blizzard – Page 4 – StuffWeLike

No Brütal Legend at E3 2008

Brütal Legend, the game prophesied for raw awesomeness, will not be appearing at this year’s E3, according to MTV Multiplayer.

They were sent a mail from Lord Awesome Tim Schafer himself, who informed them that the game will not be appearing at E3 and that there’s nothing to worry about: the game is in fine order. “We’re not going to be showing at E3, but soon after that we hope,” he said. As for when this “soon” comes, he says “As soon as the dust settles from this whole [Activision Blizzard] merger thing we should be able to talk about the game a lot more.”

For those not in the know, this is because the game was originally supposed to be published by Vivendi, which now becomes a subsidiary of Activision along with Blizzard, by the clauses of the Great Activision Blizzard merger.

Brütal Legend will see Jack Black playing the roadie protagonist as he travels across a surreal heavy metal-inspired landscape. The game will feature music and cameos from several Metal Gods, such as Ronnie James Dio, Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Black Sabbath, Wolfmother and many more. It is going to be one hell of a game! Check out our earlier coverage on it! You’ll love it!

Blizzard Exec: Microsoft not doing enough for PC Gaming

It’s great that there’s a resurgence of PC gaming, or at least PC game development. Valve is already doing fantastic with promising stuff in Steam Cloud. Blizzard show their respect for the venerable platform by making pretty much all their games PC-exclusive (and they’re all big hits, too). I mention this because I believe that Blizzard has every authority of accusing Microsoft for not doing anything for Windows and gaming.

Ever since Microsoft dipped its feet into the console world, it’s never come back, devoting all of its gaming attention to the Xbox and Xbox 360. This is with good reason, as Blizzard COO Paul Sams notes, because it is where Microsoft Games’ bread and butter is, and it is their system, after all.

But they just can’t continue to ignore Windows.“Certainly they have a lot in Windows. And Windows is a system that supports all the business applications as well as games.” he says. That’s true: active participation from Microsoft is what is necessary to bring forth the PC as a gaming platform. Windows is easily the most widespread platform right now, with more copies of Windows in this world than every other console combined.

Take heed, Microsoft, and mend your ways!

Diablo III – Coming Soon

Diablo III is finally arriving to PCs and Macs “when it’s ready” according to Blizzard! Diablo III was announced at The 2008 Blizzard Invitational held at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center in Paris. As always with any Blizzard trailer, it looks fantastic! The development team spans 50-55 members and has been in development for 4 years.

Make sure to check out the Diablo III website for more movies, artwork, and info!

Best of 2007 – May

What previously would have been the month for the big video game expo E3 is now a mere filler in the year. Continue on we must in our Best of 2007 series. Welcome to May.

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Best of 2007:
January – February – March – April – May

May

GameTap Goes Free
With competition increasing in the digital distribution field, GameTap releases a free version of its service. It would be nice if this free version actually worked, but oh well.

Microsoft Announces Silverlight
In the internet realm, there really are no standards formats. Microsoft heats up the video market with its version of what is basically Flash called Silverlight.

Spider-Man 3 Webs In the Money
$148 million in 3 days. Damn where’s my paycheck?

Everybody Loves Raymond
I discover that I love Raymond as well. Yeah I know the show came on the air and went off years ago, but for some reason I now truly appreciate it.

ABC Online Goes HD
Streaming TV shows in HD for free?! What a concept.

Starcraft II Announced
In another shocking event Blizzard announces the wildly anticipated Starcraft II. Don’t expect it anytime soon though. Command & Conquer is a better series anyway.

Geometry Wars for Wii and DS announced
I quiver at this post because I had to actually test these games over the summer. What crap they were.

Activision Blizzard Press Details (Update)

As an update to the current Activision Blizzard merger story we can announce
that for the foreseeable future all press announcements from Activision or Vivendi
will be kept separate apart from details on the merger. We can also report that
it is expected to be complete mid next year.

Activision MERGES with Vivendi (and Blizzard)

Right when you thought that all the attention of the gaming world has been turned to the Gerstmann controversy, Activision announces out of the blue (the one you see above) that they are merging with Vivendi, who owns Blizzard. As any good gamer will know, Vivendi is just a frail shell encompassing the massive development powerhouse that is Blizzard. This deal shows promise to our gaming eyes, because both sides of the merger here lie on the good side. Activision have published great games like the Call of Duty series and the Guitar Hero series, while Blizzard is known for their even more popular games like the WarCraft games, StarCraft, Diablo series and of course, World of WarCraft.

This flabbergasting deal is worth $18.9 billion, and the result has been titled Activision Blizzard, although I would have preffered something more catchy, like Actizzard, or Blactivision, or Blizzivision. Even though Blizzard gets to be in the company’s name, Vivendi is the one holding a 52% stock in the corporation.

Blizzard CEO, Mike Morhaime says, “Blizzard’s industry-leading PC games business…is an exceptional fit for Activision’s highly profitable console games business.” This probably hints that Blizzard may now be concentrating on the console crowd, which has now become ever simpler with Activision permanently involved. With the developing genius of Blizzard, and the publishing power of Activision, the new corporation is going to give the strongest competition of the Dark Evil Lord of gaming, EA.

Blizzard has posted a press release on their site, which is basically a FAQ with what is going to happen after the deal. Blizzard has explicitly stated that their operations, goals, beliefs and political ideals will not be affected with this deal. You can read the release here.

I don’t know about you, but I have a feeling Activision did this to compete with EA’s buying of BioWare and Pandemic. With those two devs in EA’s hands, they are an unstoppable force in the RPG market, leaving their fierce rivals Activision at a loss. In retaliation, Activision buys what must be the most successful developer in the past 5 years – Blizzard, and their sorry money-giving shell that is Vivendi.

Possible? Not? Comment.