In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are embarking on a “Victor’s Tour” after winning the 74th Annual Hunger Games. During this time, the two will light a fire that will start a revolution in the streets of Panem.
Here a team of engineers at Facebook have a meeting with CEO Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook Home finally ships. One member of the team, however, would rather use Facebook Home than listen to Zuckerberg give a triumphant speech, humanizing the product and the executive.
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An article was posted on Kotaku recently railing against the current state of major video game publishers. In a response, designer David Jaffe agreed with assessments of how games are hard to get right and try too much to be like movies, but rejected the accusation of publishers holding developers back too much.
“I reject that accusation because of the classic line that I am sure you’ve heard before: you are worth what you can negotiate. Period,” wrote Jaffe. “Don’t like the way a publisher treats you? Don’t sign a contract with that particular publisher. Or if you do, make sure you have what you will and won’t tolerate written into the contract. And if your studio is not good enough to demand better deals and is not clever enough to secure alternate forms of financing (thus allowing you to bypass the publishers all together) then you deserve what you get.”
“I am very sympathetic to the article’s core (it can suck being a dev when you feel your failure stems from forces out of your control) but that is very much the whole ‘every kid who plays gets a trophy even if their team loses’ thinking. AKA: This is business,” he continued. “You want to be treated better? Sign a contract demanding it. You are not able to get such a contract? Then improve your team until you can demand in the real world what you think you are really worth in your mind.”
“Because at the moment the real world is making something very clear to you. And that is this: For the time being anyway, you are not as good as you think you are. The people who fight against this and complain that the world is not fair are spinning their wheels and wasting their time. The people who embrace this truth can then decide to either get out of the business or put the effort into getting so good that they can pretty much write their own ticket,” he concluded.
Source: Blogspot.com
Minecraft will not be releasing on disc for Xbox 360 in April as originally announced. The reason given is that they want to make sure that key content is on the disc, though they didn’t reveal what content that was.
“FYI: In order to include the very latest content, the retail version for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been delayed until June 4 (US),” tweeted Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb,
Minecraft has sold over 6 million copies on Xbox Live Arcade.
Source: Twitter.com
Everything from BioShock Infinite‘s Columbia, Lord of the Ring‘s Helm’s Deep and Game of Throne‘s King’s Landing has been recreated in meticulous detail in Minecraft. Fez designer Phil Fish for one is sick of it and tweeted out how tired he was that every incarnation gets news attention.
“hey bloggers, no more ‘blank rebuilt in minecraft’ posts, please. we get it. you can make things in minecraft. Thanks,” he tweeted.
Naturally, this led to someone recreating his tweet in Minecraft. Fish has a good sense of humor about everything, however, responding when he found out with, “HAHAHAHA. thank you for that.”
Source: VentureBeat.com
Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment announced that it has put out two infographics of some of the key characters of Injustice: Gods Among Us. These feature the most notable of the villains and the heroes and combines the best traits for the best composite hero and villain.
Namco Bandai games announced it is launching the Ridge Racer franchise into the realm of free-to-play. The game, titled Ridge Racer Driftopia, will release later in 2013 for PS3 and PC.
“At Namco Bandai Games we are committed to embracing new business models alongside the still vital traditional retail sector,” said Olivier Comte, Senior Vice President, Namco Bandai Games Europe. “Free-to-play is playing an increasingly important role, so it’s very exciting to be bringing one of our most successful franchises to the free-to-play space for everyone to enjoy.”
Cowen & Company believes that Gears of War: Judgement sold around 425,000 units in the U.S. during March compared Gears of War 3‘s first month sales of over 2 million units in September 2011. Similarly, God of War: Ascension had sales of an estimated 360,000 units in March compared to God of War 3‘s March 2010 launch, which saw 1.1 million units sold.
“We had expected sales trends to improve in March due to a strong core line-up,” wrote the company. “Two historically strong franchises appear to have significantly underperformed.”
Because of this, Cowen & Company expects the leading titles for the month to be Tomb Raider with 696,000 units sold in 33 days and BioShock Infinite selling 665,000 copies in 10 days. When the NPD report comes out, they expect that software sales will be down over 20 percent year-on-year.
Source: GamesIndustry International
Rumors of the next Xbox console having an “always-online” design have led to fierce debates around the Internet over the wisdom of such a move. Despite the controversy, Ubisoft Montreal head Yannis Mallat doesn’t think that consumers will react with hostility to “always-online” if it is done right.
“I would suspect that the audience is ready,” said Mallat. “As soon as players don’t have to worry, then they will only take into account the benefits that those services bring. And I agree, these services need to provide clear benefits. It’s important to be able to provide direct connections between us and our consumers, whether that’s extra content or online services, a lot of successful games have that.”
Source: The Guardian
Bethsoft announced that QuakeCon 2013 online pre-registration is now open. While admission is free for attendees, pre-registration offers a limited number of premium packages.
The BYOC Select-a-Seat will be $30 and come with a guaranteed seat that can be reserved in the BYOC area along with an official QuakeCon 2013 BYOC t-shirt. The $80 BYOC select-a-seat and swag pack also includes another shirt, a QuakeCon branded Logitech G400 mouse, a $10 voucher for the on-site Bethesda retail store and reserved seating until 7:00 p.m. on Friday.
There will also be a BYOC Select-a-Seat and QuakeCon Done Quick pack for $50 with everything included in the BYOC Select-a-Seat pass and express lane fast-passes to all the events and limited reserved access seating for all panels, presentations, and events. Finally, there’s the Swag Pack for $60 which will have three t-shirts, the QuakeCon branded Logitech G400 mouse and a $10 voucher for the on-site Bethesda retail store
QuakeCon will take place from August 1 at 9:00 a.m. CT until August 4 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas. For more information on how to pre-register online for QuakeCon, visit Registration.Quakecon.org.
