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| Xbox 360 | Time spent gaming on the rise - NPD
May 27, 2010 at 6:49 PM
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| Annual survey shows gamers averaging 13 hours of playtime a week; PCs and consoles being used more as portable popularity wanes. 
Gamers are spending more and more time with their home consoles and less on their portable systems, according to the market research firm NPD Group. A survey conducted by the firm concluded that gamers over the age of 2 in the United States spent over 13 hours playing video games each week, up from 12.3 hours per week for the previous year. The uptick is based on a January 2010 online survey that garnered 18,872 responses. The study also found that hours spent playing console games spiked the most dramatically, with the average time spent playing vaulting 9 percent from the year prior. Time spent with PC games rose 6 percent, and portable gaming dropped double digits, down 16 percent from 2009. Additionally, the study concluded that the age of the average gamer rose to 32 years old from 31. According to the survey, the "extreme gamer" classification saw its weekly average hours spent playing games rise from nearly 40 to more than 48. The firm did not detail what criteria it used to include respondents in the "extreme" group, but did note that it makes up just 4 percent of the market. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PC | Star Wars: The Old Republic Exclusive Preview - The Sith Warrior In-Depth
May 27, 2010 at 5:55 PM
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| Get some in-depth intel on the mighty Sith Warrior profession in this highly anticipated online game. 
The Old Republic will be BioWare and LucasArts' massively multiplayer game that takes place in the pre-A New Hope universe of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. We've already revealed all the game's character classes and covered many of the basics of gameplay, which developer BioWare ambitiously intends to infuse with all the in-depth story, intriguing characters, and moral choices of a traditional single-player role-playing game. And as we've also revealed, you can play as characters on either side of the conflict between the evil Sith lords and the noble Jedi and their allies in the peace-loving Old Republic. One career path you can choose is that of the Sith Warrior, a powerful combat class that is unafraid to don a suit of heavy armor and is otherwise dedicated to following the dark side of the Force...and utterly trashing all enemies with brutal lightsaber-based attacks. We now have some new details on the profession's advanced capabilities, as well as one of its non-player character companions. While the Sith Warrior class seems like a pretty straightforward profession with only two steps to success (step one: ignite lightsaber, step two: commence the hurting), it turns out that this class will branch into two separate, advanced classes: the juggernaut and the marauder. Juggernauts will be heavy-duty frontline fighters equipped with Force powers that increase their resistance to damage and demoralize their foes, making them even easier targets. (In online game parlance, this makes the juggernaut a Sith "tank" class.) The marauder class, on the other hand, focuses on dual-wielding two lightsabers at once and excels in combat with multiple opponents. (In online game terms, this would make the marauder a "DPS," or "damage per second," class that focuses primarily on dealing as much damage as possible.) In addition to having two promising career choices of either "laugh off your enemies' pitiful attacks" or "slice them to ribbons, then laugh," the Sith Warrior, like other professions in the game, can also recruit the services of "associate" characters--NPCs who can help fill out your adventuring party during those times when your other friends aren't logged into the game to join up or for those times when you'd prefer to fly solo. One of the Sith Warrior's companions will be Vette, a wisecracking pirate of the Twi'lek race (the humanoids with those crazy tentacles growing out of their heads, like Bib Fortuna from Return of the Jedi) with a dark past. It seems that Vette was born into slavery, but her owner was ruined financially by the infamous pirate Nok Drayen, whom she decided to join in order to explore the universe--particularly, those places she wasn't supposed to be. Later, Drayen mysteriously emancipated all his slaves, and the young pirate found a new lease on life on the smuggler planet of Nar Shaddaa, where she meets your character and comes across as a character who has both a cynical side as well as a lighter side that comes out when people around her take themselves too seriously and seem like they need to be taken down a notch. It's suggested that Vette has some family out there, a sister and her mother, though she lost contact with them years ago. Having learned more about both the advanced professions and the companions available to the Sith Warrior class, we're really looking forward to more updates on how the game's other professions will differentiate themselves as they become more powerful. GameSpot looks forward to bringing you new updates on the game very soon as we approach this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in June. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PlayStation 3 | Gearbox counting down to Z-Day
May 27, 2010 at 5:30 PM
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| Borderlands studio files USPTO trademark application for potential title of upcoming project.
Just after the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Borderlands creator Gearbox Software filed a host of applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office to secure the rights to possible future game titles. Among these titles were "World War II Hero," "Brothers In Arms War Hero," "Modern War Hero," and "War Hero." Of the last, studio CEO Randy Pitchford confirmed to GameSpot that a game of that name was in development, but well "down the road." This week, one more of those "down the road" projects may have emerged, courtesy of a new trademark application that Gearbox has filed with the USPTO. The game name in question is "Z-Day," and it carries the customary telltale description of "computer game software for personal computers and home video game consoles; motion picture films about action and adventure." Gearbox has yet to respond to requests for comment on the project. However, on the studio's Web site, the developer currently has four in-development projects listed. Among these are Aliens: Colonial Marines, as well as three unnamed developments. One of these untitled works is likely a sequel to its highly stylized double-platinum shooter Borderlands. Though a sequel has not yet been announced, Borderland's critical and commercial success led creative director Mike Neumann to call a follow-up "a no-brainer" in November, and Take-Two has trumpeted the fact that it retains the "long-term publishing rights" to the franchise. As for the under-the-radar War Hero, it remains to be seen whether the recently filed mark is a rebranding of that project or an entirely new title. Notably, the title also appears to be in use by another game developer: Arrowhead Games. In October 2009, the group announced that it was working on a game titled ZDay, one that sees players fighting zombies in a massively multiplayer first-person shooter environment. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| DS | Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light battling to DS
May 27, 2010 at 9:53 AM
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| Square Enix announces new "back to the basics" Final Fantasy game for Nintendo's handheld, due in autumn 2010. 
An all-new Final Fantasy game is coming out this autumn, Square Enix announced today. Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light will take the series "back to the basics," according to the Japanese publisher and will arrive on the Nintendo DS this autumn. Four-player co-op has been promised for the title, which will be a turn-based role playing game. It will feature a class system akin to Final Fantasy X-2, with players being able to switch their character's class by changing the hat they're wearing, Square Enix said. "Ease of play" is a focus for the game, with Square promising that users will be able to set their own battle commands to the DS's touch screen. The 4 Heroes of Light will feature over 20 different "jobs," including traditional black and white mages, a ranger, and the like. The cooperative elements will involve up to four players locally taking on dungeons and earning points that can be traded for items to use in the single-player campaign. Visually, the game will draw from a picture-book aesthetic, with art direction duties taken on by Akihiko Yoshida, who looked after Final Fantasy XII and the DS edition of Final Fantasy III. Development is being handled by the team that developed Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV for the DS. Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light tells the story of a young hero called Brandt venturing through the land of Horne attempting to rescue the land's youngest princess after discovering her missing on his 14th birthday. The game is rated 12 by PEGI and E10+ by the ESRB. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PlayStation 3 | Scratch: The Ultimate DJ coming to iPhone, iPad, PC
May 27, 2010 at 12:13 AM
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| Scratch publisher announces game will come to mobile platforms; no mention of 360 or PS3 versions.
Genco Interactive and 7 Studios first announced Scratch: The Ultimate DJ in late 2008, revealing the hip-hop rhythm game and its Numark-made turntable peripheral would arrive on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later that same year. But the game never made it that far. Activision evenually bought 7 Studios, and in April 2009 Numark and Scratch publisher Genius Products filed legal action against the DJ Hero publisher for breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets. The court found no evidence against Activision, but did order the publisher to make 7 Studios give the Scratch code back to Genius and Numark. In August 2009, Genius and Numark hired new developer Bedlam Games to resume work on Scratch, announcing the game would ship on the 360 and PS3 in early 2010. It now seems that Scratch is headed for other platform pastures. In a press release this week, Numark announced that Scratch is now in development for the iPhone, iPad, and PC, and are expected for release later this year. No mention of the 360 or PS3 platforms was made. Numark CEO Jack O’Donnell said he sees new platforms like the iPad as "a perfect fit for Scratch: The Ultimate DJ". This news comes four months after Activision CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed the publisher was working on DJ Hero 2. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PC | The Sims 3: Ambitions Exclusive Hands-On - Ghost Hunting, Inventing, New Career Content
May 26, 2010 at 7:28 PM
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| We get our hands on this career-minded expansion for The Sims 3. 
By now, you know The Sims 3 and the story of The Sims in general--a series of games that lets you control the lives, loves, and potty breaks of little computer people who live in little computer houses and go to little computer jobs every day. While your sims' jobs typically take them out of play for several in-game hours, the upcoming Ambitions expansion actually adds several new careers that you can play through all day long, plus new career-related gameplay features that add a lot more variety and choice to the daily grind. We got our hands on an early version of the game to try out and have much to report. Ambitions' new features run through the entire base game of The Sims 3, including new traits that play into the new career. For example, "eccentric" makes your sims handier inventors and "perceptive" makes your sims better at sniffing out clues when working as private investigators. The expansion also adds an entirely new (and huge) neighborhood called Twinbrook, a backwater bayou town with plenty of amenities in the center of the city. And, perhaps in keeping with some of the new professions, like ghost hunter and PI, the town has lots of weird, backwoods swamps on the outskirts. While we've covered the other professions in some detail, we haven't focused in on the ghost hunter or the inventor until now. The ghost hunter profession benefits greatly from logic skill (to work the experimental Ghostbusters-like contraptions that capture loose spirits), so it helps to pick logic-based traits like "genius" and "computer whiz" to aid your performance. Like with all of Ambitions' professions, you can sign up for the career path straightaway by picking up the nearest newspaper (and using the "find a profession" option rather than the "find a job" option), which will immediately get you started on your career path. Better still, even though professions do have set work hours each day, they don't always require you to start an hour beforehand by jumping into that pesky carpool car. Instead, you'll get an onscreen pop-up alert that lets you know it's time for work, and you can get started on your own time. Early on in your career path, you can actually take your time, but as you gradually get promoted, your job will become more time consuming and you'll be better off if you hurry to your job. As you might expect, bustin' ghosts requires you to work odd hours (you'll start off at about 5:00 p.m. in game time and work until the wee hours of the morning). The meat and potatoes of the profession are "spirit collecting" jobs that require you to don your ectoplasm-stained jumpsuit, hop into a cab, and travel across town to an infested house. Once you arrive, you'll be given an onscreen meter that keeps track of how many loose ghosts are on the premises, and you must head into the building to capture them, which you can do simply by clicking on a ghost to interact and choosing the "capture" option. Ghosts appear as glowing blobs of varying colors and have different ages (such as young or old) and different temperaments (lower-level ghosts are "kind" or "nice," while higher-level ghosts will put up much more of a fight). They also have a monetary value attached to capturing them. Once you've sucked up every specter, you'll receive a cash bounty for clearing out the property and have the spirits in your inventory, which you can then donate to science. Interestingly, while you'd figure that working the graveyard shift as a ghost hunter would be a lonely and isolating job that cuts deeply into your sim's need to socialize, it turns out that several of the jobs you'll take will actually be in the inhabited homes of other sims across town. You can interact before and after you've taken care of their ghost problem, so you can still make friends, chat, and get to know their traits. However, these other sims won't feel like talking when there's a ghost within sight range--they'! ll be too busy running in terror. On the other hand, if you decide to take a more hands-off profession, you might try the inventor career, which benefits greatly from both the logic and handiness skills. This profession is a much less social gig that requires your sim to make frequent trips to the local junkyard to hunt down piles of scrap from the trash heaps. You must then invest in a pricey workbench for your home and then spend hours hammering away until you can invent something useful. You might start with less-than-useful tchotchkes like a dipping llama (similar to the dipping bird…but with a llama) and move on up to more-powerful stuff like a tunnel that goes directly to the beach or the ever-popular time machine. In all cases, you have different choices for advancing in your profession (rather than simply performing one and only one task). While there are jobs that are directly related to your gig that contribute to your advancement (which is measured in a meter in your profession tab), you can also perform other tasks that will advance your profession level and earn you extra cash. For example, there's a riddle contest downtown that tests your logic skill as a ghost hunter and earns you a nice chunk of change for your trouble. All professions have built-in money makers that will let you pursue them full time and keep your sims supplied with all the delivered pizza they want. Ambitions' profession system is a much more flexible, much more open-ended and lenient way for your sims to earn some extra scratch. Each one has clearly been designed to be self-contained enterprises that ensure your sims can meet their basic needs of health, wealth, and social interaction without having to constantly come to a jarring stop to take that urgent bathroom break. Ambitions is scheduled for release on June 1. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| PlayStation 3 | Michael Jordan to front NBA 2K11 - ESPN
May 26, 2010 at 7:25 PM
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| Sports network reports that Chicago Bulls legend and Charlotte Bobcats owner will be 2K's next hoops cover athlete, could be playable along with other retired stars. 
As the upcoming off-season's class of unrestricted free agents shows, there's no shortage of star athletes in today's NBA. Despite that, ESPN reports that 2K Sports is saving the cover of NBA 2K11 for a storied star from a previous era, Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan. The sports network (which is featured annually in Electronic Arts' competing NBA Live series of games) cites "multiple sources" as having confirmed that 2K Sports has landed Jordan to be the game's spokesperson. The report also includes speculation that Jordan could be playable in the game, allowing gamers to step into his Air Jordans to re-create the biggest moments of his career. Even less solid is the story's assertion that 2K Sports is in negotiations to include Jordan's teammates and other players from the era to more accurately depict those moments; that bit of information is attributed to "whispers." One problem that would arise from such a gameplay mode would be the need to negotiate individual deals with all of the retired players. While a logistical headache, it's a task 2K has handled before. When 2K Sports created All-Pro Football 2K8 without the NFL license, it included more than 200 retired players, each of which needed to be negotiated with individually. 2K Sports having to pursue all the other players while already having Jordan under contract would reverse a long-standing problem publishers had with the star. For much of Jordan's playing career, he had a licensing deal separate from the one that included the rest of the NBA. As a result, Jordan was conspicuously absent from most NBA games over his career, appearing instead in vanity projects like his own Super Nintendo action game, Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City. NBA 2K11 is expected to release in October, just as the league's preseason games tip off. For more on the franchise's recent history, check out GameSpot's review of NBA 2K10. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Xbox 360 | Warner Bros. appoints head of digital gaming
May 26, 2010 at 5:52 PM
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| Publisher creates new executive position to oversee online and downloadable endeavors, names Turbine, Rocksteady, Midway acquisition lead to post. 
Last month, Warner Bros. showed its commitment to online gaming with the purchase of Turbine Entertainment, developer of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron Unlimited. Today, it made someone responsible for that commitment, as it appointed Jeff Junge to the newly created post of senior vice president of online games and digital games platforms for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. Previously, Junge was the senior vice president of business management for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, a position in which he drove the company's strategy for mergers, acquisitions, and business partnerships. Junge led Warner Bros. purchases of Turbine, the bankrupt Midway Games, Rocksteady Studios, and Traveller's Tales parent TT Games (maker of the Lego Star Wars series), as well as the company's investment in the OnLive service. In the new role, Junge will oversee Turbine and the ongoing integration of TT Games into Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. He will also be responsible for the company's entire digital games business, reporting jointly to WBIE president Martin Tremblay and WBDD president Thomas Gewecke. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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