The Friday Funspot for May 10th

Greetings, Programs! (sorry, just rewatched the original Tron..)

Let's see what's going on.

Blizzard's World (of Warcraft) is getting smaller

Latest quarterly subscriber information is in, and the numbers are getting worrying for Blizz.. down another 1.3 million or so subscribers, down to about 8 million. Now, don't get me wrong, that's still the 800 lb gorilla of the MMO world, but it's got to cause some worries for the suits at ActiBlizzard. They've managed to commoditize (spell check says that's not a word, I say whatever) their other games (the Diablos, the Starcrafts) well, although that has it's own set of problems (see Blizzard shutting down the Real Money Auction House for days due to a gold duping bug that was introduced in the latest patch).

It's very hard for "pay" to compete with free, and that's what Blizzard has to do, with the competitors offering little or no initial buy in. It's very hard to convince someone to pay $200 a year or so to play your game while other people are offering the base game for free.

Again, don't cry for Blizz, they've made tons of money, and still will make money (albeit a lower amount), going forward, but at some point, the latest $50 expansion gravy train is going to grind to a halt, and it'll be very interesting to see where they go from there.

Precursor Games rises from the ashes of Silicon Knights

You remember Silicon Knights, right? The company that bought rights to use the Unreal Engine, made a crappy game, sued Epic Games for not sharing the secrets of, you know, not making crappy games, got countersued for misapproriation of trade secrets and misuse of the license, and got taken to the legal cleaners as a result?

Well, the folks from that studio have started a new company (Precursor Games) and are trying to crowdfund  a sequel to their hit Eternal Darkness.

Somehow, I have a feeling they'll have a problem finding someone to license a graphics engine from..


Guess Who's Back, Back Again, Sid Meier's Back. Tell a friend.

Yes, that is a dated reference. So are most of the actual games that Sid Meier actually worked on, as recent versions of the games he's known for (like the Civilization series) have had nothing really to do with him except crediting him as the originator of the series.. is back.. but before you start to salivate, here's the details..

It's a semi-port of a World War I flying game, turn based, for Iphones/pads. Not saying it's a bad thing, but it's a far far way away from making games that "stood the test of time"



Sony's thinking everything will come up roses with PS4 launch

Fresh off making their first profit from their games division in five years (and that mostly because they don't actually, you know have to make the consoles as much anymore), Sony recently said they do not forsee "major losses from the launch of the PS4, unlike the PS3".

Honestly, I'm a cynic here. In this market, releasing a new system at a rumored high price point.. the only way that this doesn't lead to a major loss for Sony is if they sell really well, something I don't see with the high price point in a recovering economy


And Finally... "Rock Not Included"

They announced the goodies that will be in the Rome: Total War Collector's Edition (what I call the Shiny box), retailing for $155. Amongst the items, a Total War Card Game, an ancient Roman Board Game, Ancient Roman Dice (back when the phrase "Rolling the Bones" meant literally that).. and the big seller here.

A kit that allows you to assemble your very own Roman Siege Catapult (called an onager).

If you remember the movie line say it with me now..

"You're going to put someone's eye out with that thing.."

Apparently EA HAS learned from SimCity debacle

They just announced The Sims 4, and the one of the first things they say, even before selling the PR is that Sims 4 will NOT require an always on Internet Connection, and will be playable off line in single player.

They then doubled own on making sure there was NO confusion in the Q&A

[b]Q: Will there be an online component for The Sims 4?
A:There will be additional fun and social gameplay elements for players who choose to go online (more to come on that later on) but the core game is designed to be played offline. It’s up to the player to choose how they want to play.

Q: Will The Sims 4 require a persistent online connection?
A: You will not require a persistent online connection to play The Sims 4.[/b]

 Apparently, EA finally realized that they left their hand on a hot stove and got burned (badly), and now are being very careful not to stick their hand near any hot stoves.








 

Nintendo gets eviscerated in money.cnn.com report.

Here's the review.

While I'm not in agreement with all of the statements in the article (the Wii grabbed the trend of casual interactive games pretty spot on), it's a damning indictment of the Big N at a bad point right now. Between the Wii U disaster, developers fleeing the system, and then the portable market no longer printing (as much) money, Nintendo's in trouble.

If I was at the head of Nintendo? I'd push for more fun/casual third party games. Come up with something new.. aggressively use the rich history of Nintendo for new games, because the Wii U is a decent system, with some nice twists.. but it is getting blown out of the water right now, and it won't take much to sink their hopes in this generation

ESPN starting to count down the 25 greatest sports video games of all time:

EA is running a weeklong story featuring the best 25 sports video games of all time, (5 Per day).


The first five are pretty solid (Bases Loaded, NFL Street, Ice Hockey, Tiger Woods 12, and Bulls vs Blazers and the NBA Playoffs). Interesting fact, EA Sports only came into being because ESPN threatened to sue Electronic Arts for using a similar name for their sports games (EA Sports Network, or EASN).

Things I expect to see:

Double Dribble
Tecmo (Super) Bowl
RBI Baseball
MLB The Show
Hardball
NBA 2K
EA Sports NHL

I could go on, but it's going to be interesting to see where they go.

The Unholy Alliance: Disney/EA (Star Wars)

Apparently, I am the last to know about today's announcment of the Star Wars/EA Hookup.

As my friend SackAttack (who I am still trying to get to write a guest column or two every so often for 8bitmind) put it, "Welcome to 12 hours ago".

These are the things that I think I'm thinking.

If you think that this means there's going to be a new KOTOR game, you're probably right.

Battlefield Star Wars? Probably.

A Star Wars-ish Dead Space game? Yeah, that too.

Too bad this probably means  the end of the smallbies (yes, that's a word, I don't care what spell check says), use of the Star Wars license. The Star Wars pinball tables were something different and interesting.. but Star Wars is a great license for EA to land, and it fits right in with their idea to have a foundation that multiple titles can be released in.

When I first saw the headline, I thought that EA was going to be Borg'ed by Disney. That would be scary. Disney owns so much of our video memories, our comic memories, and they'd take a big step to enter the full fledged video game market. Thankfully, this is an alliance, not the House Of Mouse taking over.

Ubisoft pulls a SimCity with new release, Marvel Heroes open beta weekend, Aliens developer Bankrupt..

Let's see.. what is there to see this weekend..

Nice to see Ubisoft learned absolutely NOTHING from the SimCity debacle, they released the latest game in the Heroes of Might and Magic series recently.. except no one can play it. Why? They botched the release, filling the Steam forums and the official forums with complaints about freezing, corrupt files, missing music, and more. Although it's not confirmed, it's believed to have something to do with their near-always on DRM. How many of these debacles do we need to go through before folks release that restrictive DRM punishes real customers, not the folks who download it illegally?

Marvel Heroes hit open beta this weekend (a special weekend celebrating the latest release of the Iron Man money machine, excuse me, movie series). And.. the crowd goes mild. I'm not like hearing the scuttlebutt I'm hearing about this. It's a shame, as with City of Heroes gone, there's room for a good superhero MMO to go with Champions Online.

And finally, how broke is Aliens developer Timegate Studios, who recently filed for bankruptcy protection? They owed money to the local pizza place. When you can't pay for two pizzas, that's broke.

The Friday Funspot for 5/3

Planning on doing some traveling on Friday, so you get an early Friday Funspot.. Lucky you!

Well, well, well, an interesting week in the news, so let's get to it.

Lawsuit filed against Gearbox/Sega on Colonial Marines

Saw the story that a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Gearbox Software and Sega about the release of recent stinkbomb Aliens:Colonial Marines. According to the lawsuit, the demos shown at E3 and elsewhere gave a misleading picture of the final product, and that Sega embargoed reviews of the game past release date so that gamers wouldn't know that it's a stinkbomb.

While I personally think that Gearbox and Sega took a well-deserved kicking for a bad game, I'm going to say that this is the very picture of a nuisance class-action lawsuit. Basically, they (and by they, I mean the plaintiff's lawyers) are hoping that the companies would rather accept a quick payout (with most of it going to the plaintiff's lawyers, natch), rather then fight a losing PR Battle. 

What Gearbox and Sega did was wrong, but newsflash: Two wrongs don't make a right.

Kickstarter moves inexorably forward

Two bits of information this week, as the Chris Roberts game Star Citizen hit 9 million in pre-release fan funding. This, along with private funding, is going to be funding an ambitious effort that promises over 100 star systems, a tablet companion app, and a free mission pack for every player. It looks like the backer-alpha will be this winter.

Also, 8bitmind favorite Shadowrun Returns is oh so close to release, they ended their backer order phase, and moved to Steam for the remainder of the pre-release phase (which is scheduled to end in June with the game's release).

Nice to see the crowd funding bandwagon is proceeding further.

EA/Wii U spat means no Madden, or NCAA

Man, it's not easy to find a side to like in this little spat, is there? EA Sports titles don't sell well on Nintendo,which is sad, because you have to think the Wii U controller would be ACE for this kind of thing, but if rumors are true, the reason why EA is not releasing their sports games on Nintendo is that EA wants Nintendo to rely heavily on their Steam-competitor service, Origin (with preferred product placement, etcetera), and Nintendo, who never wants to give anyone else a single bit of control over their hardware or software, said no dice, so EA turned around and said "Fine, no EA Sports sellers for you"

As I said, it's not easy to pick a side in this battle.

New Engine for New Release of Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty had been using the same game engine (with some tweaks each year) for the Call of Duty series since 2005.. so it's no surprise that the next Call of Duty game (which will release on current gen systems on November 5th, and next-generation systems at an undisclosed date), will have a new engine. But I have to call out Activision for a bit of tomfoolery (there's a great word, isn't it?) in their announcement:

This new engine is "coming from the developer who started it all, Infinity Ward".

They're counting on short gamer memories.. sorry, I still remember.

You mean the developer that you bought, and then immediately started looking for ways to withold earned bonuses? The developer that you bought and then sued? The developer you bought and then tried to illegaly break into their computers? The developer you bought that then saw all the main talent leave for a new startup after the above?

Activision may have the name Infinity Ward, but that's all they have, and shame on Activision for trying to pass off the shell of IW as the real thing.

And Finally, Rogue Employee installs BitCoin software on eSports client.

Saw this story about how a rogue employee at ESEA, one of the larger eSports Leagues out there.. enabled a BitCoin client on the eSports software, causing a spike in CPU and GPU usage, as temperatures soared to nearly 90 degrees Celsius. (here's a hint, the boiling point of WATER is 100). He made off with about $3,300 in the digital currency before this was discovered, the employee was found and disciplinary action is forthcoming. The disciplinary action should be two words. "You're fired" and three more words "Referred for prosecution)