February 2012
20 posts
WatchLook a PS VITA and I’m playing with it!!! Also GAMES
EA's Chief Financial Officer Resigns
Eric Brown, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer of Electronic Arts, steps down from the company this month to take a position at Polycom.
Brown’s last day at EA will be Feb. 17, his first day at Polycom, the communications company, will be Feb 21. He will be the chief financial officer and chief operating officer.
The Academy Awards That (Almost) No One Cares...
Video games have a problem.
It’s not that some people say they cause aggression in their players, or addiction, or death (if you do it too long), it’s that no one seems to get behind celebrating them.
Why have I spent what feels like the entire year so far watching actors give awards to other actors on television, but I’d be hard-pressed to see anything celebration for the...
Hawken Hits Dec For Free, Beta Live Now
Indie mech first-person shooter Hawken, and one of my most anticipated games of the year, hits computers Dec. 12 as a free-to-play game, according to VentureBeat and the game’s official site.
Hawken generated a lot of buzz with its complex imagery and faithful adaptation of giant walking war machines tearing into each other in intricately detailed settings. The interest has only...
UDraw is No ET
Yesterday THQ told analysts that they still have 1.4 million of their UDraw tablets sitting around unsold. I joked on Twitter at the time that the unpopular peripheral could be this generations ET.
For those of you who weren’t alive in the 80s, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was a surprisingly unpopular Atari 2600 game. It was so unpopular that some say it contributed to the crash of the...
EA's Origin Service Rakes in $100M
More than 9.3 million people have installed Electronic Arts’ digital store and gaming platform Origin, helping the service rake in more than $100 million in revenue since it’s June launch, the publisher said today.
The numbers hit as seven new publishers agree to sell their games on the service. Remedy Entertainment will be bringing Alan Wake to Origin, EA says. Other publishers...
Massive Layoffs, Leadership Pay Cuts Hit THQ
Facing a Wall Street delisting and flagging sales, publisher THQ today outlined plans for a massive restructuring that eliminates up to 240 jobs and cuts the pay of execs by as much as fifty percent.
“On January 26, 2012, Company’s management initiated a plan of restructuring in connection with the updated business strategy in order to appropriately adjust the Company’s...
Poor Volition
In 2000 THQ purchased Volition, makers of Saint’s Row and Red Faction, for about 1 million shares of common stock. (They also assumed about half a million in net liabilities.)
At the time that stock was worth about $12.8 million. As of today it’s worth about $660,000. Even if you factor in the 2005 three-for-two stock split, the value is only $990,000.
THQ Lets VP Go, 170 Layoffs Rumored
Rumored massive layoffs are hitting Saints Row and Warhammer game developer THQ this week as the company fights to stave off a Wall Street delisting spurred by rock-bottom stock prices.
THQ’s vice president of technology Mark DeLoura is no longer with the company, according to an automatic response sent back from DeLoura’s email address this morning.
Rumblings of layoffs hit earlier...
January 2012
59 posts
Misuse of Game Footage in IRA Doc A Breach of...
A UK television network that passed off video game footage as the real thing in an IRA documentary last year was found in breach of British broadcast rules today.
In the ruling, published today, Ofcom said ITV mislead their audience in both the Exposure - Gaddafi and the IRA documentary by claiming video game footage of a helicopter being shot down was actual footage.
In the September 2011...
The Future of Books Isn't Coming From Apple,...
I’ve written about the idea of digital adaptation books before. I sort of love them. In my latest column for Vox Games, I talk about how this new idea may significantly change the way we absorb books.
It’s always a challenge for me to write these weekly gaming columns. It’s not because I don’t have the ideas or sources, it is because by their nature as a newspaper column...
“It’s easy to fall back on the vernacular of gaming when describing...”
– http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/23/2727325/the-dawn-of-the-new-book
My First Vox Games Column and the Allegory of the...
My first Vox Games column, Good Game, ran this morning over on The Verge’s gaming forums. That’s where I’ll be running the column until we transition to a more permanent home.
I reexamined a story I first wrote about last week. Playing with Pigs is a project in the Netherlands meant not just to get people to play video games with pigs, but to spur a reexamination of how we treat...
Should Creators Distance Themselves From Their...
“At their best, social media democratize literature and demystify the writing process.” - Anne Trubek, New York Times.
There are (at least) two schools of thought in criticism and literature: One holds that a work should be viewed apart from its creator. The other holds that a deeper understanding of the creator is integral to understanding the work.
While Trubek’s...
Assassin's Creed: Revelations Creative Director...
Alexandre Amancio, the creative director for Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, recently jumped ship to head up the new Montreal offices of marketing firm Cossette.
Amancio’s new job as co-head of the Montreal office was announced yesterday on Cossette’s site.
Amancio was in charge of the Assassin’s Creed brand for the past five years, according to the...
Video Games Stand Out in China's Pop-Culture Cold...
There’s a fascinating piece in today’s USA Today about China’s struggle in a growing pop culture war in their country.
One of the key components of that war, according to Chinese leader Hu Jintao, is video games.
“International hostile forces” use thought and culture “to Westernize and split” China, Hu stated in a speech publicized in January in the...
Russia's Defense Ministry Spends $1M To Copy...
Russian Defense Ministry officials set out to create an answer to pro-American shooter Call of Duty, developing a game that would boost patriotism by giving young gamers a chance to fight through World War II in the boots of Russians.
What they got was a $1 million knock off of Tetris, RT reports.
A visit to Russia’s Ministry of Defense multimedia page allows people to play games that...
Razer's Fiona Concept is Sorta Really Ugly
I’m not so sure about Razer’s Fiona concept. It sorta looks like an iPad with Move Navigation Controllers nailed to either side of it.
The full specs:
Hybrid user interface for PC gaming Intel® Core™ i7 10.1” 1280x800 display Full-screen user interface supporting multi-touch 3-axis gyro, magnetometer, accelerometer Force feedback Dolby® 7.1 surround sound WiFi 802.11b/g/n...
New Modern Warfare 3 Comes to 360 First,...
True, Call of Duty content has a history of hitting the Xbox 360 before it comes to the PC or Playstation 3, but I can see why some people hoped that a paid membership into Call of Duty Elite’s premium service would change that.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t, it just adds another layer.
Today, Activision unveiled a nine-month schedule for new content coming to Call of Duty: Modern...
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier Delayed To...
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier will now be coming out in North America on May 22, 2012 and in Europe on May 24, 2012, Ubisoft said today.
The game, initially set for a release by March 2012, was pushed back the extra couple of months to “allow Ubisoft’s creative teams more time to refine the experience and deliver a game that fully achieves the level of excellence that...
Kingdoms of Amalur Demo
Ooooh, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is getting an Xbox 360 demo on Jan. 17. Now people can decide for themselves if I’m crazy or not for thinking that this could be a 2012 sleeper hit.
Film Festival Looks To Explore Cronenberg, Body...
The Toronto International Film Festival plans to create an interactive exploration of director David Cronenberg and his work in venereal horror next year.
The Canadian nonprofit cultural organization posted a job opening for a project manager for the David Cronenberg Augment Reality Game last week.
The game, Body/Mind/Change, will be housed in the Tiff Bell Lightbox & Festival Tower in...
Pigs Will Soon Become Gamers in Europe
Pigs as gamers? It’s not that far off it seems.
A group of researchers and artists are working on Playing with Pigs, a gaming project meant to explore the intelligence and play of pigs while relieving their boredom.
In Playing with Pigs, a gamer uses an iPhone or iPad to maneuver a ball of light that shows up on a wall-sized touch screen in a pig enclosure. The researches say they...
Toshiba Releases Glasses-Free 3D Gaming Laptop...
Toshiba and NVIDIA have teamed up to release an update for the Qosmio F755 laptop that that will allow people to play PC games in 3D without needing to wear special glasses.
Sound familiar?
The laptop uses autostereoscopic display technology enabled with the use of a double parallax image display. It’s essentially the same technology that the 3DS uses to create 3D without the need for...
iPad and iPhone Are Getting Slick, New iCades
The folks over at Engadget got their hands on ION Audio’s latest versions of the iCade. These two new devices help to turn your iPhone and iPad into better gaming machines.
I remain a big fan of the original iCade, but I LOVE the idea of an iCade Jr. for your iPhone.
Make sure to check out Engadget’s story to see more details on both items, and video.
WatchXbox House Party 2012 will include Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Warp, Nexuiz and I Am Alive. No word on when the month-long celebration of Xbox Live Arcade titles will kick off, but last year’s House Party ran from February through March.
This is a pretty damn impressive list of games. I’m a huge fan of American Nightmare, and what I saw of Warp blew me away last year.
Via...