iPhone Games Dominate New Releases in App Store

iPhone 3GS

Apple’s iPhone has evolved into quite the multifaceted device. While it was initially lauded for being an easy-to-use smartphone with a fantastic web browser and outstanding movies/music capabilities, it quickly became a prominent gaming system. In fact, games have been dominating Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch. GigaOm’s Om Malik reported:

From August 2008 to the same month in 2009, more apps were released in the “games” category than any other and, as a result, the iPhone (and iPod touch) became a new handheld gaming platform, one that impacted Nintendo DS. The Japanese game device maker acknowledged that the iPhone and iPod touch were among the reasons why its profits declined drastically in the most recent quarter.

Are any of you taking iPhone gaming seriously? Or do you think it’s more of casual gamer thing? I’m loving Civilization Revolution and greatly looking forward to Ghosts Attack. If you have any iPhone game recos, I’d love hear ’em!

Source

Ric Flair Cuts a Promo for the Hulkamania Tour

To promote the Australian Hulkamania Tour, “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair cut a promo on YouTube. While Flair is still money on the microphone, I’m sad that he’s getting back in the ring. Don’t get me wrong, he was the best in-ring performer of all time and it’s up to him if he wants to make money getting in the squared circle…but his send-off from the WWE and his WWE WrestleMania 24 match against Shawn Michaels were perfect. Hopefully ‘Naitch does well in Australia, but I’d hate to see him tarnish his legacy.

Uwe Boll Autograph Session on November 7

Uwe BollUwe Boll — the scourge of the videogame-movie universe — will be signing autographs on November 7 at Spudic’s Movie Empire. Most of you hate him or at least hate his work, but you have to admit that he’s a pretty good sport about his sucktitude. About.com noted:

If you want to meet the German madman who literally boxes his critics, flings personal insults at Michael Bay, and has made nearly 10 video game inspired flicks, he will be making a rare U.S. in-store appearance this weekend (November 7th) in Van Nuys, CA at the video store Spudic’s Movie Empire. The two hour signing will begin at 6PM, with Boll present to chat it up and sign autographs. Spudic’s Movie Empire will have Boll’s movies on hand as well as a selection of old school NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis and Sega CD games at the event for retro gaming fans.

Van Nuys isn’t that far from me, so I’m tempted to go. I’m not sure what I’d have him sign or what I’d say to him. If you could meet Uwe Boll face-to-face, what would you tell him?

Source via Kotaku

Sony Motion Controller Not Complete, Still in Early Days

Sony Motion Controller 2

Sony’s sex toy of doom motion controller is set to compete with Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Project Natal some time in 2010, by most accounts. Nintendo has found remarkable success with its motion controller and Microsoft appears to be close to entering the fray. Sony, while arguably having the most impressive tech of the three, seems two steps behind (like Def Leppard). In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said:

We are also still working on the motion controller; it’s not complete. We are making changes to the hardware, so we really want to wait until we feel confident enough about giving the audience a chance to try it out. We are making progress, though, and we wanted to show at least snippets of games in that are in development.

We are still in the very early days of motion control development. We have had discussions with the company management where we discussed if we approach this as a peripheral or a platform and we agree that this has huge potential — so we position this as a hardware platform. The initiative was from the Worldwide Studios, but this has to be designed so that many different kinds of games from all publishers can participate in this hardware platform.

I’m definitely excited to play with Sony’s wand (that sounds gross), but I have to wonder about the product’s timing. If its motion controller is released significantly after Project Natal, Sony will be playing catch-up to its competitors. It doesn’t matter if its controller has the highest fidelity; the customers that Sony will attract with this product won’t care and will have had plenty of time to consider the Wii and Xbox 360.

Continue reading “Sony Motion Controller Not Complete, Still in Early Days”

Epic Games Cliff Bleszinski Talks Digital Distribution, Used Games, Motion Controls, Hideo Kojima, and Getting Punched by RPad

Cliff BleszinskiEpic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski is one of the most prominent game developers in the business. He’s just a smart, talented, and quotable guy (though he whines like a little girl when you hit him…more on that later). Whether he’s talking about digital distribution, what games he’s been digging lately, used-game sales, or bars in San Francisco Chinatown, the man always has something interesting to say. Here’s my interview with one the main minds behind Unreal and Gears of War, the infamous Cliffy B.

Raymond Padilla: With games like Shadow Complex and systems like the Sony PSPgo, digital distribution is becoming a bigger part of the gaming business. How does digital distribution impact you as a game designer?

Cliff Bleszinski: A couple weekends ago, I was up in East Village at “Videogames New York”, a combination new/retro game store. On the front counter, they had Borderlands and in the back aisles, they had the Vectrex and Game & Watch. My feelings went from initially geeking out to immense nostalgia to overwhelming pride for how far this business has come in my lifetime alone. We go digital and that physical history starts drying up and eventually vanishes. Older games become the same as a 45 record.

Digital distribution has the potential to end the used game debate that’s currently raging across the business. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, I love having that pipeline into my house: Look, a new game is up on Live; download the title right to your hard drive and fire it up. At the same time, I love having games, movies, and books on my shelves at my home. It feels like an IRL representation of the facets of your personality and tastes whenever people come over to visit. The Kindle and other devices are equally fascinating. I fear not leafing through a book ever again but at the same time I cringe at the thought of having to deal with a CD and a jewel case in a world of digital music.

Finally, as far as the kinds of games I’d like to design and contribute to? Digital frees up some risk. You can make that little dream game you’ve always wanted to make and take more chances, which is incredibly appealing as a creative.

Continue reading “Epic Games Cliff Bleszinski Talks Digital Distribution, Used Games, Motion Controls, Hideo Kojima, and Getting Punched by RPad”

This Week’s Videogame Releases

The gaming business is entering its final push before everything is on the table for the holiday rush. This week’s big release is Dragon Age: Origins from the outstanding Edmontonians at BioWare. Music games are facing off again, but this time the battle is for casual gamers with Band Hero and Rock Band: LEGO. Is the music-game genre to saturated? Or will these games sell to a different audience?

While you ponder that, here are this week’s PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS releases…along with some brief commentary. I’ve taken out most of the garbage and kids games (unless I found them funny). As always, let me know if you’re planning to buy any of this week’s new releases.

Dragon Age Origins chicky

PlayStation 3
Band Hero — Too bad this isn’t Band Camp Hero. I’d play an RPG about this one time, at band camp.
Dragon Age: Origins — BioWare rules!!!
Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
Rock Band: AC/DC Track Pack
Rock Band: LEGO
Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition — I’m pretty sure the Sith invented repackaging.

Continue reading “This Week’s Videogame Releases”

Coffee Talk #16: Videogame Instruction Manuals and You

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the awesomeness of Brad Lidge, Crystalium being Sphere Grid 2.0, or the old rib eye vs. filet mignon debate, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Last week I came across this interesting Gamasutra article on videogame instruction manuals. It got me thinking about how my gaming habits have changed in regards to instructions. When I was younger, manuals were pretty important and often a valuable resource. Nowadays, I’m irritated if I have to open the box and pop out the manual. Heck, I haven’t even touched the manuals for the vast majority of games I’ve bought over the last three console generations.

Instruction Manual

There are two reasons why I rarely read videogame instruction manuals these days. The explosive growth of the Internet has made it so easy to find quality information on a game — info that’s almost always better than anything in the manual. More recently, in-game tutorials have gotten so good that I usually don’t need the Internet or a manual to figure things out.

As gaming moves towards digital distribution, manuals will become even less important (unless you love printing out PDFs) and eventually extinct. They’re still here today, so I want to ask for your views on instructions. Do you read them? Do you ignore them? Are they a last resort for you? Do you think in-game tutorials are the instruction manuals of today? I instruct you to leave your opinions on instructions! (Okay, I’m really just asking you and hoping you share.)

Sony Corp. CFO Expects PS3 to be Profitable in 2010

PS3 Slim

Sony Corporation chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda expects the PlayStation 3 to be a profitable console in 2010. He explained to Impress AV Watch:

At present, the difference between sales and materials cost has been reduced to between 10 and 20%. Within the year, it could be in the single digits. We’ll be able to reach profitability at some point in the next term.

Out of the three major gaming consoles, Sony’s PS3 was, by far, the most expensive to create and build. Achieving profitability is a significant milestone for Sony.

Source via Andriasang

Final Fantasy XIII Crystalium Level-Up System Explained

Japanese magazine Shonen Jump has detailed Final Fantasy XIII’s “Crystalium” system, which is used to level up characters. Using “Crystal Points” and a chart with diverging paths, the system sounds like an advancement of the sphere grid used in Final Fantasy X. The good peeps at Andriasang have translated and analyzed the info:

FFXIII WP1

As you defeat enemies in battle, you earn Crystal Points (CP). These can be exchanged for new skills and abilities, shown on a circular chart in the Crystalium management screen. As you learn certain skills, new paths on the chart open up.

In addition to earning new skills like “Fire,” you can also use this system to increase your characters’ parameters. The screenshots in Jump show options for increasing character HP.

Character growth appears to be done on a per role basis. This is my speculation based off the screenshots, but it appears that each character can be raised individually in the various battle roles (Blaster, Defender, Attacker, and so-forth).

This system sounds great on paper. I loved the sphere grid in FFX. Crystalium sounds like the sphere grid taken to the next level. Even though FFXIII’s gestalt mode continues to vex me, I’m thinking (wishing?) that Crystalium will help me forget it’s there.

Source

Raymond’s Random Rants

– I received the Wrestlemania 24and Wrestlemania 25 Blu-ray discs. Between videogames and the World Series, I won’t have time to watch the entire cards, but I sure as hell am going to watch the Shawn Michaels matches from each event. HBK/Flair was a brilliant, emotional match that excelled in the storytelling department. HBK/Undertaker was one of the best matches I’ve seen in the last decade.

WrestleMania 24

– Speaking of HBK, what a remarkable career he’s had — especially the second half. I never bought into the “boyhood dream” and I only started really enjoying his matches just before his first hiatus. Since his comeback from back surgery, it’s crazy how good he has been. While he can’t do some of things he used to in his younger days, his storytelling and psychology are the best they’ve ever been. Plus, nobody sells moves as good as Shawn does these days.

– I’m still wondering why the hell R-Truth is on the cover of the WrestleMania 25 box. What’s up?

Continue reading “Raymond’s Random Rants”