MMO Clerks

Nintendo unveiled the games that will launch with its DSi Ware downloadable games service for its new version of the Nintendo DS hardware at a financial briefing Friday in Japan.
(Sorry for the lame pictures, they were all screen-capped from a
lame video.)
The most interesting of the bunch is
Utsusu! Made In Wario, the latest in the
Wario Wareseries of micro-game collections. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata explains that you’ll use the Nintendo DSi’s built-in camera to play it, kind of like an EyeToy game — your silhouette is inserted into the mini-games, and you have to play it with your face and hands. You’ll actually set the DSi on a tabletop to do this.
Nintendo will extend its
Art Styleseries of elegantly designed puzzle games from Wii Ware to DSi Ware, as well. These, like the new
Wario title, will all cost 500 points or about $5 and launch in the beginning of December.
Nintendo will produce even […]

Original post by Chris Kohler

Electronic Arts wants to assure the gaming world that their mysterious, Steven Spielberg-helmed title is still in development, despite the company’s recently announced lay offs.
The “ultra-real game,” codenamed “LMNO,” was the first casualty of
EA’s workforce cutbacks, stated the rumor spawned by gaming blog Videogaming247. Their source, an unnamed EA employee, was never revealed, nor were additional sources cited before EA flatly denied the story.
“Development of LMNO continues at EALA under the creative leadership of
Doug Church and Lou Castle,” EA said in a statement this morning. Though it’s standard practice to deny any and all rumors, the firm response provided by EA leads me to believe that they have nothing to hide on this one.
Had they offered up the typical “we do not comment on rumors and speculation” line however, I’d be much less apt to believe the company.
I wish I could offer more on the game itself than just a […]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

After reporting a significant loss yesterday, Electronic Arts announced that it would be laying off 6 percent of the firm’s workforce, a figure that translates to 540 people, reports Wired.com.
EA stock fell 14 percent in after hours trading, closing at $23.75 a share. The company’s second fiscal quarter reports show that the firm lost $310 million. By cutting its workforce, EA estimates that it will save more than $50 million a year.
The cuts will come from EA’s studio labels, publishing operation and corporate headquarters.
“Considering the slow down at retail we’ve seen in October, we are cautious in the short term,” said EA CEO John Riccitiello.

Image courtesy Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts Joins Layoff Club; Provides Sad Outlook[Wired.com]

See Also:

EA’s CEO: How I Learned To Acquire Developers And Not Screw Them Up

Riccitiello and EA: Don’t Ask Me, Ask These Guys

Designer Will Wright Walks Us Through
Spore

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Continuing the trend of regularly scheduled downloadable content releases for
Burnout Paradise, developer Criterion Games has just revealed details on the first additions for the new year, dubbed “Party.”
The premium DLC will add a hotseat multiplayer mode to the game, allowing for group gameplay with a single controller. The pack also includes an altered aesthetic for this special mode.
There is no word on whether any of the current multiplayer modes will be incorporated into this Party mode, but as most of them require more than one person’s car competing against another, I can’t imagine how that would work.
The Party pack is scheduled for release on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network in February 2009. Criterion has yet to reveal how much this round of DLC will cost.
Additionally, Criterion revealed the impending release of the
Burnout Paradise Ultimate Box.
This updated retail release of the game will contain all the content of the […]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

The first downloadable content for the just-released, PlayStation 3 exclusive
LittleBigPlanetwill hit the PlayStation Network Store on November 6.
To thank players for their patience after
LBP’srocky launch, developer Media Molecule is releasing two “fan appreciation gifts” free of charge to all
LBPplayers.
The two aesthetic bonus items (the pumpkin mask pictured at right, and a spacesuit) will only be available from November 6 until November 19.
The official PlayStation Blog also has a rundown of the various types of DLC the game will see over its lifespan, including seasonal downloads such as the pumpkin mask, premium costumes (like the previously revealed Solid Snake and Sephiroth costumes) and “RARE Sackboy Costumes” which, according to Sony, are “very rare items that are both only available for a certain amount of time and extremely collectible.”

Image courtesy Sony

Available 11/6: Official LittleBigPlanet DLC on the PlayStation Store[PlayStation.Blog]

See Also:

Qur’anReferences Force
LittleBigPlanetDelay

Old Snake, Sephiroth Get Sacked for
LittleBigPlanet

Recalled
LittleBigPlanetCopies Hit eBay

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

The Witcherrecently broke the 1 million copies sold barrier, announced Polish developer CD Projekt Red Studio.
This news comes roughly a month after the firm released
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, a massive upgrade for the title that
we thought was a fantastic game. Fans who purchased the original version were able to download the additions free of charge, while an updated iteration of
The Witcher, including all the new content, was shipped to retail.
“The success of
The Witcherhas ensured that we’ll be able to make the games we want,” said CD Projekt CEO Adam Kicinski. “The amazing response we had from the gaming community to the
Enhanced
Editionreally reinforced that we’re on the right track with our
development philosophy.”

Image courtesy Atari

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin are both scheduled to appear in
Mercenaries 2: World in Flamesas downloadable playable characters, reports G4’s
X-Play.
I too scoffed at the news, but G4’s representatives claim that
Mercenariesdeveloper Pandemic Studios is entirely serious about this. So much so that
X-Playwas granted exclusive footage of the downloadable content to broadcast on their show.
There is no release date yet for the DLC pack containing the two polemical politcos, but we expect to see it soon if only based on the fact that election day is a week off.

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Wondering why we haven’t heard of a publishing deal yet for
Brutal Legend? According to one report, Activision Blizzard is to blame.
Variety reporter Ben Fritz says that sources at Double Fine, the developer of Psychonauts and the awesome rock-flavored action game illustrated above, told him that the publisher is acting as an “impediment” to the process of finding
Brutal Legenda new home. Activision Blizzard owns the rights to the game following the merger, but has declined to publish it. Several such games have found new publishers already, but for some reason,
Brutal Legendis getting caught up in red tape.
Hopefully whatever’s going on gets resolved posthaste, as I think we’d all like to be playing this game sooner rather than later. Especially considering that Double Fine’s last game had to go through the same sort of publisher hand-off.

Image: Double Fine

Brutal LegendStill Homeless, Sources Blame Activision Blizzard[Variety]

Original post by Chris Kohler

Microsoft’s launch next month of the “New Xbox Experience” is also bringing with it access to Community Games, and the home-brewed games could be even cheaper than originally expected.
In Joystiq’s
video previewof the Community Games section of the new service, we find out that of the three titles currently available in the preview build, multiplayer space shooter
Net Rumbleis priced at 50 Microsoft Points (around 60 cents).
So far, Microsoft has stated that all games from the XNA community would be priced at either 200, 400, or 800 points.
This of course could simply be a quirk of the beta build of the New Xbox Experience, or it could mean cheaper games.
Also, Kotaku
reportedearlier this month that
Net Rumbleshowed up on the Xbox Live Marketplace under an “XNA Creator’s Club” banner, priced at 100 Microsoft Points.
I expect we’ll hear more from Microsoft on a new pricing policy for XNA games prior to the upcoming launch.

New Xbox […]

Original post by Jean Snow

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s time to start getting very excited about the upcoming launch of the Community Games section of Xbox Live.
Microsoft’s push to create the user-generated “YouTube of Games” has always been a great idea in theory — let indie programmers crank out new and innovative game ideas using the XNA development environment, then allow them unfettered (well, not very fettered) access to publish the games on Xbox 360. But while the games in the first beta release of the service were
merely interesting proofs of concept, the titles that Microsoft showed at a launch party Wednesday were something more — actual, fun, awesome videogames.
The highlight of the show was
CarneyVale: Showtime, a “vertical ragdoll platform game” created by
GAMBIT, the
Singapore-MIT game lab started by Henry Jenkins et al. It is super fun. You launch a clown into the air, then use “grabbers” spread throughout the playfield to grab him and fling […]

Original post by Chris Kohler