Just about every commercial industry in the market today is making the shift towards environmentally friendly practices. This can be seen very clearly in the auto industry as many automakers make the shift towards fully electric or hybrid vehicles. In the video gaming industry, it seems that EA Sports will be taking a similar route announcing today that they will no longer be printing paper manuals instead including digital manuals on the actual games themselves.
According to EA, this is in a move to make their game production greener and save money in the long run. Printing all of those manuals and then stuffing them into the boxes can’t be cheap so we’re going to assume that this will be a major cost cutting maneuver for the company.
However, it may come as a bad thing to some consumers who enjoy looking at the printed imagery in some of these games. You win some, you lose some, right?
We’re eagerly awaiting the latest Deus Ex game, Human Revolution, Ubisoft was kind to finally showcase some gameplay from the game — 8 minutes of it. Actually, the voice acting sounds a bit cheezy in our opinion, and the visuals are… well… not exactly the way that impressive trailer described them as. And the gameplay seems kinda uninspired. And the switching from first to third person feels disorienting, and… well, you get the point: we’re not impressed.
We’re now having second thoughts about Deus EX Human Revolution. Is anyone else canceling their pre-order?
BioWare’s Mass Effect franchise has largely been considered one of the best video game franchises to be introduced within recent memory. Currently on its second iteration, Mass Effect 2 offers gamers top notch gameplay mixed with beautiful visuals that has garnered virtually positive reception across the board. However, seeing how Mass Effect 2 has been out for quite some time, chances are you if you’re a diehard fan you’ve already played through it and are thirsty for more.
Well, lucky for you BioWare has just come forth today to announce that they will be releasing the ‘Arrival’ DLC pack on March 29th for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for $6.99 or 560 Microsoft Points depending on which platform you’re making the purchase for.
Included in the pack is new gamplay that focuses on the Commander Shepard with Admiral Hackett said to be making a major appearance.
If you’re a Facebook user (and judging by the amount of active users, changes you are) you’ve probably heard of one of Zynga’s games. If it’s not FarmVille it’s CityVille and if it’s not CityVille it’s Mafia Wars. Furthermore, if you’ve got friends who are addicted to the games you’ll probably know how annoying recieving 10,000 invites to be their neighbor or join their mob is.
Luckily, if you were worried about this annoyance coming to Xbox Live, you no longer have to worry. Zynga’s own Brian Reynolds came forth to speak of the matter saying the the Xbox Live is just too small of a demographic for them to invest their time in. Below is a quote he recently game to Industry Gamers regarding the matter:
“[Xbox Live's] too small a demographic. Think about, of my friends, how many of them own an Xbox 360? Well, I’m a game developer and I even come from a triple-A space so we might even be in the double digits… Twenty or maybe even thirty percent of my friends might have an Xbox 360, but effectively 100% of them have Facebook and effectively 100% of them have a mobile phone. Of them, probably 90% have a smartphone.”
Crysis 2‘s March 22nd release date is quickly approaching and with demos on the market for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC gamers are getting a glimpse of the graphically intensive action. But what, there’s no PS3 demo available for download, you say? Yes! It was just made known that Crytek has been forced to pull the PS3 multiplayer demo of Crysis 2 due to severe connection problems plaguing said demo.
According to EA, pulling the demo will give Crytek enough time to polish out the bugs prior to the game actually launching but this probably also means that the PS3 demo won’t be resurfacing before the game is out considering, you know, it’s out in just a few days.
If you’ve played the Crysis 2 demo how have you liked it?
Released back in 2008 was Spore from Maxis and EA. If you haven’t played this game it quite literally allows you to take a civilization from a single celled organism to an intelligent race capable of intergalactic space travel. Sure, it had its flaws but it was a very innovative idea and Maxis did a good job executing it. Instead of releasing a title that directly sequels Spore, Maxis is going on to release Darkspore – a game partially based on Spore but includes new elements being described as a fast paced scifi action RPG.
Anyways, originally slated for release on march 29th, EA has come forth today to announce that they will be delaying the game about one month with a new release set for April 26th. Luckily things will be soothed a bit by way of an open beta which was just confirmed with a release date set sometimes towards the beginning of April.
Confused about what Darkspore is? Check out the above gameplay video and let us know what you think.
Minecraft has taken the world by storm as one of the most successful independently developed games to ever hit the scene. Starting off being developed by just a single coder, the game has now spawned a company dubbed Majong Specifications and over 1.6 million purchases have been made. However, what many people may not know is that Minecraft is still in beta meaning there is still quite a bit of room to grow.
Today a future update has been made known by way of YouTube video which shows off wolves. These wolves have some unique behaviors such as sitting down when presented with a piece of meat and will even attack another animal (such as a cow) when you do so first. There’s no word if these wolves will attack mobs for you but if so they will add a whole new weapon to your arsenal.
Check out the above video and let us know what you think.
Warner Bros Interactive and its studios, which include Rocksteady Studios (developers of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City) and NetherRealm Studios (developers of Mortal Kombat), have struck a deal with Epic Games for an Unreal Engine 3 license to all their games through 2014. Why 2014? Well, that’s apparently when Unreal Engine 4 will be released, and UE4 will only be available for next generation consoles. That’s good to know. It’s also good to know that the next Batman game (after Akrham City), will most likely be a lot prettier than the current one.
Epic recently revealed an updated version of the engine at GDC, which blew everyone’s mind. You can check that sweet video here.
Steam is running a weekend deal for DarkSiders, which is 75% off and for this weekend only, will retail for just $10. The Volition developed and THQ published DarkSiders was originally released last Summer to little fanfare, but it was still well received title among gaming critics — our own review gave it an 8 out of 10, and praised its stylish visuals, varied combat and great puzzles and dungeons. If that sounds like it might interest you, you should definitely consider Darksiders, especially for the low price of just $10 bucks.
Sony has delayed the North American release of MotorStorm Apocalypse indefinitely due to the tsunami disaster in Japan. The launch had been previously delayed in the UK, and of course, in Japan, which itself is dealing with an apocalypse of sort, with thousands dead, hundreds of billions in damages, and several nuclear reactors that are in dangerous states right now.
We can certainly understand the delay of MotorStorm Apocalypse, as the game is set in a city devastated by earthquakes — not the most interesting setting these days, considering the disaster in Japan. Sony has yet to set a new date for the game, but we expect a few months delay, with a release this Summer. The game was originally scheduled for release on April 12, 2011.
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