We just got done telling you about how Square Enix had launched a smartphone focus development studio dubbed Hippos Lab so it’s no secret that mobile platforms are very valuable entities. In fact, it seems that they are so valuable that Valve may be considering porting their Steam digital distribution service to mobile platforms such as Apple’s iOS.
News of this comes to us from a Steam forum member who suggests Valve co-founder Gabe Newell recently went on record during a company meeting as saying that they are considering expanding to the iOS and Android platforms. What they means exactly we aren’t sure but if we take a look at the Android platform we can see competing app stores such as the recently launched Android Appstore from Amazon so it’s definitely possible here but what about Apple? Unless you have a jailbroken device that is capable of installing unauthorized software there’s no way to get a competing app store on the platform so it would definitely be a stretch to get Steam onto the platform.
Either or, this has yet to be officially confirmed so we’re going to have to wait and see how it unfolds.
EA, one of the heavyweights in the game publishing industry, made an interesting note earlier today, saying that they estimate that 40% of games today are bought as digital downloads. Which is of no surprise, as digital downloads have steadily risen of the past years, so much that Valve is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in sales on Steam.
EA also noted that retail outfits are becoming less and less relevant, even going as far as saying NPD sales figures are irrelevant as well, since they don’t include sales of digital copies (neither Steam nor EA Store nor any other digital game distributor releases their sales numbers). EA predicts that digital will overtake retail in 2011.
Currently, it’s known that Blizzard plans to use its Battle.net service for their own in-house games like Diablo III and StarCraft 2. However, Blizzard’s Rob Pardo recently went on record as saying they might open it up to third parties.
“It’s something that we’ve definitely always talked about. The problem for us is that it takes a lot of work from our other teams. Every time we have the discussion, we try to figure out what’s going to happen if let’s say a Blizzard game was coming out and a third party game was coming out at the same time. Could we be agnostic in that way? Could we offer the same level of support that we offer our games to third parties? We just never know. It just seems like a big job for us.”
If Blizzard were to do this, Valve’s Steam digital distribution platform would finally be getting a run for its money. I wonder which studios would take sides.
via cvg
Buzz had been circulating for some time now that had us wondering if Modern Warfare 2 would be hitting store shelves for the PC on the same day as the Xbox 360 and PS3. The fact that major retailers such as GameStop briefly had the PC title listed with a November 24th release date didn’t exactly sooth our wounds.
Luckily Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling has let us know via Twitter that there will in fact be no delay and the PC version will be hitting store shelves on the same day as the console versions.
Furthermore, he also let us know that Modern Warfare 2 will be coming to Valve‘s digital distribution service Steam, if that’s your kind of thing.
GameStop has recently announced that their online Casual Store has gone live featuring digital downloads of just about every casual PC game you could think of. And, to celebrate its launch, GameStop is offering 50% off on select downloads with the full list made viewable, here.
Games featured in GameStop’s Casual store include Plants Vs. Zombies, Peggle, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc. Additionally, GameStop will host over 800 casual game trials that you can download free of charge.
We learned back at E3 that Microsoft would be discontinuing their Xbox Originals service to make way for their all new Games on Demand service that would let gamers download full Xbox 360 titles. This led many gamers to turn their head towards Sony asking if they too would offer an extensive library of full retail games for digital deliver. I mean they already offer games like Warhawk and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, right?
Eric Lempel, an exec over at Sony, responded to the idea:
It’s not something we have planned, just because the size of the games is massive. With Blu-ray we can put up to 50 gigs on a dual-layer disc, while [Xbox 360] is still on a 9-gig media. So technically it’s possible, but I think the issue would be, ‘Do you want to download 40 gigs and keep that on your hard drive?
I’ll have to agree with Mr. Lempel, downloading a 40GB game and storing it on the PS3′s harddrive wouldn’t be my idea of a walk in the park. However, waht about the multiplatform games that only take up a fraction of a Blu-ray’s
Read (Kotaku)
It’s no secret that the PSP’s UMD format was nothing less than an utter failure, hell even its creator Sony decided to ultimately give it the boot. But wait, was it declining UMD sales or an evil plot by Sony that caused UMD’s death. According to Naoya Matsui, a Sony exec, it was an evil plot:
“We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning. But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first – things like the transferral of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as Media Go.”
Do you believe him? I mean, I guess it does make sense that they needed time to prepare their Playstation Network for total digital delivery but would they really put all the time and money into developing the UMD format if they were just going to kill it off?
Read (Edge)
If the above image is anything to go by the guys over at Steam seem to have uploaded said image clearly displaying Bethesda’s Morrowind and Oblivion before they were announced to hit the service.
The ad was displayed on the homepage for a brief period of time before it was taken down. However, you can still view the ad to verify its legitimacy here, which is clearly located on the Steam’s servers.
I think its safe to say that both of these games will in fact be hitting the service at some point in the very near future. I mean, Bethesda’s Fallout 3 is available from Steam, why not some of their back catalog too?
Read (Gamerlimit)
If you’re an avid PSP user, when Sony announced the PSP Go you probably thought to yourself, “how am I going to play my old games on this new console?”
Well, Gizmodo recently caught up with Sony’s John Koller who explained that they will offer some sort of service that will allow gamers to obtain digitized versions of their old UMD games. Exactly how much this service will cost (if anything) and when it will go live, we don’t know, but we’ll keep you updated.
The PSP Go is set to drop on October 1st of this year for $249
Despite having everything from hardware specs to official press images leaked a few days ago, Sony has come forth at their E3 conference and taken the veil that was never really their off of the PSP Go.
Just like stated in the leaked specs, the PSP Go will include 16GB of internal storage, no UMD slot and a slideout control panel. Of course, no UMD slot means a 100% digital library of games which is certainly a step towards the future.
Something we didn’t know from the leaked documents was the price and relesae date which were also revealed during the E3 conference. The PSP Go will sell for $249 and hit store shelves in the United States this October.
Read (Yahoo!)
