Madden NFL 12: The Debut

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Undaunted by the recent labor difficulties, EA is still gearing up Madden NFL 12 for an August release. Check out this first look at the game, with the song Champion by Chipmunk featuring Chris Brown.

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Portal 2 Personality Quiz Asks Deep, Probing Questions

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Appearing as an entry on the official blog for Portal 2, the Portal 2 team has released a personality test supposedly conceived by Aperture scientists in the 1970s. Used to determine test subject compatibility for cooperative testing initiatives, the test was categorized UNSAFE by Aperture Laboratories in 1977 after every test subject who took the test became immediately insane. Filled with questions that reveal unassailable truths and gut-wrenching personal secrets about anyone that takes the test, it was placed in a locked strong box and secured in an abandoned sub-basement filled with cement with the doorway bricked over. Only recently discovered last month a further round of testing has been requested and you can help! Questions get the user to reveal preferences about themselves like what color do you wish your eyes were and challenge their perception of themselves allowing them to post to Facebook the character they are most like in Portal 2 at the end.

Fruit Ninja Might Be Slicing On Xbox 360

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Evidence recently appeared suggesting that Fruit Ninja is coming to the Xbox 360. South Korea’s Game Ratings Board has rated a game called Fruit Ninja Kinect.

Fruit Ninja is one of the most popular games on mobile platforms, using the touch screen to simulate chopping fruit in half in midair. It’s not hard to imagine the possibilities with Kinect.

Source: Siliconera

Beyonce Sued Over Dancing Game

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Developer Game Five is suing Beyonce Knowles, claiming to be out over $100 million on a dancing game called Starpower: Beyonce. They say that the pop singer is in breach of contract because of a a last minute compensation demand.

“In early December everything was still a go. And then the week of Christmas, she said that’s it, I don’t want to hear from you guys, go away, resulting in 70 people losing their jobs,” said Gate Five founder Greg Easley. “We’d much rather make a game than litigate. But we want to recover damages that Gate Five suffered.”

Source: New York Mag

Ads Look Back In New York

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One of the more appealing near-future innovations for outdoor advertising is targeted advertising working in the way like it does on the Internet. Now, the future is here, with innovations allowing smart billboards to adjust depending on the age, gender and number of people looking at it.

So if a fifty-year-old man strolls by an ad for tampons, the ad will morph seamlessly into an ad for running shoes before he gets there, writes Amy Lee. If a crowd of men and women of all ages come by on a cold morning, the display might transform into an ad for hot coffee: a gender-neutral, time and weather appropriate solution. And if hundreds of people are tweeting about the Knicks game, the software might realize a sports game is unfolding nearby, and display a nicely appropriate Gatorade ad.

The software uses a built-in camera to measure how long people look at an ad. A successful ad will, obviously, draw more and longer attention. The company that created the ads is quick to point out that they are not invasive and all information gathered is private.

“The information that we are collecting is purely numerical,” said Immersive CEO Jason Sosa. “It s not identifiable to any one particular person.”

Source: Huffington Post

Dungeon Siege III Digital Comic Available

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Square Enix has announced that the Dungeon Siege III web comic has gone live. The weekly series will have three exciting vignettes by writer Jeremy Barlow (Star Wars: Rebellion) and artists Iban Coello (Iron Man: Iron Protocols) and Sergio Abad (Transformers: Prime).

The final comic will be a print comic introducing the fourth character will be packaged with Dungeon Siege III exclusively at Wal-mart. The three Dungeon Siege III comics are now available for free download on www.DungeonSiege.com and at www.digital.darkhorse.com.

Game Industry Seeing Increasing Gains In Emerging Markets

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Newzoo released the results of its 2011 National Gamers Surveys, polling 20,000 respondents in the U.S., Europe, Brazil, Russia, Spain, and Mexico. Results revealed that two-thirds of players’ game budgets was online (digital download and mobile gaming) with roughly half of Brazilian and Russian gamers spending money on those games, with the majority of that money going towards free-to-play and mobile titles.

“As an international Payment Service Provider consulting clients on monetizing their gaming platforms, we see changes first hand,” said GlobalCollect CCO Koen Vanpraet. “Year on year, total transactions grew 103 percent in Russia and 228 percent in Brazil in 2010. Local payment methods, such as Boletos Banc¡rio (Brazil) and WebMoney (Russia), played a major role in this. We know research is vital to ensure gaming companies implement the right strategy to grow their online business and the results of these surveys enable us to advise our clients on a strategic level.”

Groupon Distances Itself From Donald Trump

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Groupon has announced that they are distancing themselves from The Apprentice or anything that has to do with the Donald Trump brand. The company that offers discounts on restaurants, hotels and other services does not want to be associated with the politically controversial Trump.

Here s the thing: Groupon has never been a sponsor of The Apprentice on TV or on the web. We invest heavily in online advertising through networks that place ads on a rolling basis, meaning that we know one will appear on NBC.com but not specifically which page. We know that some advertising appeared on the Apprentice home page a few weeks ago, wrote Groupon. Enough consumers have contacted us to warrant ensuring that we don t place ads on the Apprentice homepage in the future. It s the same reason we don t run deals on guns or abortion this isn t a political statement, it s avoiding intentionally upsetting a segment of our customers.

Source: Groupon Blog

App Store Game Downloads Top 40 Percent

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Xyologic has announced that almost 40 percent of game downloads on Apple’s App Store are now free. About 80.8 percent of all app downloads in the month of March were free, with 99.9 million free game downloads over that period.

Many of these play-for-free titles are supported by extra supporting apps that are downloaded. However Apple was worried that such methods were being used to inflate rankings in the top 25 apps and they’ve cracked down on it.

It may make Apple s platform possibly less attractive vis-a-vis Google Android if developers can t find a suitable alternative to offer walls, said the report. This is the biggest interference by Apple into the app economy in recent months. Its effects, at this point, are unclear.

Of the 150 top free games on the App Store, 94 games are supported with micro-transactions, meaning that Apple must work carefully to preserve these developers. Other important revelations include the fact that 4 percent of game apps account for 40 percent of all downloads and almost all of the paid games on the App Store are priced below $3.99.

Source: VentureBeat

 

PSN Hackers Reportedly Tried Selling Data Back To Sony

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According to reports, hackers attempted to sell details of 2.2 million hacked accounts, reportedly including credit card numbers, expatriation dates, and security codes on the back of the cards. Sony has claimed that those details were either encrypted or not kept on their PSN servers and they are denying that they ignored offers to buy the info back.

To my knowledge there is no truth to the report that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list, said Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media. The entire credit card table was encrypted and we have no evidence that credit card data was taken.

Source: New York Times