Ninja Gaiden 3: Unmasking Teaser

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Ninja Gaiden 3 has been hidden (like a ninja) since its announcement at the Tokyo Game Show, but it’s finally gotten its first teaser trailer. It’s only a small look, with more promised for E3 2011.

Rebellion Announces Social Games Division

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Rebellion has announced that they will launch a division solely for making social games. This comes after the successful launch of the free-to-play Evil Genius game for Facebook.

The release of Evil Genius has given us an appetite to look at other opportunities in the area, said Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion. One thing that has become increasingly apparent over the last few years is that gamers can t be defined as just people who own consoles people who use social media like Facebook or use smart phones all play games and this is an exciting new opportunity that we want to explore.

Evil Genius has been a fun and rewarding project for us and has proved that there is a lot of interest out there for games that don t run on traditional platforms, said Chris Kingsley, CTO of Rebellion. Thanks to the internal technology we use and the great skills of our team here, we can bring our 18 years of console and PC games experience to this sector and produce games that reach new players who would never consider themselves to be gamers.

Source: Rebellion Blog

Twitter Quick Bar Adds Ads To IPhone App

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Over this past weekend, Twitter added the Quick Bar, a toolbar which appears on Twitter s iPhone app, displaying trends and ads. This was one of the more outright advertising attempts ever launched by the company.

Many of the most influential and vocal members of Twitter quickly decried this addition, causing Twitter to revise it so that the ads display on the top of the app, though will not eliminate them completely. Previous attempts to help monetize Twitter include Promoted Tweets and Trends, which were designed to be unobtrusive ways to advertise while blending with the user-driven activity on the site.

Source: AdWeek

Blizzard Talks Free-To-Play And World Of Warcraft

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World of Warcraft is the most successful subscription MMO in history, having 12 million players that pay some form of annual fee every month. Still, the rise of free-to-play games has made some wonder if World of Warcraft will switch to a similar model; Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard, admits there are some strengths to F2P games.

As it relates to free to play, I do think that is an interesting business model, said Sams. But it is not going to allow those companies to create the type of complexity and experience that a subscription-based title like World of Warcraft can have. The fact of the matter is, the companies that make high-quality games have to have monetary backing and they have to be able to generate revenue that covers the costs of initial and ongoing development.

We have these recurring revenue streams, which allows us to invest and to provide experiences and services to our players unlike any other company, added Sams. The free-to-play games have to go about trying to find other revenue streams, and those revenue streams are inherently smaller. That means the game development budgets are inherently smaller. That is not to say you cannot have an awesome free-to-play game that costs less to make. There are lots of examples of those successful games. I do think that with the free-to-play games you may reach audiences that you don t traditionally reach with the subscription games. That makes sense because you are not going to find a lot of casual first-time gamers signing up for a $15 a month subscription.

The free-to-play games serve an important role, he noted. Like the theme parks that compete with Disneyland. You can go see all of those experiences, and then you will come and do it all with us. We are going to create the most immersive experience and the most engaging, deep experiences. That is because we can put a big budget behind our efforts that the free-to-play games can t match. I like these other games personally and I dig the fact that small development teams can work on games again. There was a period of time that was not possible because the budgets had gotten so big.

Switching over to the next MMO Blizzard is working on, Sams said there will be a balance with World of Warcraft content. We intend to do more expansions too. There is no change in our thinking. We intend absolutely positively to continue to support the existing World of Warcraft product, said Sams. There are over 12 million global paying subscribers that are active in our game. We are not going to turn our back on them and we intend to continue to support that franchise for many many years to come. As to our new unannounced game, we believe that it will be more complementary than competitive. And while people do have a limited amount of free time that they can devote to these types of games, we do think that people will want to check out the new and the old. We think the new one is very compelling and is going to capture a lot of hearts and minds and will be very successful for us. But we also believe that many people will continue playing World of Warcraft because they have such a huge collection of friends and community. We have taken some of our most experienced developers and put them on this project. We believe we have a dream team. These are the people who made WoW a success. We are going to blow people s minds.

Source: VentureBeat

Google Addresses Android Malware Issues

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Last week, malware was uploaded onto the Android Market that infected tens of thousands of mobile phones. Google has taken down the offending apps, suspended the associated developer accounts and contacted law enforcement officials.

On Tuesday evening, the Android team was made aware of a number of malicious applications published to Android Market, posted Rich Cannings, Android Security Lead. Within minutes of becoming aware, we identified and removed the malicious applications. The applications took advantage of known vulnerabilities which don t affect Android versions 2.2.2 or higher.

Source: Google Mobile Blog

Capcom Shooting For ‘Perfect DMC Game’

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Few games have engendered more Internet controversy at their initial revelation as the Devil May Cry reboot DmC by developer Ninja Theory. A Capcom staff member responded to worries about the new game’s developer and what Capcom hopes to accomplish.

This isn’t a sequel to Enslaved or Heavenly Sword! posted onlyonet. This is DMC it has nothing to do with previous titles the developer has created. In the same way that Dead Rising 2 wasn’t similar to baseball game ‘the bigs‘ that Blue Castle developed prior to the Multimillion selling DR2, and the same way that SFIV co developed by Dimps had nothing to do with Sonic The Hedgehog 4! Working with a developer is a lot more than looking at their previous games. But the skills that they have and what they can bring to the table and how our skills at Capcom can benefit them in our marriage.

Talking about the original four Devil May Cry games, the poster said, Lets be honest they were great games (averaging in the low 80’s on metacritic) but not perfect. We re now aiming to make the perfect DMC game that gets 90’s.

Source: Capcom Forums

Nintendo Wants To Reach The Masses With 3DS

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For Nintendo s first hardware launch in over four years, they want to make sure everyone knows about the 3DS. In the U.K., they want 85 percent of the country to have seen the TV ads three times before launch and give hands-on experiences to a half million people.

The campaign is a celebration of the 3D experience. There are two key elements: experiential and advertising. What will be a departure for us is how we fuse them together, in a way we haven t done before, said Nintendo U.K. marketing director Dawn Paine. In the campaign we will be showing consumers, real people, getting their first hands-on with 3DS at one of the events. And that in turn drives the people who see the ads to the sampling push. It s a virtuous circle. It s very fresh and different and very, Nintendo, because its all about genuine reactions, there is nothing fake or over-stated, it s all real.

Of course, there’s no practical way to show the 3D capabilities in standard media, but they have a plan for that. There s always a question about how you execute a 3D product in 2D. That s where the consumer reactions come into play, said Paine. It s not about the intricacies of the technology. The fact you can t see it on screen will tease and push people to trying it for themselves.

Source: MCV

World Of Warcraft Player Housing Unlikely

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Player housing has been a part of MMORPGs since Ultima Online, and its a feature in many other titles. Despite ongoing discussions on the matter, game producer J Allen Brack says that it may not ever happen in World of Warcraft.

“Player-housing has been on the list of something we want to do even back before the original realm box [first game release] shipped – it was a feature that didn’t make that,” said Brack. “It’s one of those things we talk about every expansion – what would this look like in WoW I don’t necessarily think that it’ll ever actually happen for WoW because the thing that we want to do is . . . I don’t think it’s sufficient enough for us in WoW to just say, ‘Hey we have player housing – great.’ There’s got to be some reason to have that, there’s got to be gameplay behind that, stuff that happens.”

“So thinking about the content creation we need in order to make that successful, as well as the other content creation that we need to do just to keep the game going, makes that . . .” Allen trailed off. “[Player housing] has fallen off the list of things that we’re willing to tackle on a per-expansion basis I guess one, two, three times now – so we’ll see what happens for the next time.”

Source: Eurogamer

Rift ‘Just The Beginning For Trion’

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Rift is launching to the public as the culmination of five years of work at developer Trion Worlds. They’re taking no risks with their first title, launching an extensive series of online and print ads that no doubt everyone in the gaming industry has seen by now, achieving over 250 million impressions in Europe alone.

Rift is just the beginning for Trion, said European marketing consultant John Davis. We are not only launching our first triple-A gaming franchise, we are also launching our game, network and digital sales platforms. A great deal of planning has gone in to making sure we continue to invest heavily to attract new players to Rift.

Find out more in the exclusive interview with Trion on Rift advertising.

Source: MCV

Heavy Rain Creator Considers Shaking Up War Games

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Quantic Dream challenged gaming conventions with Heavy Rain and David Cage indicates that he wants to do so again. After the studio gets through two upcoming games, he wants to challenge conventions of war games the same way Apocalypse Now and Platoon challenged conventions of war movies.

“I want to create a genre,” revealed Cage. “I want to convince more people that [emotional gaming] is a valid direction for the industry; to show them that this was not just one product, one story. It’s a format that can be used to tell any kind of story in any genre with any tone. I would really like the opportunity to work on a different type of game. I would love to see if what we discovered could be applied to a first-person shooter, for example.”

Still, two projects away is a long time and when asked if this new idea will ever come to pass, he said, “First person, I don’t know. But a game about war is something I would like to do, just to see if we could get closer to the film side; not glorifying war, but talking about it from a realistic point of view. War is not fun – talking about what the people involved feel, how horrible it can be for them. This is something I think could be very exciting and very new for the games industry. When we talk about war, it’s always a very ‘cool’ thing – you have these big guns and you kill loads of people.

“I would really like to take a different approach; to tell a story about politics [with it] or something a little more serious, he added. I would like to use what we discovered in Heavy Rain in this fantastic medium of interactivity to say something meaningful. This is probably one of the next things I’m going to try.”

Such an idea, if it came to pass, could challenge the conventions of standard war games. Cage said, “I think it would be an important way to evangelize [to] people. To say, ‘Look – if you get with more emotion and storytelling, it leads you to a more interesting experience. There is room for more than just games which get you with adrenalin.

Source: CVG