Before the era of P2P file sharing if you wanted to get a game for free you had a few options. First if you had a buddy with the right knowhow he could send a disc your way with the game and a crack program on it. If none of your friends were quite that delinquently minded you only had one choice: to hunt through ‘warez’ sites which were generally just spawning grounds for popups, viruses and porn advertisements.
Peer to peer downloading programs changed that and Bittorrent has been one of the most popular downloading programs in years. Though the first protests came from the music industry thanks to Napster, the video games industry has gotten in on the act, with many companies complaining that developing for PCs has become nearly impossible due to rampant piracy. Those who do often institute draconian DRM measures, frustrating players and anarchists everywhere.
The Sims 3 was leaked and downloaded over 180,000 times from May 18th to May 21st, yet the DRM-free game has sold over 1.4 million copies in its first week, making it one of the most successful launches in EA’s history. EA has been one of the main proponents of the argument that piracy is killing the PC gaming industry, but their arguments seem to have been invalidated by this.
My guess is that the theory behind piracy goes like this: you’ve got a small subsection of the market who will pirate a game no matter what. Then you’ve got people who are willing to pay full price for a robust, well-crafted experience, but don’t want to pay full price for something that they think might be cool yet is only netting five or six out of ten on the reviews. In the end even if the panic-mongers at EA are right and piracy is a huge problem, the industry will simply evolve into an online focus where verification is built into games and money will be made by subscription fees or optional VIP packages in free games.
Whatever the review scores say (I haven’t played the game or read any reviews yet), I have to give THQ some major points for their interesting choice in promotions/publicity stunts/giveaways for Red Faction Guerilla. If you’d been strolling the streets of London yesterday you might have seen a car being pounded on by strangers with a sledgehammer.
This wasn’t a case of revenge, random violence or vandalism; THQ had taken a rather odd event most often used for a fundraiser at state fairs and utilized it to promote their newest game. Usually whoever’s running the ‘car smash’ charges a few bucks for a few whacks at the vehicle, but this time taking out your aggression on the automobile was more than free; it was profitable. Inside the car were over a hundred copies of Red Faction Guerilla. Folks at THQ said it was an ‘experiment’ to see how many people would stop in the middle of their day to wail on a car in order to get a free copy of the game, inspired by the game’s incredibly realistic destruction engine. They also get kudos for taking the car in for recycling after the conclusion of the event.
If you’ve ever played Street Fighter II you’ll undoubtedly remember the car-smashing bonus level in which the player was tasked to beat-the-living-crap out of a helpless car as fast as possible.
Well, it looks like a man (obviously contracted by Samsung) decided to get all decked out as Ryu and beat the crap out of a car himself. While he has some cool moves, which definitly look like they hurt, my favorite would have to be the drop kick to the side door.
Other than advertising one of Samsung’s cameras I think this advertisement proves just how cool the bonus stage was. So what gives Capcom? Why wasn’t it in Street Figther IV?
Sony has recently announced that they will begin offering their Vidzone service for the PS3 and PSP in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
If you don’t know what Vidzone is, it’s a free service that allows users to stream pretty much any music video they want to their PS3 and/or PSP through remote play. At launch the service will have 10,000 music videos with more being added regularly. In addition to watching pretty much any music video you want, you can also create a playlist of music videos.
If you are in one of the locations that I listed above you can head over to the Playstation Store and download Vidzone for free.
According to VentureBeat, id Software is gearing up to launch a “true next-generation” iPhone game next week which is none other than Doom Resurrection. Also according to the article this new game will feature 3D graphics unmatched by any game currently on the App Store.
While the game’s development was relatively easy considering they were able to take textures from Doom 3 and port them to the iPhone, it wasn’t all peaches. id Software’s Jack Carmack says that deep into development him and his team were forced to redo much of the “core shooting/aiming” mechanics included in the game.
Doom Resurrection will hit the App Store complete with 8 full levels making up for 5 ful hours of gameplay. Considering the game will run flawless on current-gen iPhones and iPod Touchs, just imagine when it is played on the iPhone 3G S. Yeah, I think Sony and Nintendo really have a new competitor thanks to Apple.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single peice of hardware that gets as many firmware updates as the PSP. Unfortunately those updates tend to, well, never really add anything cool so don’t hold your breath about 5.51.
To further confirm nothing cool is to come from these updates is Sony’s Eric Lempel who says that the update will provide nothing more than tweaks to the hardware’s software stability.
Common Sony, let’s get some cool features already. I mean I can’t think of anything I would want my PSP to do (besides have good games) but I’m sure someone at Sony can!
First Left 4 Dead 2 was announced, then a group of 15,000+ formed to boycott said game, then Valve responded to the boycott and now the group has responded to Valve.
“While we are excited about the idea of new content, we are still in the dark about it. What sort of content is it? For all we know, it could be a new main menu screen. Is it a new map, is it new monsters, is it new weapons, etc…? We’d like to know what is going to be in this new content.
Furthermore, when will this content be released? Is there any sort of timetable within which the content will be made available? These are all questions we would like Valve to elaborate on.
Last, Valve is trying to address the community split from releasing a new game in the series… they did not go into details, and are still working on it.”
I mean I don’t really blame them for giving such a stern response. Valve says that there will be new content for the original Left 4 Dead but exactly what kind of content and when, if ever, will this content hit? Let’s hope that Valve didn’t just tell the boycott group what they wanted to hear to calm them down as we will have a very unhappy community if that is the case.
First announced at EA, Kojima and Konami have kept their Metal Gear Arcade under wraps pretty well. Well, those wraps are still tightly bound but at least we have a few details and the above picture to hold us over thanks to the latest issue of Famitsu.
According ot the magazine, players will control the arcade while sitting down, wearing 3D glasses using a controller that allows for seperate movement and viewpoint control. Better yeah, in addition to being able to play solo players will get the chance to participate in up to 16-player co-op. Sounds awesome.
Unfortunately, there is no word on if Metal Gear Arcade will ever make it stateside but for those in Japan, it is set to hit arcades over there later this year.
Saints Row 2 was released all the way back in October but as a way of saying thanks for purchasing the game, THQ and Volition have released a free DLC pack currently exclusive to the Xbox 360.
Entitled The Unkut Pack, this pack will add all sorts of new character customization items from T-shirts and tanktops to watchets and tattoos. Below is the official description:
Pimp out your personality with over 60 brand new customization items including Unkut watches, necklaces, bracelets, T-shirts, tank tops, hoodies and camisoles. Change it up with a preppy polo, or dress it down with some jeans at Sloppy Seconds. Ink-up your character with 16 all new tattoo options.
As for a PS3 and PC version? Well there’s no word on when or even if those versions will drop but we’ll keep you updated.
If you’ve been looking to get your hands onOverlord IIbut just can’t wait until its June 23rd release date you are in luck as a demo for the game has hit both the PC and PS3.
Xbox 360 gamers have had the chance to get their paws all over Overlord II as the demo was released on that platform last week.
Sure, the game looks cool, especially after watching the above trailer, but will Overlord II deliver? I guess I’ll have to go download the demo and check it out.
Before the era of P2P file sharing if you wanted to get a game for free you had a few options. First if you had a buddy with the right knowhow he could send a disc your way with the game and a crack program on it. If none of your friends were quite that delinquently minded you only had one choice: to hunt through ‘warez’ sites which were generally just spawning grounds for popups, viruses and porn advertisements.
