July 20, 2007 – StuffWeLike

YouTube Behind The Times

YouTube.com has released a new player that mixes YouTube videos together. This “custom player” allows you to customize the name of the player, color theme, and video display layout. The videos come straight from a YouTube user’s playlist, favorites list, or the user’s own uploaded videos.

Here’s our YouTube example:

Now first with the good: the way that the video thumbnails are displayed is fantastic! Glossy, iTunes-ness gorgeous!

Now for the this is crappy portion: no Full Screen view, background colors only? – why not pictures for more in-depth branded players, and there is no way to categorize the videos – they all get lumped together into one player.I’m being serious here in saying that YouTube sucks. It’s an old fashioned system that needs some major updates to catch up with newer video sites that have higher quality video, no site branding, and are skinless.

That’s why I submit to you the future of StuffWeLike.com’s player The Pipeline! Get ready for the future of the multimedia experience. This new version (seen below) is planned to release in roughly 3 weeks.

The Pipeline v2.0

Major props to SplashCast for creating a great technology that allows users to create their own shows while still being able to syndicate other users shows **cough cough search for The Pipeline** all in one player.

Two Free Mega Games to Play Right Now!

Demos for both Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM and The Darkness are now available on Xbox Live!

Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM

In Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM Heero Yuy must try to stop what seems to be a mysterious planet that is veering towards Earth. With the aid of Master Asia and fellow pilot Jerid Mesa, conquering the Mausoleum battlefield is just the beginning of what lies ahead.

“We wanted to ensure that every Xbox 360 owner has the opportunity to enjoy the perfect melding of the Dynasty Warriors signature gameplay and GUNDAM’s Mobile Suits before its anticipated debut,” said, Executive Vice President and COO, NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. “The online demo of Dynasty Warriors:GUNDAM offers a glimpse of the unrivaled experience that made it a chart topping success in Japan.”

The Darkness logo

In The Darkness demo features three single player levels including the Tunnel, Cemetery and Grinders Lane. The Darkness is a next generation, first-person action game that features an immersive and gritty storyline written in collaboration with famed comic-book writer, Paul Jenkins (also of Civil War: Frontline). Set in the dark and seedy underbelly of New York City, players experience the role of mafia hitman Jackie Estacado, heir to “The Darkness,” an ancient power that awakens within him on his 21st birthday. Jackie must use traditional weapons as well as learn to command his terrible new powers to seek revenge on his own crime family. The Darkness is based on the popular comic of the same name published by Top Cow Publishing and created by Marc Silvestri and Paul Jenkins.

Bioware to use Perpetual’s Online Platform in upcoming MMO

Perpetual Entertainment

Bioware has reportedly licensed Perpetual Entertainment’s Online Platform for use in their new MMO. The untitled MMO in question is currently unnamed and no information has been given out. It is under development at Bioware’s Austin Studio and its team includes veterans from Neverwinter Nights and Ultima Online, which is enough to hint that it has kickass potential.

According to Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director of BioWare Austin:

“We evaluated numerous technology solutions to serve as the service backbone of our first MMO title and feel Perpetual’s online platform is the best fit. The Perpetual team has years of experience building infrastructure and tools for online games and we are thrilled to be working with them.”

Meanwhile, Joseph Keene, Co-Chairman and CEO of the Perpetual camp said:

“BioWare is one of the leading developers of AAA games in the world and we know they will find the Perpetual platform provides both the functionality and ease-of-use they are looking for to support their upcoming title.

With the Perpetual platform, BioWare’s Austin studio can focus on making great games while minimizing the time and effort required to deploy and support their titles.”

This Online Platform will include all the tools necessary to make a MMO game, like managing a game’s online operations, billing, customer support and so on. If you want one for yourself, head here.

[Via Game Informer]

Fatal Inertia team facing troubles with Unreal Engine 3 for PS3 too!

Fatal Inertia Screenshot

We brought you news of Silicon Knights throwing a lawsuit at Epic Games not long ago. To summarize, they claim that Epic gave them faulty versions of the Unreal Engine 3, that it does not do what it is said to do, that it has problems working on the PS3, that Epic did not help them figure out how to use the Unreal Engine 3 and that Epic stole their lunch money.

Using Silicon Knights’ lawsuit as cover, Fatal Inertia developers Koei have gone public with the statement that they are having problems with the Unreal Engine 3 as well. Koei announced that the Unreal Engine 3 is not functioning well under the PS3’s highly-acclaimed hardware. The game is “not running well enough” to be released for the PS3 yet.

This means that Fatal Inertia for the PS3 has officially been delayed. Since they find it silly to hold up the Xbox 360 version because of troubles with the PS3, Koei has decided to release the Xbox 360 version without a delay.

[Via Games Radar]

Far Cry 2 announced, teaser site launched

Farcry 2 Logo

Far Cry was one of those games that ushered in the new era of video gaming, which encompassed everything with glossy graphics, overused bloom, hackneyed plots and large corporations. Of course, there were lots of good things too, like advanced AI, realistic graphics and so on. While Crytek, the prodigal developers are busy working on Crysis, Ubisoft has announced the sequel to Far Cry.

There was already info and some screenies floating around the internet about this game, but yesterday, Ubisoft laid it down and hard. Apart from the game’s title, Far Cry 2, we know nothing more about the game. Well, not much at least. It is being developed by the Ubisoft Montreal studio and is scheduled for a Spring 2008 release, but we know how that goes. It will be coming out for the PC only, as of now.

Ubisoft has also released a teaser site for the game. The site, being a trailer, doesn’t show much. What it does show is an awesome Savannah backdrop, which hints at the game’s next exotic setting. The next explosive screen shows the game’s logo, as well as lots of jungle music in the background.

It should be noted, that during the transition of screens, a presumably African man can be heard saying “Dawa ya moto ni moto!” According to “Claws_The_One” from the game’s official forums, it means “The remedy to fire is fire”. As you can guess, it is a proverb from the language Kiswahili, spoken in some parts of Africa. If you didn’t get it, replace it with “An eye for an eye.”

And to finish off, we’ll give you something from the press release:

“Far Cry marked the beginning of a new era for shooters. An era of gorgeous graphics and of advanced artificial intelligence,” declared John Parkes, EMEA marketing director at Ubisoft. “We are confident that Far Cry 2 will have the same impact again on the FPS genre landscape.”

While I would have preferred Crytek handle it, this looks great!

World of Warcraft: The Comic Book.

Right, if you really want to, you can click the image above to get a jumbo-sized version of the same.

Now then, it appears that the guys at Blizzplanet were intrigued by Jim Lee’s name being listed at the San Diego Comic Con 2007 schedule. After some thorough digging, they foundthecomicforums.com, where a user (under the name ‘thefreakytiki’) posted that he found a free comic sampler at a local comic store. The credits for the sampler included Jim Lee as a cover artist.

Further digging found the scan you see above. This is going to spur thousands of webcomic jokes, I’m sure. That cover looks awesome to me, and I’m guessing it is for real. Lee will be making an appearance at the upcoming Blizzcon on August 3rd, 2007. So whatever happens next, happens there.

[Via Blizzplanet]