If you're looking for an employee from Minecraft developer Mojang, you might want to look out your window, because they are currently over the moon. Mojang head Markus "Notch" Persson tweeted yesterday that he will distribute his 2011 Mojang dividends to his employees. The rub: said dividends totalled "about 3 million dollars" before tax. That is, to put it mildly, one hell of a bonus.
Mojang staff members have made their feelings known on Twitter, with Lydia Winters, Mojang's director of fun (no, really) revealing she was "incredibly stunned." Business developer Daniel Kaplan, meanwhile, admits to crying "tears in shock and happiness." Mojang "boss" Carl Manneh noted that Mojang is "the best company in the world." We'd be inclined to agree, but Notch has yet to acknowledge our application to become Mojang's Head of Monitor Dusting.
A new Assassin's Creed mobile video game will launch in December of this year for English and Japanese audiences. The title is being developed by Ubisoft and GREE. In the same breath, GREE is teaming up with Gameloft on Gang Domination, which will be available on various smartphone devices this coming June.
So, what's GREE? Beyond being a company with way too much money, it's a mobile publisher/platform that's huge in Japan and is moving into the global marketplace, launching the GREE Platform in the second quarter of 2012. The company bought mobile social network OpenFeint last year and has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, London, Beijing, Sao Paulo and Dubai. The company states: "GREE will continue to aggressively expand worldwide."
"GREE will continue to focus on building relationships with third party video game developers and publishers as it moves towards releasing its new platform."
So, if GREE wasn't on your radar before, it appears to be a company you're going to be hearing about a lot in the near future.
SXSWi, the "interactive" technology portion of Austin's South by Southwest festival that runs between March 9 and 13, also hosts ScreenBurn, a 3-day gaming conference and expo. The ScreenBurn Arcade portion of ScreenBurn is open to the general public, and to kick things off the first day of the Arcade will feature a Street Fighter X Tekken tournament, presented by IGN Pro League.
An exhibition-style tournament, the event will be more of a spectator activity, rather than something that the public can enter and participate in. Still, it'll be a good opportunity to see highly technical play of the video game just after its release. Since attending the ScreenBurn Arcade doesn't require a SXSWi pass, Austinites interested in the future of fighting can swing by the Palmer Center between 3PM and 7 PM Central on March 9 to scope out the tourney. If you see a complete dork dressed like Dan Hibiki, come say hi.
Yesterday Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Team Meat dropped a gigantic, raw bomb on Twitter (gross), announcing their plans to strip down Super Meat Boy and rebuild it completely for mobile touch devices. They were vague on details apart from an intent to create a brand new video game in the Super Meat Boy universe, and that they definitely wouldn't use "shitty touch controls."
We thought they were being coy, but it turns out they don't know much more about the touchscreen version than we do. It's still in the engine phase of development, McMillen told Joystiq, and they're pretty much winging it, playin with things that work and throwing out ideas that don't -- even if that includes the entire video game.
"I mean, honestly, this is simply a challenge for us," McMillen said. "It's easy to poo-poo a new system because of its horrible use of touchscreen on ported titles; it's harder to attempt to try and figure out a design that works and make something worth checking out.
"So that's basically what we are doing -- no idea how it will turn out -- but Tommy and I wanted to jump back into dev again with something that isn't going to take a year-plus to make, so prototyping this idea seemed most appropriate and inspired."
Double Fine will be able to fund at least 2 and a half adventure video games and/or put an awful lot of money into creating an incredibly extravagant one, as the developer's Kickstarter project has just topped $1 million dollars. After being announced late last evening, the project's page already reflected a number exceeding the goal of $400K within just over eight hours.
With another 33 days to go, and an incredible amount of momentum as is, we're thinking the sky's the limit for the Double Fine folks. And they'll get to that sky in their fleet of private jets, all custom designed to nest within one another like the characters in Stacking, and Tim will be the mothership. It's all so clear now! What have we done?!
The Halo Living Monument is active -- whether it's actually functional for you is an entirely different matter. To celebrate the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the site allows the Halo faithful to upload an image and be part of this grand marketing opportunity.
The monument is a rotating Master Chief with interactive limbs displaying hexagonal portraits of those who have taken the opportunity to upload a photo onto the internet. That seems about it. We guess you could always have a moment of silence, and pray to the monument that next year's Halo 4 ends up succeeding without Bungie at the helm.
To enjoy Uncharted 3, you need a highly developed sense of adventure, the ability to spot unorthodox paths through a chaotic landscape, the patience to stay cool during protracted firefights, and a PlayStation 3.
For those first 3, you're on your own, but Sony has a plan to help with the last one: a new Uncharted 3 hardware bundle, including a 320GB system, a copy of the video game, and -- why not -- a month of PlayStation Plus access. Despite appearing in the picture, there's no mention of an included PS3 vertical stand.
The bundle will sell for $299.99, the same price as a 320GB system by itself. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is out on November 1.
We suspected as much earlier this year, and now the ESRB seems to think the first 3 Devil May Cry video games are headed to Xbox and PS3. All 3 have been rated by the organization and, incidentally, have received an "M for Mature."
HD collections are all the rage these days, and Capcom is certainly no stranger to rereleasing its older products. And, with the impending Devil May Cry reboot, it only makes sense that the publisher would want to cash in on both series veterans and newcomers alike. We contacted Capcom and were told that the company hasn't "made any announcements." Well we knew that. Sheesh.
If you want to play Gal Gun, Inti Creates' light gun video game about shooting pheromones at crazed high school girls -- and we're not judging -- it's about to get easier to do so. This winter, according to a report from Famitsu, publisher Alchemist will release a PS3 port of the formerly Xbox 360 exclusive video game. PS3 video games are region free, so it's no problem to play it on your system!
In addition to that perk, the PS3 release will have improved visuals, a new character, a new gameplay mode, and -- most importantly -- PlayStation Move support. The downside there is that you'll be waving a glowing ball around, making it even easier for others to notice you playin Gal Gun.
Nintendo has ensured that its full lineup of video game classics are right there ready to lead the charge In the forefront is The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess The Wii version unlike the GameCube one will run in 169 widescreen which should make it more immersive and Zelda takes full advantage of the new Wiimotes functionality to make swordfighting a completely different experience The video game hasnt been made gimicky to accommodate the Wii controller it just naturally does
Finally European / Australian gamers can join the Ninja Revolution as the legendary Naruto anime franchise makes its long awaited European / PAL debut on Wii in Naruto Clash of Ninja Revolution European Version on March 28th. Yes that’s right folks, it is only been out in the US since October last year (yes that’s sarcasm). [...]
Capcom-Unity captured 30 minutes of uninterrupted Dragon's Dogma gameplay from Gamescom, controlled by producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi. Even while being interviewed, Kobayashi holds his own in open-field battle scenes and close-quarters combat alike.
Capcom also captured a producer interview-slash-gameplay session for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which is even more impressive in its potential for distracting a producer mid-sentence. Check it out after the break.
The Xbox 360 has one enormous advantage over the other 2 consoles its already out Its had a year to establish itself to have video games developed for it and to impress by being the first to show the obvious improvement in performance with all the seventh generation consoles It launched with a couple of big video games notably Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero because who doesnt like Chicks With Guns Sony has the pull of beloved video game franchises Tomb Raider and Halo and Japanese favorite Blue Dragon Oddly the 360 was backwards compatible with some but not all older Xbox video games whereas the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 claim to be compatible with all of those companies previous video games
When the sun shines we'll shine together, You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh eh. Yes Capcom must be singing tunes of happiness with this news, that comes as a bit of a shock to me, because quite frankly I thought Umbrella Chronicles kind of sucked. Seems like that did not affect sales [...]
There's nothing quite like a butter-smooth frame rate, is there? Fans should be happy to learn that the upcoming Metal Gear Solid HD Collection will indeed run at a slick 60 frames per second.
After sharing images of the Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker remake, Hideo Kojima tweeted, "60 frames per second in HD... it's the best! Say peace!" Kojima Productions' Jiroo Tsubuyaki also confirmed the frame rate in a different tweet.
As Andriasang notes, Peace Walker marks the final video game in the collection to benefit from a doubled frame rate. Kojima already confirmed the same for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater -- and Metal Gear Solid 2, it turns out, always ran at sixty frames per second, even on the PlayStation 2.
We suppose that explains Raiden's ... uh ... smoothness.
Worms Ultimate Mayhem has been officially announced by Team 17 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Revealed by the Australian Classification Board in May, Worms Ultimate Mayhem is a downloadable HD re-vamp and "reimagining" of Worms 3D and Worms 4: Mayhem. The video game will include "all of the content" from the original video games, along with 60 single-player missions, 12 graphical themes, 38 weapons and full online play for up to 4 players.
Team 17's head designer John Dennis also mentions that they've made improvements suggested by fans of the original video games. The voice-acted missions are good and fine, but the "vastly improved camera functionality" is what could finally convert the hate directed at the 3D installments of the series into wriggly worm love.
XSEED is continuing its cozy relationships with both Bandai Namco (which has resulted in Retro video game Challenge, among other things) and developer Prope (whose Ivy the Kiwi? was published by XSEED), announcing a North American release of the Wii fishing video game from Yuji Naka's company, Fishing Resort. It's a third-party Wii video game in 2011, and thus a rarity.
The Wii video game puts equal emphasis on both the "fishing" and "resort" aspects -- of course you'll be able to cast for over 200 varieties of fish (and play fishing-related minigames), but you're also given the choice to explore your island surroundings at your leisure, finding spots in different locales from which to fish. And should you develop some skill at the art of virtual fishing, you can take part in competitive play for up to 4, and tell the world an incredibly accurate fish story via the leaderboards.
A company called Impulse Technology has filed suit against Microsoft and several video game companies over the Kinect hardware and software, claiming that the controller-free motion tracking violates its patents for "System and method for tracking and assessing movement skills in multidimensional space," and "Education system challenging a subject's physiologic and kinesthetic systems to synergistically enhance cognitive function."
Microsoft is named for its Kinect hardware, of course, but other companies are included in the suit because they made video games that use the Kinect to track body movements.
According to Patent Arcade, Impulse is seeking not just money, but a permanent injunction -- which, were it to go through, would force Kinect hardware and software to be shelved in the US.
As if owning HD versions of 2 of the best video games of the previous generation wasn't enough reason to pick up the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection, Sony has revealed bonus content that will be included with the PS3 re-release. In addition to the remastered video games, the collection will also include 2 dynamic PS3 themes, one for each title.
Also included with the collection will be "a ton of exclusive video content from ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian." While bonus content for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is certainly nice, any content related to the mysterious Last Guardian is very enticing indeed.