Gary's Blog

Just a place to find out what's on my mind, or what's occupying my time whilst I avoid actual "work."

 

VGN for August 5th, 2005

Video game news:

Fighting the Grid Lock on the Grid Iron.

Down and dirty

Midway Games intends to play rough with its upcoming football video game, "Blitz: The League."

BY HIAWATHA BRAY

The Boston Globe

This year's National Football League season is shaping up as the least competitive in years -- if you're a computer gamer. That's because there's only one official league-sanctioned video game this year -- the 2006 edition of Electronic Arts' popular football simulator, "Madden NFL." Thanks to some hard bargaining between the league and the world's largest computer game company, EA Sports now has an exclusive lock on NFL gaming titles.

That's bad news for gaming rival Take 2, which finally broke Madden's hold on the pro football gaming market last year with its superb "NFL 2K5" game. Take 2's game was as good as Madden, at half the price, and sold millions of copies.

EA responded with the nuclear option -- an NFL licensing deal that bars Take 2 from the market.

Midway Games also makes pro football video games. Unlike Take 2, Midway has no intention of bailing out of the business. Nor does the company plan to challenge EA's exclusive deal with the NFL.

Instead, Midway is developing a different kind of football video game. "Blitz: The League," which debuts in October, will combine sports action with seamy off-the-field drama.

Mike Bilder, the game's executive producer, said that Midway had planned to drop its licensing deal with the NFL even before the EA lock-down.

"Over the years, the NFL has gotten more restrictive," Bilder said.

"Blitz" has never been a straight-up sports simulator like "Madden." Born as a coin-operated arcade game in 1997, it featured exaggerated athletic moves and exceptionally violent tackling.

There'll be plenty of innovation in this year's "Blitz." The game offers an entirely fictional football league, with teams like the Chicago Marauders and the New York Nightmare. In addition, "this is the first football game with a story mode in it," said Bilder. Along with the hard-hitting games, players follow the lives of the team's manager and key players throughout the season.

The game begins after your team has just lost the championship game. A vicious hit by an opposing linebacker (played by NFL Hall-of-Famer Lawrence Taylor) has ended the career of your star quarterback. Now you must rebuild by drafting new players and molding them into a team.

Thanks to VGN Listener Aaron for sending this one in!!

Metroid 3

RETRO SHARE METROID PRIME 3 DETAILS
Posted: 20:33 on 04 Aug 2005
By: Chris Leyton

Retro Studios provides a glimpse of Samus’ return on the Revolution..

As details of Xbox360 titles and to a lesser extent the Playstation3 come thick and fast talk of the Nintendo Revolution has slowed down to bordering on comatose, while Miyamoto-san and his team presumably busily work around to clock to re-invent the way we play videogames.

That silence was today broken, well almost, as details of Metroid Prime 3 became apparent during an interview with Retro Studios on Luminoth Temple.

Naturally the team goes nowhere near to discussing specifics, although suggest that they want to take full advantage of the new functions of the Revolution and its controller. The game will be displayed from the same perspective as its predecessors, while suggesting that the Phazon substance will resurface and form a dominant role within the game.

Once again Kenji Yamamoto will compose the soundtrack, however work has yet to begin on this.

And that’s about it… but at least it gives the indication that certain developers are in the midst of Revolution development and presumably no more than they’re letting on about its revolutionary aspects. 

SHOCKING!!!

Greg Sandoval
Fri Jul 29,12:52 PM ET
 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)--Tara Teich enjoys nothing more than slipping into the role of a female video game character. But the 26-year-old software programmer gets annoyed by the appearance of such digital alter egos as the busty tomb raider Lara Croft or the belly-baring Wu the Lotus Blossom of “Jade Empire.”

 
Don't even get her started on the thong-bikini babes that the male gunmen win as prizes in “Grand Theft Auto,” which was sent to stores with hidden sex scenes left embedded on the discs by programmers.

Rockstar Games belatedly took responsibility for the scenes this week after the industry's ratings board re-rated the game “Adults Only.”

“I wish they were wearing more clothes,” says Teich, a lifelong game enthusiast who now helps create games. Why, she asks, must women in video games always look like Las Vegas show girls?

Yee-Haw.  More money!
Fri Jul 29,12:15 PM ET
 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Members of the Screen Actors' Guild overwhelmingly approved a new contract covering their work in video games, the union's Web site said on Friday.

The vote was approved by a margin of 81.2 percent to 18.8 percent late on Thursday and sent a strong message to SAG's national executive committee, which in June narrowly voted to nullify a previous SAG member vote approving the agreement.

The contract with video game companies, including industry giant Electronic Arts Inc., was jointly negotiated by SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

The agreement won higher wages and better benefits for union members, but failed to secure residual payments for a union actor whose voice or likeness appears in a video game.

Thanks again to Aaron for contributing this article!

Speclulicious...

Posted: 15:17 on 03 Aug 2005
By: Jon Wilcox

Several reports from several sources as speculation surrounding PS3 continues to build...

In contrast to what appears to be a relatively steady and calm progress towards the launch of Xbox 360 at the end of 2005, speculation surrounding Sony’s PlayStation3 console continues to build.

After SCEI boss Ken Kutaragi announced that people will feel the need to work longer hours to afford the next-gen console, speculation that the price of the PS3 will be relatively higher than previous console launches have been strengthened by comment from NVIDIA CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang. Speaking to Beyond3D at his company’s ‘Editor Day’, Mr Huang made comparisons between the $499 plus price tag of the GeForce 7800 GPU and PlayStation3, commenting that:

“We need to price it at a level the enthusiasts will buy it at, that's the way that we think about pricing. We think about the pricing of this in the same way that Sony thinks about PlayStation 3's - its not about how much is costs, its about what is the price it needs to sell at, and we need to figure out how to make money underneath that.”

Meanwhile the US edition of PlayStation Magazine has reported that the PS3 will not be supporting PSone and PS2 memory cards, instead it will solely rely on the HDD and Sony’s Memory Stick Duo cards, currently used on PSP. The magazine also states that third-party peripherals for the two older platforms will not be supported either, although the PSP will be used as a Wi-Fi remote control unit that could be used to organise and manage various media stored on the next-gen machine. With various suggestions going around as to what media types would be supported by PlayStation3, PSM is keen to stress that at the moment the final specification of the machine is yet to be set – although the option to play games in 480p and 480i (current non-HDTV standards) will be available to players without high-def equipment.
What I've been playing.

Nothing!!!  I've been preparing for AFO.  I need some game time soon.

Anime:

AFO this weekend!!

 

Hope to see you guys out there!!

posted by: Gary1059 at 07:42 | link | comments |