NUMBER One!
A report has surfaced that Neversoft will be losing it's name and fusing together with Infinity Ward. Neversoft, best known for it's Tony Hawk games from consoles past, helped Infinity Ward with the development of Call of Duty: Ghosts, which released last November. Giant Bomb has a leaked memo detailing the change for both studios.
This is pretty unsurprising for anyone who has been keeping up with Neversoft the past couple of years. It was a shock to most to find the developer helping create Call of Duty, but seeing as how the Tony Hawk series has moved to another developer (and mobile platforms) and Guitar Hero, the other franchise the studio has worked on, is dead, why not merge them into Infinity Ward. Call of Duty is Activision's bread and butter, as proven by the fact that the publisher has assigned three separate studios to help create the games that make hundreds of millions (into the billions) of dollars every release.
NUMBER Two!!
Comcast and EA are working on a service to allow the cable provider to stream EA games to it's customers. According to a report, games such as Plants vs. Zombies and FIFA could be available for purchase by viewers who would play the games via an iOS device. This partnership has apparently been in the testing phase for over 2 years now, with a lineup of casual games to release first.
This is pretty unsurprising, as cable companies are fighting tooth and nail to keep themselves relevant in our streaming heavy society. Partnering with EA is a smart choice, as EA holds most of the successful sports titles as well as a bevy of casual games, which are perfect for customers who just want a minor distraction between commercials. Hopefully more news on this partnership will be released soon. I personally don't pay for cable, preferring to stream, but if I were to pay, this would be a nice feature to have.
Number THREE!!!
Epic Games executives Mark Rein and Paul Meegan have revealed that the next Unreal Tournament game will be shown this week. This Thursday, the game will stream off of Twitch, showcasing the capabilities of the Unreal Engine 4.
Not much more is known, other than we will learn more on Thursday. This is, once again, will showcase the power of Unreal's newest game engine. It'll be interesting to see which platforms the game releases, especially considering how close each console is to developing on PC compared to last generation.
Number FOUR!!!!
The State of Washington has filed a lawsuit against Ed Nash (real name Edward Polchlepek) and his company, Altius Management, for failing to make good on a successful Kickstarter campaign. The project originally asked for $15,000, yet raised $25,146 by the time it ended in October 2012. According to the Attorney General's office, Nash and Altius collected the money but neglected to deliver the cards or the various backer rewards. Because some of those backers live in the state of Washington, the state's legal team is allowed to get involved.
This is a very important case. The outcome will shape Kickstarter and other crowd funding programs as well as the people who use these formats to gain money for projects. On the one hand, crowd funding is not an investment; it's a means to help a company create something. Therefore, you are not obligated to a return on your money. On the other hand, sites like Kickstarter help create a means to fund projects, but these projects are required to create promises of 'stretch goals' once the project has reached the desired funding, which this project did, there for, requiring a return on individuals capital. It's a very muddy mess for sure.
It is a shame that no one was able to receive the product that they helped fund, but I do think it is important that a distinction be made between crowd funding and investing. It will be very important to see what becomes of this case.
NUMBER FIVE!!!!!
Rhythm game Amplitude may be coming back. Announced today via Twitter, Harmonix is starting a Kickstarter to bring back the PS2 classic and put it on PS3 and PS4. The Kickstarter is set at $775 000. During the announcement video, Harmonix co-founder and CTO Eran Egozy said "we've been eager to return to our roots for awhile, and develop a next-gen controller-based rhythm game. We want to put a team together at Harmonix to make another Amplitude."
This is pretty surprising. Harmonix is a pretty large studio with roughly three games on it's plate at the moment, so the decision to add another seems off, but it also explains why the company is going to Kickstarter for some money. Time will tell if there is enough older fans and newer curious players to fund the game, but it could be a big help to Sony, as both Sony and Microsoft are in need of exclusives for the respective new consoles.
As usual, there is a lot of news out there, but some of it is just straight forward information. So here are some of those stories:
- 5 new screenshots from Tales of the Borderlands have been released.
- From Software's next game supposedly leaked; codenamed 'Project Beast'.
- Twitch Plays Pokemon moves on to Platinum as well as adds Pokemon Stadium betting.
- Sony trademarks 'Guns Up'.
No comments:
Post a Comment