Normally the holidays are good to video game sales. This year, though, not so much. According to NPD game sales in December were down 21 percent over the same time last year, to just $3.99 billion. Hardware sales took an even larger nosedive, plummeting 28 percent, and accessories dropped 27 points. For the full year, video game sales were down 8 percent compared with 2010, and even digital sales suffered. Downloadable content, in app purchases, subscriptions and other non-physical media gaming sales totaled between $16.3 and $16.6 billion — down 2 percent from last year. And, in case you’re interested, the best-selling game of the year was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3!
Age of Wushu is an intriguing free to play MMO from China. You play as a martial arts expert, but there aren’t any levels or character classes. You learn your skills from one of eight schools of combat, and will be able to raid other schools to gain bonus knowledge and unlock more abilities. You’ll be able to train your character outside of the game as well, using 30 “offline activities.”
Expect lots of customisation, too. Apparently there will be more than 5,000 equipment upgrades, 17 progressions and aerial combat. The fighting style draws heavily from Wuxia genre, so there will be plenty of superhuman acrobatics and, as shown in the trailer above, water-running. It’ll be released in the UK as well, under the name Age of Wulin. An “international test” is supposed to be starting soon. Keep an eye on the official Age of Wushu site for news of the beta.
According to the Guinness World Records 2012, Star Wars: The Old Republic has more voice acting than any entertainment project that has gone before. With over 200,000 lines of dialogue voiced by more than 200 actors, there’s not much that can really compete.
PCGamer caught up with game director James Ohlen just before TOR launched and asked him how Bioware made the ambitious decision to create a fully voiced MMO. “That was really exciting,” he said. “I remember showing a demo to Ray and Greg to budget, and actually calculated out “here’s how much extra money we’re going to spend if we’re going to do player voice.” I did the demo to them and they were like “we have to go this way.”
That was before Ohlen revealed to them the full cost involved, but they still took the plunge. “Ray and Greg are very much about quality so they wanted to. They signed off on an amount. That was a big one I think just because we were gonna be pretty much spent out of time, but we did.”
Ohlen didn’t give an idea of the amount involved. With over 200 voice actors and 200,000 lines of dialogue, it must have been a pretty huge number. Ultimately, it was worth it.
Sure, the devil himself, Lord of Hell and probable pioneer of the Snuggie, is a pretty bad dude, but you know what’s even worse? Gambling. Or at least, that’s how South Korea’s Game Rating Board sees it. And so, the board’s opted to delay making a definitive statement on Diablo III and its controversial real money auction house for a third time. Without a rating, even the baddest big red monster this side of the Kool-Aid man is out of luck. Obviously, this doesn’t exactly bode well for the game’s eventual release.
“Committee members are conflicted about what to do with Diablo III because of (its American developer) Blizzard’s information on the game’s ‘auction house’ feature,” a board spokesman told The Korea Times, pointing specifically to the “cash out” feature that allows players to convert gold into cold, hard cash.
A new decision date is now set for January 6, but the spokesman once again cited the board’s “reluctance” and noted that fans probably shouldn’t get their hopes up for anything definitive.
Blizzard, meanwhile, remains committed to a simultaneous worldwide launch “in principle.” When reached for comment, the Devil merely cackled maniacally, rubbed his hands together, and said, “Good, good. All according to plan.”
Diablo III’s road to completion has been long and fraught with lengthy periods of radio silence. Granted, while disappointing, it’s not altogether surprising, given that Blizzard is one of the few remaining practitioners of the ancient art of “When it’s done.” Fortunately, we may finally be approaching a light at the end of the randomly generated tunnel. So said Jay Wilson in a celebratory video on the newly launched Diablo 15th anniversary website:
“We are almost done with Diablo III, and that’s a fitting celebration of the 15th year anniversary for Diablo. So, we are getting it to you as soon as we can.”
Fingers crossed, then, that Blizzard’s able to hit the “early 2012” mark. I don’t know if my poor heart can go another cold, Diablo-less winter without bursting like a brittle, brittle loot pinata. But instead of totally rad swords, it’s filled with longing.
Shortly before Christmas, Square Enix filed for a trademark that suggests a title for the Hitman game set to arrive after Absolution. The name? Hitman: Profession. Siloconera spotted the trademark application, which will likely be the working title for the new Hitman game in development at Square Enix’ recently opened Montreal Studio.
Hitman: Profession would be a terrible name, but the trademark coincides with a spate of unusual odd upcoming game titles…
Fifa 13: Sport
Syndicate: Organisation
Football Manager: Manager of Football
FUEL: Combustible Matter
Deus Ex: God From
Cave Story: Mostly Indoors
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: F.A.K.E. A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.
Thi4f: W0rd F41l
Diablo: Spanish Satan
Call of Duty: Again
Transformers: Robots That are Also Cars (And Sometimes Other Things)
Mass Effect: The Principle By Which Element Zero Modifies The Mass Of Matter, Allowing For Faster Than Light Travel, Biotic Abilities, and Future Guns
We really hope they don’t end up calling it Hitman: Profession. Not the best name around, Square Enix better be trolling around.
Happy new year! We’re back from two weeks of balancing dutiful shifts of family time with prolonged periods of PC gaming. From the look of Steam’s player stats page, we’re not alone. Steam has just broken the five million concurrent users’ barrier.
The Steam Christmas sale will have plenty to do with it no doubt, but the success and longevity of Skyrim has also helped. It’s still easily the most played game on Steam at the moment. Team Fortress 2 sits in a distant second place.
Not a bad result in a year that saw EA launches a serious competitor in the form of their Origin client. Origin doesn’t make their user numbers public, but it’s the only place to get hold of The Old Republic digitally. Both services must be rolling in Christmas cash. It looks like digital distribution is going to continue to grow in 2012.
Crysis 2 was the most pirated game last year, with nearly four million illegal downloads according to a report on Torrent Freak. The numbers were collated from stats put out by public BitTorrent trackers, and suggest a slight decrease in overall piracy numbers compared to 2010.
Crysis 2 was released in March, so it’s had plenty of time to reach the 3,920,000 downloads mark. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, released in November, was the second most pirated game, with around 3,650,000 illegal downloads. Battlefield 3 was a close third at 3,510,000 downloads. Fifa 12 took fourth place with 3,390,000 downloads. Portal 2 was fifth with 3,240,000.
Those are some rather huge numbers, sadly, and around three times bigger than the most pirated console titles. They’re slightly smaller than last year’s round-up. It’d be nice if that was the start of a general downward trend, but PC piracy will continue to be a big concern for publishers in the coming year.
BioWare CEO and co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka told Wired on Tuesday that the next Dragon Age title will likely draw inspiration from Bethesda’s current RPG monster, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in addition to both of its predecessors. He also admitted that the company is listening to its fans with open ears while also learning from the strengths and weaknesses of other RPG titles on the market.
“[The next Dragon Age] is gonna have the best of features from the prior Dragon Age games, but it’s also gonna have a lot of things I think players are gonna find compelling from some of the games that are out now that are doing really well with more of an open world feel,” Muzyka said. “We’re checking [Skyrim] out aggressively. We like it. We’re big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product. We think we can do some wonderful things.”
Bethesda launched Skyrim on November 11 which has thus far sold around 10 million units across the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC platforms, representing approximately $650 million in retail sales. The PC version of Skyrim has even outsold all other PC games by over three to one in the first month of its release. For that reason alone, it’s no wonder BioWare is eying Bethesda’s blockbuster RPG with “aggressive,” inquiring eyes.
“Skyrim is the fastest selling title in Steam’s history,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve Corporation. “Bethesda’s commitment to and understanding of the PC as a gaming platform shows in the great review scores, spectacular launch, and continued high player numbers that Skyrim has received. We are delighted that Bethesda chose to use Steamworks to support Skyrim both at retail and digitally.”
One of the complaints that will likely be addressed with the next Dragon Age title is the ability to equip party members, a feature that Dragon Age II severely lacked. There’s also talk that the next game will have a possible multiplayer mode featuring playable dragons. Muzyka confirmed the former report, but wouldn’t acknowledge the multiplayer aspect.
“Our goal is to surprise and delight our fans,” Muzyka said. “I’ve seen something in the last couple of weeks that is really the future of that franchise that is so compelling, I am so looking forward to being able to announce it.”
Piracy is a major problem in video games world and the industry has tried so many ways to curb this activity. The most common method is through CD keys or DRM which unfortunately, got hacked too easily and quite a hassle for many of legit users. Some of the developers approached it in a different way though like Croteam who actually put their damn anti-piracy mechanism right into pirated version of Serious Sam 3 by making one of the enemies immortal. Read more…
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