Crysis Comes To Consoles

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Crysis was heavily acclaimed when it released in 2007 for PC. Now that it’s coming as a download to PS3 and Xbox 360, the game still looks absolutely amazing!

 

  

Resistance 3 — Tales Of Survivors

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Not unlike a series of ads that detailed the accounts of “veterans” of the war with the Covenant for Halo 3, Sony has launched a series of ads from some people talking about their experiences with the Chimera. These ads, however, have the edge of being from the viewpoint of those who were mostly not soldiers.

Make Your Own Driver Poster

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On the official Facebook page for Driver: San Francisco, a movie poster creator app has been launched. Fans can pick from one of 5 iconic styles and start creating their own personalized Driver movie poster. After a style has been chosen the user must select a car (Mustang or Le Mans ) and then choose their co-stars from their Facebook friends. Once the final image has been assembled, high resolution assets are replaced and the poster is complete. Fans can post the photo to their photo album, download or share it!

ESPN Ready For Some Football

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ESPN and the NFL ended months of speculation by announcing a deal that extends the Monday Night Football rights package through 2021. It is believed that the eight year deal is worth $15.5 billion, or slightly less that $2 billion per year.

The current deal was set to run through 2013 and was worth $1.1 billion. The deal grants ESPN additional broadband rights for its ESPN.com and ESPN mobile platforms, increased international rights along with leverage to stream MNF and all NFL studio programming via its WatchESPN app.

Currently, ESPN’s MNF has ad sales adding up to around $175 million with the lightest of all NFL broadcast loads. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed that extensions are in the works with NBC, CBS and Fox, where again all three broadcast contracts run through 2013; NBC’s Sunday Night Football deal is worth $603 million per year, CBS’ national package comes in at $619.8 million while Fox ponies up $257.1 million per season for its Sunday afternoon package.

It seems unlikely that ABC (owner of ESPN) will pony up for the Thursday night package. Right now, Turner Sports, NBC Universal and Fox Sports’ FX are the frontrunners for the eight-game bundle, which could go for over $600 million per year, with bidding on the new package expected to begin in earnest later in September.

Source: AdWeek

3D ‘Just Scratching The Surface Of What’s Possible’ Says Sony Developer

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3D TV adoption has been sluggish so far and consumer reactions have been somewhat sluggish. However Sony London Studios manager and internal 3D expert and evangelist Mick Hocking thinks that the 3D era is still in its infancy.

“Looking at the future of 3D, I think we’ve really only just begun to realize its potential as a creative medium,” said Hocking. “With the combination of 3D and motion control gaming with PlayStation Move, I think titles like Resistance 3 are just scratching the surface of what’s possible.”

“For those who may have been fans of some of the ‘virtual reality’ projects of the late 1980s and early 1990s, improvements in processing power and 3D screen resolution are creating virtual spaces that are more realistic than ever,” he continued. “If you look at what PlayStation is doing now and the innovations that are being worked on in our Studios in 3D gaming, we’re living in one of the most thrilling eras to be a gamer.”

Source: IndustryGamers

Sims Social Races Past FarmVille

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Electronic Arts has seen it’s The Sims Social game leap to 36 million monthly active users after its first month of use, more than FarmVille. The social game is currently the fastest growing on Facebook, acquired 1.7 million new users on Sunday, and picked up a total of about 8.3 million new users in the past week.

The Sims Social is now the fourth most popular game on Facebook, behind Zynga’s own Empires & Allies, Cityville and Texas HoldEm Poker. The game has made EA to the second largest Facebook game developer with roughly 77 million monthly active users, second to only Zynga with 273 million.

Source: appdata.com

Swrve Heads Into In-Game Advertising

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In-game advertising start up Swrve is looking to make in-game ads more targeted. The company has announced that it has raised $2.7 million in seed funding for its real-time feedback platform for game developers and testers.

Swrve will let game developers to test, target, and tune their games using their real-time analytics for web and mobile games. The cloud-based platform gives smaller companies that can’t have a large analytics team the ability to set up the right ads at the right times.

“If you see the signs that a user is about to discontinue the game, you can spot that before it happens and do something about it,” said Hugh Reynolds, CEO of Swrve. “We can now establish a two-way dialogue between developer and gamer.”

Reynolds indicates that Swrve has insights into how things like school holidays and commute patterns affect game habits from day to day. He indicates that the platform will automatically push game concepts to targeted segments of players and help analyze reactions to those changes in real time.

Swrve indicates that integration is easy and there is a flexible pricing model. The platform works across Apple’s iOS, Facebook, web and smart TV platforms.

Source: VentureBeat

Zynga Support Pages Point To Kingdoms & Quests

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Zynga is working on a new game that will be titled Kingdoms & Quests. The game was outed by the discovery of support pages for the new game.

The beginner’s guide for the gameplay describes Kingdoms & Quests as a role-playing adventure. It will still involve the collection of resources like most Zynga titles, but the game will also involve combat like Empires & Allies, although in this case it will be against fantasy monsters.

Source: InsideSocialGames.com

Twitter CEO Says Promoted Tweets Expanding

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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says the company is looking to expand its advertising efforts. While Promoted Tweets have heretofore only been shown to customers that already follow an advertiser’s account, that limitation will soon be removed, allowing tweets to reach a much broader audience.

Twitter is also adding the ability for advertisers to target a specific geographical area. The CEO also said that the company will look at experimenting with a self-serve platform for advertisers to launch campaigns without dealing with the red tape of the company’s sales team.

Some people think that an IPO might come soon, but Costolo pushed back against that, noting that they recently raised $400 million. “We want to be able to remain independent and not beholden to the public markets until we want to be,” he said.

Source: AdWeek