Aliens: Colonial Marines is quite possibly the most anticipated Aliens game in years, but there’s been very little gameplay to go on… until now. This trailer, using in-game footage, is among the most tense videos done in recent memory for a video game.
M&M’S have had some of the longest running spokespersons in their talking candies, and the cast got bigger by one. In a Super Bowl ad (teased beforehand) we got to meet the buttoned up Ms. Brown… and the undressed Red.
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A new YouTube engagement for the reboot of 21 Jump Street has been launched featuring Ice Cube as Capt. Dickson. Find out if you’ve got what it takes to go undercover with the Jump Street crew. You’ve got to be on your game, high school isn’t what it used to be. See if you can fit in with the first question and choose whether you’re going in as an undercover jock or geek to get to the next question. Be careful, because Capt. Dickinson will smack the sh*t out of you!
According to Trendy Entertainment and Reverb Publishing, Dungeon Defenders has sold over a million copies in approximately four months. Available now on iOS, Android, PC, Xbox Live and PSN, Dungeon Defenders will soon be coming to PS Vita.
“It is a tremendously successful franchise,” said Reverb Publishing CEO Doug Kennedy. “We have lots of plans to support it both with DLC and additional add-ons for the franchise.”
To find out more about Dungeon Defenders, read this [a]list feature.
Cloud gaming directly through televisions without a set top box is already a reality and will only become more common as time goes on. Because of this, Gaikai founder David Perry thinks that Microsoft will have to make their own Xbox television.
“Digital TVs are including all of that media stuff,” he said. “I think the mistake that the console companies are making is not a mistake of their choice – it’s the evolution they have to go through,” said Perry. “Once the other media hubs can have games – and I don’t mean Checkers, but things like Call of Duty – the public will get confused. With that in mind, who is able to make a TV Sony is already making them, so it will have to take all that stuff into its TVs.”
“So: my prediction is that Microsoft will have to make a TV,” Perry added. “What choice do they have There have been lots of reports that Apple has bought out a large LCD panel-making company. It’s pretty obvious that they’re on the trail too.”
Source: CVG {link no longer active}
THQ has announced a strategic agreement with Seamus Blackley and his mobile game start-up, Innovative Leisure. Blackley is an Xbox co-creator and has a team that includes Asteroids and Centipede co-designer Ed Logg, Battlezone creator Ed Rotberg, Owen Rubin of Major Havoc and Space Duel and Missile Command co-developer and Gravitar creator Rich Adam, with Atari veterans Dennis Koble, Tim Skelly and Bruce Merrit.
“I’m lucky, because I love games and following that love has always done me well,” said Blackley. “Once we figured out iPhone is the new arcade, that games from the old days fit this new audience and their on-the-go lifestyle, we knew what to do. There is already a group of people here who know how to operate and innovate in this space. They had the longest string of hit games in history. And they wanted to get back together again.”
“We are always looking to work with the best creative talent in the video game industry and we feel this relationship with Innovative Leisure reinforces our goal,” said Danny Bilson, EVP of core games at THQ. “We are committed to delivering creative games through digital distribution and Innovative Leisure has the expertise to deliver remarkable and cutting-edge games for a new generation.”
Source: VentureBeat
Streaming services like Gaikai can offer trials of full games to users almost instantly, making the old method of downloading a demo seem very inconvenient by contrast. Gaikai founder David Perry thinks that this will make the whole gaming industry go free-to-play.
“If we can place the gamer first, every game must be free-to-play, so we are fundamentally pushing the whole game industry to go free-to-play. They haven’t quite caught that yet, but that’s actually what’s occurred,” said Perry. “[Publishers] have no choice; it is the future. Effectively, all the games that don’t have demos right now Gaikai is able to make free-to-play. We have this slogan: ‘Play it; if you like, share it with all your friends and tell them this is really cool. If you love it, then pay for it’.”
Source: IndustryGamers {link no longer active}
Zynga has had to deal accusations of copying game elements by NimbleBit, makers of Tiny Tower. Now a user on Reddit claiming to be a former full-time engineer for Zynga has given the details about how far the social game company goes to copy competitors’ games.
“[The Tiny Tower and Dream Heights situation] is all standard operating procedure here. If you can’t buy ’em, clone ’em. Even the core technology for FarmVille (MyMiniLife), was bought,” wrote the user going by the handle Mercenary-Games. ”The only ‘homegrown’ codebases at Zynga is Mafia Wars 2 and maybe Poker, the rest of their tech was just bought from small studios. Look up Dextrose Engine. To me, that’s utterly creepy. They try to choke out the competition by gating all these engines and tech. Producers and Product Managers often scout the market. Whatever is trending hot, will get cloned, bought, or buried.”
He also noted that Zynga tracks high paying users (which are dubbed “Zynga Black”) and alters games so that users will spent more. “Internal metrics researchers often give studio wide talks on what trends are going on. They’ve basically tracked down very popular players and also players who’ve spent an excess of 10k into the game,” noted Mercenary-Games. “We often tweak our features to match and maximize for a particular gaming habit. We do this for massive populations of players. Players are not aware of this. To me, that’s a big brother like issue, someone is measuring and monitoring your behavior intimately, and you don’t know how that data is going to be used.”
Source: Reddit.com
Verizon has announced that they have signed an alliance with Coinstar, which will see Verizon taking a 65 percent stake in the company. The new streaming video service will be available to anyone with a broadband-Internet connection.
Users will be able to watch movies and television shows via streaming, presenting potential competition with Netflix; rights for that content are still being worked out. Coinstar also owns the Redbox video-rental business that has over 34,000 kiosks nationwide.
“The service will have a Netflix look and feel, which means it will likely offer more generic library content, and not the latest shows and movies, in terms of digital rights,” said Christopher Watts, an analyst at Atlantic Equities LLP in London. “That’s the model Verizon is aiming for.”
“We have 36 million e-mail addresses,” said Coinstar Chief Executive Officer Paul Davis. “That’s a lot of people we can talk to about this new service.”
Redbox is currently used by about 30 million people, according to Rachel Gerber, a spokeswoman for Coinstar. Verizon has 4.2 million customers for its FiOS service while Netflix has 24.4 million subscribers.
Source: BusinessWeek.com {link no longer active}
The new Syndicate game has been in development for a few years, but has only coalesced around the form it’s been shown in late in development. As is not uncommon in the industry, Starbreeze programmer Lars Magnus Lang wishes they had more time with Syndicate.
“Let me put it this way: I’m really proud of the end result, but I’m not super satisfied. I want to have been able to have done more, but that’s always the feeling you get,” said Lang. “Unless someone says, okay, enough, we need to ship it, development will go on and on forever more or less or until everyone gets bored with it. It’s been a long production: it’s good to finally ship it, but at the same time, you always think, if we could have had half a year more, we could have done even more.”
Source: CVG {link no longer active}
