Sony improves PS3 development tools and reduce devkit costs. About time too. The PS3 is the most difficult console to develop for, ever, and Sony have not looked after the development community anywhere near as well as they should have. As a result all formats titles come out on the PS3 last, giving a huge advantage to the competition. That is when they even bother with a PS3 version.- Microsoft steps up family focus. Who isn’t now that Nintendo have proven that there is more money to be made from games than everyone’s wildest dreams? More interestingly is the rumoured gesture controller. If true (likely) and done well (likely) this could force Nintendo to bring out son of Wii sooner.
- Play.com to launch huge consumer show at Wembley. With the right marketing an ambitious event like this has the potential to create an immense buzz and do us all lots of good. Another step on the road to being accepted as mainstream. So it is well worth everyone supporting it.
Former Barbie boss joins EA. All you have to do is look at the crashes at Acclaim and 3DO and the management upheavals at Infotari and Take Two to realise that some of their quality of management was below optimum.
EA are the number one publisher, by miles. And the main reason for this is that they hire top draw professional management. People are everything, with the right people you can get everything else.- The golden times roll on. Ubisoft first half sales figures are up by 50%, Gamestop has a 283% increase in Q3 earnings and NCsoft Europe to double in size by 2009. These are the best times ever for video gaming. With platform proliferation and new found audiences we are making that final, much anticipated, breakthrough into mainstream. And whilst the rest of the economy jitters on the brink of recession we have the added bonus of knowing that we are above such economic worries.
Zune and 360 will one day be unified with a common online platform. This will come as no surprise to regular readers here. To Microsoft online is the platform, the bits of hardware are just ways to connect to it. The platform will have ever increasing capabilities till it becomes the centre of our lives. Other companies like Apple and Sony are just playing round at the edges in comparison. Microsoft’s greatest days lie ahead of them.- Hillary Clinton sticks her oar in. She’s got an election to win so grabbing stupid populist ideas is the way to go. But she ought to look at books, they have no age rating. Or film where the age ratings are far more lenient than they are for games. She won’t though because she understands books and films but when it comes to games she hasn’t the faintest idea what she is talking about. How do these people get so much power?
British government spend taxpayer’s money developing computer game. Only this is pretty much labour party propaganda. So it should have an 18+ rating. It is also pretty dire and of no possible use to anyone. Which is what we have become accustomed to with this government.
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