Archive for September 7th, 2006
Crab Dude Interviewed For Massive Damage
Kyle Shubel is a famous man. At E3, the producer unveiled not only one, but two catch phrases: “Giant enemy crab” and “Massive damage.” The game is Genji: Days of the Blade, and actually looks somewhat interesting (once you expunge the E3 press conference from your mind). Shubel talked with Game Informer, pointing out that the giant crabs (heikegani) are real creatures and are two meters in size. Now, whether they found warriors in ancient Japanese battles is another issue. Shubel adds:
Honestly, I wanted to have this event at Joe’s Crab Shack, but they told me it would probably be a bad idea. Agreed, the campiness is all fine and dandy, but what’s really interesting is we’re trying to tell a story which is very serious to Japanese natives. We’re trying to cover a major era where they went from an aristocratic society to a feudal society. While having fun with it, you know, it’s not our culture, we don’t recognize it, so therefore you can have a little fun with it. Every one of the characters in this game is a real warrior that actually fought in these battles. All of the major battles really occurred during the Genpei War. So we’ve got this interesting balance where we’re trying to juggle between history, legend, and video game - hence giant crabs.
It’s a very serious story for the Japanese, but it’s not your culture, so you’re trying to have fun with it? That explains everything.
More Here [Game Informer] via VGB
Wii Chip Shipments Started About 3 Weeks Ago
Frankly, I’m not sure if this is good news, bad news or no news, but IBM confirmed today that they started shipping the brains of the Nintendo Wii for their New York fab plant about three weeks ago.
Ron Martino, director, of IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions, wouldn’t tell me how many of the “Broadway” chips have been produced so far or how many they will be able to manufacture by Nintendo’s still to be announced launch window later this year. Nintendo also declined to release details about chip production.
While Nintendo hasn’t quite gotten around to releasing the date or price for the Wii, I’d be shocked if that information didn’t come out at their New York City press event next week.
At least we can be pretty sure that Nintendo has already started, or is gearing up to start, production for the Wii. A July job posting by the company for a “production agent trainee” practically glows with confirmation.
This is IBM’s second console launch with Nintendo. The chip manufacturer also designed and produced the Gekko chip for the GameCube. This time around IBM and Nintendo signed a multi-year deal for the chip manufacturer to produce “millions” of the Power Architecture-based chips featuring IBM Silicon on Insulator technology at 90 nanometers.
Yeah, I’m not sure what all of that means either, but I do know that the chip is designed to consume about 20 percent less energy. So there’s that.
I tried to get Martino to spill with some more technical details, but he referred me to Nintendo who passed on commenting.
Nintendo was happy to say that the first of the chips, which are being produced at IBM’s 300mm semiconductor development and manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, New York, are already in their hot little hands.
“Today’s milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive and remarkable gaming experience,” said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director and General Manager for Nintendo’s Integrated Research & Development Division.
Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America’s vice president of marketing and corporate affairs, said all is well in the world of the Wii.
“Everything is on schedule, Nintendo is very happy,” Perrin said. “We still plan a hearty launch in Q4.”
In a prepared statement Martino said they are proud of their customized Power microprocessor for the Wii.
“When millions of gamers take the controls of Wii this holiday season, the IBM logo will once again be front and center on this innovative new product,” he said.
Ironically, IBM is also producing the Cell chips for the Playstation 3 at the same East Fishkill, New York fabrication plant.
Martino said production for the Cell chip is “going well and is meeting our objectives.”
Sony declined to say when IBM started producing the Cell chips for the Playstation 3, but did say that they already have more than three million of the chips for their console.
The Death of Cinematics
Gamasutra reports from the Austin Games Conference on the remarks of Editorial Story Design Director for Ubisoft, Alexis Nolent. Nolent reports that he hears two things consistently from many hardcore gamers: that they hate storyline being thrust upon them in games and will do anything to skip cutscenes and exposition, and secondly that the plot and writing always suck anyway.
Nolent, smart man that he is, believes the two issues to be closely related. He predicts the death of the cutscene and the rise of the game writer.
His advice to writers was to think of their job as generating lots of good ideas. They can’t afford to hang on to any one idea, especially if that idea gets in the way of gameplay or other constraints of the game. A good game writer needs to be humble. When one of their ideas gets dropped or changed, they need to have a thick skin and move on, coming up with another good idea.
Nolent says the ideal working situation for great narrative design is to have the writer “embedded” in the development team full-time. A writer in the trenches can keep an eye on story, defending it when necessary. With everyone creating together, problems can be solved immediately.
This is particularly relevant based on the comments I saw in the last “game writing is important” post I made, which I believe was yesterday. Someone mentioned that cutscenes were on the rise, which I believe is patently untrue. I think we can look forward to a golden age of art and execution in this generation of games, where tedium and clumsiness are viciously attacked.
The Death of Cinematics [Gamasutra]
Biker Mice From Mars Trailer
To all the Kotaku Nintendo haters (I’m looking at YOU, Gauger!) who may be under the impression that Nintendo doesn’t have enough blockbuster titles for the DS, I say HA, and HA again! I present to you, the Biker Mice from Mars!! It’s going to be the next big thing in gaming, mark my words!! It’s got mice wearing patent leather, driving around motorcycles, and kicking butt (cheese not included). Go ahead, you KNOW you want to post this gem!
Look, I am not a Nintendo hater! I have a DS AND a PSP, OKAY?! Sometimes I dress them up in little fancy clothes made of toilet paper with pretty glitter glued on, and they’re best friends and have strawberry tea and play whist until their mommies call them home for the yummiest dinners ever. And they never have to go to school or clean their rooms ever!
[Thanks Jwalestrom]
GTA Creator Not Hip to Sony’s Online Service
Grand Theft Auto creator Dave Jones says that Sony’s online service for the upcoming PLAYSTATION 3 leaves him cold. He states:
I seriously question Sony’s policy of leaving it down to publishers to come up with their own standards for each [online] game. I completely disagree with it. I’m not going to put my credit card details with five different companies for some bits of downloadable content. Sony is a huge force, and definitely has been with the PS2 - but now I see it being, at worst, a 50/50 race, but as time goes on I lean more and more towards Microsoft.
While Jones has been involved with GTA since the second installment in the series, he is currently invovled with a Xbox 360 title called Crackdown. Guess he really did lean more and more towards Microsoft.
More Here [Eurogamer]
An apology, and a note on hype
Filed under: Meta
Yesterday afternoon, we ran a post that generated an immense (and unexpected) amount of interest and speculation. Instead of defusing the prolonged PR tease that Nintendo has been escalating for the past year, we contributed to it. Instead of doing our readers a service, we added more confusion to the situation. The post was vague and left only room for disappointment which, inevitably, came at 12:01.
The worst part is, we understand that it was our hard-earned credibility that contributed to this excitement cocktail. There are gaming websites that trade in hype, and we’ve always prided ourselves on avoiding it. If we tell you that something is “major” and “worth waiting for,” naturally you would expect it to be. As you’ve all no doubt noticed by now, news that IBM has begun shipping processors for Nintendo’s Wii console, while potentially telling, is hardly the sort of megaton announcement we alluded to or fans were dreaming of. It became increasingly clear as the comments increased and the diggs increased, that we would reap what we had sown. Our credibility and reader trust are all we have, and we are taking measures immediately to ensure that we don’t make this mistake again. We’re very sorry for the error in judgment.
Sincerely,
Christopher Grant
Editor, Joystiq
PS - We’ve switched off comments in the earlier two posts, and ask you to direct your comments here where they can be more productive.
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HOOOOOO! Hard Gay Tribute in Tingle
The cam isn’t too shaky, and the pelvic thrusts are absolutely authentic: could this be a tip-o-the-assless-chaps to supergreen Japanese television personality Hard Gay? God I hope so.
Game|Life says:
I’ve been continuing my excursion into the off-kilter world of Tingle’s Rose-Colored Rupee Whatever. I bring to you this evening news that there is, in the game’s second level, a character whose overtones make the green-spandexed Tingle look positively hetero.
It’s Duke, the short-legged-no-shirt-overalls-straight-out-of-The Village People construction worker! Who communicates primarily by way of thrusting his pelvis.
Tingle RPG: Gay as in Happy [Game|Life, via 4 Color Rebellion]
Wii chip production well underway, say IBM, Nintendo [update 2]
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Strategy, Competitive Gaming, Business
[Ed's note: we made a mistake in allowing this item to snowball into something more than a mere IBM-Nintendo PR announcement that production of chips is on schedule. Our apologies for allowing this one to get way, way out of hand. Read here for a more detailed apology.]
IBM announced that their Broadway chip custom-designed for Nintendo’s Wii console has been shipping to Nintendo’s since July. “We have been shipping well within this quarter (July),” said Ron Martino, director of IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions. “In fact, we have shipped a significant volume in this quarter.”
So what does this news mean to gamers who have been waiting patiently for a release date from Nintendo? Well, considering that Nintendo has had their hands on a “significant volume” of one of the major components of their console since July, some might speculate that the Wii could be ready for release sooner than the expected October street date.
When asked to quantify the speed of the Broadway processor, IBM’s Martino compared it to the GameCube. “Compared to the Gekko in the GameCube, it’s 20 percent more power efficient. It also performs significantly better. The key point is that it is Power Architecture-based and custom-made and optimized for Nintendo,” he said (not really answering the question).
With this update and Nintendo confirming the shipment of “6 million systems to retailers around the world between its launch in the fourth quarter of 2006 and the end of its fiscal year on March 31, 2007,” we expect Nintendo might finally be ready to talk release schedule during their event in New York City next week.
[Update 1: toned down language throughout, added new first paragraph.]
[Update 2: more edits, added link in first paragraph.]
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Kotaku Commenting: Now With Less Elitism
Don’t worry, you still have the right to be snobby to all of those non-commenters out there, but the ability to get access to the misty realms of Kotaku commenting is now no longer in the sweaty palms of the site’s editors.
Starting today, Kotaku will have a new commenter approval system that will essentially be based on granting permission to people who can offer a comment that is interesting, substantial or highly amusing. (Hmm, I better go check and make sure they’re not going to remove my commenting ability.)
Here’s how it will work:
People who want to comment, including those without access, just type in their comment and then enter a username and password. After hitting the submit button, the posts made by people not in the system will be whisked away to Sugar Plum Mountain where a bevy of gelatinous blobs will trundle the comment off to the Grand Gingersnap Prince for inspection. If the comment is deemed worthy the Prince will confer honorary membership on you and send your candy-glossed comment through a series of tubes back to the fiefdom of Kotaku where it will go live.
From there on out the witty commenter will enjoy all of the rights and blessing of full commentingdom at Castle Kotaku.
Speaking of commentingdom, the avatars appear to not be working. It might take awhile for your various and sundry cache’s to clear and see all the marvelously tiny images, but they’re there. Also, if you can’t seem to comment, try clearing your cache, that seems to fix most problems. Actually, clear your cache just for the hell of it, maybe people will start loving you again.
Now’s probably a good time to point out that while I no longer have to handcraft each invite in the steaming innards of my home entertainment center, I still am in full possession of the ban stick and I plan on using it liberaly.
Today in Joystiq: September 7, 2006
Austin Games Conference
Rob Pardo’s keynote at the Austin Game Conference
Jon Landau at the Austin Game Conference
Joystiquery
Europe’s PS3 delay in quotes
Q&A: Dr. Ruth Aylett, Heriot-Watt University
News
World of Warcraft hits 7 million subscribers
Devil May Cry coming to the PSP
PS3 delay leads to publisher stock dip
Colleges band to make anti-bullying game
Wii-DS link-play confirmed for Spore, plus new Wii info in latest NGamer
Sam & Max “season premiere” Oct. 17 on GameTap
2K Games publishing Civilization compilation, Jade Empire PC
Forza 2 delayed, release date in limbo
Microsoft to launch Xbox 360 Core in Japan
Rumors & Speculation
Wii to get Super Paper Mario, lose DVD playback?
BBC says “Sony is losing” in wake of Euro PS3 delay
Culture
Video games may enhance sociability
Mini USB gamepad for those with small hands
Comcast deals “massive damage” to giant enemy crab advertisement
Gamer culture: I can’t ambi-shoulder-button
Muscles: The secret to better animated game characters
VG Cats’ Spore creatures brought to life
Virtusphere brings together VR, hamsterball technology
Zombies on a Stamp
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I Will Sony No More Forever: Angry Gamer Dumps the Big S
Yet another furiously-typed breakup letter to a major franchise is making the rounds, this time from a fed-up Angry Gamer to his formerly beloved Sony.
Then you unvieled the price. Six hundred fucking dollars! Do you even know how much that is? And then there’s the exorbitant markup that you gave the European market. I can’t afford that. Nobody I know can afford that. And then you tried to placate me with excuses about how it’s cheaper than other things, like that fancy computer from Tron. And like a fool i believed you! I even put down a pre-order! Looking back now, I realise i was being naive and that you were just using me for cheap thrills. Well, no more.
The litany of sins goes on, reaching a conclusion when the Gamer smugly confides that he has taken up with a more reliable beau.
The letter is funny, yes, and I enourage you to click over and read it all. But I would like to use this post to make an official request. Please send me good things about Sony. Specifically, game-related things. PSP things that are fun or exciting, Playstation stuff, maybe even some good PR choices or witty and encouraging blurbs from Sony people. I’m asking nicely, now. I have a PSP and a PS2 and I want to go back to optimism, don’t you?
Send glad tidings either to the tips address or directly to me.
Dear Sony: It’s Over [Angry Gamer, via Digg]
NRA Licensed Game
Crave Entertainment managed to pry an official endorsement out of the cold dead hands of the National Rifle Association.
NRA Gun Club, a target shooter for the Playstation 2, will include more than 100 firearms, 12 settings, 15 challenges and competitive play for up to eight gamers.
“In keeping with the NRA mission, this game tests marksmanship in a sporting environment and emphasizes responsible use of firearms. This is a fun and exciting game, challenging all ages and all levels of firearms proficiency” says Mike Marcellin, Managing Director of the National Rifle Association.
This game may not be gun porn on the level of Black, but it’s damn close. I wonder if Jack Thompson will have a problem with it? It involves shooting, but not at people. Is it OK to shoot paper targets in a ficticious world, or is that a no, no too?
Hit the jump for some screens of the “game.”
Surprise: Characters Look More Realistic When Given Muscles
Character movement is one of those things that can make or break a game’s realism, even moreso than character design. Good movement will get you through times of bad design more often than good design will get you through bad movement.
I hearken to Grand Theft Auto as an example: despite the oven mitt hands, low-poly bodies and nearly expressionless faces, the combination of well-animated (or captured, I’m not sure) movement and exquisite voice acting makes those characters come alive.
So I was not surprised (but still horrified) to learn that the traditional method of character model construction was from the outside in, that is to say, drawing the outlines first and not worrying much about skeletal or muscular structures. Any freshman figure drawing student can tell you what a massive mistake this is, how truncated and stiff your creations will be if you jump right into the outline before knowing how the skeleton works.
But this is apparently a revelation in game animation.
A more accurate method, Zhang says, is to build a character’s muscles first and then add the skin on top of them. It’s more natural looking, he says, but it requires detailed knowledge of anatomy, and it’s counterintuitive for an artist who has the external appearance of a character in mind. For those reasons, he says, the muscle-based approach has been mostly an academic curiosity.
“Counterintuitive” my ass. How is it counterintuitive to think of a body being moved by its muscles, or supported by its skeleton? If this is truly the mindset of the current generation of game artists, then no wonder the vast majority of titles have such appallingly canned movement.
Let this be a lesson to aspiring game designers, cartoonists, and artists of all stripes: learn to draw. More specifically, learn to draw traditionally, from the anatomy out, like the old mastas used to do it back in the day.
Remember, life drawing class = staring at naked people for a long, long time. And many of them, I can tell you from personal Art School ™ experience, are middling-to-extremely attractive.
Beefing Up Animation Software [Technology Review, thanks Jason]
Microsoft to launch Xbox 360 Core in Japan [update 1]
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
Having already launched the Xbox 360 twice in Japan, it would seem that Microsoft’s efforts to woo gamers in the East are due to take a turn for the desperate and slightly non-sensical. Reuters Canada reports that the Redmond giant plans to release a “simpler version” of the console on November 2nd, one stripped of a hard drive and equipped with a lower price (a drop of 10,000 yen, or $86). Savvy gamers will immediately recognize this as the Xbox 360 Core system and promptly recoil in horror. We can only imagine the marketing meeting that spawned this strategy:
“Sir, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we aren’t doing too well in Japan.”
“Japan?”
“It’s a country. It’s where Mario, the Italian plumber comes from.”
“Of course. Why aren’t we selling millions over there?”
“My analysis of the situation reveals one of two reasons, sir. Number one. We haven’t been giving the Japanese gamers the genres or the popular franchises they want. We have no Final Fantasy, no Dragon Quest and no Metal Gear Solid.“
“………”
“………….”
“Bwahahahaha!”
“Hahaha!”
“But seriously, I figure it’s just because they hate freedom so much.”
“Well then, we should stick to our guns and give them freedom. Lots of it. Let’s send them choice and our cheaper Xbox 360.”
“But sir, that didn’t even sell well in the countries that do like the Xbox 360. The normal version did much better. Oh, I see.”
“That’s right. The good Xbox 360 sells well here and the crappy one sells poorly. The good Xbox 360 sells badly in Japan, so therefore …”
“The crappy one should be a huge hit! Amazing!”
Cracking the Japanese market isn’t an amazing or an impossible feat, but assaulting it with the squeaky toy hammer that is a $255 (29,800 yen), feature deprived console is unlikely to be terribly effective. Consider that since its original launch in Japan, the Xbox 360 has sold 158,654 units — about as much as the DS Lite sells in a week.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
[Update: IGN notes that the system includes Ninety Nine Nights and Project Gotham Racing 3. Does that make up for the 16,275 yen (roughly $130) value of a seperate hard drive and headset? Thanks, A Master Ninja.]
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Second Life Presidential Press Event: Aftermath
Presidential hopeful Mark Warner recently held a press conference in the MySpace of MMOs, Second Life. The coverage of the event was decidedly subdued, and I’ve seen very little followup worth reporting.
Except, of course, for the article from which the following excerpt is plucked. Surprise surprise, all did not go as planned. Uninvited attendees were removed from the premises while shouting slogans about freedom and democracy; the invited reporters, fresh from Help Island, couldn’t figure out how to use the provided chairs; and once the impertinent questions from the same reporters were silence by the moderator, the former quickly became restless and took matters into their own hands, making this the most entertaining political debate since the word “internets” was coined.
One reporter was a green Incredible Hulk type, one was a series of tubes, another was a knight with feathers in the helmet, still another carried a balloon proclaiming “Stop Slavery,” and several turned themselves into buxom blondes. Warner chose a dark jacket and tan slacks.
[...]
The avatars became bored. Whirling Eddy and the tube guy began to fly. Others joined the governor on the stage or made some of the “gestures” in the program, such as muscle-flexing, yawning, rock-scissors-paper and a spanking gesture called “kmb” — kiss my butt.
After fending off the questions with increasing ferocity, moderator Hamlet Au pronounced the governor a virtual success. “You’ve performed quite well, sir,” he said. “You are not a noob.”
Do You Have a Question, Pixeleen Minstral? [Washington Post, via GamePolitics]
In Denver Tonight? Come Play With Crecente
I’ll be joining Buzzcut’s Dave Thomas at the Denver Press Club tonight to play games and help raise money for jailed blogger Josh Wolf.
Wolf, 24, was recently freed on bond after spending a month in jail for refusing to give a federal grand jury raw video tape he took of a G-8 summit protest that turned violent in San Francisco.
The money raised at the event will go toward the bills that stacked up while Wolf was tucked away in the Big House protecting all bloggers’ press rights.
If you want to play some games, or just drop off a check, swing by the Denver Press Club between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. tonight.
Motherly Concern About Castlevania
Eric Caoili over at 4-color Rebellion apparently has an adorable Asian mother, and I imagine her much like Margaret Cho’s eternal Korean mater.
So when Eric dropped off some forms at her office and accidentally mixed in a printout from GameFAQs about Castlevania, the sheets were returned with scribbled note of concern that can only be described as adorable:
I usually print out these guides so that I won’t need to be tethered to a computer when I find time to play. It’s a convenient practice, but I have a tendency to jumble or even lose the pages sometimes. Staples and paperclips, though useful, never seem to be available when I print out these walkthroughs.
So that’s how a few pages of my Dawn of Sorrow guide were mixed in with the forms I’d dropped off at my mother’s office. When I came by the next day to pick up the signed forms, she was noticeably quiet.
It wasn’t until when I got home that I noticed my mom had returned the missing Castlevania tips. She had even scribbled a note on the guide after having read a few paragraphs. I’ve transcribed her words to make it more legible for you, but I left my mother’s old-asian-lady grammar intact.
See his scan, her note, and the transcription at right. D’awwww…
GameFAQs of Sorrow [4CR, thanks Sizzlepig]
A Casemod to Give Grandpa Flashbacks
A tipper by the catchy handle of Jwalestrom went apeshit in our inbox this morning (in a nice way), and among the 6 enthusiastic bombs he dropped between 4:45AM and 5:33AM was this collection of Xbox casemods.
The mods were harvested by news site CyberNet from various xbox fora. My favorite is the one picture at right, which looks “as if the beleagured 360 just barely made it’s way out of a minefield.” Well said, Jwales.
Complete gallery here [CyberNet]
New, New Console Info Hitting at Midnight
Expect to hear some kinda interesting news about a very interesting upcoming console at 12:01 a.m. EST Friday. The embargoed news was sent out to a bunch of newspapers and websites with the understanding that no one would print the information until first thing in the morning.
While I’m sure you will all find it endlessly fascinating, in the end it really won’t get you any closer to the news most people want to know.
Make sure to head back to Kotaku one minute into tomorrow to read the details and see a wee bit of analysis.
Forza 2 delayed, release date in limbo
Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Driving, Simulations
After several days of internet murmurings and a noticeable lack of response from Microsoft, a delay in Forza 2’s holiday release has manifested in that cruel place often referred to as “reality.” Posting on the official Forza Motorsport forums, community manager Che Chou (username “chespace”) revealed that the speedy sim sequel would overtake the 2006 holiday period and that the team would not “announce a new date until X06. Gotta do what you gotta do to get things right, y’know?”
Oh, we know. Given the game’s relatively brief development time (the first Forza hit the Xbox last year), lofty goals and glut of prerendered promotional trailers, the news will likely disappoint more than it surprises. The few weeks leading up to Microsoft’s X06 event are sure to be filled with speculation regarding the new release date — we hear March 2007 is pretty popular these days. In the meantime, Microsoft expects you to gaze upon the latest screenshots, one of which features a rather exciting wall.
[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
See also: Forza 2 jacks PGR3 technology
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