Electronic Arts announced that over 1 million players signed up for the free-to-play, browser-based strategy game Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances within its first two months. In celebration of this milestone, EA offers a free starter pack of in-game resources Tiberium, Crystals, Credits, and Power for anyone redeeming code HMKV-VWGN-8GEH-6BTZ on the game’s official website.
Shelly Pearce has been named Nintendo’s new U.K. marketing director, a promotion from her role as head of European PR. She will oversee the work of senior managers James Honeywell, Ben Taylor and Jo Bartlett.
“This is an exciting time to be joining the U.K. team with two major hardware launches on the horizon, Nintendo 3DS XL on 28 July and Wii U later this year,” said Pearce. “I started my Nintendo career as part of the U.K. team and it’s great to return as we start this new chapter in our company’s history.”
Former U.K. marketing director Dawn Paine was the most recent high profile departure from Nintendo U.K. this year, including U.K. marketing manager Rob Lowe, and U.K. general manager David Yarnton.
Source: CampaignLive
Zynga developers have donated their time to help develop the charity Facebook title Half The Sky, based on a book of the same name. Set for release in November, the game will serve as part of a media campaign alongside a television series designed to raise awareness about female oppression.
“Zynga’s role in bringing this game to life is particularly special to us,” said Half the Sky authors Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof. “Using a game to potentially reach great numbers of people helps send a message not only that there are challenges women face around the world but also that they bring great spirit and joy to their communities when they can live safe, normal lives.”
“The mission of Zynga.org is to help make the world a better place through games,” added Zynga’s Ken Weber. “Zynga’s employees are eager to leverage social games for good, and we are honored to be collaborating with Games for Change and Frima on this important initiative.”
The Ouya Android game console is a phenomenon on Kickstarter, raising roughly $5 million in a very short period of time. However, Ouya founder Julie Uhrman says that outside funding with still be necessary and that the console will help address the gap between the core and casual gamer world.
“We have a lot of support from the investor and entrepreneur community. We raised money initially from individual investors,” said Uhrman. “This is a really big undertaking and it’s going to be expensive. We’re looking for additional funds of money but more importantly we wanted to take it to Kickstarter regardless.”
“[Developers and gamers are] switching focus from TV to mobile platforms,” Uhrman added. “Gamers find hardware and software still to be super expensive and developers feel that it is still complicated and expensive to bring games to the living room.”
Source: Develop
DLC for AAA games is often expensive, and is an added expense with retail games that release at $60. CD Projekt RED’s Marcin Iwinski thinks that this could lead to a negative backlash, noting that releasing free content for Witcher 2 actually helped sales.
“When we put it out for free, we saw a boost in the sales with the Enhanced Edition because it just created good will, and it refreshes the product,” noted Iwinski. “You can always do it from two angles, and sadly I see the industry trending toward over-exploiting the gamer, and I think this will come back to the publishers that are doing that, and eventually, people will stop buying their stuff. That’s just not the way things work.”
“When we had that publishing deal, we went to the publisher, and said, ‘So we have this idea where we make all this stuff, all this new content, and you don’t pay anything for it, we give it away for free. How about that ‘ The publisher went all big-eyed and said, ‘Whoa! Let’s charge 10 dollars! 10 Euro!’ But we believed that we would sell more units if we put it out for free.”
Source: Gamasutra
Research in Motion had a relatively calm presentation to shareholders, despite the company’s huge financial losses, its planned massive layoffs, the diminishing stock price, or planned delay of BlackBerry 10 phone until next year. There’s also growing discontent with the fact that corporate customers are contemplating what they will do if BlackBerry goes bankrupt or simply isn’t viable.
“There was no mention of a sale of the company, no mention of a breakup of the company, and again, our big, big concern is if the BB10s are a dud,” said Jaguar Financial CEO Vic Alboini.
Despite all of the lingering issues, RIM’s current slate of directors were re-elected with little muss. However, much of the support for ex-CEO Mike Lazaridis, who helped put the company in its current position, eroded from shareholders in the support for his re-election as a director.
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins emphasized that success of BlackBerry will rely on its loyal business users, its various mobile-computing apps and BlackBerry 10 when it releases. “I have assembled a leadership team for RIM that’s truly capable of taking us into the future,” he told shareholders.
“We’re very focused on what we have to do both in the short term and long term,” said Richard Piasaentin, a RIM executive member. “And very explicitly, in the context of a solid foundation, we’re here for the long haul.”
Source: Brand Channel
The first full-length trailer for Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn shows off the impressive production values for the series coming out October 5, 2012. Get a glimpse at the main character of the series that Master Chief inspired in the early days of the Human/Covenant war.
Disney Epic Mickey 2 The Power Of Two will mostly be about Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. However, this intro features the Mad Doctor singing a special tune.
Season 1 of VGHS comes to a close in the most epic episode yet. RocketJump.com wants to make sure this is not the last adventure for BrianD, so be sure to support them on their site!
The main criticism of the design of the 3DS XL is the lack of a second circle-pad; there will instead be an add-on for a second circle-pad just like the regular 3DS. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that a second circle-pad was considered for the 3DS XL, but it got cut out due to other considerations.
“When we looked at the design of the 3DS XL we had to look at various factors. One was battery life, one was the overall size of the unit, and we had to make some trade-offs.The choice, if we were going to include the second analogue stick, was to reduce the size of the batteries or make the unit much bigger,†said Iwata. “What we wanted to do was have a bigger screen in comparison with the overall size of the system, so had various discussions and had to make trade-offs and this is the outcome.”
“Attaching a second analogue stick is possible but it would have made the system even bigger and, though it perhaps puts a burden on people that really want that second stick, it’s a call we had to make and these people will have to live with it,” Iwata. Noted. “This [the lack of a second stick] isn’t my main focus when I look at the 3DS XL, it’s one point we had to cover, but for me personally I’m quite happy with the product we’re able to offer.”
Source: The Independent
