Video Games – Page 38

Should Apple Enter The Gaming Market?

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?

Spore’s Miniature Billboard’s So Small, You Need a Telescope!

EA’s definitely gone for some innovative marketing when it comes to Spore! This billboard, located in San Francisco’s Union Square is so small, you need a telescope to see it! They probably resisted the urge to make it microscopic, if you ask me.

The billboard is of a miniature size 14″ by 6″, and as you can probably guess, not very visible to the naked eye. EA has, therefore, cut your cost of buying a new telescope by adding one of their own:

I particularly like that telescope more than anything else. Cool sea blue, smooth and sexy (almost phallic, we might say) and totally awesome-looking. There’s no reason why EA shouldn’t be selling that; people will buy that!

Since a trip to San Francisco might a bit too much for viewing EA’s advertising expertise, check out what the billboard actually looks like below. And don’t be such a snob: donate some, goddamit! There are microorganisms dying for your DNA!

Source: Kotaku

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Delayed for Silly Reason

Most game delays have reasons like an extended development cycle, or maybe trouble in the development team, or so. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky isn’t one of these games. According to reports, Clear Sky’s copies were recalled from North American stores when it was found that a printing error had left without CD Keys. Without goddamn CD Keys.

The game was to be released of September 5th, but will now be pushed back, most likely to September 15th. No change in the European release date, so it’s only North Americans affected. Well, to be entirely honest, I don’t think STALKER was too big of a title to miss for 10 days anyways.

STALKER: Clear Sky is the follow-up to STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I go on about it now, but why don’t you just checkout this post I made back when it was first released? It’ll sure as hell make my keyboard last a little bit longer.

Gearbox working on Duke Nukem Game? WTF?

Right, okay, let me get this straight. First we have rumours that Gearbox is working on Halo 4 for the next Xbox. Now /gamer reports that it won’t be Halo 4, but a goddamn Duke Nukem game. That’s right, Gearbox is developing a Duke Nukem title, according to the rumour.

/gamer’s mysterious source contacted them, informing them that there is, in fact, no Halo 4 going on. Also, he mentions “When it is announced fans of a series from the past will be surprised.” Note how he says “a series from the past”.

Now, they are contacted once again, with their source hinting at an article they wrote about Duke Nukem Forever. Why the source is not willing to state directly is unknown, but by his enigmatic words, this most probably would mean that 3D Realms is handing the reins of Duke Nukem to.

This wouldn’t be very surprising. Hell, it’ll be great, considering we won’t have to wait another century-and-half for another Duke Nukem game. Besides, the guys at Gearbox are trustable enough to deliver a quality shooter like Duke Nukem’s calibre.

Holy Lego Cartoon Series, Batman!

Batman will be hitting the TV again, and I’m not talking about The Batman here. Instead, Traveller’s Tales, developers of all those great Lego games will be handling this. Yes, that’s right, we’re talking about a Lego Batman cartoon series by a video game developer! Awesome!

“We’re looking to do… a Lego Batman series. I think they’re looking at doing a one-off initially,” Rich Earl, producer at TT said. The series will use the game’s engine itself, and the characters will animated fresh from Maya.

Earl claims that this will be quite different, and that’s totally fine by me. Traveller’s Tales earlier announced that they had their minds on a TV cartoon series, but did not mention any specifics. This news confirms that a 20-minute Batman cartoon will be on, and hopefully make its way to its own series!

I hope LucasArts looks at this and decides that a Lego Star Wars TV series will be worth its salt. Hell, from what I can tell, that might even end up better than that battlefest kid’s show The Clone Wars. Well, it’s not that bad, but a Lego Star Wars TV series might end up somewhere. Or not.

Far Cry 3 Set in Africa

Wow, it seems like only yesterday I brought you the news of Ubisoft Montreal announcing Far Cry 2. With that game coming close to release now, Ubisoft Montreal goes further to announce another addition to the franchise. No, it’s not the Far Cry: Africa Pet Zoo for the DS, it’s a full-fledged Far Cry 3.

Announced at Leipzig, it has been confirmed that the game will be set in Africa. Ubisoft Montreal seems to be keen on boosting African tourism industries with their repeated interest in African wildlife and the promise it holds. I agree with that, too: you can only fight so much in Normandy! Still, I was expecting a Far Cry set in, say, an East European urban setting, or maybe the Great Wall of China or someplace equally exotic.

The team has made a commitment to Africa, supposedly, but shows interest in the Antarctic setting as well, which would be totally cool in my opinion, no pun intended. They also admit that the Africa setting will save time. Hmm.

The game will use the same engine as Far Cry 2 and we don’t have any more details on it, as usual. Suffice to say, it’ll involve lots of exotic, open-world, instinct-based action. Crytek is, as usual, out of the picture, probably too busy working on Crysis 2 or some such.