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	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:45:00 -0500 Tech company Emergent is updating its Gamebryo LightSpeed development platform, adding new features and establishing a "Kickstart" program for more transparency on the devkit. The new features include whiteboxing capabilities, additive animation blending and full support for D3D11. Emergent's also announcing a new source distribution method that offers engine code in three separate phases of development, beta and release. According to the company, the World Builder's new whiteboxing tool allows developers to prototype more rapidly ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	itwbennett writes "In a 45-minute press conference at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony announced its motion controller, officially named the Playstation Move. The Move consists of the Eye Toy (a camera pointed at the player) and a wand-like controller with a lighted ball at the end and a range of buttons on the shaft, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Alternatively games can use two of the wands, or one wand and one "sub-controller" that has an analog stick (the camera is always required),' says Smith. 'If this is sounding very much like the Wii's Remote and Nunchuk well, you aren't far off (though at least there's no cable between the two parts to smack you in the face when things get heated).' Here are Smith's thoughts on the demo: 'All in all, the demos seemed OK, but I, at least, wasn't really blown away by any of them. That said, it's always hard to tell how well these systems work without actually trying them for yourself. You need to feel the connection (or lack thereof) between what your hands are doing and what's going on on-screen in order to be sure. For example, in the boxing demo the player did a quick spin move that led to a roundhouse punch. It's hard to say if his motion triggered a pre-set action (a 'combo') or if the system was able to track the controller that accurately, and was able to 'connect the dots' from when his body briefly occluded the wand to when it reappeared.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:16:00 -0500 Nintendo's Yoshio Sakamoto is a designer who takes pride in being strange - a paradox at times, as he's employed by a company perhaps best known these days for its approachable, all-inclusive games. "It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that Metroid is the only series I'm known for outside of Japan," Sakamoto said as he introduced himself in a packed GDC 2010 talk. He says he was "virtually uninvolved" in the Prime arc of ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	Paul Taylor noted a story that I would have thought to be an April Fool's Day joke a few weeks from now, which makes it only seem more tragic. A 3-year-old shot herself with a gun after mistaking it for a Wii controller. Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:27:00 -0500 Though the talk is called Complex Challenges of Intuitive Design, Molyneux says "it's more to do with how we're taking the design of Fable II and radically changing it in Fable III and some of the angst you go through in the design decisions." Of course, those decisions are primarily about simplifying the game. "The whole Fable series was built out of our passion for role playing games," says Molyneux. And in the past, with ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders and a potentially game-changing, one unit per tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:47:00 -0500 Epic Games and Valve Software have announced an agreement to provide Valve's Steamworks tool suite to all licensees of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 to use in their titles without any extra charge. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is a game development framework for consoles and PCs, providing core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure. The engine is designed to put "as much power as possible in the hands of artists and designers to develop assets ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:01:00 -0500 In a private meeting outside of this year's Game Developers Conference, InstantAction CEO Louis Castle unveiled the InstantAction Platform, a unique game distribution service that the company believes will change the way consumers play games. In a nutshell, the InstantAction Platform delivers full PC games from third-party partners to end users through their web browsers. Games are downloaded progressively to a user's PC, meaning that they are available to play sometimes within minutes, either within ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	adeelarshad82 writes "After eight years of development, remote gaming service OnLive is scheduled to roll out on June 17 for Windows and Mac. The company also announced its service pricing: users will need to pay $14.95 per month, which will allow them access to the service. However, the company did not disclose the price to rent or purchase games. 'It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:27:00 -0500 Harmonix and MTV Games revealed Green Day: Rock Band, a new standalone title from their popular music game franchise, releasing worldwide on June 8th for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. The forthcoming music game allows players to take on the role of rock trio Green Day, which includes Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals/guitar), Mike Dirnt (bass) and Tre Cool (Drums). As players advance through the group's story and history, they'll also unlock over 100 collectible ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:52:00 -0500 Khronos Group, the industry consortium behind the OpenGL 2D and 3D graphics standards, released its OpenGL 4.0 specification, an update promising to bring the "latest in cross-platform graphics acceleration and functionality" to PCs and workstations. Khronos's OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group defined the OpenGL 4.0 specification, which now includes the GLSL 4.00 update to the OpenGL Shading language. The group says this will enable developers to access the latest generation of GPU acceleration ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:23:00 -0500 Following the final form reveal of its PlayStation Move motion controller last night, Sony Computer Entertainment revealed that 36 third-party developers and publishers have pledged to support the platform. SCE has already disclosed several titles it's working on with internal studios for the motion controller, including SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs, Move Party, Little Big Planet, EyePet, and Motion Fighters. The company says it plans to release more than 20 titles with PlayStation Move support ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra: "Valve will release a version of its Steam digital distribution service for Mac next month, along with Mac-native versions of its own games, the company confirmed today after days of hints — and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions. The Source engine, which Valve uses to develop all its internal titles and also licenses to third-party developers, will incorporate OpenGL in addition to DirectX, to allow Mac support for all Source developers. ... 'We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform, so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360,' said Cook. 'Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:37:00 -0500 Facial animation software and services company Image Metrics has secured $8 million in financing through a stock deal and has gone public through a reverse merger with International Cellular Accessories. The Santa Monica-based developer says this new financing will enable it to expand sales and marketing efforts for its core software and services business, support the launch of its facial animation software Faceware, and explore opportunities in new online markets like virtual worlds, gaming, and ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	arcticstoat writes "AMD has just aimed a shot at Nvidia's PhysX technology, saying that most game developers only implement GPU-accelerated PhysX for the money. AMD's Richard Huddy explained that 'Nvidia creates a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game.' However, he adds that 'the problem with that is obviously that the game developer doesn't actually want it. They're not doing it because they want it; they're doing it because they're paid to do it. So we have a rather artificial situation at the moment where you see PhysX in games, but it isn't because the game developer wants it in there.' AMD is pushing open standards such as OpenCL and DirectCompute as alternatives to PhysX, as these APIs can run on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. AMD also announced today that it will be giving away free versions of Pixelux's DMM2 physics engine, which now includes Bullet Physics, to some game developers." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:57:00 -0500 As part of its recent efforts to compete against rival social networks Facebook and MySpace in the thriving social games space, hi5 has announced a new Game Developer Program designed to encourage developers to release games to its platform by offering various promotion, distribution, and monetization benefits. The Game Developer Program will provide developers who release their games exclusively on hi5 with a free marketing and promotion package comprised of free banner ads, placement on ... Source: Gamasutra News (Gamasutra News)

 

	ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	Last year we discussed news that an Xbox Live gamer was banned for identifying herself as a lesbian on her profile. Microsoft said at the time that nothing sexual in nature could appear in Gamertags or profiles. Now, they seem to have reconsidered their stance, and they've updated their Code of Conduct accordingly. Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten wrote: "[The update] will allow our members to more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles. Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community. This update also comes hand-in-hand with increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	MojoKid writes "When a game developer releases a demo, it's typically intended to entice players into first trying and then purchasing the full version. This is the stuff of Game Design 101 for most of us, but a crack team of cutting-edge gaming researchers at Sony have applied for a patent based on a novel concept: game demos that become progressively less fun the more you play. Sony refers to this as 'feature erosion.' The idea behind this dubious concept is that gamers will become hooked on a game while it's still in demo, then squawk unhappily as features and abilities they've unlocked begin to disappear. In order to prevent this, the player ponies up for the full version. A demo or program that provides limited functionality or play time is one thing; a game that's purposefully designed to take your progress away, in an admitted attempt to get you to buy once you've been hooked, is something altogether different." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	eldavojohn writes "Enough rumors, Portal 2 is due out for 2010. Valve also let users know through an announcement on Steam. Game Informer seems to be the de facto provider of Portal 2 information so far. Prepare yourselves for more aperture science! Notice anything funny about the underlined letters in Steam's announcement?" Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)

 

	wintersynth writes "We hacked a toy brainwave reader to electrocute people if their brainwave frequency got too high (by concentrating). We took outputs off of the 5 level LED indicator, put the outputs through a transistor/resistor/relay circuit to give 2 levels of high voltage through an electric shock circuit right into the user's arm." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot: Games (News for nerds, stuff that matters)