Gaming

Xbox 360 game marketing gone wild

It seems that someone behind the promotion of the Microsoft game "Perfect Dark Zero" has gone and made the kind of silly marketing mistake that drives some advertising critics nuts.

Over the weekend, editors at the video game blog "Joystiq" reported that they received a series of crudely written e-mails. Each one, purporting to be from a different writer, alerted them to the fact that Xbox 360 kiosks--which play demos of games and show off the next-generation Microsoft console's multimedia capabilities--at Wal-Mart stores would soon be featuring a playable demo of "Perfect Dark Zero.&… Read more

'Star Wars' has multimedia Halloween

Just in time for Halloween, the "Star Wars" universe just got a whole lot bigger.

On the one hand, you've got the release on DVD of the film critics called the "best" of the prequels--and boy, isn't that like saying getting run over by a bicycle is better than getting run over by a bus?

On the other hand, there's the release Monday of the new "Star Wars Battlefront II" for, like, every single video game console in the world.

According to the video game blog Kotaku, the new "Star … Read more

Future looks good for online games

AUSTIN, TEX.--You're sitting in a coffee shop playing "Untold Legends" on your Sony PlayStation Portable when you get a message from some friends playing on their mobile phones while riding the subway in Tokyo.

You play with them for a while, but finally decide to go home. There, you decide you're not done, so you log on from your next-generation console and pick right back up where you left off--with the same character, in the same place and even with the same people.

Finally, it's bedtime, so you go to sleep, but the next … Read more

Sex in games sells

AUSTIN, TEX.--After a morning of panels at the Women's Game Conference here, it had appeared that the concept of expanding opportunities for women in the video game industry appealed to a scant few men.

But one panelist figured out how to change that.

"This is the Women's Game Conference," began Brenda Brathwaite, a game designer who heads up the International Game Developers Association's Sex special interest group. "Well, if you want to get a lot more men to show up, have a panel on sex in games. Because I see a lot more … Read more

Surprise! Game designers not so diverse

Surprise! According to a new study out from the International Game Developers Association, it turns out that the vast majority of video game designers are white males.

The study, "Game Developer Demographics: An Exploration of Workforce Diversity," shows that in fact, there's no such thing in the video game industry. According to the study, 88.5 percent of designers are male, while 83.3 percent are white. The average age is 31.

It seems like this should come as no surprise, and maybe the biggest surprise was that the IGDA bothered to put resources into discovering what … Read more

Warcrafters take Graveyard Games virtual

After I wrote a story the other day about playing the alternate-reality game Graveyard Games at the Italian Cemetery in Colma, Calif., a reader comment that went vaguely along the lines of "Hey, dumbass, get out of the cemetery where my grandparents are buried or I'm going to call the cops" more or less summed up the feelings of those who took the time to write in.

Fair enough. I understand that graveyards are sacred spaces to many people. But I would argue that the Graveyard Games participants were pretty respectful of the space and that even … Read more

Where's Blizzard?

NEW YORK--With nearly everybody who is anybody in the world of virtual worlds on hand at the State of Play conference here this weekend, the thing no one could figure out was where was Blizzard Entertainment?

NCSoft, makers of popular titles like "City of Heroes" and the upcoming "City of Villains" was there. So was "EverQuest's" Sony Online Entertainment, "Eve Online's" CCP Game Design and Makena, publishers of "There." And the whole conference, to which hundreds had come from across the country and around the world to talk … Read more

Developers wary of PS3?

If a post on the video game blog, Joystiq, is to be believed, there may be some ominous signs for Sony and its forthcoming PlayStation 3 console.

According to the post, rumors are bouncing around Dutch, German and Japanese Web sites that some developers are worried that the PS3 isn't right for them.

For months, of course, there have been fears that all the next-generation consoles--the PS3, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Revolution--will cost developers a fortune in licensing fees. But there was no reason to think that the PS3 would be any different than the Xbox … Read more

Xbox division down $4 billion

Everyone knows that since its inception, Microsoft's Xbox has been a money-loser. The argument always was that sales of the box would drive sales of Microsoft's own game titles as well as hefty licensing fees from third-party publishers.

But now, according to Forbes, comes word that makes it very difficult to imagine that the Xbox could ever have been an effective loss leader.

Forbes says that the Xbox division has lost $4 billion since 2001. Four. Billion. Dollars.

That's a lot of money, even for Microsoft, which Forbes also says has a war chest of $40 billion … Read more

Revolution rumors for serious geeks

Since it's still months until the expected spring 2006 release of the Nintendo Revolution, there is little hard news about the next-generation console.

True, the Japanese video game giant shocked the world earlier this month by unveiling the revolutionary game controller that players will hold in one hand instead of the standard two.

Other than that, little has been known about the Revolution while competitors Sony and Microsoft long ago spilled their guts about the guts of their next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, respectively.

Now though, technology site Ars Technica has posted an article with … Read more