Nexon MMO Suffers Real-Money Trading Downtime

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Nexon has confirmed that it has taken the MMORPG Mabinogi offline as a result of illegal real-money trading issues. Use of ‘bots’ to harvest goal and reproduced gold are also believed to be contributing to the extended downtime of the game.

“We have found lots of RMT rising from ‘the workers and auto players’ during last holidays. So we are working on investigation over it and proceeding broadscale system maintenance to root it out,” said Nexon. “Some are saying the reproduced gold caused this server down, but it’s not true. This is totally about the RMT and the workers. Since this such huge situation happened inevitably without any notice days ago we will compensate the players reasonably.”

Source: This Is Game

Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Confirmation

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Reports are that Mass Effect 3 will indeed have some form of multiplayer. The first details of which are apparently the scoop of PC Power Play, an Australian magazine.

“That’s right – Mass Effect 3 is getting multiplayer!” teases Daniel Hindes. “We travel to BioWare’s office in Edmonton for hands-on time with the series’ first foray into online gameplay, and chat with Mass Effect Series Producer and Mass Effect 3 Project Director Casey Hudson about the decision to go multiplayer in the epic battle for the galaxy.”

Source: computerandvideogames.com

Rift Top Fan: Guild Launch Wants To Find You

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Guild Launch has announced a contest to try and find the Rift Top Fan. The winner will receive a one year subscription to Rift and a GeForce GTX 570; other winners will receive the graphics card, a six-month subscription to Rift or SteelSeries gaming headsets.

“Gamers want to be recognized for being the best. Sharing videos and images of their exploits is a lot of fun,” says Mike Bilter, Community Manager. “On top of that we have the in-game item Dwarven Smithy Goggles and a chance to win a GTX 570 just for voting in the contest. You literally can’t go wrong by participating in our Rift Top Fan Contest.”

To find out more, please visit TheGuildLife.com {link no longer active}.

iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Over 1 Million

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Despite a lukewarm reception to the iPhone 4S by some, Apple, AT&T and Verizon Wireless all announced they had exhausted supplies of pre-orders of the phone. Sprint, meanwhile said they had run out of inventory of the 16GB iPhone 4S, though they still had 32GB and 64GB phones available.

“Amazing,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. “It shows that the iPhone 4S is not necessarily for the leading edgers. Apple has become very, very mainstream.”

Apple revealed that iPhone 4S pre-orders have topped 1 million in the first 24 hours, a 66 percent increase over the first-day sales of the iPhone 4 in the summer of 2010. Many on the Internet were disappointed that the screen size of the iPhone and lack of support for the LTE networks of AT&T and Verizon caused some disappointment, but clearly it was easily dissipated.

“This was a great upgrade if people weren’t waiting for a rabbit to come out of the hat,” said Gottheil. “People who were disappointed are the ones who are always very interested in being surprised [by the latest Apple move]. They’re always looking for that ‘I never would have thought of that’ moment.”

“There has been lots of buzz in China surrounding last week’s unveiling of the iPhone 4S and we believe the product will be available in China during December,” said White, who is currently in that country on business. “We believe the iPhone 4S will take Apple fever to the next level in China.”

“While the unveiling of the iPhone 4S received a muted response, both from the market and tech blogs, the customers have the final word, in our view, and they have spoken with resounding enthusiasm for the iPhone 4S,” said Brian White, an analyst with Ticonderoga Securities. “There has been lots of buzz in China surrounding last week’s unveiling of the iPhone 4S and we believe the product will be available in China during December. We believe the iPhone 4S will take Apple fever to the next level in China.”

Source: computerworld.com

Xbox 720 Logo Spotted In Real Steel

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While Microsoft has been reluctant to talk about the next Xbox console, a logo recently appeared in Real Steel that might give us a hint at what it is named. The capture of the screen shows the logo for a ‘Xbox 720.’

What adds a slight amount of credibility to this is the fact that the image it is included with includes several real, current brands like Cadillac, Capital One, Mercedes-Benz, Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Microsoft’s own Bing. While this is far from a confirmation, it gives a hint that Microsoft is still looking towards the future.

Source: CVG  {link no longer active}

Batman: Arkham City Sees Nightwing Patrol The Streets

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The final trophies for the DLC of Batman: Arkham City have revealed the final playable character. Nightwing will be playable in what can be assumed are his own challenge maps.

Nightwing joins Batman, Catwoman and Robin as the four playable characters in Batman: Arkham City. Batman and Catwoman will be available in the main story campaign, while Robin and Nightwing will be DLC exclusive.

Source: arkhamcity.co.uk

Wii U: Peter Moore Says ‘We’ve Made That Commitment’

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Peter Moore, Chief operating officer for Electronic Arts, says that the company is committed to the Wii U when it releases. “There are no indications that there’s anything that feels like it’s off target,” said Moore.

For his part, he’s still waiting for the final details of Wii U’s GPU and CPU, its price and when it might be shipped. “From our perspective right now, specs are a big deal,” he added.

“No one thinks it’s going to replace an iPad 2 but it is playing into what a consumer feels comfortable with,” Moore noted. “Our teams are working on it around the world. Our key franchises will be there. We’ve made that commitment to Nintendo.”

Source: Reuters

Social Media Companies ‘Buying Their Way Up The Charts’

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The App Store environment is becoming increasingly competitive and hard to break into. According to Hungry Shark developer MD Ian Harper, some media companies are buying their way to the top using Cost Per Install programs.

“Any developer who hasn’t already had a hit on the app store faces that challenge, ‘can I get anybody to play it in the first place ‘,” said Harper. “I think if you can get people to see you’re in with a fighting chance, but the issue nowadays is lots of big social media games companies are coming into iPhone and buying huge numbers of CPI [cost-per-install] installs and advertising, essentially buying their way up the charts, which really kind of crowds out the space for other people quite a lot. That’s been getting progressively worse in the last year, to the point where now it’s very, very difficult to get an app seen at all.”

Harper says that his company is happy to share its own in-app promotional technology, the Future Games Network, to help out smaller companies. “We’d done this anyway just to promote our own software, and then we were ‘oh, y’know, actually other people might be interested in using it.’ We’re independent developers, we like the idea of general moral helpfulness – we’ve done quite well on the App Store and we’d like to see other independent developers doing quite well too, so we’d like to help them. It’s really an alternative to going cap in hand to Chillingo or one of the other big publishers and doing some terrible deal with them where you end up with quite a restrictive contract, potentially having to give up your IP or something like that. So this is just to give people an alternative.”

Future Games of London does vet its partners to ensure quality, which has helped net 25 million downloads. “We don’t guarantee to publish anything that anybody sends us – we’re very much cherry-picking what we want to promote and that’s really because we don’t want to promote apps from within our own games that we don’t think are that good,” he added. “There’s not much too point in doing that.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Qwikster No More, As Netflix Kills Separate Site For DVDs

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Netflix has announced that they will not be separating their DVD rental and streaming services into Qwikster and Netflix.com. Major outcry from their customers about maintaining separate accounts on separate websites has resulted in a major reversal.

“While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “We value our members, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get movies & TV shows.”

Meanwhile, the decision to add video games to the service has been put on hold.

Source: blog.netflix.com

Sony May Look To Purchase Whole Of Sony Ericsson

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Sony will reportedly look to buy out the Ericsson half of Sony Ericsson. The price is reported to be in the range of $1.3 to $1.7 billion.

Sony Ericsson was formulated as a joint venture a decade ago to increase both companies earnings in the mobile space. Notably, they produced the Xperia Play, a PlayStation-certified phone designed with gamers in mind.

Source: Wall Street Journal