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Nintendo exec’s mysterious comment.
Nintendo appears to have confirmed that ageing GameCube games will be made available for download on the Wii U.
Gamers will get the last-gen games via the company’s existing WiiWare service, Nintendo of America exec Amber McCollom told NintendoGal.
“GameCube discs will not be compatible with Wii U, but a number of the games that were playable on GameCube can be downloaded from WiiWare,” McCollom said.
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The history of PS3’s most charming IP.
Phil Harrison, then president of Sony Worldwide Studios, wanted LittleBigPlanet to be free-to-play, downloadable and to adopt a brand new business model.
That was at the end of 2005/early 2006 – nearly a year before PlayStation 3 was first released.
“In that initial 45 minute that turned into three hour pitch, which was at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006, Phil said all sorts of buzz words which we still haven’t hit,” revealed Alex Evans, co-founder of LBP developer Media Molecule, speaking on stage at the Develop Conference with Harrison and MM colleagues Mark Healy and Kareem Ettouney.
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“Community is not stagnant,” says MM.
LittleBigPlanet has seen 1.5 million new users since the PlayStation Network outage of April, developer Media Molecule has announced.
“I like that stat because it’s growing,” Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans told an audience this morning during the UK studio’s Develop keynote.
“LittleBigPlanet is not a stagnant community. There’s multiple levels published every second. You can no longer keep up with the amount of content.”
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Why it’s “stepping away” from LBP.
Media Molecule has explained studio director Siobhan Reddy’s recent comment that the UK developer is “stepping away” from LittleBigPlanet.
Speaking during a Develop conference keynote this morning, Media Molecule co-founders Kareem Ettouney, Mark Healey and Alex Evans told ex-Sony president of worldwide studios Phil Harrison the man who signed LBP as a PlayStation 3 exclusive in 2006 that the Guildford studio is “still very involved” with the game, pointing to the upcoming release of the PlayStation Move pack.
However, Media Molecule is now a multi-thread company, the Sony-owned developer said, and branching out into new areas.
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“Aren’t enough female heroes in games.”
BioWare has revealed that “18 per cent of everyone who plays Mass Effect plays it with a female character”.
David Silverman, BioWare marketeer, told vg247 he was “completely taken aback” by the vocal support for FemShep (female Shepard) in Mass Effect 2.
BioWare has decided to include FemShep on the Collector’s Edition box of Mass Effect 3 as a result, and will even, for the first time, base an entire ME3 video around the female lead.
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And a porn star and someone from Lost.
Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan is doing a voice for upcoming open world mental ’em up Saints Row: The Third.
Ex-porn star Sasha Grey and Lost Daniel Dae Kim also lend their dulcet tones to Volition’s game.
Hogan plays Angel DeLaMuerte, a wrestler wronged by his former tag-team partner. He teams up with the Saints to take over the city of Steelport.
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Q&A: Fox and Roadhouse say free-to-play, microtransaction-based title will have RPG elements, show writers include Alex Carter and Andrew Goldberg.
20th Century Fox may have initially been skeptical of Family Guy‘s prospects, going so far as to cancel the unabashedly crude cartoon in 2001. However, the production company has changed its tune considerably in the here and now. Today, Fox officially announced its Web browser-based, free-to-play title Family Guy Online, saying that the 3D title is targeted to enter open beta this year.
Comic-Con 2011 will act as a coming out of sorts for Family Guy Online, even if its official website has been active since mid-June. However, gamers can expect a good deal more content on that website today, as Fox and developer Roadhouse Interactive have set live Family Guy Online’s character creator to promote the title.
The real question, though, is what does Family Guy Online have for fans of the show?
“It’s just a great way to extend the television show and allow users to engage with each other in a community in a game product that is being developed really in association with the show,” Gary Rosenfeld, senior vice president, new media for Fox Consumer Product, told GameSpot in an interview. That collaboration includes help from two senior writers on the show: Alex Carter and Andrew Goldberg.
The experience begins with character creation, and Roadhouse Interactive cofounder and chief creative officer Ian Verchere told GameSpot that players will have a wealth of customization options. Verchere also noted that rather than having players assume the identity of, say, Peter Griffin, they will be able to select from four character-class archetypes that typify the different attributes of the dysfunctional family.
Fox and Roadhouse aren’t entirely ready to talk about Family Guy Online’s actual gameplay, but Verchere indicated that it will have elements akin to the role-playing game genre. Those mechanics include character progression and experience points. The game has both single-player and multiplayer options.
“We’re not just sticking Family Guy into Champions Online or making Dungeons and Quahog or whatever,” he explained. “In the same way that the show riffs on popular culture and on TV, [we’ve been thinking about] an intelligent way to bring Family Guy online. At its heart, you are going to earn experience and progress through the game. There are familiar structures that gamers will be able to relate to and engage with, but it is going to feel like Family Guy.”
“When you come into the game and create the character, you can literally create billions of different characters,” he continued. “When you go into the game, you’re not going to play as you would in a console game as, say, Peter Griffin. But when you build your own character, it makes sense from a game mechanic perspective to associate with the positive and/or negative aspects of what each of the Griffins represent. If you look at how you would map out an attribute table, Peter is obviously big and slow and tank-like and Stewie is small and ranged attack. OK, there, I said ‘ranged attack.'”
Of course, Family Guy Online will come heavily laden with personalities from the show–some 150 in total. “Once the users gets into the game, the user will interact with show characters,” Rosenfeld said. “The show characters act as guides. They will send the user off on adventures that allow [them] to advance through the game. ”
Rosenfeld also expressed optimism over Family Guy Online’s ability to react to current and popular culture trends. In other words, the game will be an open-ended experience where players will be afforded new and culturally relevant quests.
“The idea behind the project, or the thing that’s most exciting about it, is that we will be able to react to certain elements that the show can’t react to because of the production time line,” he said. “So for instance things going on in pop culture that we might want to riff on, we’ll be able to react to as a result of how we set this up. Building it in Unity, we’ve got the flexibility to update content, add new content, pretty quick turnarounds in regular intervals.”
Family Guy Online will be free-to-play, where virtual currency and in-game goods rule the day. Rosenfeld explained that the game will include microtransactions, and the studio will likely also make use of ad and sponsorship components as well as other premium content.
Rosenfeld also briefly addressed the Family Guy game that is in development at Activision, saying that Family Guy Online exists entirely apart from that project. “We want to make sure there is a Family Guy experience for fans on all the different platforms,” he said. Rosenfeld declined to comment on whether that game is still on for this year.
Fox and Roadhouse plan to have a significant presence at Comic-Con this week. In addition to having Family Guy Online’s character creator up and running on the show floor, Quahog mayor (and seminal Batman actor) Adam West will be on hand to sign exclusive posters for the game. Comic-Con attendees who create a character at the show will also earn an exclusive in-game item.
Check out GameSpot’s coverage of Comic-Con 2011 for more on Family Guy Online and other games from the show.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Family Guy Online open beta targeted for this year” was posted by Tom Magrino on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:02:25 -0700 -
You might remember that we reported on a browser-based Family Guy game advertising beta signups. As of right now, that website now houses a character creator. I had the opportunity to talk to a couple of people working on the game, and though they were unwilling to discuss the gameplay, they did describe it as somewhere “between Farmville and Halo.” They also told me players will be able to explore all of Quahog, which will be fully 3D and running on Unity…
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Resume of ex-Red Fly environment artist reveals studio was working on now-cancelled Star Wars title.
Earlier this year, Austin-based Red Fly Studio–the team behind the Wii version of Sega’s Thor: God of Thunder–laid off 30 staff members due to the unexpected cancellation of “a large, high-profile project.”
It now appears that project may have been a Star Wars title, with the online resume of an ex-Red Fly developer (discovered first on Twitter) revealing he had worked on a “next-gen Star Wars title” from January to June 2011, after the studio’s completion of Thor: God of Thunder for the Wii.
Red Fly is best known for 2008’s original Mushroom Men games on the Wii and DS. Its highest-profile games to date have been Wii versions of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, and Thor: God of Thunder.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Cancelled Red Fly project Star Wars-related?” was posted by Laura Parker on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:43:48 -0700 -
Resume of ex-Red Fly environment artist reveals studio was working on now-cancelled Star Wars title.
Earlier this year, Austin-based Red Fly Studio–the team behind the Wii version of Sega’s Thor: God of Thunder–laid off 30 staff members due to the unexpected cancellation of “a large, high-profile project.”
It now appears that project may have been a Star Wars title, with the online resume of an ex-Red Fly developer (discovered first by Superannuation) revealing he had worked on a “next-gen Star Wars title” from January to June 2011, after the studio’s completion of Thor: God of Thunder for the Wii.
Red Fly is best known for 2008’s original Mushroom Men games on the Wii and DS. Its highest-profile games to date have been Wii versions of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, and Thor: God of Thunder.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Cancelled Red Fly project Star Wars-related?” was posted by Laura Parker on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:43:48 -0700
