Mozilla and Epic Games are working on bringing a web version of the Unreal Engine 3.
Mozilla stated their commitment toward developing applications improving 3D performance on the web. Browsers will be enabled to fully utilize a hyper efficient JavaScript capable of displaying the fastest and most visually impressive 3D works.
Here’s the ambitious lowdown from Mozilla.
Capcom has announced that the PC version of Resident Evil 6 will feature characters and creatures from Valve’s popular Left 4 Dead 2.
PC owners will have the luxury of playing the exclusive version of RE:6 Mercenaries No Mercy mode that will allow them to select the cast from Left 4 Dead 2 along with the original RE:6 characters. It will also feature a couple of nefarious monsters from the Left 4 Dead series.
The PC version of Left 4 Dead 2 will also see the appearance of a few creatures from Resident Evil 6 making their presence felt.
I love the whole WipEout series. I bought in on the PSP and got it on the PS3 too. That said, I didn’t hesitate to download Repulze in the hope it was a clone of a good gravity racer.
Man was I mistaken. First and formost, Repulze may LOOK like WipEout but doesn’t play like it at all. The control is limited to onscreen left to right (or by tilting your iDevice which is not recommended due to the limited scope of your turning radius) and boosting is done by going through these colored gates. You need to collect a number of them to get a boost.
Then there is the gameplay. There are NO competitors! This is a pure TT race (TT being a Time Trial) and you don’t bump fenders with any opposing team. So this also means, no weapons to pick up to blow away the opposition.
Crashing is optional of course and should you do it too many times (which happens to be quite often) you get a time penalty handed to you. So in order to get through this game, you will need among other talents, clairvoyance, to get by those nasty turns.
The graphics are cool, that much I must admit. It looks the part and plays smoothly too. But beyond this shell, there isn’t much that will compel you play on, except maybe when you want to beat your friend’s score posted on the time standings.
Once you get past the spiffy graphics, you will find it hard to motivate yourself to do anything on the game. The controls don’t always work out and regardless of your need for an adrenaline rush, you will not be rewarded with the same thrills of say playing the real WipEout on a PSP for that matter.
Conclusion
Is there life on Mars? I think you’d be better off pondering such questions than playing the game. Repulze offers limited thrills and repeat gameplay. The only motivation is to challenge your friend’s time on different tracks if you have a friend to play with.
The idea behind a TT gravity racer has been done before, Repulze is just a repackaged version of the same thing. You’d probably marvel at the effort of putting the whole game together but beyond that. I can’t think of a reason to buy this game except when it cost only 0.99 cents.
The first slice of gameplay footage from Kickstarter success Shadowrun Returns has been released online.
Nearly 20 minutes of alpha gameplay are available to watch below. It’s our best look yet at Harebrained Schemes’ ambitious project, which completed its crowd-funding campaign almost a year ago.
Shadowrun Returns’ barn-storming Kickstarter raised a huge $1.89m (£1.25m), more than quadruple its $400,000 goal.
Highlights of the new footage include demonstrations of the game’s solo and party-based fight systems. You can holster weapons to try and trick the game’s enemies, use cover, and shoot people in the face with a shotgun.
The turn-based role-player is due for an “early summer” release for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
Although the economy might not be in the thick of a recession as it once was, that doesn’t mean things are going especially great for videogame publishers. Take Electronic Arts, for instance, which hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with its performance as of late. The start of the next generation is an ideal opportunity to effect change that doesn’t come along often, and it seems EA doesn’t intend to miss it; just yesterday it revealed plans to proliferate microtransactions throughout each of its games. As EA and publishers in general attempt to do this (and try out other means for generating additional revenue), I hope they don’t forget to treat gamers with respect.
This current generation of consoles has seen the onset of numerous new money-making tactics. While expansion packs had been offered in the past, downloadable content became the norm for nearly every game, delivering everything from horse armor to new characters, maps, and more. Online passes have attempted to fight used games sales, encouraging gamers to buy new copies of their games or, failing that, forcing them to pay money directly to the publisher for access to certain (often multiplayer) content. Always-online connections, allegedly intended to enable new features but with the obvious benefit of trying to ward off piracy, spread from games where its use was implicit to those where its use is a detriment more than anything else.
The next generation will bring with it consoles that are more open to alternative business models and give publishers an opportunity to reprogram the way gamers think about buying games (much in the same way they have over the past seven or eight years). What that means is we can expect to see the way games are delivered to us, and the way we’re asked to pay for their content, to change. You can’t blame a company like Electronic Arts, which has posted more than its fair share of losses in recent years, for trying; I like a lot of the company’s games, and I want to see more of them. I appreciate that these companies are businesses with stockholders expecting them to make money, but I do worry that things could be taken too far in a hostile direction.
I have no problem with downloadable content. I like having the option to play more of a game I enjoy without having to wait for the sequel. Provided the content in question is worthwhile and wasn’t yanked out of the base game because it’s something that they knew gamers would have to buy later, I’m perfectly okay with downloadable content continuing to be a mainstay going forward. After all, without it, we’d never have gotten something like Minerva’s Den — widely considered the best part of BioShock 2 — and so long as games are released as complete experiences like they used to be, I don’t see downloadable content as the plague that some do.
Online passes aren’t especially objectionable to me, though it’s easy to see why people dislike them. Simply by choosing to take advantage of all of a game’s features, the game loses value because a secondhand buyer would then have to purchase an online pass to gain access to whatever it locks. It also makes the simple act of borrowing a game from a friend a less-than-ideal experience.
But it’s always-online requirements that I find much more hostile. Take Diablo III, for instance. Blizzard liked to point to the benefits this requirement allowed for (persistent friends lists, server-side characters accessible from any computer, and the like), but it ignored the fact that this prevented a segment of gamers from playing the way they wanted to. This is not World of Warcraft where an online connection is critical to the experience; Diablo III can be played solo, but you have to connect to Battle.net’s servers in order to do so even if you have no intention of ever taking advantage of an online feature. Considering the sales success of Diablo III and what’s almost assured to be a big hit in Destiny, we’ve got the makings of a trend that’s only going to become more prevalent, not less.
Microtransactions are something that have already become a common sight in all sorts of games, with the possible exception of the traditional, $60 retail titles. Dead Space 3 made headlines earlier this year when it was revealed the game includes microtransactions that essentially act as a shortcut for obtaining resources used to craft weapons. It’s not the first time a shortcut like this has been offered — we’ve even seen it in multiplayer games before. In case you thought it was a one-time experiment, this kind of thing officially is not going anywhere, as EA declared this week that it will include microtransactions in all of its games.
I’m not necessarily opposed to this option being offered for those who want it — if people want to spend their money on shortcuts, so be it — but there is something that simply feels untoward about it all. Trying to squeeze extra money out of gamers, not with new or better content, but by hoping they won’t have the time or inclination to play a game the old fashioned way, strikes me as a poor strategy for turning a business around. Again, I get that this is a business and the goal is to make money, but wouldn’t better products be a preferable path to profitability? I certainly think so, and that’s before raising the concern that microtransactions could eventually influence design decisions in some capacity; if companies are going to sell weapons and the like as DLC, who’s to say they won’t also make the time investment required to obtain a high-end weapon/car/whatever higher in order to nudge people in the direction of microtransactions? Even if that doesn’t happen, the suspicion will be there, and the potential backlash won’t be good for anyone.
The bottom line is that the gaming industry needs to ensure it treats gamers with respect. It might ultimately view them as walking bank accounts, but that doesn’t mean it can’t shy away from some of the more anti-consumer practices out there. Take DRM, for instance: Far too many companies (which is to say, more than zero) place an emphasis on trying to block pirates from accessing their games rather than making the experience of buying and owning the game more pleasant. Instead of everyone putting effort into delivering a kick-ass boxed product, as some do, you have a company like Ubisoft that has, in the past, employed always-online requirements as a form of DRM that only punished legitimate customers once the DRM was cracked. It’s the equivalent of the piracy warning you’re subjected to when you boot up a DVD that can only be skipped on pirated discs, only far more detrimental. Paying customers shouldn’t be treated like criminals.
Asking to be treated with respect is not that outrageous of a request. At the very least, doing so will avoid running the risk of scaring gamers away from the industry altogether. Beyond that, publishers might even find that treating people with respect is to their benefit. By passing up an opportunity to make a quick buck, considering things from the gamers’ perspective, and delivering better games, they might find they instill a sense of loyalty that ultimately leads to gamers who are more willing to open their wallets. Perhaps the path to making money that seems to elude these companies has been in front of them this entire time.
Sony Corporation today announced the sale of its Sony City Osaki office building for 111.1 billion yen ($1.2 billion/ £790.9 million). The building was sold to Nippon building Fund, Inc. and one unnamed Japanese investor, but Sony will remain in the building for five years under a new lease agreement.
Net cash after transaction costs comes to 110 billion yen ($1.19 billion/ £783 million), with Sony expecting a gain on 41 billion yen ($442.4 million/ £291.9 million) to go against operating income for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2013.
The sale comes as Sony tries to slim down and cut costs.
“Sony has identified certain assets for possible sale as part of an initiative to transform its business portfolio and reorganize its assets. This sale was conducted as a part of that initiative. While this sale was anticipated and the potential gain on the sale was taken into account at the time of the forecast, Sony is currently reevaluating the aggregate impact of this sale and other factors on the forecast,” said the company in its statement.
Courtesy: Sony.net
Bungie has begun unveiling Destiny, the grand game project that’s been in the works for years. The future for Bungie, and a significant part of Activision’s future, is depending on the success of this game. Bungie and Activision brought members of the press to Seattle to start revealing information about the game and to create some excitement and anticipation for Destiny. The process also raised many questions that have yet to be answered.
A full day of meetings were held for the assembled press, beginning in mid-morning and lasting until mid-afternoon. After a tour of Bungie’s studio, Bungie COO Pete Parsons and several key Bungie employees discussed major aspects of Destiny. Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg joined them for a question-and-answer session. The most curious feature of this entire day was that no actual gameplay was shown; the closest we came was a few seconds of in-engine footage to demonstrate a feature of the new graphics engine.
What is Destiny? The next game from Bungie is “ambitious in its scope, innovative and creative in its approach, elevated in its tone, and is the kind of ass-kicking trek through the universe that only Bungie could create,” said Hirshberg. “Very few games transcend their medium and their genre to truly become part of popular culture. We believe that Destiny could become one of those rare games.”
“[This] is the kind of ass-kicking trek through the universe that only Bungie could create” – Eric Hirshberg
Destiny’s more than just Halo on steroids, though. “As we saw Destiny coming together, we realized that it didn’t belong to a genre that we could quite pin down,” Hirshberg said. “It has elements of a first-person shooter, it has elements of an open-world sandbox, and it has elements of a persistent world, and brings them all together in a new way that seems very fresh. We realized that to refer to Destiny as any one of these pre-existing genres is almost to under-promise or undersell the experience we think it could bring to gamers. We realized that we needed to coin a new phrase and a new way to reference what this game is. I think what Bungie is creating with Destiny is the world’s first shared world shooter.”
The game takes place in the future, on Earth and throughout the Solar System, in a style art director Christopher Barrett calls ‘mythic science fiction.’ Players will take on the role of a Guardian of Earth’s last city, fighting against a variety of aliens amid the shattered remnants of an interplanetary empire. The settings revealed through concept art appear vast and awe-inspiring, evoking a sense of wonder and a desire to explore. Barrett noted that they have generated more concept art for this game than for all previous Bungie games put together.
Bungie co-founder and project director Jason Jones said that “we’re doing something really ambitious, and I hope by the end you’ll agree it’s a little crazy.” Jones started off with a simple declaration: “If you enjoy first-person shooters, Destiny’s going to be the best first-person shooter you’ve ever played.” Bungie is looking to create a much broader appeal, though, by including many more (unspecified) elements to the game that will have a broad appeal. Destiny will (somehow) let players of all skill levels have fun, so you won’t need to be an FPS expert to jump in and have a good time. From all the deliberately vague descriptions of the gameplay, it seems like Bungie wants Destiny to appeal to a much broader audience than just Halo or Call of Duty players. “Absolutely,” Bungie’s Parsons agreed. He’s a fan of World of Warcraft, and Skyrim, and other games, and he hopes that the range of experiences in Destiny will bring in many gamers who are not classic FPS players.
Bungie has had Destiny under development for several years, and in the process has thoroughly re-imagined and re-invented their ideas of what a game could be and should be, along with the technology necessary to make that happen. Jones noted that Destiny’s design is built on seven pillars: A world players want to be in; a bunch of fun things to do; rewards players care about; a new experience every night; shared with other people; enjoyable by all skill levels; and enjoyable by the tired, impatient, and distracted.
“We’re doing something really ambitious, and I hope by the end you’ll agree it’s a little crazy” – Jason Jones
Writer and design director Joe Staten said that ‘we’re all storytellers’ and that Destiny was designed to bring that out in the players. Their vision is to tell stories that matter and endure, and the most important stories will be the ones told by players. This is a big change from the design concept of the Halo series, which was built around the story of Master Chief and not really around the player’s character.
Engineering lead Chris Butcher discussed the ambitious scale of the game, which has required a huge amount of new technology. Bungie has spent the last six years rebuilding game technology, including such things as a multithreaded engine, a new graphics engine, an interactive world editor, distributed computing clusters, advanced AI and locomotion, a live update content pipeline, and global scale servers. Interestingly, the concept of a matchmaking lobby is disappearing into the background, as Bungie has created what it calls ‘seamless, invisible technology’ that is continuously matchmaking, transparent to the user; there’s no UI.
Graphics architect Hao Chen described how Bungie had to build a new graphics engine because the world is so big; it had to be automated. The old way of lighting, Chen explained, required pre-rendering, which took enormous amounts of time and resource. Now it’s all real-time, which enables things like a dynamic time of day. The result is some interesting emergent graphics that occur, surprising even Chen with how they look.
The music for Destiny is still under development, but audio director and composer Marty O’Donnell described how he wanted Destiny music to go to ‘the next level,’ to really enhance and reflect emotions. O’Donnell worked with long-time collaborator Mike Salvatore and a surprise contributor – none other than Paul McCartney. It turned out McCartney has been very interested in interactive music and heard about Bungie’s project, and the result has been a world-class collaboration. O’Donnell played segments that were recorded with a 106-piece orchestra and chorale at the iconic Abbey Road studio. The classical score brought to mind some of the great movie composers, like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Bernard Herrmann.
Parsons, Hirshberg, and Bungie president Harold Ryan then answered questions from the assembled press, but revealed few details of Destiny. There will be an Internet connection required, even to play solo, which could rub a few gamers the wrong way. There was no detail on release dates or pricing, but Hirshberg did say that the game is currently targeted at Xbox 360 and PS3; next-gen consoles were not a topic he could talk about. There will also be a mobile app that will have a significant impact on the game, the team said. Parsons emphasized that Bungie has a lot of great ideas and is not playing it safe.
Hirshberg did address one of the questions head-on, before it was even asked. “I’ve heard all the rumors, and let me just rip this bandaid off right here,” Hirshberg said. “We have absolutely no plans to charge a subscription fee for Destiny.”
“Let me just rip this bandaid off right here: We have absolutely no plans to charge a subscription fee for Destiny” – Eric Hirshberg
Destiny represents a grand re-imagining of the first-person shooter, expanded and modified so that it may appeal to a broader audience. Bungie’s commitment is enormous; the entire staff of 360 is working on this game. Activision is also heavily committed, on a scale of hundreds of millions of dollars. More than that, Activision has (by their own count) four major brands, and if they want to grow substantially they need more such brands, “Activision’s approach has been to try to do a few things exceptionally well,” said Hirshberg. The dark side of that strategy is that when you don’t do something exceptionally well, it can be devastating.
Activision has done its best to minimize the risks. It’s chosen one of the best developers in the world with a stellar track record to head up the project, and given the team plenty of time and resources. Bungie has thrown itself headlong into the project, setting forth ambitious goals and leaving no assumption unexamined. Bungie’s staff also noted that they are currently playing Destiny in-house and bringing in outside testers to give them feedback, which implies that the game is pretty far along and Bungie is well aware of the need for polishing the game. Many great game concepts have failed in the marketplace because of unbalanced play, numerous bugs, or just a lack of fun. Bungie knows very well indeed that a high level of polish is crucial to the game’s success.
Perhaps the most common failure point for a big budget game is when a publisher pushes to ship the game by a certain date. That’s when polish gets forgotten, important features are removed, and the brilliant design can become an unplayable mess. Activision seems to be avoiding this trap; in the company’s forecast for 2013 it carefully noted that it did not include revenue from Bungie’s project. At the same time, Bungie seems to be pretty far along with the game; the studio may well be able to ship it this year. If so, Activision gets a pleasant surprise boost to its revenue. If not, well, management can say “We told you not to expect it this year.”
The biggest challenge to the ultimate success of Destiny may be something beyond the control of Bungie or Activision: the future of the console market. Will current-gen consoles continue to decline in sales, or will there be price cuts that may keep sales going? When next-gen consoles arrive, will they sell at the levels seen for the current generation, or will they struggle? Could Destiny be a game like Halo that can actually drive hardware sales and the overall market?
Some clues to Activision’s thinking can be found in its contract with Bungie. The text of the Activision/Bungie contract was revealed in the course of Activision’s lawsuit with Infinity Ward last year. The agreement (dated April 2010 – it may have been altered since then) spans a period of ten years, in which Bungie will develop content that Activision will publish. The first release was slated for the Fall of 2013 with major releases at every two years afterwards, and major DLC releases in the years between. The target platforms for the initial release are specified as Xbox 360 and its successor (labeled in the contract as “Xbox 720″), with a PS3 release for Fall 2014. A second Destiny Game would also be released on the “PS4″ (the successor to the PS3) and the PC (under Windows).
“Activision’s approach has been to try to do a few things exceptionally well” – Eric Hirshberg
We’re likely to see the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions appear in relatively close order; this doesn’t appear to be a problem these days for most developers. Should next-gen consoles launch this year, would Destiny be a release title? While nothing was said about this by either Bungie or Activision, it should be obvious that releasing Destiny as a launch title for a next-gen system would be a sure sales boost. If it can be done, it will be done. If the contract is still unchanged, don’t expect Destiny to be exclusive to any platform. It’s also interesting to note that a PC version is planned; that makes a lot of sense as yet another platform that should be good for a considerable audience. Everything we know about next-gen consoles indicates it will be far easier to port those titles to and from the PC.
The Destiny press reveal was fascinating for a number of reasons. No gameplay was shown, and no ship date was given. Even if the game ships this fall, this is extremely early to be giving press conferences for a fall game. There are no press conferences planned any time soon for Call of Duty’s fall release, or Grand Theft Auto V, or the next Madden or FIFA. Normally you wait until E3 to start the real buzz going on fall releases. Perhaps Activision merely wants to get out in front of the huge noise level that’s going to be overwhelming the game market this year. New consoles, new mobile platforms, important new software releases – game media this year will be filled with sound and fury from every PR direction.
For now, we have to wait until Activision and Bungie decide to reveal more. When we can finally get our hands on the game, we’ll be better able to see how Destiny might unfold. Check out the video below for more.
