game

HP says Voodoo Envy 133 now shipping, hints at new product

Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that the Voodoo Envy 133 laptop introduced in June, is now finally shipping to customers.

It's HP's version of the Lenovo X300 or the MacBook Air: incredibly thin and pretty to look at. It was introduced as part of an elaborate product rollout at a high-profile event in Germany.

The Envy is a good example of the kind of design chops and credibility Voodoo brings to HP. When HP bought Voodoo a few years back, the enthusiast PC maker became HP's gaming PC unit, which made sense, especially after Dell bought Alienware.

But soon … Read more

EA pushes back 'Harry Potter' game release

Electronic Arts is delaying the release of its Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game until next summer so that it will coincide with the release of the film, which has also been postponed.

Shares of the game maker dropped by about 1 percent to $45.94 in after-hours trading on Monday.

Last month, Warner Bros. said that the release date for the sixth film in the series would be put off from November to summer 2009 because of after-effects of the writer's strike. (It said that production of the next two films in the series would not … Read more

What's so special about 'Spore'?

Just released in the U.S. on Sunday, September 7, Spore is Electronic Arts' big holiday push for the still-alive PC gaming market. The game is from Will Wright, creator of the best-selling Sims and Sim City franchises, and developed by the same company, Maxis, so expectations are naturally high.

But despite the buzz, which includes full-page stories in the New York Times and numerous TV news segments, does Spore have a chance at mainstream video game success at the level of GTA4 or Guitar Hero (or The Sims)?

After spending the last week playing an early copy of the full game (where we created the Danosaurus, which lives on the planet Danlandia), we're ready to say that Spore is a monumental achievement in game design, and a genuinely engaging experience, but at the same time, it may lack that mainstream accessibility needed to resonate with non-core gamers. … Read more

Asus releases 15-inch gaming laptop, the G50V

Mobile gamers, take note: Asus today released the G50V, a 15-inch gaming laptop that appears to be a high-powered, low-priced affair.

The majority of gaming laptops use a 17-inch chassis and weigh 8 pounds or more. The Asus G50V packs many of the same features inside a 15-inch chassis that weighs a relatively svelte 6.2 pounds. Inside, the laptop supplies a high-end 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor, 4GB of fast 800MHz DDR2 memory, and an Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT graphics card with 512MB of DDR3 memory. Two hard drives are on board for a combined 500GB … Read more

Peering inside video-game pitches

James Goddard, CEO and founder of CrunchTime Games and professor of game development at the University of Advancing Technology, recently published the documents that got Shred Nebula the green light from Microsoft for the Xbox platform.

GameCareerGuide has his pitch paper and a manuscript required by Microsoft known as "60 seconds of gameplay." According to GameCareerGuide, Goddard said:

CrunchTime Games, Inc., is very excited to offer this reference to the vast communities of aspiring developers, students, educators, and peer in the industry, showing how we tackled the task of pitching Shred Nebula [which was tentatively titled R.I.… Read more

Video game violence is a bad influence, but Facebook groups may be worse

In the past I've lobbied for the Wii to become the violent video game platform of choice, and in the process heard comments suggesting that video game violence was a problem for kids.

I'm here to admit that it's probably true that violent video games are bad for kids. There are lots of studies that suggest that to be true. However, there are plenty of other influences that are likely worse. One psychiatrist I spoke with said that lack of parenting is a much stronger influence than video games and violent movies combined.

Doesn't it rest … Read more

Behind the prototyping of 'Spore'

Electronic Arts' much anticipated evolution game, Spore hits store shelves Sunday in North America, and for those that have been on the project since the beginning, it has been a long road from concept to completion.

The game's creator, Will Wright, who is famous for previous games like SimCity and The Sims said recently that the game has been seven years in the making, meaning the project was getting under way not long after The Sims launched and became the best-selling PC game of all time.

Wright has talked at length about how Spore's origins lie in the SETI project and other flights of his fancy.

"The original concept was sort of a toy galaxy you could fly around and explore," Wright told me last month. "As we thought about, it became apparent that evolution was a very important component. Some of the very first prototypes involved how you would move around and visualize the galaxy."

In the highly anticipated lead-up to the Spore's release from EA studio Maxis, in Emeryville, Calif., almost all the attention has been on the game itself or on its Creature Creator, which gives users an easy and sophisticated way to create complex beasts and which was made available in June as a free download.

But for many people, an equally exciting element has been the series of prototypes available for free download on the Spore Web site, each of which provides a look at the origins of a small piece of the larger game.

In fact, the prototypes were a crucial part of making Spore a reality. For example, since the procedural animation of the creatures in the game is one of its most-heralded elements, it's notable that before the system was ever built into the game, it started as a prototype.

"The earliest prototypes were making strange topology creatures and seeing if we could teach the computer to make them move plausibly, and later, show emotion and behavior," Wright said. "We had to find out whether the project was doable or not, or if some part of it wasn't doable, where we have to scale it back."

The first programmer on the Spore team was a Maxis veteran named Jason Shankel. Prior to joining Wright on his evolution project, he'd been working on a project known as SimMars, which was essentially a Mars terraforming game that was supported financially by NASA before the plug was finally pulled. … Read more

For game consoles, an $8 billion Net target

Internet-connected game consoles will generate $8 billion in revenue for the Big Three companies through online content and services in 2013, according to a report released Thursday by research firm Parks Associates.

Clearly, console games aren't going away in the next five years. And if $8 billion in revenue can be generated just through services, then they are unlikely to go away for a much longer period of time.

I wrote previously that a more-likely scenario than the death of the console is one in which the console can play games of all types, including those that are browser-based or require a download installation.

In another post on video game "megatrends," I noted that Internet connectivity is key to extending the commercial lifespan of games and also provides monetization methods beyond sale of the actual games. "The ability to download new content or play against others online extends the lifespan and the potential audiences," I wrote.… Read more

The 404 177: Where MTI is in the bathroom with a camera

Our resident peeping Tom (don't ask, you don't want to know) joins us for today's videogame heavy show. Surprisingly, I actually participate a fair amount! I think it has something to do with the Playstation Yu Foundation...Jeff flaunts a very positive review of Hamlet 2, we "ooh" and "ahh" over a very cute marriage proposal (hint, hint Mr. Bakalar), and talk way too long about our fear of those horrid little eight legged freaks.

Although there's lots of talk about videogames today, we somehow find the time to introduce yet another cryptid in the wild: a giant 50 foot mechanical spider miraculously appeared on the side of an building under construction in Liverpool yesterday. The creature is the pride of joy of this year's La Machine street festival, set to debut tomorrow to the public. Luckily for us, a few pictures leaked onto Flickr and sufficiently make us squirm like frightened little girls. Seriously though, spiders freak me out, there's something about their small furry legs running around my house that makes me want to cut off my skin. And you know what I realized? My generation's unreasonable fear of spiders is solely based on the movie Arachnaphobia. So thanks, Director Frank Marshall, for ruining my childhood.

EPISODE 177 Download today's podcast … Read more