Yahoo today, featured an article on the game licenses that are being scooped up by hollywood. A rather interesting read. We've already seen Tomb Raider, Silent Hill and Resident Evil on the big screen and they all did very well in the box office.
Current "titles in the works" include Prince of Persia, World of Warcraft and Castle Wolfenstein with writer/director Roger Avary (Beowulf) handling the script. Check out the article. I can imagine that some of them can be totally kick-ass movies if handled well. Some of those worlds are beautiful!
The articles that are included in the news stories I get in my email every morning can be term "interesting" sometimes.
Information Week reported on Tuesday, that some guy in San Diego was suing Microsoft because Halo3 was causing his XBox360 to crash.
This pertains to the gaming industry, certainly, but was it truly news-worthy? Well, why am I blogging it then? Mainly because I think there are two sides to this. On the one hand is the view that frivolous law-suits are the reason our legal system is in the state it is in. On the other hand, shouldn't consumers expect games to work? Should someone have tried to sue Microsoft for the way Windows crashed? Would we have better software if someone did? Why is it accepted practice for software to ship with bugs?
As a gamer, the burden of proof is on us when we bring a game home and we find the disk is damaged. That was an issue with the packaging of the Halo3 special edition and Microsoft offered to replace the disks. I once had a review copy of an MMOG shipped to me from a Developer. When I ripped open the sealed CD-key envelope, it was empty. Imagine trying to convince a retailer of that!
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick made a bold statement that the PS3 and XBox 360 needed to fall below that of the Wii to compete at the Reuters media summit in New York yesterday.
"The Wii at its price point is now setting a standard and an expectation, and people say, well, the Wii is less complex technically. I don't think that really matters as much to the consumer,"
He added that the key price point for mass adoption was $199.00
Well, yeah... and the DS should then drop to $99.00 and the new and improved PSP to $129.99 :) It would be nice! Of course game publishers want console prices to fall. That makes it more affordable to the masses which then gives them a larger base of potential game buyers. At $129.99, I'd buy the new PSP. At $199.99 there would be a run on the PS3 as Home Theater enthusiasts and installers buy it for the Blu-Ray capability.
What do you think about the Holiday console pricing wars?
If it's there and connected to the web, someone will try to hack it. Consoles are being used to surf the web these days and Trend Micro has released a web security service for the PS3. The service is provided by updating the PS3 system software to Version 2.00, available starting on November 8, and the service is free through April of 2008. No news yet about the cost of the service after that.
Maybe... just don't surf the web with your console! Is *your* console protected by a fire-wall? Something to think about.
Not so much games related but then again... there's every possibility since EVE Online announced Nov. 7th that the current release, the game was playable on Linux.
On Nov. 1, Everex and Walmart announced that they were selling a Linux machine for $199.00 - Not that it can run any of the State-of-the-Art PC games, but a 1.5GHz processor, 80gig Hard drive, 512 Mg of DDR2 RAM, DVD/CD player and loaded with OpenOffice (which includes Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications) for $199 (no monitor) introduces the power and convenience of a computer to those of us with less discretionary $$ to throw around.
Fifteen days later, it's sold out online, although some stores may still have one. You hear that tinkle? It's the sound of the Windows monopoly breaking. Industry analysts must be watching this one closely. There are limited applications that run on Linux, but as these (and similar) machines slip quietly into the mainstream, there will be more demand for applications capable of running on Linux.
Today's morning email surely brought a slew of items of interest to me. In case you didn't hear, The Associated Press and AOL Games conducted a poll (in both English and Spanish,) Oct. 9-11 and 16-18 based on telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 2,016 adults from all states except Alaska and Hawaii and included 770 gamers. Only adults were interviewed.
The really interesting part is the part of the poll results that each outlet highlighted over the others. The Associated Press in their article about the poll reported these stats:
More than four in 10, or 43 percent, of those whose young children play video or computer games never play along with them.
Despite the publicity given to newer game consoles like the Nintendo Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 — the proportion of adults saying they play electronic games was virtually unchanged from April 2006, when an AP-AOL poll asked the same question.
Then these were presented towards the end of the article:
44 percent said they play over the Internet;
26 percent said they spent nothing on the pastime last year, another 46 percent spent up to $200 and 12 percent spent $500 or more, with men usually the bigger spenders;
Price is the chief factor for people purchasing a gaming console, followed by the availability of games.
Eight out of ten kids between the ages of 4 and 17 play computer or video games
81% of kids play at least occasionally compared with 38% of adults who admit to playing computer or video games in any capacity, and 45% of those adult gamers are female.
Nearly half of all adult gamers are under 40 years old.
Only one third of adult gamers are married with children.
41% of all games classify themselves as "hardcore" or spend at least 3 hours per week playing video games.
58% of hardcore gamers are male, while 42% are female.
It's Bat Mitzvah time for Music in Games (in the USA anyway). It's come in to itself. One of the most under-stated, neglected aspects of games has been sound and music. However, with games leaping into the consciousness of mainstream entertainment, developers are paying more attention to and putting more resources into sound and music in games.
EverQuestII dug into their parent's movie pockets and hired Emmy award winning composer Laura Karpman who scores the music and works with the Prague Symphony Orchestra to record the music.
Play! A Video Game Symphony certainly helped stick an oar into the snobby upper-crust. Oy! Look! Symphony orchestras are play themes and music from *gasp* computer games!
I'm talking main-stream of course. Not the onesies, that's popped up here and there over the years in the US. This Wikipedia article talks about game music outside of video games. Hmm... needs to be updated. But I digress. I'm not often impressed by the music in video games but the music from two games stand out in my mind currently.
Pirates of the Burning Sea - I heard the music broadcast over the loudspeaker system at Talk Like a Pirate Day. I've also received the CD of music that's in the Pre-Order. There's some beautifully scored music. Unfortunately, it's been processed for a video game - i.e. ambient music. There's no image for one.
Halo3. I've heard the music when playing the game and the 2-CD set of music will be released in late November. I may have to pick that up to have a listen and see if it's recorded in a way to recommend to my audiophile club.
Holy pixel glory, Batman! Following the popular & successful LEGO Star Wars Games, TT games has announced LEGO Batman.
I enjoyed playing LEGO Star Wars on the XBox with my nephew. What a concept it was! A non-split screen two-player XBox game, the ability to take control and drag him the right way to help and invulnerability. LEGO and Star Wars in one. Who can beat that concept? That it was also done very well made a game to be played over and over. LEGO Star WarsII was disappointing that it was quite a bit more difficult than the first, but still a bunch of fun.
Now, we we're going to have Gotham City in LEGO bricks. The press release gave us a little peek at what the game will be like. Very similar to the LEGO Star Wars concept - play as Batman or Robin or play together, defeat villains and even take control of them.
What next? LEGO Indiana Jones? :D I think that would be sweet.
At the same time as I received the Batman announcement, I also found out that Warner Brothers will be acquiring TT Games. Hmm... large "traditional" entertainment companies acquiring Game companies. Disney acquires Club Penguin and just released Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Will this be good for the industry? Only time will tell.
The title actually refers to two different subjects. First, I've jumped on the band wagon and I'm blogging. Second, the morning email brought information that the Consumer Electronics Association is increasing game exhibit space by 65% at their Consumer Electronics Show, Jan 7 - 10, 2008.
The CES is held the 2nd week of January in Las Vegas each year and it's already a zoo. Spread over several hotels as well as the Convention Center, they announced last week that they are collaborating with the Parent's Choice Foundation - a group that reviews Children's Media to produce the Sandbox Summit.
It used to be that software vendors would only be there to support the hardware guys. SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) would be there to take advantage of the media presence by taking a private suite in a hotel. Other software companies often took a room for the same reason - "Hey... come see the games after you look at the hardware!"
This year was the first year they had games other than console games actually on exhibit. Microsoft had a large presence in the Sands Convention Center with their Games for Windows Exhibit, showing games that ran on Vista and made use of DirectX 10. I saw some really bodacious looking graphics there, met up with several different hardware companies scattered throughout the Sands, traveled to too many different hotels for appointments, never made it to the Las Vegas Convention Center and didn't want to.
Next year... some advice for first timers, take the monorail between the venues. Don't even think of driving or taking a taxi between the Sands and the Las Vegas Convention centers. Or better yet, plan do do only one venue a day, so you don't have to move between them.
