'”
Source: Kotaku
Sports Illustrated and Sony Network Entertainment have signed a cutting-edge transactional licensing agreement based around the SI Swimsuit 2011 issue. This will bring a 3D Swimsuit video to PSN and PS3 and also to Sony’s 3D-compatible and network-enabled 2010 and 2011 Bravia HDTVs and 2011 Blu-ray Disc players via Qriocity.
“Just when you think the bar couldn’t get any higher for the Swimsuit franchise, we’ve raised it once again with our partners at Sony,” said Mark Ford, President of the Sports Illustrated Group. “Swimsuit in 3D has extraordinary potential and we’re thrilled to deliver its millions of fans a new perspective through the exciting world of 3D video.”
Along with the 3D content, there will also be a dozen hours of Swimsuit video available, with making of videos of recent shoots and four half-hour videos focusing on the 2011 shoot. Also, PS3 users will have access to “Dynamic PS3 Themes” based around shoots from the ’90s, 2006, or the past two years.
“The combination of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit brand with the amazing 3D capabilities of Sony’s network-enabled devices makes for a great consumer entertainment experience,” said Tim Schaaff, President, Sony Network Entertainment. “We strive to deliver unique content to our users, and are delighted to offer this first-of-its-kind high definition 3D Swimsuit video.”
The PS3 release of Mass Effect 2 includes free DLC on the game disc, including the Blood Dragon Armor, the downloadable interactive comic Mass Effect: Genesis and the missions Kasumi – Stolen Memory, and Lair of the Shadow Broker, but that’s not all. Those that purchase the game early will have a chance to get access to some exclusive armor and weapons.
“Until February 23rd, 2011, Mass Effect 2 players on PlayStation 3 can download the Terminus Armor and M-490 Blackstorm Projector Weapon free of charge from the PSN Store,” announced BioWare. “After Feb 23rd, the Terminus Gear will be available as paid DLC.”
Mass Effect 2 will release on January 18, 2011.