Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- Blacklight Retribution
- OP-ED: EA Being Named America’s Worst Company is Crazy
- Origin Used by 5 Million People Daily, Claims EA [Update]
- DK Online
- The Wildest International Box Art
- Borderlands 2: Gearbox Looking To ‘Help PC Gamers Feel Loved’
- DK Online
| Posted: 05 Apr 2012 08:23 AM PDT
There were a couple more videos I posted on Blacklight: Retribution before (link), and if you are not impressed by the customizations and graphics, I am not sure what will. Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2011/10/blacklight-retribution-developer-diary.html No related posts. |
| OP-ED: EA Being Named America’s Worst Company is Crazy Posted: 05 Apr 2012 03:51 AM PDT Electronic Arts is the winner (loser?) of The Consumerist‘s annual Worst Company in America tournament this year. Following a round of nominations and weeks of head-to-head, March Madness-style voting, the Redwood City, California-based videogame publisher was named the top vote-getter in the finals today in which it was squaring off against Bank of America. Before going any further it’s important to note this is an Internet poll, and as such can’t be taken as an actual indication of what the population believes is the worst company around. Yet even with that caveat in mind, it’s hard to fathom that a company responsible for making games could be loathed so vociferously. Yes, EA has certainly done its fair share to draw the ire of gamers. Origin has been condemned by many as an unneeded hurdle for playing PC games, a copy of Steam that does a poorer job and offers nothing in return even when its usage is mandatory. Others deplore the way it has monopolized the football market, acquiring the exclusive rights to the NFL and effectively killing off the excellent NFL 2K franchise while failing to innovate with its annual Madden releases. There are those who detest the way in which it sells downloadable content. Online passes have been a frequent target of criticism, and it was EA that pioneered the concept with Project Ten Dollar. The company has acquired a number of developers and been accused of forcing them to compromise or alter the way they develop games, or worse yet closing them down. Online servers for its games (even ones carrying online passes) have been shut down more rapidly than they should be. Most recently, Mass Effect 3 has been surrounded by controversy whether it be for the availability of launch day DLC that some felt should be in the game for free or because of the allegedly terrible ending (which almost certainly was the driving force behind EA coming out on top in this tournament). Even if all of these points are accepted as fact, there is no way EA or any other company in the games industry should be beating out Bank of America or many of the other companies in the tournament. (Walmart, GameStop, PayPal, ATT, and Comcast were among the 32.) It’s difficult to even begin to pick out examples of the things Bank of America has done to make it more worthy of this dishonor. But however dissatisfied you may be with how Commander Shepard’s story concluded, false foreclosures are surely a much more serious matter. This is not to say EA is or isn’t undeserving of gamers’ hatred; I do feel the reaction to Mass Effect 3′s ending was over the top, I don’t blame EA for snatching up the NFL license even as someone who greatly preferred the 2K games, and I think Origin might be pretty good some day. But especially when it comes to matters of objecting to downloadable content or the games it puts out, you are more than welcome to not spend on your money on those things — no one is forcing you to be nickel-and-dimed, as EA and others are accused of doing. Yet those in the games media who choose to point to how silly EA winning this tournament is are guaranteed one thing, and that is to be accused — baselessly, I might add — of being bought off or bribed by the publisher. Again, feel free to dislike EA and its business practices all you want while keeping in mind that EA is a business (and accordingly does want your money) and that it doesn’t owe us anything (regardless of whether or not that is a smart long-term business decision). But also remember that this is, after all, the videogame industry, and to suggest that a bank with a deplorable track record is worse than EA is not an indication of bribery or blindness, but an attempt to put all of this EA hate in perspective. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/ea-named-americas-worst-company Related posts: |
| Origin Used by 5 Million People Daily, Claims EA [Update] Posted: 04 Apr 2012 08:25 PM PDT Update: As expected, Moore didn’t mean to say Origin sees five million users every day. EA clarified with 1UP that Origin has seen five million registered users. That makes quite a bit more sense than jumping from four million registered users to five million daily users in such a short span of time. Original Story: Origin is still very much a work in progress, as you’d expect for a piece of software or platform that launched only a few months ago. Despite the short time it’s been around, an impressive number of people are already using it on a daily basis according to Electronic Arts. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, EA’s new COO, Peter Moore, talked about the position Origin currently is in. He recently delivered a keynote at the EB Games Expo, during which a heckler in the crowd shouted about how Origin “sucks.” “[L]ike any piece of software, and I worked at Microsoft for enough years to say this, you launch software and continue to polish it, upgrade it, get feedback and make it better,” he explained. “That’s where we are with Origin. We’re only four and a half months in and already over five million people are using it on a daily basis.” It’s a surprisingly high number considering it wasn’t that long ago when we heard Origin had been installed on only four million computers, and that number wouldn’t account for people who uninstalled or never used Origin. We’re double-checking with EA to see if that’s correct. Steam is beloved by many PC gamers and is the go-to place to buy games for many, myself included. When it launched, however, it was maligned as an unnecessary piece of software, particularly around the time Half-Life 2 came out in 2004 when Steam technical issues made playing the game at launch a real headache. Fast forward to 2011 and Origin has received a great deal of criticism for being an unnecessary barrier between the player and the game. “As I said to the young man who shouted at me,” Moore continued, “I think two years from now we’ll be back down here in Australia and talking about how it really enhances and complements the gaming experience, not gets in the way of it, which I think some people do believe right now.” Addressing the impression some people have that Origin “is just EA’s answer to Steam,” Moore contends it’s “much more than that.” He said, “Like any great content provider, you want to provide yourself with a platform to talk directly with your customers. You don’t necessarily want to be constantly be disintermediated by the other platform holder. “We love our business with Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo and with Apple and Facebook, all of which have platforms that we develop games on, and all of which have revenue sharing situations or royalties, but at the same time we love to be able to talk directly with our consumers and build a platform that other publishers can take advantage of. That’s exactly what Origin is all about. And I don’t think anyone begrudges us doing that. The console first parties understand what we are doing. I think the fans, the people that have to use it in the early going, are the ones that get it last in regards to what we are trying to do.” EA doesn’t seem to have any intention of stopping its push of Origin regardless of the complaints it has to deal with in the meantime. With Battlefield 3 still unavailable on Steam, it’s going to receive a big influx of new users when the game launches on PC next Tuesday. Source: GamesIndustry.biz Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/origin-used-5-million-people-daily Incoming search terms:No related posts. |
| Posted: 04 Apr 2012 03:50 PM PDT
Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2012/04/dk-online-confirmed-for-north-america.html Incoming search terms:Related posts: |
| The Wildest International Box Art Posted: 04 Apr 2012 03:50 PM PDT Mocking bad old game cover art is one thing, because yes, there are many, many examples of bad box art from around the world. But there aren’t quite as many that are complete 180-degree flips from their original source. Specifically, art that is either not quite as representative, or absolutely not representative of its original intent. And sometimes the art isn’t even bad, but just kind of weird. So, before you ask where the NES Mega Man box art is in this list, at least that one still depicted a helmeted robot guy that can shoot things. And everybody knows that one. Have a look below and expand your mind.
 Tasmania StoryLet’s start with a relatively mild selection: Tasmania Story, a pretty innocuous Game Boy game based on a Japanese film of the same name, but without much else that’s related. The original Japanese box is pretty funny out of context: a boy holding a marsupial in front of another boy, seemingly all by themselves in Tasmania. On the American box, we have a much more active yet generic illustration where the hero character rides the elusive Tasmanian tiger. In a way, with its cartoon approach, the American box is actually more “Japanese” than the Japanese one. Go figure.  Oddworld: Abe’s OddyseeThe original Oddworld games may have been lauded on this side of the world, but try convincing Japanese gamer kids that a lumpy hobo goblin with its lips sewn together is supposed to be a fun character to play as. The dark, nondescript American cover sort of conveyed the cinematic qualities of the game, but the Japanese cover for “Abe A-Go-Go” suggests it’s a brightly-colored dance party. Plus, look how they seem to actively hide Abe in an Abe-shaped hole, as if to say “you’re not going to like this thing anyway, so why bother seeing it?”  Crush 3DHere’s a very recent example: Sega’s Crush 3D on Nintendo 3DS has a fairly straightforward box design in America: The hero character in the center, with his mad scientist “friend” in the corner and some other game-related stuff coming out of his head. It doesn’t exactly tell you how the game works, though — 3D platform puzzles that can be “crushed” into 2D planes — so that’s where the Japanese version comes in. Its box art is completely different, using stick figure iconography to tell you how to play the game right upfront. They didn’t change how the game itself looks for Japan, but on the box and other promotions, it’s like a warning sign inside a Tokyo commuter train. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/features/wildest-international-box-art No related posts. |
| Borderlands 2: Gearbox Looking To ‘Help PC Gamers Feel Loved’ Posted: 04 Apr 2012 03:50 PM PDT Gearbox Software hint at just some of the ways PC gamers will have the enhanced version. We know it, you know it, everyone knows it – it's just no one wants to talk about it. PC gamers aren't always catered for, sometimes with inferior versions of console games (how is that even possible?!) or even no shows on PC at all (just… why?!). So it's always nice to see a developer talk about how they're going out of their way to help us poor, poor PC gamers. Borderlands 2 and Gearbox Software is just one example, as a recent interview with PC Gamer highlights. Sharper resolutions is obviously the most important factor – and with a game like Borderlands, that art style would really benefit from it. Meanwhile native multiplayer matching making, support for a number of resolutions, tweakable controls and button presses and Steamworks compatibility all add to make Borderlands 2 the best on PC. It's by no means a definitive list since it was part of an interview, but it certainly sounds promising. So you can relax, dear readers, Gearbox understands our plight. The PC Gamer interview video is below, though there's nothing else majorly revelatory in the rest of it. Find similar article at: http://www.totalpcgaming.com/latest-pc-news/borderlands-2-gearbox-looking-to-help-pc-gamers-feel-loved/ Related posts: |
| Posted: 04 Apr 2012 09:50 AM PDT
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