Posts in category business
by James Ransom-Wiley Oct 11th 2007 3:34PM
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Business
George did it. And so did
Beth. Now, as
forecast, it's Perrin's turn. Nintendo Vice President of Marketing
Perrin Kaplan has announced her retirement from the company after 15 years of service.
Kaplan did not give an explicit reason for her departure, saying only, "I finally will be leaving Nintendo at the end of the year. Until then, I am focused on getting a great transition team in place and handling all of my normal responsibilities as well." It had been speculated that the marketing exec trio -- now all officially on course to retire -- would leave Nintendo after
plans to relocate the company's PR headquarters from Washington to San Francisco and New York were revealed in May. But this theory remains
pure speculation. Think about it: there are plenty of other circumstances that could have prompted Kaplan's resignation ... well, actually, we can only think of
one.
by Scott Jon Siegel Oct 11th 2007 12:55PM
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Business
With
shortages possibly running into early 2008, it would appear that the Wii is a clear-cut success in the current generation of consoles. So why are software companies so nervous to develop games for Nintendo's white wonder?
IGN
reports on a recent article from
The Nikkei Business Daily. After speaking to a number of software houses on the future of the Wii,
The Business Daily reveals that several developers, preferring to stay anonymous, expressed concerns over the longevity of the system, and were hesitant to develop games in the event of the Wii's popularity dropping suddenly.
Several houses perceive the motion-sensing
Wii as a fad, and believe its success to be ending shortly. This could possibly be in response to the Wii's sales in Japan, which
The Nikkei Business Daily reports are at their lowest point since late last year. Several developers also blamed
Nintendo for their hesitancy, claiming that the company puts third-party developers at a disadvantage while ensuring the success of first-party titles. It remains to be seen if any of this Wii fear is justifiable, although a lack of third-party confidence is never a good sign for a console manufacturer.
by Justin McElroy Oct 11th 2007 10:10AM
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Business
Valve's Gabe Newell has been pretty open about his displeasure with the PS3 in the past, and it's clear from a recent interview that time has not softened him, calling the system "a waste of everyone's time" in Edge magazine last week. Newell continued, saying, "Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created. I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution."
Though Newell is one of the few developers in a position to speak out on the system (we would too if our game was
rocking a 98 on Metacritic), a slew of
PS3 game delays have us wondering: Is he speaking the minds of more than we know?
[Via
CVG]
by Justin McElroy Oct 11th 2007 8:49AM
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
They say that if you don't talk to your kids about drugs someone else will. What you may not know is the exact same thing holds true for video game consoles. For example, Microsoft still hasn't announced that they'll be phasing out the Core 360 to replace it with its sleek, cooler cousin, the 360 Arcade. Meaning we have to get our info ...
from strangers. Exhibit X (or is it Y yet?) is this retail stand-up captured by Gamespot, that makes mention of (shock!) the 360 Arcade!
All the features are the same as the ones
you've heard rumored: five free games, 256MB memory card, a wireless controller, etc. What there's no mention of is the system's price. But, since the other details have held up, we'd bet the $280 we've heard before is spot on. Now, Microsoft, would you kindly announce this thing instead of forcing us to learn about the Arcade
on the street?
by Alexander Sliwinski Oct 10th 2007 8:30PM
Filed under: Culture, Business
According to website Twitch, Fox Studios
pulled the director of the
Hitman movie off the project in post-production and will re-edit the film to receive a PG-13 rating. There is no official word yet that this is true, but the story goes director Xavier Gens was yanked off the project because the film he submitted to executives would have guaranteed an R rating. Apparently post-production of the film has now been handed over to Nicolas DeToth, the man who edited the hell out of
Live Free or Die Hard to receive a PG-13 rating. Essentially they are turning a hyper-violent (mature?) movie and watering it down for the kids -- if true, there's something wrong in that, on so many levels.
Our friends over at Cinematical
put it this way: "See, here's how I know Hollywood is a lunatic bin: Whomever hired Mr. Gens for this job had to know two things: 1) The director's first film --
Frontiere(s) -- is so amazingly and powerfully violent that it
almost becomes parody. 2) The video game? You know, the one that this new
Hitman movie is BASED ON? It's a pretty damn violent game. Like,
really violent." Not only is it violent our Cinematical friends, but the games are all rated Mature, the video game industry's version of an R rating. Oh well, guess we'll just skip the movie in the theater and wait for the unrated version on DVD.
[Via
Cinematical]
by Jason Dobson Oct 10th 2007 5:56PM
Filed under: Culture, PC, Business
With
Maxis still hip-deep in
Spore's primordial ooze, EA's decision to
hand the next game in the storied
SimCity franchise over to
Caesar IV devs Tilted Mill was understandable, if not entirely welcome given the game's move away from being a 'realistic urban simulation,' a shift decried by fans to the tune of "
you killed my baby!"
In keeping with the forthcoming
SimCity Societies' touchy-feely approach, which looks to abandon simulation gameplay
in favor of 'social energies,' EA has announced that the game will also include '
climate education' through "low-carbon electricity choices and carbon emission monitoring" thanks to a partnership with 'green minded' alternative energy organization BP. The goal, says EA, is to give players an "accurate" look at some of the causes and available solutions to the
inconvenient truth of global warming, no doubt giving Al Gore reason to smile as he
continues to tango with Mizuguchi.
Thankfully, according to EA, the game will not shove any eco-friendly environmentalist perspectives down players' collective throat. Instead,
Societies will offer choices on how players wish to power their cities, leaving those of us who feel less at home hugging trees than we do while shoveling coal into the furnace free to
do as we please when the game ships for the PC this November.
by Justin McElroy Oct 10th 2007 3:26PM
Filed under: Culture, Business
Pour one out today for
Shiny, which will soon be merged with another dev team,
The Collective. Gamasutra's reporting that the developer collective that controls the two teams,
Foundation 9, will be fusing them into one as-of-now-unnamed entity. ... May we suggest Shillective?
Spearheaded by
Dave Perry, Shiny was once a bastion of creativity in the industry, with titles like
MDK,
Earthworm Jim and
Wild 9. The Collective is no slouch themselves, currently helming
Silent Hill V, making them the first American company to develop a game in that series. While Shiny has lost some of its luster in recent years, and this new developer's going to be packing a lot of talent, it's hard for us not to be a little sad at the prospect of the house that Jim built finally being dismantled.
by Ross Miller Oct 10th 2007 7:56AM
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Business
Nintendo of America's ass-kicking, name-taking president Reggie Fils-Aime (pronounce it
properly, please) earned top honors this year by being named marketer of the year according to BrandWeek. It's not too surprising, given the console maker's rather storied rise to the top - how many more articles are we going to see about grandparents playing
Wii bowling?
Other honorees include executives from NBC, Geico and Crocs. The BrandWeek article can be viewed online (
.pdf file); Reggie's article starts on page four.
[Via
Gamasutra]
by Scott Jon Siegel Oct 10th 2007 5:00AM
Filed under: PC, MMO, Business
Following
last month's news of delays and downsizing at Perpetual Entertainment, Warcry Network
reports that the company has put development of their mythologically-themed MMO
Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising on "indefinite hold," as the team reorganizes and seeks out new investors.
Perpetual co-founder Chris McKibbin has posted an open letter on the
Gods and Heroes community page, stating that the team was overly ambitious in terms of the game's development, and that shelving the title gives the team opportunity to focus attention elsewhere. Despite the significant amount of time invested in
Rome Rising, placing the game on "indefinite hold" means it will likely never see the light of day in any finished form.
McKibbin states in his letter that the team has shifted all of their focus to their IP-driven MMO
Star Trek Online, and their Perpetual Platform Services division, which develops middleware for MMO development.
by Ross Miller Oct 10th 2007 2:33AM
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Action, Sports, Business
Nintendo's press conference came as somewhat of a surprise. Even for IGN, who did not know of it and instead
translated the live blog of Japanese site Ge-maga. The big news of the event, of course, was
Sonic's unveiling as a Smash Bros. Brawl character. Here's what else came out of the event:
- Mario Kart coming Spring 2008, with motorcycles!
- Super Mario Stadium Baseball was unceremoniously revealed in a collection of clips for previously-announced games.
- Nintendo will soon "begin a service similar to the DS Station retail service. You'll be able to download demos from your home."
- Virtual Console has reached 7.8 million downloads. Even if all those sales were NES titles (and we know they're not), that's at least US $39 million in almost pure profit.
- "Nintendo will put more emphasis on the Wii Vote channel in the future. You'll be able to put rankings for games that you've played and search for games that fit your liking."
The rest of the news:
by Zack Stern Oct 10th 2007 1:10AM
Filed under: Culture, Retro, RPGs, Video, Business
Gametrailers user,
BlackSad03, has posted an old
ad from NES game,
Iron Sword, and we wish today's
ads were as exciting. We enjoy the clip on so many levels, like watching the gameplay and being sucked into the sale itself. Must... buy...
Iron Sword. Our favorite take is to imagine the production of the commercial and which PA had to swing the tentacle into the room.
The video is watermarked with "Gaming-Age.com," but we could only find an
article there that references an equally great print ad for the game. So we send
Gaming Age a nod, too.
See the ad after the break.
Continue reading Today's ads-used-to-be-this-good video: Iron Sword
by Alexander Sliwinski Oct 9th 2007 6:25PM
Filed under: Sony PSP, Business
An official Konami advertisement for
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles in magazines talks about "the Beaumont family's quest to destroy Dracula," the only problem being that anybody who has played a
Castlevania game in the last 20 years would know it should be the
Belmont family. Oops! The error is kind of funny considering the amount of eyes that probably saw
the ad before it was sent out, and it's not like we're talking about a new franchise here.
We could go into a spiel right now about the incredible amount of people in the industry who know next to nothing about the products they're hawking -- but why bother getting serious. This reminds us of another
hilarious ad from earlier this year for
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam on the
Sony Wii. Good times in advertising.
[Via
Wired]
by Alexander Sliwinski Oct 9th 2007 2:00AM
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Business
Jesse Divnich, an analyst at prediction market simExchange, believes the
rumored $399 40GB PS3 will have
little impact on the sales of Xbox 360. He says the
new Xbox 360 bundles and "
teh Haloz 3" will keep momentum going on the console for a while. Although he does believe there will be a slight dip in October sales as consumers wait for the new bundles which won't release until late in the month.
Divnich believes the buzz around the Xbox 360 is high enough now to deflect any effects if a cheaper PS3 is introduced to the market. Divnich says, "The cheaper price point will only be drawing customers who already planned on purchasing the PS3 but were deterred by the price." We'll get a better feel for the real impact of a 40GB model once Sony officially announces it for the North American market and see how it does at retail.
by Zack Stern Oct 9th 2007 1:30AM
Filed under: Culture, Microsoft Xbox 360, Driving, Online, Video, Business, Casual
Remember that
Yaris XBLA game to be released free on Wednesday? Gametrailers user,
warchiefgrim, uploaded a clip. We hope this video convinces you to save the precious bandwidth of the internet and pass on the game; even "free" costs too much.
Things we learned:
- The 4-Door Sedan Yaris comes in such focus-group-approved colors as "Jade Sea Metallic," and "Flint Mica."
- Northbound on 101 goes straight up (and straight down) as often as it goes north.
- The Yaris is powered by the constant desire to catch a cat toy mounted on its roof. Sadly, the toy is always just out of reach.
See the video, and add your own observations after the break.
Continue reading Today's future-of-advertising-video: Yaris game
by Scott Jon Siegel Oct 9th 2007 1:00AM
Filed under: Business
Laziness is both the bane and best friend of anyone in the job hunt. As many of our readers seems to be interested in the game industry, many of our readers must also know that it's a difficult industry to break into. Job hunting is a difficult process, often resulting in dead ends, and sometimes it's just easier to kick back than search through one more listing.
Luckily for the lazy, game designer and blogger Yehuda has done all of the hard work. Over two
blog posts, he's compiled a frighteningly exhaustive list of worldwide game industry positions open
right now. The list runs the gamut from media positions to lead programming jobs -- internships, full-time, part-time and everything in between. Since these positions were listed when he first did the research, potential applicants should be warned that not all the jobs might still be available. Still, the quicker you act, the quicker you might nab that dream job. Special thanks go out to Yehuda for doing all the dirty work.
[
Photo via
MMBOB on Flickr]
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