Monday, 6 July 2009
WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2010 Cover Art
So what do you think of the cover art? im not a cena fan so for me i would rather see Jericho but Cena is a big money maker for WWE so he needs to be on there, otherwise the other four are spot on Edge, The Undertaker, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio.
Expect more details on the roster and features over the coming weeks.
Is OnLive the future of gaming?
I have seen and read a lot about OnLive and its promise of cheap, easy gaming on any PC or TV but will it really work? The problem everyone as being going on about lately is how will this work in home's and areas with slow broadband or even no broadband?
so for this reason i cant see Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo worry about OnLive at this stage as OnLive is online the whole time even when playing single player so the problems are lag and the fact some ip's are not unlimited download per month for the people with unlimited this is not a problem but for everyone else this is, OnLive apparently uses about 1.5-5mbps so it can eat up your monthly download limit quickly. Also one of the other problems will be where the servers are placed and if you can play against people from other countries.
Click read more for the whole post
Here in the UK homes should have access to broadband and faster download speeds by 2012, the government has said.
One other problem could be the fact most gamers want to have a physical copy of the game they are playing so it may be traded in for other games, OnLive will be a subscribution based service.
So for the time being it seems OnLive wont be able to compete with home consoles and pc's until broadband speeds are increased and in every/most home's.And even then there will be a lot of competition from Gaikai,OTOY and Slingbox plus Sony registered a trademark for cloud gaming called "PS Cloud" the day after OnLive was announced.However, the trademark covers a broad range of possibilities, including online videogames, Internet radio, eletronic magazines, cloud computing, etc. and thus no direct conclusions can be drawn from it. But if this is the future of gaming then Sony,Microsoft and Nintendo will no doubt bring there own version's of OnLive to the market.
Ghostbusters coming to LBP
The PlayStation Blog as now confirmed Ghostbusters is coming to LBP, no other details but could this mean free/paid costumes or even Ghostbusters themed levels? or maybe just some Ghostbusters sticker packs. Hopefully we will see something similar to the MGS packs.
PlayStation 3 Hardware and Software deals
If you are looking for a good deal on hardware or software i highly recommend shopto.net and checking HotUKDeals.
shopto.net are very good price wise and seem to always price match other sites as long as you post a link to the deal in there forum. Also i must say i have never had any problems with them unlike play.com who told me i had to wait 21 days for a refund or another copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 to be sent due to it being lost in the post,shopto send all there games recorded post where as the last time i used play.com they were sending by normal first class post which means no signing for or recorded. Also shopto keep you well informed on status of your order via email or text message or even both. The other great thing about shopto is every game i have ever pre ordered as arrived one or two days before release.
i have used other sites as well like HMV,GAME and ZAVVI but shopto is by far the best site i have used.
HotUKDeals is also a good place to look for deals to, people post the deals they have found as well as any coupons or codes that can be used for online sites or even in store's to.
SingStar Update
SingStar as been updated with the following
Click read more for the whole list
Ultimate Coldplay 1 SongPack
Clocks
Speed of Sound
The Hardest Part
The Scientist
Yellow
Ultimate Coldplay 2 SongPack
Don’t Panic
In My Place
Lost
Trouble
Violet Hill
SingStar Essentials SongPack
Martina McBride – A Broken Wing
Montgomery Gentry – What Do You Think About That?
Sara Evans – Born to Fly
Trace Adkins – Honky Tonk Badonkadonk
Trace Adkins – You’re Gonna Miss This
In English:
Adam & The Ants – “Ant Music”
Ashford & Simpson – “Solid”
Blur – “For Tomorrow”
Blur – “This Is A Low”
Cheap Trick – “If You Want My Love”
Erasure – “Always”
Erasure – “Sometimes”
Gloria Estefan – “1-2-3″
Gloria Estefan – “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You “
Kelly Clarkson – “Because Of You”
Kreesha Turner – “Bounce With Me”
Krezip – “In Her Sun (Stupid)”
Krezip – “That’ll Be Me”
Lily Allen – “Not Fair”
Pet Shop Boys – “It’s A Sin”
Radiohead – “No Surprises”
The Offspring – “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)”
The Poodles – “Song For You”
Vincent – “Don’t Hate On Me”
Yazoo – “Don’t Go”
In Italian:
Afterhours – “Non È Per Sempre”
In Spanish:
El Arrebato – “Una Noche Con Arte”
La Oreja De Van Gogh – “Cuídate”
La Oreja De Van Gogh – “Dile Al Sol”
La Oreja De Van Gogh – “El Último Vals”
La Oreja De Van Gogh – “Geografia”
La Oreja De Van Gogh – “Soñaré”
What's wrong with publishers?
Thirty one EA games were million-plus sellers in its last financial year – up from 27 previously – yet on May 5th it reported an annual loss of between $96 million and $1.1 billion, depending on your accounting poison.
When CEO John Riccitiello memorably told MCV in 2003 that million sellers weren’t a big deal any more, this wasn’t what he had in mind.
What’s gone wrong? The short-term diagnosis: Having stumbled in the transition, EA underestimated Wii, allowed costs to spiral, and made too many mediocre games and also the wrong ones – a company with a $2 billion warchest but still no credible GTA-killer hasn’t been looking hard enough.
Click read more for the whole post
But I propose a deeper malaise: EA, and most other game publishers and developers, ran out of road. EA is a machine built to deliver millions of boxed copies of expensively developed, mildly iterated traditional games to retailers, but the supply (and the cost of supply) grew bigger and more demanding than the market.
But wasn’t 2008 the biggest year yet for games? Sure, but look where the action was. Casual or ‘experiential’ peripheral-based games like Wii Sports, Guitar Hero and EA’s own Rock Band that cost more and last longer.
Older games like Nintendogs and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that keep selling, either as full price retail releases or revenue-draining trade-ins. Downloadable content – Call of Duty 4 DLC generated $10 million in a week. Then there’s the $1 billion a year geyser that is Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. Every subscription and hour spent on WoW can’t be spent on another game – assuming it would be anyway on that piracy-ridden platform.
These trends have tilted the playing field to topple some companies and left others stumbling. The traditional market remains, but the growth the industry is geared on has shot off in another direction, with ruinous results for the status quo.
The download revolution
Digital distribution will yet cause the biggest upheavals. Some of us have cried wolf about this for years, but now the wolf is at the door.
In retrospect, consumers and the economic forces of the industry (as distinct from its businesses, who with honourable exceptions have been merely bystanders) needed a reason to embrace digital distribution – saving a shopping trip or the sheer inanity of transporting data in cardboard boxes wasn’t enough.
Today we’ve abundant reasons. Gamers like online distribution because it enables community, DLC, easy access to new content, and because the younger ones expect nothing else.
Predicting change
As for the industry, the cost of development and of securing consumer attention means the fire-and-forget mathematics of shipping a boxed title then turning attention to the sequel are breaking down. To exploit hits for longer, retain hard won customers, and fight both piracy and secondhand sales, games are becoming services.
Predicting such change was easy. Timing proved difficult. Tackling it commercially is a crap shoot.
As a related example, EA recently wrote down its $680 million purchase of mobile games pioneer Jamdat by $368 million. It surely overpaid in 2005, but it’s also seen wireless game growth flatten.
iPhone has reinvigorated the market, but tiny developers for whom $0.99 is a payday dominate Apple’s App Store.
Was EA late in fully embracing the mobile market, early, greedy, unlucky, fundamentally right, or wrong to try?
Incumbents are always vulnerable in revolutions. Stalwarts will try to buy or build a future, and some will survive. But when the grand old name of Atari is being traded like a poker chip, we shouldn’t need reminding that everything is up for grabs.
Summer game droughts to end at last?
Codemasters, ShopTo and analyst Michael Pachter all believe change is afoot, and that summer videogame droughts may be the norm no longer. Economic risk, argue the trio, is forcing even the biggest players to keep clear of the crowded autumn release schedule.
"We're beginning to see a change in summer releases," notes Michael Pachter, videogame investment analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities. "It actually started a year ago, with GTA (April) and Metal Gear Solid 4 (May) having pretty solid success. EA pushed Tiger and Fight Night forward, and will release FIFA and Need for Speed in September, earlier than usual.
Click read more for the whole post
"A lot of this is to limit risk from a crowded holiday release schedule. EA had a bad time with too many games in the October-November time frame last year. They decided to spread things out in order to be more competitive. "
ShopTo boss Igor Cipolletta recalls a "majority" of Christmas 2008 games being discounted within "a few short weeks". He thinks shifting some focus to summer is a change worth making.
"Traditionally, the summer and early autumn have been a very quiet period for game releases, and it would seem to be worth a change of focus to advertise and release some titles within this window; customers may have money now, but will they still have that money come the Christmas rush?" asks Cipolletta.
"Sales of certain titles are a given but those titles slightly lower on people's want list, would the publishers rather have decent sales in a pre-Christmas market or are they happy to see their titles as weekly specials or bargain bin fodder crushed under the weight of sales of Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 10 and Forza Motorsport 3?
"[Publishers] debuting or returning franchises that don't have a massive guaranteed pre-order base may want to release their product slightly earlier," he adds. "The earlier release date will reduce their advertising budgets and allow their title to stand out, rather than getting lost under the sheer weight of releases when we reach October, November time."
Codemasters is one publisher doing just that: Damnation was released in May, Fuel at the beginning of June and Overlord II at the end of June. Furthermore, Ashes Cricket is scheduled for July, Colin McRae: Dirt 2 for September and F1 2009 for autumn. The "greater visibility" of the summer is attractive, argues global communication manager Sam Cordier.
"For Codemasters, it's always been about spreading releases to the launch window that makes the most sense - fitting the right game to the right window," he said. "Overlord 1 did very well during the summer when originally released, so it made sense to hit the same kind of release window. It also has greater visibility during the summer than it would have done at peak holiday time.
"Ashes Cricket 2009, F1 2009 and Colin McRae Dirt 2 have launch windows where they are because they are tied in with major sporting events around the world. Ashes Cricket 2009, for example, is maximised as a summer release during the Ashes sporting event.
"The past has proven that using this kind of launch strategy can be very successful if done right as you are giving people the games they want to play, when they want to play them," added Cordier.
Cipolletta admits that we have seen some big releases over the last couple of summers, with games such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Battlefield: Bad Company, Mercenaries 2, Soulcalibur 4 and now Ghostbusters, Overlord II and The Sims 3.
Pachter, however, points out that most of these were accidental summer releases resulting from delays. Nevertheless, if they are successful "we will probably see more of the same in the future", he said.
But Pachter reckons we're not there yet, and is adamant that platform holders need to force the issue if they are to turn around what will be depressing sales figures for the coming months.
"July will be sad, August will be better," said Pachter. "Hardware is still a driver of game sales, and the consoles and handhelds are just too expensive for those households who haven't bought yet.
"They have to come down in price to spark renewed interest, and if console/handheld sales are down by 500,000 - 700,000 units in July and August, software sales will be burdened by 1.5 - 2 million fewer units that aren't purchased with new boxes."
Lots of this cagey behaviour follows a turbulent period for the global economy. Cipolletta says a result of this will be less risks and more revived franchises with proven track records. That, he concludes, will please the hardcore, and they, he believes, are the people who drive the videogame industry.
"Hardcore gamers are still at the heart of the major sales in the console market and publishers are realising that spending lavish amounts on licensed product that is likely to receive a lukewarm reception/sales has become too big a risk, especially in the current economic climate," explains Cipolletta.
"Instead they are choosing to revive well established franchises which they can sell to hardcore gamers, who will buy games all year round. Aside from the likes of FIFA, which will always have both a hardcore and a casual audience, the vast majority of consistently high sales are for established hardcore franchises.
"That's not to say we should abandon all hope of fresh and original titles, just that publishers may be wary of the risk," he concludes.
GTA IV DLC coming to the PS3
Two expansions are on the way one is called “Blood and a Four Leaf Clover” analysts are suggesting that both expansions will be released in Fiscal 2010. So it now seems the $50m Microsoft paid for exclusive DLC is about to run out.
Also if that's not enough analysts are suggesting GTA V will be released Fiscal 2011
God of War 3 coming October 30 2009?
Could God of War 3 be coming October 30 2009, According to Amazon it's coming out sooner then March 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)