Do you know where that swoosh on your shoes came from? And just who, exactly, might be responsible for that plummeting ad man who magically avoids a messy death just before the start of your favorite TV show? How about that half eaten apple that may well be on the other side of the screen you're looking at right now? How did that come about?
"Designers do a lot of work in the shadows," says John Fiorelli. "The audience generally doesn't know where all this beautiful work comes from."
National Hockey League fans now have three more ways to watch their favorite teams play live.
The NHL announced today that its game-streaming service, GameCenter Live, has made its way to the PlayStation 3, Boxee, and Roku set-top boxes.
GameCenter Live allows customers to watch 40 out-of-market NHL games live in HD each week. The app offers the ability to watch entire games up to 48 hours after they were played. In addition, GameCenter Live provides access to over 500 classic games from the NHL Vault.
The PlayStation 3 version of GameCenter Live is available for download on the PlayStation … Read more
Whenever you say "It's on like Donkey Kong," going forward, be sure to thank Nintendo.
The game company announced today that it has requested a trademark for the phrase from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Nintendo said its trademark application is "in honor" of the upcoming launch of Donkey Kong Country Returns on November 21.
As Nintendo pointed out in its announcement, "it's on like Donkey Kong" has been around since at least the early 1990s, the original Donkey Kong having launched in 1981, and has been uttered "in … Read more
Microsoft on Tuesday filed a new patent-related lawsuit against Motorola, its second against the company in the past six weeks.
The new lawsuit, which was filed earlier today with the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle, accuses Motorola of charging too much for royalties on its patent licenses, which Microsoft uses in both the wireless networking and video decoders found in the Xbox.
News of the lawsuit was first reported by Reuters.
A Microsoft spokesperson told CNET:
Microsoft filed an action today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington … Read more
Somewhere between the Greatest Generation and Generation X lies a vast expanse of American history. Though World War II is safely enough in the past to explore freely, and our current war on terror close enough to inspire (occasionally uncomfortable) ripped-from-the-headlines games (and plenty of movies, books, and television), that great middle section has been largely unexplored by interactive entertainment--until now.
Dan: With a mighty stroke of the virtual pen, the Call of Duty series has single-handedly brought everyone's attention to the Cold War era. But this is not the Cold War of John le Carre or James Bond; instead the brutal small-arms firefights and squad skirmishes feel more like today's unconventional warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, just redesigned for a different decade. It's modern warfare, just in a slightly less modern package.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Often, the most effective way to tell a story is through time-shifting and indirect symbolism; it's pretty much the foundation of the narrative experience. Interestingly, this particular setting is uniquely underused in video games--compared even with the Civil War or various ancient conflicts. I'm not sure there's an adequate explanation as to why there have been so few Vietnam-era games (and even fewer Korean War games); perhaps the baby boom generation controlling the purse strings of game developers and publishers felt it off-limits, or inaccessible to younger gamers who had not lived through the tumultuous era. … Read more
When pressed to find a disappointment in the gaming space this year, GameStop senior vice president of merchandising and marketing, Bob McKenzie, pointed to Sony's PSP.
"If I were to pick a disappointment, the only thing would be looking at the number of titles that launched on the PSP format compared to the prior year," McKenzie told video game publication Eurogamer in a recent interview. "I think Sony did a great job two years ago in terms of coming out with a pretty good lineup of PSP offerings, and I didn't see that breadth of … Read more
It only took a few days, but Microsoft's power adapter for the Kinect has become available at the company's online store.
The adapter powers the Kinect unit for users with older (read: not slim) Xbox 360s, and is unnecessary for users of the newer Xbox hardware, which has a special powered Kinect port on the back. The adapter is included for users who bought the standalone Kinect accessory, but not in either of the two Kinect Xbox 360 bundles, since they both feature the Kinect port.
Activision today launched Call of Duty: Black Ops for all three major consoles, the PC, and the Nintendo DS.
Call of Duty: Black Ops puts the player in various roles as soldiers "behind enemy lines." Players can also play co-op with zombies, Mark Lamia, head of Activision's Treyarch Studio, said in a statement. But as with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, many gamers will be picking up the title for its online multiplayer offering. And to that end, Lamia promises an "incredibly deep" experience for gamers.
Microsoft's Kinect platform will rule the 2010 holiday season in motion-control gaming, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told CNET in an interview today.
Pachter, who covers the video game industry, said he expects Kinect to hit the 5 million unit sales mark that Microsoft last week said it expects by the end of the year. But Sony won't be so lucky with the PlayStation Move, its new entrant in motion controllers.
"I think that Move will pick up to a respectable level, probably around 3 million by year end globally, so roughly 2 million in U.S. and Europe and 1 million rest of the world," Pachter said. "It's possible that Sony could see a tad more, but we will have to see a pickup in advertising, maybe 3.5 million."
Sony seems to be feeling that pressure.… Read more
So now you can get a Kinect for the Xbox 360. Or a Move package for the PlayStation 3. Or maybe you already have a Wii. The point is, this holiday season, gaming is going to be all about moving. There's a three-front motion-tracking war going on and it may be a while before there's a clear winner.
Nintendo's Wii has been around for a few years now, so movement-based gaming isn't as novel as it used to be. Sony's Move is fun, but along with Microsoft's Kinect, it may have to play catch-up. … Read more
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