Pretty much one thing, really.
Our giant, in-depth, definitive Starcraft II review is coming this weekend in two parts – one for the single-player campaign, and one for the multi-player. The game is so massive both in content and in mindshare that we decided it best to split up the SP and MP reviews.
You can expect both reviews to land sometime Sunday evening, if we’re still awake from our weekend-long marathon.
See you out there.
I think EA will migrate to an online subscription model, so instead of paying $10 for an online pass, I think EA will charge $5 or $10 a month which will give the player the ability to play any of the companies sports games online.
- Michael Patcher
Gaming industry analyst Michael Pachter predicts that online multiplayer will become subscription based as game publishers seek new and painful ways to shake money out of the pockets of consumers. Patcher, an analyst from Wedbush Morgan, says companies such as EA will begin to charge players a monthly fee to play online — something all-too-familiar to players of MMOs, but foreign to the majority of online players.
Interestingly, the infamous Patcher suggests that even if companies move to subscription models, some games (such as EA Sports titles) won’t take a huge hit, claiming that “they will be fine if 1-2 million do that [pay for subscription] and they will be fine if other 10-20 million people who play EA Sports games keep buying new games.”
Rumors suggest that Activision is already planning to charge for online Call of Duty play, which would amount to aggressive implementation of a subscription based model for online shooters. While community managers from Infinity Ward suggested that there were no plans to put CoD on a subscription model, there’s no telling what the higher-ups are thinking at Activision and elsewhere.
“Blow It Out Your Ass” is a series inspired by the unapologetic swagger of Duke Nukem that highlights brutally honest talk from figures in the gaming industry.
Speaking to Eurogamer during the Develop Conference, DoubleFine’s Tim Schafer has revealed his candid feelings about Activision’s grand poobah Bobby Kotick, referring to Kotick as a “dick” and a “total prick.”
“His obligation is to his shareholders. Well, he doesn’t have to be as much of a dick about it, does he? I think there is a way he can do it without being a total prick. It seems like it would be possible. It’s not something he’s interested in.”
Oh, it’s on.
Schafer is behind DoubleFine’s Brutal Legend, which was slated to be published by Activision until the Blizzard merger put the kibosh on those plans. EA eventually picked up Brutal Legend, and, well, the rest is history. Schafer brought out the big guns, highlighting Kotick’s apparent disdain for his own industry, adding: “[Kotick] makes a big deal about not liking games, and I just don’t think that attitude is good for games in general. I just don’t think we’re an industry of widgets.”
His criticism didn’t stop there, either. We’ll just let his words speak on their own:
We can approach it like we approach bars of soap, where you’re just trying to make the cheapest bar of soap. He definitely has that that kind of widget-maker attitude. I don’t think he’s great for the industry, overall. You can’t just latch onto something when it’s popular and then squeeze the life out of it and then move on to the next one. You have to at some point create something, build something.
Hopefully he’ll go back to another industry scene. He could go to an industry that makes more money. Ball bearings… something that suits his passions more. Weapons manufacturing?
Ball’s in your court, Bobby.
With the rise of “pre-order” madness wherein companies offer beta participation in exchange for a full down-payment on their game, free demos are something of a lost art. Fortunately, Ubisoft and Steam have teamed up to bring you a completely free weekend of their upcoming World War 2 real-time strategy game, R.U.S.E.
For those unfamiliar with the game, R.U.S.E. is a a WW2 RTS centered around the art of deception. Victory will require expert bluffing, spying, sabotage, and, you know, strategy — you’ll be able to hide units, reveal enemy plans, create decoy offensives, and a number of other unrevealed actions to deceive and ultimately destroy opponents.
Of course, you’ll just have to play it to see if it’s any good. Click here to launch Steam and start pre-loading R.U.S.E.
PC gamers have gotten their comeuppance in recent years after a golden age of self-proclaimed gaming superiority with the flourishing of the console world. A microcosm of this ongoing saga can be seen in the Battlefield series of games which for a long spell reigned supreme on the PC. With the addition of the Bad Company IP to the Battlefield series, consoles have received a lot more attention.
Case in point: The “Onslaught Mode” addition to Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This update, which will pit four players cooperatively against a horde of AI bad guys, first came to consoles back on June 22 and 23 with no plans for PC deployment.
PC players can finally rejoice, because DICE has confirmed Onslaught Mode is coming to BFBC2 on the PC. No release date or price was given, so who knows if the update will be released within the next year (we do recall something about Battlefield 1943 supposedly releasing on the PC last year and never coming about). DICE originally eschewed committing to a PC version of Onslaught, claiming concerns about public servers switching from 32-players to four.
The way things are headed, it’s not a stretch to imagine that by the time the Halo universe becomes a reality you’ll need to show your papers for just about everything. The Halo: Reach collectors edition appears to have your back, featuring a sew-on patch, a “UNSC” identity badge, and what looks to be a medical card. With the included diary, this is set to be the most practical set of collectors edition crap ever assembled.
The collectors edition is a bit of a reach from the regular price, and will set you back $79.99. Look for Halo: Reach to hit store shelves on September 14th later this year.
Check out a close-up of the contents after the break.
The title of “midrange graphics champion” changes hands more often than the baton in a relay race, and Nvidia is picking up the crown in this round. The GFX Giant announced today that that Direct-X 11 GTX 460 will be the newest recruit in its Fermi series. The good news is that the hardware has received broad acclaim for its performance. The better news is that it will only set you back $199 clams.
The GTX 460 will add two cards to the Fermi Flotilla:
You can grab the 768MB edition today, but unless you need to buy the card right frickin’ now, we recommend waiting to grab the 1GB flavor for only $30 more. Check out Nvidia’s product page for additional specs, or any of popular review houses listed here:
The Guru of 3D Review
AnandTech Review
Tom’s Hardware Review
HardOCP Review
Hot Hardware Review
Dragon Age: Origins was a breath of fresh air in the role-playing genre in the same league as titles like Mass Effect. And yes, those two titles are from the same developer, which just goes to show how BioWare continues to set the bar. The fantastical Dragon Age universe is now set to expand with the announcement of Dragon Age 2.
According to the game developers, the sequel will feature a number of revisions or enhancements to the original game  – some of which will remain vague until demonstrated. Here’s what BioWare lists as key features of DA2:
The game will feature a new hero in addition to all of these goodies, and we’re betting big on that hero being the unholy demon spawn of a certain Miss Morrigan (seriously, we’ll go bananas). Our favorite hopefuls are the new graphics and visual style, which were the only things really holding Dragon Age: Origins back in our book.
For now, it’s time to play the waiting game. EA plans to release Dragon Age 2 in March 2011.
Check out BioWare’s concept art below:
I’m not sure whether to file this under “shit that’s totally obvious,” because that might just be a projection of what’s obvious to me as a self-admitting absent minded gamer. Iowa State University saw fit to investigate the relationship between attention span and the — totally productive — activities of television watching and video game playing. The university concluded that exceeding the recommended guidelines for engagement in these activities can, you know, turn your brain into mush (technical science terminology).
The university assessed a sample of 1,323 middle childhood participants (why they didn’t decide to increase the sample size by 14 is beyond us) during a 13-month period wherein parents, children, and teachers reported television and video game consumption as well as attention problems. The study also included 210 “late adolescent/early adult” participants who were entrusted with self-reporting their gaming shenanigans.
The study found that “exposure to television and video games was associated with greater attention problems,” but like any scientific study, did not include a philosophical assessment of values, leaving open the possibility that the things children “ought” to be paying attention to — like arcane classroom bullcrap — might be less valuable to development than the sophisticated problem solving found in gaming. Of course, playing mindless shooters and watching Law and Order repeatedly for years on end probably doesn’t fall into that high-value category, but we’ll let the folks with the chalk stained, padded-sleeve jackets figure that out for us.
FULL DISCLOSURE: When I first caught wind of this little study, my attention span quickly strayed from “hey, this is an important thing I should communicate to my audience” to “ooh, I wonder what I could photoshop for this article.” Proof positive, folks. This study is real.
If you’ve been part of the Starcraft II beta, launch up your client and install the latest patch to jump back in. The beta is rumored to start back up soon, and this latest patch indicates movement towards a relaunch.
Just make sure to stay vigilant while turtling, because Blizzard is fixing to 6 pool Zerg rush your personal information.
UPDATE: It turns out the beta is not actually live yet, despite the patch. Sorry for the confusion!
