BioShock Infinite will have a variety of enemies called “Heavy Hitters” that will force you to change the way you are fighting. Here, we meet The Motorized Patriot, which is a clockwork George Washington with a mini-gun that will stop at nothing to take you down.
Recently, rumors had been circulating that Valve might be preparing a ‘Steam Box’ – a console-like machine that would play Steam games and other PC titles on your TV with a proprietary controller and optional USB attachments. Valve marketing head Doug Lombardi, however, is dismissing the rumors as a byproduct of hardware they normally build.
“We’re prepping the Steam Big Picture Mode UI and getting ready to ship that, so we’re building boxes to test that on,” said Lombardi noting they ware working on a new Steam user interface built to work perfectly on TV displays. “We’re also doing a bunch of different experiments with biometric feedback and stuff like that, which we’ve talked about a fair amount. All of that is stuff that we’re working on, but it’s a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware.”
“We’re always putting boxes together. Going all the way back to the Half-Life 1 days, we built special boxes to test our software render… it’s just part of development,” he added.
Source: Kotaku
While PSN normally has barriers to putting up content, CCP has indicated it will not be as much of an issue with Dust 514. The game’s executive producer Brandon Laurino says that patching the game will be a trivial and non-expensive matter.
“Together we’ve worked to identify all the barriers that need to be removed to properly operate a service such as this on a console,” said Laurino. “We have complete ability to service and update the game as much as needed.”
“I can’t speak for Sony, but part of the reason they’ve engaged with us on this is to be able to bring this business model full force to their platforms moving forward,” said Laurino. “Certainly the intention here is to evolve the whole console business model, and we’re doing it in a way where it’s not just specific to us necessarily. This was very much an evolution and learning exercise for them as much as us.”
Source: Eurogamer
Valve’s Joe Ludwig noted that in continuing development of Team Fortress 2, adding new content was key to attracting new players. However, he noted that there was a push and pull between getting in new players and keeping the old ones happy.
“Although small updates to the game started immediately after launch, it wasn’t until the medic update in 2008 that significantly changed revenue. Adding so much stuff at once gave the press and community a reason to talk about it, which got more people to try it for the first time,” said Ludwig. “The trouble is, when you’re a AAA box game, the only people who can earn you new revenue are the people who haven’t bought your game. This drives you to build new content to attract new people. There’s a fundamental tension between building the game to satisfy existing players and attract new players.”
Valve then continued updating the game with the ultimate target being a free-to-play title, listening all the time to what players were saying. “We found people in the forums talking about how cool it would be if the Pyro could light the sniper’s arrows on fire,” Ludwig said. “To be honest, we hadn’t considered it, but we were able to implement it by the time the update shipped.”
More than analyzing feedback, Valve used actually assets made by fans. “At this point, more than half of the items in TF2 are contributed by the community,” detailed Ludwig. “Pretty much every place you give the community a chance to change the game, they’ll do it, and they’ll probably do a better job than you would,” Ludwig said, “One more way that the community contributed to updates is by building maps. Up to this point we’ve shipped 19 community maps.”
Charging for items was a key part of the free-to-play transition. “This wasn’t a change we made lightly, but it was something we had to do to get our game into the free-to-play business model. They had never paid for an item in TF2 at any point in the past, and we weren’t sure how willing they’d be to pay now,” said Ludwig. “We dealt with the pay to win concern in a few ways. The first was to make items involve tradeoffs, so there’s no clear winner between two items. But by far the biggest thing we did to change this perception was to make all the items that change the game free. You can get them from item drops, or from the crafting system. It might be a little easier to buy them in the store, but you can get them without paying. The only items we sell exclusive to the store are cosmetic or items optional to gameplay.”
There was also the problem of dealing with virtual currencies and making sure that paying customers didn’t feel ripped off. “Players actually object pretty strongly to the idea that they’ll have to take their money and buy a block of some virtual currency, when they only want to spend a fraction of that on the item they want,” Ludwig said, “TF2 uses the Steam Wallet, which supports all currencies you can normally use on Steam, and lets you load it to the exact amount you want to use. It’s now used by 22 games on Steam.”
“One thing we did was to give paid players a hat called ‘Proof of Purchase’. We also made a distinction between paid and free accounts; smaller backpack sizes, and fewer crates,” he added. “What we didn’t include was any restriction on how you could play the game itself.”
In the end it paid off, and they saw that revenues from item sales alone were four times larger than revenues from sales of TF2 itself, and after the free-to-play transition was finished, overall revenue was up 12 times higher than monthly TF2 sales were. “This is just the beginning of taking the lessons we’ve learned from TF2 and applying them to Steam itself,” Ludwig said, “It was risky, everything could have gone horribly wrong, but we felt it was worth the risk to try the new business model.”
Source: Gamasutra
Ubisoft has announced that they are bringing From Dust to Google Chrome in April 2012. Users will be able to purchase the game from the Chrome Web Store.
The game will have a completely new control scheme to accompany its launch in Chrome. It joins Bastion and Mini Ninjas as AAA quality titles coming to Crome.
New reports have said that Microsoft will not be putting a disc drive into the next Xbox. Sources breaking NDA also indicate that it will have an interchangeable solid-state card storage, though it is unknown if it will be proprietary or a standard format such as SD.
The new Xbox is also said to be set for a launch during 2013, although it is still unknown when Microsoft will publicly announce the console. An unveil during E3 2012 is still a possibility.
“Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend its lifecycle like introducing the world to controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships,” said Microsoft in a statement. “We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention. Beyond that we do not comment on rumors or speculation.”
Source: MCV
Assassin’s Creed III might be the fifth main entry in the franchise with several more entries worth of supplementary material, however Ubisoft U.K. media director Rob Cooper thinks that the new setting and hero make it a perfect point to join the series. He also thinks that the game will be able to stand toe-to-toe with the heavy hitters in the final part of the year, including Resident Evil 6, Halo 4 and the next Call of Duty.
“This is a great time for gamers to join the adventure. There’s a huge will from Ubisoft to bring more gamers into this universe,” said Cooper. “Assassin’s Creed III is the biggest and most ambitious launch in Ubisoft’s history so we absolutely believe this game will continue to grow the franchise.”
“This is a huge investment for us and we’re extremely confident that together, all these factors will put us in pole position to compete against the other titles this Christmas,” he concluded.
Source: MCV
Keiji Inafune is famously outspoken about the status of the Japanese gaming industry, saying that Western developers are way ahead nowadays. He’s now suggesting that Japanese developers are nostalgic about the past, and that new ideas and concepts are distant memories.
“The Japanese games industry has become like a frog in a well. It is very closed minded,” he said. “There is a conscience and desire to win missing. We, the Japanese, have forgotten all about that. Back in the day we grew used to winning. At some point these winners became losers, and not acknowledging or accepting that has lead to the tragic fate of Japanese games.”
He remarked that Japanese games feel dated these days. “It’s embarrassing, but it feels like Japanese games are just memories. It’s rare that we see anything new. They are now just great, great memories.”
“Perhaps the folks who are now running the show in the Japanese games industry are those who simply jumped on a bandwagon. The creations that measured up to global standards were crafted by our predecessors,” he continued. “There is something you must do to win. You must acknowledge your loss, and start over again. We are humans, and have our own pride, but we cannot win if we keep that pride up. We must believe ‘I will win.'”
Source: Develop
SCEA Developer Relations manger Ted Regulski estimates that there are over 90 million PSN accounts. This number is boosted by the recent launch of the PS Vita, and it also includes accounts made on the PSP and PS3; the number of active accounts was not listed.
Regulski also claimed that PSN royalty rates were better than Nintendo or Microsoft and said that, “[Sony is] the only major console publisher to allow self-publishing. There are others but they have publishing rules that aren’t much fun . . . and there are no weird limits you have to hit in order for us to pay you.”
Source: Develop
Google has reportedly threatened to drop developers from the Android Marketplace if they don’t adopt its Google Wallet payment service. The company may have been issuing warnings as long ago as August that alternative payment methods breach the company’s terms and conditions.
“They told people that if they used other payment services they would be breaking the terms of use,” said Papaya Mobile CEO Si Shen. “Whether it’s right or wrong, we have to follow the rules. If we had a choice, the freedom to choose which billing service, then that’s even better. But if we have to follow the rules, we will. I want to maintain a very good relationship with Google. We are very collaborative. It’s very important to the business.”
This would guarantee Google 30 percent of the revenue for games sold on what is now Google Play. It would also ensure lower friction on Android, making the payment system more universal like it is on iOS systems and Facebook.
Source: Reuters
