It’s GDC 2010 week and game companies usually reveal some new announcements during the event. Tonight, Sony will be holding their GDC conference and they are expected to make several new announcements that will make lots of news.
Sony’s motion controller is getting support from many in the gaming development community, although, not full support from gamers themselves. EA’s Jens Uwe Intat has told MCV that the company will have games ready for the launch of the PlayStation 3 motion controller.
He said both Sony’s and Microsoft’s motion controllers will allow for new gaming experiences for existing players, but the controllers will also introduce new people to gaming. Essentially, he believes these motion controllers will do for Sony and Microsoft what the Wii and Wii remote controller did for Nintendo.
There are a few misconceptions in the indie development community concerning the definition and legality of clone games. Some take it as given that a legal clone can be a fan game, including many of the same visual and sound elements as the original.
Others believe that because some game companies don’t enforce their IP rights against fan game developers, all fan games must be legal. Some may even believe that a game is simple and general enough to not warrant IP protection. This entry is designed to dispel some of the confusion and inaccuracy surrounding clone games and fan games.
Spike.com writes: It’s no secret game companies sometimes put out a broken game on the shelves. But for every game-breaking nightmare you have to download a patch to fix, there are bugs you want to hang onto. Whether it’s flying frogs, crashing planes, or filling a room with watermelons, here are the eight greatest bugs ever to ship.
Most of the dates for big fall releases have been set for weeks or even months now, but now we finally have an official release date for Little Big Planet on the PSP. Sony’s Mark Valledor announced the date on the PlayStation Blog as November 17. He also unveiled the packaging for the PSP title (right), and covered a few odds and ends in the Little Big Planet community.
With this move, Little Big Planet is taking a bold step that most other game companies are avoiding. It’s hitting only a week after Modern Warfare 2, when the multiplayer shooter is almost certain to be hogging the spotlight. Little Big Planet is a much different type of game and so it avoids obvious overlap between the two; however, gamers with limited funds might only be able to buy one or the other. We’ll have to wait to see how that affects the sales of the platformer.
Game companies are always working on new projects. It looks like Microsoft is working on a new secret project that Major Nelson is taking part in.
Despite selling premium dynamic theme for $2.99 each, game companies don’t make a profit.
It’s commonplace for game companies to make gamers’ saved-game files oddly incompatible with things they seemingly should be compatible with. So the news Microsoft had for Kotaku today about saved-game cross-compatibility is a progressive step.
On August 11, gamers will be able to download full Xbox 360 games to their console using the new Xbox Live Games on Demand service. At least 30 titles will be available at launch, including some you already own.
A spokesperson for Xbox 360 told Kotaku today that existing save-game files for those games will be compatible with any copies of the games you download from the service. Have a Mass Effect save but you long ago sold Mass Effect back to GameStop or accidentally ran the disc over with your lawnmower? The save file will work with the version of the game you can purchase for download.
OnLive isn’t the only service in development that’s promising to stream full games to your computer over the Internet. Shiny Entertainment founder David Perry announced several months ago, following the initial reveal of OnLive, that he too is working on a cloud gaming service called Gaikai. But unlike the competition, Gaikai promises to work directly in your browser without any downloads or add-ons; so long as you have flash installed (something that virtually every Internet-connected computer already has), your computer — from the crappiest of laptops to high-end desktops — is capable of playing any game that Gaikai offers.
It might sound far-fetched, and who could blame you for thinking such a thing? Such a technology would be quite a feat provided that it works. Amazingly enough, by all indications it would seem that the team working on Gaikai is onto something. Perry posted the above video on his blog recently that demonstrates Gaikai in action along with some of the design principles behind it. And, lest there be any video trickery at work (unlikely, given that this has already been shown behind closed doors), it really does seem to work as promised, as Perry plays Mario Kart 64 (on an emulator), Need for Speed ProStreet, EVE Online, Lego Star Wars 2, and World of Warcraft without incident.
As exciting a prospect as this is for gamers who can’t either be bothered to or can’t afford to constantly upgrade their PC with the latest hardware, a service like Gaikai might be even more attractive to game companies who could potentially develop games without having to concern themselves with potential hardware constraints on the gamers’ end. Of course, there are technicalities when it comes to something like MMOs and the desire to install add-ons, but the convenience of never having to worry about patching World of Warcraft again is an awfully nice proposition.
In addition to music and music videos, Jackson was also known as a fan of videogames. His Neverland Ranch had many arcade cabinets on free play. But Jackson did not just want to play games, he wanted to be in them, too. And so in 1990, Jackson teamed up with one of his favorite game companies, SEGA, to create the game Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker for the arcade, Genesis, and Master System, as well as current personal computers at the time.
