Deep in the heart of insanity you’ll encounter Vaas and Buck, two of the most twisted and ruthless savages in Far Cry 3. Learn the rules of the jungle and see how they unleash hell on the unfortunate souls who cross their paths.
Take command of XCOM and its highly-skilled soldiers in this interactive gameplay trailer. Remember, in the full game, you choose all the actions of your units, not just general strategies!
The Boston Tea Party took place in 1773, representing a stand against taxed British imports. This historical event will be in Assassin’s Creed III… with some context over the deeper battle between Assassins and Templars.
Fuse Powered senior producer Rob Sandberg says that free-to-play games have given him more freedom than when he was working in the AAA console space. He detailed his experiences at the IGDA Toronto panel titled “Dr. Gamelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Freemium”.
“When I was making console games, we were so limited in terms of creativity,” Sandberg said. “We had so many people, it was design by committee. We had publishing partners influencing our designs and our games, and we had no control over it. So we were making crap products, and we couldn’t get good deals because our last games were crap products.”
Responding to criticisms of the free-to-play model, Sandberg said, “Get over it. We’re not the video game club, we’re the video game industry, you know We’re here to make money. We’re not saying freemium is going to take over and every piece of entertainment you consume is going to be freemium. All we’re saying is right now there’s a great piece of the pie being carved out if you’re wily and you’re smart and you want to take advantage of it…All I have to say is don’t drape yourself in the flag of being a core gamer just because you don’t like it. There are a lot of very excited, energetic gamers out there that really love these games and enjoy this entertainment.”
Sandberg later added, “One of the biggest challenges I have as a producer is getting game development teams to get on my side. Because they are there for the vision. They’re there for the art. They want to make a kickass game, and it’s my job as a producer to convince people that you can have your cake and eat it, too. You can create high art. If you look at the top grossing games right now, a lot of those games are amazingly good looking, phenomenal games, from an artistic perspective.”
Capybara Games co-founder Nathan Vella chimed in that too often games are designed with money as the first and foremost consideration. “It’s interesting that when free-to-play is discussed, it’s only ever discussed as a business model,” Vella said. “It’s never discussed as enjoyment factor, like, ‘How do I make the best game possible The only way to do it is free-to-play.’ That’s never in the dialog. The dialog is consistently and permanently about how to monetize.”
Source: GamesIndustry International
Syfy Digital announced it is launching an original series exclusively on Xbox 360 via their Syfy App. All 20 episodes of Vuguru’s sci-fi drama Nuclear Family will premiere on the Syfy App on the Xbox Live on October 1, followed by releases on Syfy.com, Hulu, VOD, Syfy’s mobile and tablet apps and Syfy’s new Roku channel starting on October 15.
“Nuclear Family, Syfy Digital’s third original series following the highly successful Riese and Mercury Men, stars Corin Nemec (Stargate SG-1), Kinsey Packard (Sleeper Cell), Ray Wise (Mad Men) and Sharon Lawrence (Desperate Housewives). It tells the story about a family’s struggle to survive in a lawless society ruled by a savage clan led by The Man, while desperately searching for their missing child, lost in the apocalyptic chaos following a mysterious mega-explosion,” reads the show’s description. “Independent studio Vuguru developed and financed the series from creator Kyle Rankin (Project Greenlight, The Battle of Shaker Heights, Infestation) who wrote and directed. Nuclear Family was produced by Jaime Burke (The Pact, The Millionaire Tour), and executive produced by Clay Kelley, Jesse Albert (The Bannen Way) and Rankin.”
Facebook gaming has become almost synonymous with casual gaming over the past few years. However, Facebook director of game partnerships Sean Ryan wants the company to make a play at hardcore games.
“The next 6-to-12 months, it’s about core and mid-core,” Ryan said. “Not because the other genres aren’t good, but when we look at openings on the platform where we think we can deliver a powerful experience alongside our developers… As we start to see Unity and Flash 11 become more prevalent, we can have a really rich gaming experience.”
Source: VentureBeat
In a mildly shocking move, Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized to customers {link no longer active} for the new Maps app not meeting many of their expectations. The contrite message also invited users to use services from competitors like Bing and MapQuest.
However, it was the mention of a company called Waze that was the most surprising. Employing 80 people, the four-year old company had its day, and perhaps month, made by the name drop.
“You begin seeing all these emails showing up, people are congratulating us,” says Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze . “Apple is this black hole that nobody has an idea of what goes on in.”
On a normal day, about 70,000 people download Waze’s free navigation app, a number that will be well over 100,000 the day after the recommendation by Cook. Since the Apple Maps release on September 19, downloads have been about 25 percent higher than usual, helped by Apple’s newly created section in the app store for mapping alternatives.
Waze crowdsources some of its information, and lets people draw areas from scratch, making it popular in certain parts of the world. Waze is also an information partner with Apple Maps.
Bardin, had nothing but good things to say about how Cook handled the situation. “To come out and apologize, recommend third-party apps, then do a featured section in the app store,” he says, “Tim really deserves kudos on this.”
Source: BusinessWeek.com
One week since the launch of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and Blizzard has been surprisingly quiet about the sales of their new expansion. Lazard Capital Markets, however, estimates that the expansion has sold between 600,000 and 700,000 copies.
While this total does not include digital copies, it puts in stark relief how well this fourth expansion has sold compared to the last three. 2010’s World of Warcraft: Cataclysm sold 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours, while 2008’s Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million copies in its first day on sale and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade saw 2.4 million sales in 2007; all of these set records at the time.
Source: VentureBeat
Ouya announced that it has named Roy Bahat as chairman. He formerly worked with Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman at IGN as the media network’s president.
“People assume it can’t be done unless you spend billions,” said Bahat about the console game business. “But then things change, and it can become 1,000 times less expensive to get into a new business. I think that is what is happening here. Ouya noticed that and acted on it.”
Ouya also named Steve Chamberlin as its new head of engineering and Raffi Bagdasarian as its software product lead. The company also said that more than 1,000 developers have asked about working on Ouya since the end of the Kickstarter campaign and it has received formal applications from more than 50 distributors interested in releasing the console internationally.
Source: VentureBeat
Ubisoft announced that they will be releasing Assassin’s Creed Ezio Trilogy on November 13 for $39.99 on PS3. Included are Assassin’s Creed II with all downloadable content, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed Revelations.
“With Assassin’s Creed III primed to launch on October 30, follow up the biggest game of the season with a little background on another legendary Master Assassin: Ezio Auditore da Firenze,” wrote Gabriel Graziani, Community Developer for Ubisoft. “Where do you think Connor, our newest hero, learned all of his moves?”
Source: Blog.us.Playstation.com
