Deus Ex: Human Revolution will have a complex score and also have a variety of detailed sound effects and world-class voice acting. Their first TV spot is also high quality, emphasizing the philosophy of evolution behind the game.
In anticipation of the remake of Fright Night, {link no longer active} an incentivized sharing program has been launched on the official Facebook page that allows fans to share Fright Night content with friends through your social feeds and attend exclusive Fright Night Friday events for a chance to win. Register to be part of the frenzy and become eligible to win weekly prizes. Help feed the frenzy by sharing weekly promoted content, retweeting special messages and attending special Fright Night events. The more you share content (trailers, extended clips, etc.) the more points you earn and each week the registrants with the most points will win a killer prize (like a $500 VISA card to plan your own Fright Night Friday or a home entertainment center). Fans can even earn points by checking into their local theater on Facebook Places.
The Sprite Zero Skate n Splash campaign has launched an interactive YouTube skate video {link no longer active} that lets you instantly skip from one segment to the next, deciding exactly what you ll see and when you ll see it. Hit play and use keyboard keys 4 through 9 to replay skateboard tricks, skip others, and create your own rhythmic masterpieces on the fly. Viewers can jump between moves that will inevitably conclude with the skater landing with a splash into the water below him. Moves include One Foot Method Air and Lay Back Air. The video can also be viewed linearly without interaction in full screen mode.
Shane Kim has left his position as Microsoft Game Studios VP to join the board of Zipline, a mobile company. However, Kim isn’t going to assert that mobile is prepared to replace game consoles.
“I would never make that kind of an announcement,” said Kim. “Obviously things are evolving and I think anybody who tries to say they know exactly what that future s going to look like – well, I think that that s a pretty tough prediction to try to make. Now, is it going to evolve as a component and are the shares going to change Sure. But it s not clear to me also that we re not talking about a world where there s a lot of growth and actually the total pie is expanding.”
“So will there be some impact on console gaming I think it would be hard to say that there isn t any impact, but I would never say that it s going to go away completely. I think that the big console game manufacturers, they ve all got plans for the next console generation. I think that they re all shooting to make sure that those next versions, whatever they look like, are going to be things that are going to be compelling for the kinds of gamers, especially hard core gamers, who really enjoy that style of gaming. It s going to be a while before you have the kind of power… in mobile platforms that can compete effectively, I think,” Kim continued. “So to me it s really about different choices for different types of gamers. There s different styles of games that are more popular on the different platforms and that just creates more opportunities, clearly, for more developers to create content. And the challenge is that there s a lot of people creating mobile game content today. So how do you help that community differentiate itself from the competition and also make money in the process ”
Source: IndustryGamers {link no longer active}
Google has acquired Motorola Mobility for the tidy sum of $12.5 billion. This is largely seen as a move to combat Apple and Microsoft, but some are asking what it means for marketers.
This is largely a deal to acquire software patents and has no near-term implications for advertising, asserts Kunur Patel. Google insists Motorola will operate as a separate unit and will continue to make mobile phones and tablets under the Motorola badge. In other words, don’t expect Google phones and tablets — for now.
Motorola Mobility is ammunition for Google in the growing patent war with Apple and Microsoft, using their 17,000 patents with 7,500 pending. The company makes mobile phones, tablets and set-top boxes, all areas that Google has expressed interest in.
As for what it means for the Android OS, what it means is: Again, nothing, according to Google, noted Patel. In a call with analysts this morning Android chief Andy Rubin said Google expects to keep Android open and Motorola won’t be getting special services. One of the knocks on Android is that because it is an open-source platform (and not an operating system) every mobile phone manufacturer deploys a slightly different flavor of Android. That means app developers can’t create a single Android app to run on all Android phones and instead have to tweak the code to run on different systems. The obvious advantage here would be that Google would enforce a uniform operating system for all Android-powered phones, but both companies say that is not on the table.
As for the deal potentially going through, Google has come under a mountain of government scrutiny lately with the Federal Trade Commission launching a top-to-bottom investigation of every part of Google’s business. This deal will surely fall squarely within the FTC’s sights and it could force the Mountain View, Calif.-based behemoth to sell off parts of Motorola that it considers important to keeping the landscape competitive, or it could scotch the deal altogether. The key to understanding this is to what degree the FTC will consider this deal under a separate threshold to its larger inquiry. Despite Google’s seemingly unstoppable growth, it doesn’t dominate the mobile media market the same way Apple does, concludes Patel.
Source: AdAge
Facebook recently announced that they are changing around their games section. While it might not seem like a large difference from what they’ve done in the past, they’ve promised changes for the developer experience.
“In the past we’ve used some pretty blunt instruments to deal with a problem we had, which was that some people really loved seeing game content in their feeds, and others felt it was spammy” said Carl Sjogreen, head of Facebook’s platform product team.
It used to be that if a game was something you’ve used, you’d see it in a feed, but now that’s changing. “So with these ranking changes we’ve done a much more nuanced job of trying to understand the quality of game content on Facebook as reported by users,” Sjogreen added. “If an app is contributing content that gets clicks, likes, et cetera, we consider that premium content.”
Users will also be able to make app recommendations to other users. Sjogreen says they want to encourage more and better games on the platform, and give more relevance to games with the ticker. “Fundamentally we want to have a relationship with developers on the platform where our incentives are aligned,” says Sjogreen.
To head of games partnerships Sean Ryan, games are very important for Facebook. “Users who play games on Facebook are more highly engaged than those who don’t, and they also report more happiness with Facebook in general so we should be catering more to them.”
“It’s not about getting as many gamers as possible. It’s about getting gamers who are more engaged, said Ryan. To everyone’s surprise, games took off. This is not a games company at core. But by last year we had an unbelievable games and growth story, but it was impacting other areas of the platform.”
At first, many games and apps did produce spam for users, but now that the problem has been tamped down, they want to enable communication more intelligently. “The key here is re-open virality for games,” concluded Ryan.
Source: Gamasutra
Gameforge announced that it has acquired over 300 million registered users worldwide. They’ve managed over 8 million new users added each month since August 2010 between their 20 browser-based games.
“Our current focus is on process optimization and consolidation, but our growth continues to progress unabated,” said Christoph Jennen, Gameforge AG’s CFO. “Although we are incredibly proud of this milestone, we are still motivated to continue our exponential growth. We are strategically expanding our portfolio and are looking for new staff – in Karlsruhe alone we currently have around 100 open positions.”
Gameforge is prepping Star Trek Infinite Space for release in 2012.
Namaste is creating a platform called StoryBricks to enable casual users to create their own games for social networks. It is being designed for regular users to create their own games, and currently the company is in discussions with several venture capital firms.
With a social storytelling platform, users can become part of the development team, according to Namaste’s Rodolfo Rosini. They have already hired Anil Hansjee, former head of M&A for Google Europe, has joined the company as adviser.
Source: Tech Crunch
Gears of War 3 will have a stereoscopic 3D option, according to executive producer Rod Fergusson. This joins the small cast of other 3D supported Xbox 360 titles like Crysis 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops.
“Instead of 720p you’re at five something,” explained Fergusson. “It was something that came in really late in our process. It wasn’t something where we said, OK, we’re going to design the game from the ground up for 3D. It was more of a post-process 3D, where we’re like, OK, certain things need to be adjusted, but for the most part it generally works.
He said that the PS3 currently offers better support for 3D, but, “As you look forward, in the next XDKs [Xbox Development Kit] coming out of the Xbox, it’ll have more support for 3D or more higher quality for native support for 3D,” Fergusson said. “We’re supporting the current state of the art for Xbox. Moving forward, the Xbox will be able to take it further.”
Source: Eurogamer
Arrowhead Games has achieved success with their release Magicka has sold well under the partnership of Paradox Interactive. The PC title has sold upwards of 800,000 units so far and they’re hoping to reach a million by the end of the year.
It’s gonna pass that [sales milestone] in the next week, week after or so,” said Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester. “We’re still doing between five and seven thousand a week, so it’s a great sales number.”
As for the Vietnam expansion, he said, “It’s done a few hundred thousand, so the attachment rate is really high.”
Source: Joystiq
