Tag: Industry - Page 36
News PlayStation's Winning the Digital Games Revenue War
And by quite some margin, it seems
When looking at console sales, people often overlook the network impact. Indeed, we're so focused on hardware numbers that we tend to forget that every PlayStation 4 sold means a potential PlayStation Plus subscription and various PlayStation Network purchases as well. It would appear that Sony's quietly lapping up...
News The Hunger Games' Lionsgate Makes a Large Investment in Telltale
Studio planning 'super show'
Lionsgate, the film studio behind The Hunger Games, has announced that it's made a significant financial investment in The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games. While no new titles have been announced, it has been confirmed that the movie company's boss Jon Feltheimer will join the studio's board of directors. Former...
News PS4 Takes Centre Stage in Sony's Big New Three Year Strategy
Growth driver
It's been obvious for a while, but Sony will continue to bet on the PlayStation 4 to put it back in the black. As part of a corporate strategy meeting earlier this week, the Japanese giant labelled its gaming business as a "growth driver", and recognised it as pivotal in its ambition of raising ¥500 billion ($4.2 billion) in earnings...
News Resogun Developer's Making Something 'Explosive' with the Creator of Defender
Smashin'
In many ways, Resogun is the modern day equivalent of Defender, so we're stoked to learn that developer Housemarque has teamed up with the creator of the 1981 arcade classic, Eugene Jarvis, to make something "explosive". The aforementioned industry veteran has a stunning track record, with Robotron and Smash TV also created under his...
Talking Point Do Review Scores Have a Future?
Number games
After an incredible 15 years – and more 8/10 jokes than we care to count – Eurogamer.net has dropped review scores. It's not the first site to do so – both Kotaku and Joystiq (RIP) ditched numbers and stars a while ago – but the news seems significant this time because our buddies from Brighton operate a more traditional...
News EA: Games Are Still Too Hard to Learn
Don't pull that face
A top executive from EA Games has suggested that most video games are still too difficult for the average person to learn. We suspect that this statement is going to go down like a lead balloon, but we reckon that chief creative officer Richard Hilleman, who was speaking at the 2015 DICE Summit, may actually have a point. "The...
News Colossal PS4 Sales Propel Struggling Sony to Profitability
Job done
If you wondered why Sony was doubling down on PlayStation across the board, then its financial report for the quarter ending 31st December should give you some idea. According to data released by the Japanese giant overnight, the company turned a rare profit over Christmas – aided significantly by staggering PlayStation 4 sales numbers...
News Sony Online Entertainment Drops PlayStation Exclusivity as Part of Acquisition
Now named Daybreak Game Company
Who wants a bombshell to shake them out of their Monday slumber? Sony Online Entertainment, the company behind EverQuest, has announced that it has been acquired by a New York-based investment company named Columbus Nova, meaning that the internally founded outfit will be going multiplatform in the future. The...
News SEGA Downsizing as It Turns Its Attention to Digital Games
American division relocating
SEGA's sadly been on a downward decline ever since it ditched the Dreamcast, and the company will continue to shrink over the coming months as it offers "voluntary retirement" to around 300 employees. It's not yet clear where the firm will be hit the hardest, but SEGA of America has announced plans to relocate from San...
News Attackers Behind PS4's Christmas Outage Hit by Heavy Hack
What goes around, comes around
Behave badly and your actions will catch up with you eventually, as some members of the so-called Lizard Squad may be realising right now. After attaining plenty of mainstream media coverage following the PlayStation Network outage which it apparently initiated over Christmas, the group launched a DDoS service,...
News PS4 Shooter Human Element on Hiatus as Robotoki Winds Down
Out of its element
It's been almost three years since we penned our first article on Robert Bowling's independent venture Robotoki, but fresh from revealing its console debut at The Game Awards last month, the studio has now officially closed up shop. The former Call of Duty creative strategist told
News Final Fantasy XIII-2 Songstress Origa Passes Away
Lost to the Historia Crux
Renowned for unique and mystifying vocals, Russian born singer Origa passed away from cancer during the weekend at the age of 44. She spent most of her life working in Japan and contributed to the games industry by providing vocals to Final Fantasy XIII-2. Anyone who has played it will have undoubtedly heard her, as she not...
News Starbreeze Studios Sells Off Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons to 505 Games
A new chapter
Ask anyone who has played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and they'll tell you that it's a fascinating adventure that culminates with an emotional punch to the gut. Future sequels were hardly implied by this standalone indie title, however, but developer Starbreeze Studios has announced that it has handed the property over to publisher...
News Life Is Strange Almost Looked a Lot More Masculine
Publishers will be publishers
Sigh. Considering the current climate, we did consider whether we should post this story in the first place – but then we figured that we'd be behaving just as badly as the publishers in question. During its recent developer diary, DONTNOD has hinted that some companies wanted it to make Life Is Strange's lead...
News DiRT 4 Stuck in the Mud as Codemasters Cuts Staff
Hoon's going to scratch our gymkhana itch now?
Codemasters' extended emphasis on the PlayStation 3 may be starting to catch up with it, as Eurogamer.net reports that layoffs have hit the legendary British outfit. According to the site, around 50 jobs are being reviewed, with approximately 30 to be made redundant as part of a 30 day consultation...
News Oops, Sony Has Delayed the PS4's Impending Chinese Launch
Raucous red tape
After nearly 14 years of waiting, Sony has delayed the PlayStation 4's impending Chinese launch. The super system was originally planned to release on 11th January, but the firm has cancelled this date, and has yet to announce a new one. Speaking to Reuters, the Japanese giant confirmed that the delay was due to "various factors"...
Rumour Sony's About to Get Really Aggressive in China
Business development
Considering that PlayStation is already enormous in Japan and most of Asia, it was strange to see Sony allow the Xbox One to deploy in China first. Microsoft’s machine launched in the potentially lucrative region earlier in the year, and there’s been very little word from its rival when the PlayStation 4 will follow in its...
News Sony Pegs the PlayStation 4 as Pivotal to Its Future Success
Cuts television and mobile lines
Sony’s doubling down on the PlayStation 4, as it tries desperately to return to profitability. The manufacturer revealed as part of its Investors Day that it will be cutting its television and mobile lines, while focusing on its next-gen platform to pick up the slack. The company also has high hopes for its...
News Blood Sport Is Probably the Worst Kickstarter Idea Ever
Bloody hell
It takes a special kind of Kickstarter campaign to make this author feel squeamish, but as your humble host taps out this story, let it be known that his skin has turned a subtle shade of green. Blood Sport is quite possibly the most mind bogglingly terrible idea in the history of crowd funding – and it’s no surprise that the drive...
News Sony to Enrich PS4 with Fresh Experiences, Functions, and Usability
Organisation outlines business strategy
We all know that the PlayStation 4 is doing incredibly well – after all, this scribe feels like he writes that sentence at least twice every day. The big question, then, is: what’s next for the system? As part of a presentation intended for investors, the platform holder has outlined its strategy for the...
Talking Point Is This Gaming's Most Disappointing Ever Year?
Down for the count
If this is next-gen, then we wished that greatness would have waited until it was ready. We were going to pen this article a little later in the month – the release schedule is still stacked with several other blockbuster titles – but with the Assassin’s Creed Unity saga still a sour taste on the industry’s lips, we’ve...
Talking Point Do You Ever Stump Up for Season Passes?
Chump change
The so-called Season Pass has become the latest way for publishers to extract even more money from cash strapped gamers. What started life as L.A. Noire’s largely innocuous Rockstar Pass – a pre-purchase for several additional cases in the sandbox detective game – has, much like the Online Pass that preceded it, evolved into an...
News Jade Raymond Departs Ubisoft After a Decade in the Job
Will pursue new opportunities
Jade Raymond, one of Ubisoft’s highest profile employees, has decided to depart the French firm after a decade of service. The luminary is perhaps best known for her role as a producer on Assassin’s Creed, but has held multiple positions throughout the company, and was most recently responsible for the formation of...
News Despite PS4's Success, Sony Expects to Lose a Lot of Money Again
Just a few billion
Just when things were starting to look up for Sony chief Kaz Hirai, the sky has come crashing down again. The company has quadrupled the amount of cash that it expects to lose for the current financial year, this time blaming its smartphone business on the issue. It described the problem as “the impairment of goodwill in the...
News Naughty Dog Looks Back on 30 Successful Years in Promo
Fawn over firm's iconic paw print
Naughty Dog is arguably the greatest developer in games today. While the Californian company has fairly humble origins as JAM Software, it exploded in popularity during the mid-90s when it released a little PSone exclusive named Crash Bandicoot. Since then, the company has gone from strength-to-strength, building...
Talking Point Is Indie Becoming a Defunct, Dirty Word?
Term worm
Indie is the video game equivalent of Marmite: a sector of the medium so divisive that it’s simultaneously culpable of both dismay and delight. The very website that you’re reading is evidence of that, but we’re not alone: scuffles and skirmishes more heated than the format wars themselves can be attributed to the increasingly taboo...
News Amazon Coughs Up $970 Million for Streaming Site Twitch
Someone's rich
Twitch has been acquired for a whopping $970 million – but not by Google as originally anticipated. Instead, it’s mega retailer Amazon that’s coughed up the extraordinary amount of cash required to purchase the streaming site, with its bidding rival
News PlayStation Boss Gets Punished for All of E3's Boring Bits This Year
This is for Powers
Regardless of whether or not you liked the content, Sony’s big Gamescom 2014 press conference was much better paced than its E3 2014 one. The folks at SCEE cut out all of the fat, and peppered the organisation’s media briefing in Cologne with trailers, announcements, and very little corporate gobbledygook. SCEA boss Shawn...
News The Man in Charge of Mass Effect Has Boarded the Normandy SR-2
Veteran hangs up his N7 armour
PlayStation 4’s first Mass Effect game didn’t look in a particularly mature state at Comic-Con earlier this year, so it’s concerning to learn that Casey Hudson – the man in charge of the franchise – has departed BioWare before the sequel’s even been properly announced. In his
News Sony Pulls the Plug on Android Support for PlayStation Mobile
That honestly wasn't much fun while it lasted
PlayStation Mobile has been dead for a good while now, but Sony’s more or less pulled the cord today. Originally intended to offer a curated content hub on PlayStation-certified phones and tablets, the platform holder quietly announced this morning that there’s a “possibility that content may not...
News PS4's Homefront: The Revolution Development to Be Finished by Dambuster Studio
Deep Silver digs deep to acquire cursed brand
We’re not entirely sure why anyone would want to own the Homefront franchise at this point, as in addition to being a property with very little to differentiate itself from the wealth of other modern military brands on the market, it also appears to carry a curse. After killing off THQ a couple of...
News Sony Wants to Win Nintendo Wii Owners with the PlayStation 4
For all of the players
Sony has always been a pioneer in the video game space, but sometimes a lack of conviction has let its consoles down. In many ways, the PlayStation 2 was ahead of the casual gamer curve, with titles such as Buzz, SingStar, and EyeToy Play appealing to families in a way that traditional hardcore games hadn't. However, the...
News Saints Row's Stupidity Will Almost Certainly Return on PS4
Loud and proud
Since the success of Saints Row IV on the PlayStation 3, developer Volition has been a little secretive. There were rumours coming out of E3 2014 that publisher Deep Silver was about to announce a new entry in the stupid sandbox series, but that turned out to be the equally ridiculous Dead Island 2. Alas, the aforementioned outfit...
News Will PS4 Win the Battle for China? Our Survey Says...
Ker-ching
Now that the Chinese government no longer believes that video games will rot the mind of its teens like teeth cleaned with Coca-Cola, both Sony and Microsoft are scrambling to release their next-gen consoles in the region. It’s easy to understand why: the untapped nation represents a potential audience of over one billion. So, who will...
Talking Point Are Publishers Taking Pre-Order Bonuses Too Far?
Spoilt for choice
Pre-order bonuses used to be exactly that: pre-order bonuses. Retailers would compete over little knick-knacks such as t-shirts, keyrings, and action figures in order to secure your business, and you’d shop at the store that was giving away the specific goodie that you wanted. It was a largely harmless practice, with the...
News European Developers Favour PlayStation 4 Ahead of Any Other Console
Stop us if you've heard this one before
A study conducted by GDC Europe is the second in less than a week to find that the PlayStation 4 is currently the console of choice for most developers around the continent. In a poll quizzing about 400 studios about their platform preferences, 18 per cent of respondents said that they are currently making...
Talking Point Should More Games Try to Teach Us Something?
Swat the swots
Edutainment is a dirty word. We typically associate the embarrassing portmanteau with low budget trash such as Mario Teaches Typing and Donkey Kong Jr. Math – or worse still, the borderline archaic Flash and Shockwave minigames that litter government websites. However, are we letting bad examples impede the true potential of...
News Guerrilla Games' Co-Founder Combines with Cliff Bleszinski in New Venture
Bet they're making a shooter
Much like Transformers’ colossal Constructicon combined death bot Devastator, veteran developers Cliff Bleszinski and Arjan Brussee are joining forces to launch brand new start-up Boss Key Productions. The former is best known for the Gears of War series, of course, while the latter helped co-found PlayStation...
News Developers Declare That PlayStation 4 Is the Best Console Right Now
The best place to play and work
We know that Sony supposedly loves developers, but is that affection reciprocated? It turns out that it is, as a slew of studios have voted the PlayStation 4 as the best console currently on the market – beating the Xbox One, Wii U, 3DS, and even the firm’s own PlayStation Vita. The system finished fifth in...
News Murdered: Soul Suspect Developer Seals Its Doors Airtight
Goodbye sequel
If you're one of the many gamers drifting their way through the town of Salem in the recently released Murdered: Soul Suspect, the news that the title's developer Airtight Games has closed its doors may send you to an early grave. Just one month after release, the rumoured closure of the firm has been confirmed by numerous news...
News EA Eagerly Anticipating PS4 and Xbox One's Christmas Clash
"We sit in the sweet spot"
In truth, the console wars can be kind of exhausting. If you spend much time on multiformat sites or message boards, you’ll probably find yourself wading through a lot of bickering before you get to the content that you’re actually looking for. However, this back-and-forth actually excites third-party publisher EA...
News Bungie Blows a Hole in Destiny's Out of This World Production Budget
Billion dollar mystery
How much has upcoming PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 shooter Destiny cost to make? We’re still no closer to knowing the truth, as Bungie has shot down reports claiming that the company has splashed out $500 million in order to produce the sci-fi loot-a-thon. That would make it the most expensive game ever made, but it...
News Tecmo Koei Will Become Koei Tecmo from 1st July in Europe
If you say so
You know it's been a bit of a slow news day when you find yourself writing stories about a Japanese publisher that's reversing its name in Europe, but here we are. After what seems like an eternity of penning 'Tecmo Koei' in every Dynasty Warriors review and news article, we're going to have to break free from the habit starting from...
News High Turnover Of Staff At Crytek UK Casts Doubt Over Homefront: The Revolution
More tales of woe for the studio
Yesterday, we reported on rumours that Crytek is in financial trouble, with staff going unpaid and hints that bankruptcy could be on the cards. Today, there are fresh reports which relate to the company's British studio Crytek UK, which was formed form the ashes of TimeSplitters and Haze developer Free Radical...
News Nintendo Thumps PlayStation in E3 2014 Twitter Head-to-Head
Hashtag haymaker
Sony may be winning the hardware sales war with the PlayStation 4, but it couldn’t overcome Nintendo in the great Twitter battle of E3 2014. According to social media intelligence analytics provider Crimson Hexagon, a whopping 47 per cent of related tweets posted during last week’s convention referenced the Wii U maker, with its...
News Sony: PS4 Is the Best Place to Play for Innovative Intellectual Property and Sports
Platform holder reacts to strong NPD performance
Ever since the dark days of the PlayStation 3, platform holder Sony has refrained from commenting too much on the monthly NPD sales reports for the United States. Indeed, May saw the PlayStation 4 secure a fifth consecutive spell at the top of the hardware sales charts, but the Japanese giant pointed...
E3 2014 Sony Says It Won't Ever Force Microtransactions into Its Games
Cough up
Microtransactions are a mainstay in the current console climate, but Sony says that it won’t ever shoehorn the contentious mini-payments into its games. Speaking with GameSpot, software product development head Scott Rohde coolly claimed that the company will only employ the real world purchases where it makes sense – and even then...
Talking Point How Did the Three Major Manufacturers Fare at E3 2014?
Compare and contrast
E3 2014 is over, and we’re breaking the fabric of time and space in order to celebrate. In this inaugural cross-platform, cross-network, cross-website extravaganza, the editors of Nintendo Life, Pure Xbox, and, er, Push Square have put aside their boxing gloves, and joined forces to bring you this industry wide look at all...
E3 2014 God of War III Director Stig Asmussen Swaps Titans for Titans
Sony Santa Monica veteran joins Respawn Entertainment
God of War III director Stig Asmussen’s rumoured sci-fi PlayStation 4 exclusive may have been cancelled, but the talented developer has wasted no time landing back on his feet, revealing that he has hooked up with Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment. According to
News Journey Composer Austin Wintory is Being Fined $50,000 By His Own Union
Shots fired
Earlier this week, on the day of the big E3 press conferences, critically acclaimed (and personal favourite of ours) game composer Austin Wintory released a video detailing some of the troubles that he may be facing from his own union. You may have heard his name thanks to his work on the superb Journey, or flOw, or any number of his...
