Create a video using the Blake Shelton cover of Footloose showing off your best moves and post your video to the official website. Don’t forget to send to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or Tumblr in order to record all the traffic in order to win a chance to go to the premiere sponsored by Herbal Essences.
USA Network, in tandem with DC Entertainment, has released volume two of Burn Notice: A New Day an engaging first interactive multiplatform comic book series. Sponsored by Hyundai, the comic book gives fans their Burn Notice fix before the show’s return on November 3 at 10/9c. Available on usanetwork.com, Facebook and as a freestanding iOS and Android App on select devices and written by the creative team behind the show, including series creator Matt Nix, this second volume features more exclusive content along with unique special effects that will give readers a 3-D view into selected panels, allowing them to more deeply explore Michael Westen’s environment. Fans will have behind-the-scenes video of DC artist Tony Shasteen, who is returning as lead artist on the volume 2. This content will not only show how he created the artwork, but how he determined the look and feel of the characters. This new volume will feature exclusive cover art each week leading into all-new episodes of season five, which premieres Thursday, November 3, with a new issue unveiled that same day. Picking up where Volume 1 left off, Volume 2 takes Michael around the globe to continue his hunt for the operatives who burned him. With a new chapter each week, you’ll experience a story you won’t get anywhere else, and unique interactive features that bring you deeper into the Burn Notice world of intrigue!
The next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft is expected to release sometime around the year 2014. Not surprisingly, this is when Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says the company is targeting for the next version of the Unreal Engine to launch.
“I spend about 60 percent of my time every day doing research work that’s aimed at our next generation engine and the next generation of consoles,” said Sweeney. “This is technology that won’t see the light of day until probably around 2014, but focusing on that horizon enables me to do some really cool things that just aren’t practical today, but soon will be.”
According to Sweeney, the multiple core processors is the really big technology trick for whatever the new technology will be. “Once you have 20 cores, you can’t easily say this one is going to be for animation and this one is going to be for details on the face of the character, because all these parameters change dynamically as different things come on screen and load as you shift from scene to scene,” he explained. “The big challenge will be redesigning our engine and our workload so that we scale more of these different computer tasks between CPU cores seamlessly in real-time and dynamically so that you’re always getting the maximum computing power out with the engine, regardless of what sort of work you’re doing.”
Source: IGN
Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella confirmed the studio is “locked into an idea” for its first project, though little information has come out about the specifics of the game. He indicates, however, that he wants its creation to be collaborative with the fans.
“We’ve kind of been underground a little bit by design because we don’t have that much exciting to talk about. But we are getting there,” said Zampella. “We recently re-launched the Respawn website. We have our forums on there, so we are starting to engage the community and get the fans excited. That will eventually fold into once we start talking about the game and what the features are we will have a dialogue with the fan base to see what they want and what they don’t.”
“We’re over 60 people now,” Zampella added. “We’re at the point where we are locked into an idea. Our deal with EA Partners is a publishing deal, but we maintain the ownership of the intellectual property. So for us it is important because we can now take the IP wherever we want it to go and we can make decisions based on what is the best thing for the franchise not just for some bottom line. Obviously, we would like to do both.”
Source: USA Today
While many might think that Mass Effect was the first original RPG world that BioWare created, the kung-fu RPG Jade Empire came before it by a few years on the first Xbox. While it’s been several years since any official word on a new Jade Empire has come out, BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka indicates they are still quite aware of it.
“We’ve been talking a lot about that actually on and off over the years,” he told, “It’s an IP, it’s a setting that we’re really passionate about, and we still are. Both [co-founder] Greg [Zeschuk] and I were big believers in the IP.”
“We have a lot of different projects now on a lot of different platforms, and you might see some of that [Jade Empire] in the future,” he added. “You never know . . . it is a franchise that’s near and dear to us.”
Source: Eurogamer
According to a new report by Raptr, social gamers have logged more hours playing Zynga’s Ville series of games than Assassin’s Creed, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and the Grand Theft Auto franchises combined. They say that the conversion rate from Zynga’s FarmVille to CityVille stacks up favorably against that of many core franchises.
“But it’s not just FarmVille players that are loyal; for almost any given Zynga title, between 80 percent and 95 percent of players also play another Zynga game,” writes John Master Lee. “And they play often, like eight sessions a day on average for Ville series gamers —compared to roughly two play sessions a day for Call of Duty and Warcraft series fans. But they don’t play for all that long: 41 minutes per day for Ville gamers compared to 177 and 252 for CoD and Warcraft respectively.”
However, there are the top 2 percent of Zynga players that manage over 120 minutes of gameplay per day. There players are a key part of filling Zynga’s coffers, somewhere around $500-800 million in 2010.
“And while Zynga led the way in creating a new kind of game and a new kind of gamer, hardcore and social gamers are approaching their own version of a singularity,” notes Lee. “In 2010, only 20 percent of Xbox 360 players also played a Zynga game. So far in 2011, that number is already at 30 percent.”
Find out more about Raptr in this interview.
Source: blog.raptr.com
Apple has never been a company to be hurried, and despite wide rumors that they would have an iPhone event on October 4, they are only just now confirming it. It is believed the new iPhone will have a faster A5 processor that the iPad 2 has, a Qualcomm dual-mode GSM/CDMA baseband, and a higher-resolution eight megapixel rear camera.
Source: All Things D
Zynga is dealing with some troubling data, starting with the fact that their top title CityVille has diminished from 72 million monthly active users from a high of 100 million. An SEC filing shows year-over-year profits are down 95 percent at $1.3 million versus $27.2 million for the previous period while the number of daily active users across all Zynga titles dropped 4 percent, from 62 million to 59 million.
Zynga’s accounting measure in “bookings” (which measures all revenue prior to adjustments like Facebook’s cut) fell 4 percent from $287 million in the Spring 2011 quarter to $275 million in the Summer 2011 quarter. While Empires & Allies, launched in during that Summer 2011 period and is viewed as a positive step for the company, IPO analyst Francis Gaskins notes that overall metrics were down.
“Whenever a company boldly creates its own accounting conventions, investors question whether it’s just a restatement to pull the wool over investors eyes. Groupon is the prime current example, although in the case of Groupon, the SEC pushed back and made it conform to general accounting principals,” wrote Gaskins.
“Sequential quarterly metrics comparisons for 2011’s June quarter versus the March quarter are not favorable,” he said. “As for Zynga management and its consultants, imagine showing quarterly income of only $1.4 million and a $14 billion valuation at the same time At a $14 billion valuation, Zynga is an obvious short. We have always had questions about Zynga and its valuation.”
Source: Seeking Alpha
Some people have jokingly suggested that the famous CG trailer for Dead Island was the best part of the whole game. Lionsgate would seem to agree, since they are using the debut trailer as the primary inspiration for a film that will focus on “human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling.”
“Like the hundreds of journalists and millions of fans who were so passionate and vocal about the Dead Island trailer, we too were awestruck,” said Lionsgate co-COO Joe Drake. “This is exactly the type of property we’re looking to adapt at Lionsgate – it’s sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love. It also has built in brand recognition around the world, and franchise potential.”
Sean Daniel (The Mummy, Tombstone, Dazed and Confused) is heading up production.
Amazon has confirmed that they will be launching a tablet device called the Kindle Fire. The $199 device will come with a 7-inch display with 16 million colors, Wi-Fi support, as well as a free, 30-day trial of Amazon Prime and will launch November 15.
Users can download magazines, books and music to the device; games such as Fruit Ninja are also supported. Amazon also unveiled a Kindle Touch with a touchscreen for $99, with a 3G version for $149 in November; a version of the original Kindle will sell for $79 starting today.
Source: USA Today
