Exploring Stuff That Makes Life Great
Remember that Fallout MMO Interplay was developing? Turns out they were supposed to get cracking by April 4th this year. They didn’t, and now Bethesda wants the trademark back. How’s that for procrastination?
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As events go the Edinburgh Interactive Festival is among the most prestigious for those involved in the gaming industry. It’s been announced that GameStation will be acting as the retail partner for the event again this year. What it means for the everyday man is special discounts at the event when going to purchase games at their on-site store.
There are also a few good points to Gamestations involvement for the Scottish public at large with a one-off pre-festival launch event scheduled at the Gamestation store on Prices Street in Edinburgh in August featuring giveaways and competitions. While full details are still coming the Gamestation website will be updated with full info near the end of July.
In addition a highlight for all at the festival is the public screenings programme. It allows members of the public to preview in person some of the biggest games before they are released in addition to asking those involved questions about the games involved and offers a glimpse into their development. Most screening sessions are around 45-60 minutes long so its not a 30 second gameplay clip in most cases. It’s most of the perks that the press get only without the annoying writing to justify the freebies!
While the screenings are a ticket only affair they are free of charge with the tickets available in any Gamestation branch in Scotland. A download & print version for those outside Scotland can also be found on the Gamestation website from June 10th.
Regardless of whether you listen to fools or not, it’s now officially official that Electronic Arts will be publishing Brütal Legend, Tim Schafer’s next title. This comes as a wave of relief for Schafer fans, since the title was floating in limbo since Activision Blizzard dropped it.
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Holy shit, did anything even remotely think of this? The Inquirer reports a breaking that Google may be buying Valve any second. And why this seemingly random move? Google most probably wants to acquire Steam, Valve’s trusty and super-successful content distribution service. So is Google taking it’s first step in the video game industry by bridging the Internet and video games?
There is no doubt that Steam is the greatest, most effective and most awesome content distribution ever. It looks like Google is interested in distributing content around. Owning Steam would definitely be profitable for Google, but it would only enforce peoples’ opinions that Google is turning into a Microsoft-ish monopoly with their webby hands over everything related to the Internet.
I personally think that the acquisition will still give Valve some space, a bit like the Activision-Blizzard merger, I’m thinking. But Google will definitely want Steam for itself. I just hope they don’t change the default theme to their boring white-blue nonsense, that just sucks.
Microsoft very recently announced their plan to dissolve one of their most famous and profitable studios: Ensemble Studios, who have provided them the Age of Empires series for so long and are now working on Halo Wars. But what happens after Halo Wars? Will the Age of Empires franchise be lost into the abyss of nothingness?
Microsoft earlier seemed to suggest that that is not so. While AoE is in their safe hands (some might use other adjectives), what exactly will happen of it? Sequels? Spin-offs? When?
In an epic interview with gamesindustry.biz, Phil Spencer from Microsoft says that they have a plan. Microsoft plans to push the franchise ahead, as it is one of their pillars of support for Windows (a bit like Gears and Halo are for the Xbox 360, I suppose). All 3 iterations of the series have done very well, so Microsoft wouldn’t give up this franchise so easily anyways.
Of course, Ensemble Studios won’t be making anything anymore, and Spencer says that they won’t be necessary for the next Age (heh, pun not intended). But yep: Age of Empires is alive and well and may be coming anytime now.
That image above comes from an artbook released with the collector’s edition of Age of Empires III. It seems to suggest that Ensemble had a big franchise in mind that stretches all the way to version 5. Continuing the series’ historical progression, we’ll head from the Renaissance/Industrial era into the Modern Era with AoE 4 and then the future with AoE 5.
Sounds like a decent enough plan, but I’d rather they go back through history all over again. In any case, the modern age sure as hell wasn’t an “age of empires” and I’d like it if the future wasn’t either. 😉
These are mysterious times. Mysterious indeed. Apple, after dominating the music industry and making a respectably deep dent in the cellphone industry. The Apple TV is also running decently enough, making sure that Apple can invade your TV screens as well. The only field left is… book publishing? No, video games.
According to Don Reisinger here at Cnet, this is not only plausible, but actually should and will most likely happen. Reisinger speculates that Apple in fact, has the ball rolling and will jump into the market sooner or later. Despite the market’s hard-coded domination by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, Apple will break in. Then again, it’s the only company that can break into the market on their own.
Apple’s focus on hardware and it’s controlling standard entertainment media such as TV, music, your computer and so on, only points at a game console next. Apple also the money to spare, Reisinger notes: $20 billion, which can give it not only a console, but an Xbox-Live style gaming experience that may thrash Microsoft.
What do you think? Will Apple enter the gaming market?