According to a cover story by Nintendo Power, Sega’s Shinobi franchise is being revived. The cover also suggests that Sonic Generations is coming to 3DS.
Adding credibility to the story is a recently spotted mention of a Shinobi 3DS game from Griptonite Games. The developer has mostly done ports of titles to portable systems like DS, PSP and iOS, but they also created Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines for the PSP.
Source: Kotaku
Ubisoft has confirmed that they are developing a new Ghost Recon title called Ghost Recon Online. Unlike the anticipated Ghost Recon: Future Soldier which is a standard retail game, Ghost Recon Online will be a free-to-play PC title.
Ghost Recon Online takes the best attributes of the Ghost Recon game franchise and brings them online, making the experience of being a Ghost accessible to millions of new players and fans, said Hugues Ricour, senior producer at Ubisoft. This game was designed from the start to be a free-to-play experience. Our development teams are dedicated to making Ghost Recon Online a truly unique, top-quality online title.
The online market is an exciting new frontier for video games and for gamers, said Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer at Ubisoft. With Ghost Recon Online, and other major upcoming projects, Ubisoft is creating online experiences that allow our fans to stay connected to their favorite brands and to continually receive new content and gameplay. This direct link with our fans will allow us to create new and ever better experiences for them.
While it is generally considered better to have more fans than less on Facebook, fan engagement rates usually decline as a Facebook Page adds more fans. There’s a couple things to take from this revelation.
The larger a community is, the more heterogeneous the make-up of its members. People fan brands for different reasons and at different points of entry, wrote Matthew Wurst. Some fans want product information or news, others are waiting for coupons or deals while there may also be a subset of you fan base that joined six months ago as a result of a contest or sweepstakes. Serving up relevant, engaging content to each of these constituencies can be a challenge. It was Abraham Lincoln who said ‘You can please most of the people some of the time, some of the people most of the time, but none of the people all of the time.’
There’s also issues with international fans, and sometimes language and timing can affect people’s engagement. It should be noted that links and pictures tend to lead to more engagement in posts as well.
While we have yet to collectively agree on a universal method for dollar value of a Facebook page, let’s be sure that we’re asking the right questions, added Wurst. There is no Klout score for a Facebook page, no universal scorecard to help understand the weight of qualitative and quantitative interactions. Total fans is not the answer, especially not the mythical ‘One Million Fan’ target. Neither is the sum of likes and comments per post. These only tell part of the story.
Ultimately, having a large number of active fans is always in the goal. Meaning, of course, size still matters, concluded Wurst.
Source: AdWeek
Team Bondi director Brendan McNamara thinks that the MotionScan technology used in L.A. Noire is powerful enough that it will even make Hollywood stand up and notice. He thinks its a sign that games can compete head on with TV and film for storytelling.
“If you take all the strengths of what’s great about a video game and you take all the strengths of what’s great about cinema and film you can get this amazing new product and what that means is video games become the pre-eminent entertainment form for the 21st century,” said McNamara, who added, “We’ve had all sorts of approaches from different people wanting to use it for medicine and for security and people like law enforcement wanting it for lying simulators to show operatives how to read faces.
Source: BBC
Microsoft recently detailed an update for Windows Phone 7 code-named “Mango” and officially making the platform Windows Phone 7.1. 500 new features are planned, from major improvements like multitasking to transparent back-end services.
Many of the new features will seek to unify and cross-feed data and messages from social networks, messaging systems, apps, e-mail, and audio. For instance, Threads lets users switch between text, Windows Live Messenger, and Facebook chat contained within the same conversation, Groups lets users receive and send messages from predefined social or business circles directly to and from the Smart Tiles home screen, and Contact Cards have been enhanced to include feeds from Twitter and Linked In.
The Mango update will be ready for Windows Phone 7 in Fall 2011.
Source: InformationWeek
The new Conan the Barbarian film will launch August 19. While there is no spin-off movie game, film producer Frederik Malmberg is fully on board with the idea of games as art.
“Hell, yeah!! Games are definitely an art form. So much passion goes into games, both from players and from people who make them, said Malmberg. “Hollywood is seriously looking at games but has a hard time understanding the business. I don’t think games threaten Hollywood; in my experience gamers are usually uber-consumers when it comes to movies, too. We may spend hours gaming and be almost physically exhausted, but a great film is an inspiration both visually and emotionally that can carry long beyond the experience.”
Despite the fact that there’s no full, separate licensed title for Conan, the MMO Age of Conan will release a content pack in The Savage Cost of Turan around the time the movie releases. “I personally worked with the Age of Conan team from the start as well as with the whole creative team of the feature film. It was natural for me to introduce Age of Conan to the film design team, play the game with the writer and guide the director through some playfields, said Malmberg, who added, “For example, to rate a movie R is not the easiest [decision] in today’s marketplace, but with over a million sold Age of Conan boxes sold in retail it helped to convince us. The gamer audience is an important component of our own, and the action in the film needed that amped up visceral feel you get in the game.
Source: Eurogamer
Mobile ad spending has been growing over the past couple of years up from $416 million in 2009 to $743 million in 2010. Still, despite an estimated spending increase of 48 percent to $1.1 billion in 2011, there are still some lingering issues.
But right now money is flowing into mobile because advertisers have learned to fish where the fish are, writes Mike Chapman. Not because of the potential offered by tiny, precision-targeted, web-connected, location-aware ads.
Indeed, a third of mobile advertising targets by reading rich media support; only 15 percent use location and the same amount by handset model and age and country are used less than 10 percent each.
Another interesting statistic shows that Android makes up the largest share of ads served at nearly 40 percent, with iOS seeing 30 percent and Blackberry at 25 percent. Still, iOS has double the click-through rate with 0.8 percent compared to 0.4 percent for Android and Blackberry.
Source: AdWeek
Take-Two has announced that it has signed Jake Song’s XLGames or an MMO based around a popular 2K franchise (which could be BioShock, Pirates! or Civilization). Song notably helped found Nexon and create Lineage, one of the most popular MMO titles in Korea.
“One of 2K’s key long-term initiatives is to bring our groundbreaking, triple-A entertainment experiences to broader audiences through emerging online platforms and markets,” said 2K president Christoph Hartmann. “Our partnership with XLGames underscores our ongoing commitment to expanding 2K’s presence in online gaming and the Asian market by leveraging our creative expertise with companies that are proven leaders in the region.”
“I can tell you this is one of the most exciting projects that I’ve ever undertaken, added Song. I cannot wait to launch this collaboration, which illustrates our shared development talent and passion to create cutting-edge entertainment experiences.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
Remedy Entertainment has done well by mobile offerings with its port of Death Rally selling positively. According to Remedy EVP Aki Jarvilehto, traditional portable game makers face a challenge these days in facing down multifunction devices.
“Many smartphones and tablets offer mind blowing value to gamers, said Jarvilehto. Right now you can buy tons and tons of fun on iOS with the price of a single handheld console game. Heck, you can get tons of fun for free with advertising based concepts. So I do think the traditional handheld consoles will need to reinvent themselves if they want to compete.
Source: IndustryGamers
The first major trailer for Dead Island presented the game as something that was emotional and, perhaps, familial. As this extended look into the gameplay shows, however, it’s more Dead Rising 2 than Heavy Rain.
