Oliver must endure the darkness of another world with the help of a few good friends in order to save his mother. The Studio Ghibli-inspired visuals are quite lush, the voice acting appears top notch and the Joe Hisaishi music simply soars.
Rumors are abounding at the moment that the next PlayStation and Xbox will launch in late 2013. Despite that, Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer sees plenty of life left in the Xbox 360.
“Right now the Xbox 360 is really healthy and it’s doing incredibly well,” said Spencer. “I think the 360 has a lot more than two years [left]. It has legs for a long time. The nice thing about the Xbox 360 right now is – if you look – we’re the number one console globally. We’re able to bring in new content and still support the best of the core games.”
“It’s a platform that has really reached scale; this is the time when you really see the great content showing up,” Spencer added. “The future in a lot of ways is always tomorrow: [things like] the SmartGlass technology and Windows 8 [show that] things are going to constantly evolve.“
Source: GameSpot {link no longer active}
Crytek has developed a reputation over the years for bleeding edge graphics in AAA retail products. However, CEO Cevat Yerli believes that the future of the company will be with free-to-play products like their own Warface.
“As we were developing console games we knew, very clearly, that the future is online and free-to-play,” said Yerli. “Right now we are in the transitional phase of our company, transitioning from packaged goods games into an entirely free-to-play experience. What this entails is that our future, all the new games that we’re working on, as well new projects, new platforms and technologies, are designed around free-to-play and online, with the highest quality development.”
Yerli wants Crytek’s products games to stand out from other F2P titles, aiming for AAA production standards, with development budgets to match. “As is evident in Warface, our approach is to ensure the best quality, console game quality,” he said. “That implies budgets of between $10m to $30m – so no compromise there – but at the price-point of $0 entry.
“I think this is a new breed of games that has to happen to change the landscape, and be the most user-friendly business model,” he said, comparing it to the DLC model of most modern FPS titles. “If you look at what kind of games are done in the packaged goods market, with DLCs and premium services and whatnot, it’s literally milking the customers to death.”
Source: Videogamer
Portable consoles like the PS Vita have tended to concentrate on AAA releases. However, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida believes that independent developers are just as vital to the success of the Vita.
“The whole development process of Vita was us watching the smartphone and the tablet market grow and blossom,” said Yoshida. “We’ve seen lots of small games sold digitally through the app stores of each device, and that’s something we thought is a great addition to the whole offering of video games to the consumers,
“We do it for the love of it, almost. It’s not like small games sell $100 million revenues. But we really think it’s important to work with younger people, and people who really sometimes disregard conventions of making games — Jon Mak made Everyday Shooter by himself.” adds Yoshida: “When games are made by a small number of people, the creative vision of one person really shines through the entire game. That’s really where we find some magic happens.”
Source: Gamasutra
Social game elements often receive some resistance from core gamers. However, Hideo Kojima sees more synthesis between social and core games as time goes on.
“I don’t think social and core games are separate, both will evolve together, and at some point I feel the social side of things will converge with the core games,” said Kojima. “I think in the future maybe Metal Gear will change in certain ways to integrate social aspects. If you look at other games on the market now you can see it’s already happening, so Metal Gear may at some point get involved.”
He’s thinking of ways to integrate social aspects into Metal Gear, though he declined to elaborate. “It’s using social to integrate different core groups, so you have the core audience but then, via social methods, hardcore gamers can interact with less hardcore players,” he said.
Source: CVG {link no longer active}
This E3 press conference by Sony offered no special 3D presentations to people in the audience. While some might think this is Sony moving away from 3D, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan asserted that isn’t the case.
“I just think that it’s something that’s now moving into the mature phase,” he said. “You only have so much time at these things, and there was an attempt at yesterday’s conference to make it shorter – which I thought was excellent. 3D was the new thing two years ago, it’s not the new thing anymore – it’s just part of the bedrock of content development and publishing.”
Source: CVG {link no longer active}
Facebook has brought their mobile App Center mobile. Currently available to less than 10 percent of Facebook users in the U.S., they’re looking to roll out to the whole of the U.S. sometime later this year.
“The app center represents a new way for users to discover social applications,” said Douglas Purdy, Facebook’s director of developer products.
Facebook says that the company was responsible for 83 million visits to the Apple App Store in May.
Source: Cnet
Bethsoft has unveiled the pre-order bonuses for Dishonored. GameStop and Best Buy seem to have the best stuff, with the Arcane Assassin Downloadable Upgrade Pack & Dishonored Tarot cards and the Shadow Rat Downloadable Upgrade Pack & Whale Oil USB Lamp respectively.
Amazon has a digital only pack in the Backstreet Butcher Downloadable Upgrade Pack, while Walmart will have the Acrobatic Killer Downloadable Upgrade Pack. Target option is pretty simple: a Smart Phone Dishonored Decal.
Source: Bethblog.com
Google announced that Google Maps is getting 3-D maps of major cities and a backpack mounted with a Google Street View camera setup that can take pictures where cars can’t go called Street View Trekker. However, they avoided questions of the future of the service on iOS.
“I’m very proud of Google Maps services and they are available basically on all devices and we will continue to make Google Maps services as widely available as possible,” said Brian McClendon, VP of engineering for Google Maps .
There are reports that Apple will no longer install Google Maps natively on Apple iPhones or iPads in favor of Apple’s own mapping application. Apple is expected to announce its own mapping app at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference next week at the Moscone West Convention Center.
“Everyone expects them to be booted off of Apple iOS devices,” said Scott Ellison, an IDC analyst. Asked if Apple has the talent and engineering capabilities to match the features of Google Maps, which has been built up over seven years, he replied, “We’re going to find out next week.”
“Google Maps is one of the areas that has long been a core competency of Google,” he said. “It’s unlikely [Apple] has the same number of people devoted to maps as Google because Google’s been in it for seven years and you’ve seen the time they’ve spent on it.”
Google Map users will also be able to download parts of Google Maps to use offline for particular locations. “We do a lot of optimizations because we do want to be considerate of the amount of space on your device,” Chen explained. “We make … decisions about the level of zoom we save to make sure that you have the amount of data that you need at street level, but also so that we don’t overwhelm your device.”
Source: eWeek.com
The Elder Scrolls Online promises to deliver all of the epic nature of the single player franchise in a format that people can play with each other. This teaser trailer is ripe with anticipation for the action to come.
