Leading chip maker Intel has spoken to platform holders about the possibility of using its advanced technology in the next generation of consoles.
Intel believes that advancements in silicon chip design over the next decade will open doors to new ways of interacting with machines, and the firm has been courting console platform holders, reports Business Week.
According to Intel, its chips can perform in excess of 1 trillion calculations per second, and could even lead to pure motion control replacing physical controllers if adopted for use in future generation videogame consoles.
"We imagine some future generation of [Nintendo's] Wii won't have hand controllers," said Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer.
"You just set up the cameras around the room and wave your hand like you're playing tennis."
IBM currently supplies Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft with processors for their videogame consoles. Having been trumped by IBM this time round, Intel appears intent not to miss out on the market opportunities that will arise from the coming of future generations of consoles.
The NPD Group reports that the US videogame industry was up 52 percent in November to $2.63 billion; Call of Duty 4 (360), Super Mario Galaxy lead with million-plus sales.
Year-to-date industry sales were up 50 percent $13.12 billion overall.
"If the year had ended on December 1st, 2007 would be up 5 percent versus last year. With the biggest month of the year yet to go, total industry sales are on track to achieve between $18 billion and $19 billion in the US,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier in a statement.
Nintendo again led the hardware race, with the DS selling 1.53 million units during the month and the Wii with 981,000. Xbox 360 sold 770,000 units, while PS3 sold 466,000.
The PS2 outsold its younger, more powerful sibling, selling 496,000 units. PSP had strong sales, moving 567,000.
Last month was the Wii’s best month yet, surpassing last December by 60 percent, with sales only limited by supply constraints from high demand.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier said that the Xbox 360 and DS both had their second-best sales months, after December 2006.
She added, "The combination of the price cut and seasonal lift gave the PS3 the biggest October to November sales increase of any hardware platform."
Overall, videogame hardware was up 41 percent compared to last November, generating $1.1 billion in sales.
Software was was up 62 percent to $1.3 billion, with sales led by the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 4, which sold 1.57 million units. On a per-platform basis, Super Mario Galaxy was the only other million-seller during the month, selling 1.12 million. In a separate statement, Microsoft said that Xbox 360 software generated $367 million compared to $203 for Wii and PS3 at $129 million. Xbox 360's software attach rate was 6.9, according to the platform holder.
The rest of the list is below, courtesy of NPD Group:
360 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Activision—1.57 million*
Wii Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo—1.12 million
360 Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft—980,000*
PS2 Guitar Hero III, Activision—967,000*
Wii Play w/ Remote, Nintendo—564,000
360 Mass Effect, Microsoft—473,000*
PS3 Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, Activision—444,000
Wii Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Activision—426,000
360 Halo 3, Microsoft—387,000*
PS3 Assassin’s Creed—377,000*
(*Incl. CE or LTD ed.; bundles and non-bundles)
"Assassin's Creed has earned a spot in the history books as the best-selling new IP at launch, besting the previous record held by Gears of War,” Frazier said.
Across all platforms, Guitar Hero III sold 1.9 million units. “On a year-to-date basis the title has sold 3.3 million units in the U.S., and Guitar Hero II is right behind it at 3.1 million units,” she added.
“Rock Band sold 382,000 units across the 360 and PS3 platforms. While some may view this as disappointing, keep in mind that initial shipments were limited, and this is the kind of title that can easily build momentum in December and beyond as word of mouth spreads."
Accessory sales were $243 million for the month, a 52 percent year-on-year increase. Frazier said, “Life-to-date sales of [Xbox 360’s HD-DVD add-on] are 269K units in the U.S., representing a 3.4 percent attach rate to the 360 install base."
Four out of five of the best selling accessories were Wii controllers. The Wii Zapper sold 232,000 units, and the second-best-selling accessory for November was the PS3 wireless controller, selling 282,000.
With the release of Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 2.0, Microsoft edges closer to a publishing pipeline for the amateur development community.
“It’s our next big step in democratizing game development,” XNA general manager Chris Satchell told Next-Gen regarding the release of Game Studio 2.0, which launches Thursday at http://creators.xna.com/.
Satchell’s ultimate vision is to create what he has in the past called a “YouTube for Games” on consoles, where users can create a game and share it with the development and gaming community at large, and at will.
Microsoft isn’t quite there yet, but Satchell reveals that the vision is becoming reality, perhaps sooner than expected.
“Once you’ve given people that publishing pipeline of the community, that’s just a huge deal in the industry. That’s a discontinuity. That’s never been done on a games console before.
“I can confirm that [a user-generated program] is actively in development here. We’ve been working on it for a while, and early next year, we’re going to have some major announcements about the details of what this publishing pipeline for the community looks like.”
Satchell said that details about the business model surrounding the program would be announced next year as well.
"Xbox 360 will still have triple-A games, will still have Xbox Live Arcade games, but will also have this whole 'Community Arcade' idea," he added.
XNA Game Studio is development software targeted at student, hobbyist and independent game developers, allowing them to create games playable on PC and Xbox 360.
With Game Studio 2.0, developers now have the ability to add voice chat and matchmaking features to their games, without the need for complicated coding. The new toolset also lets developers develop games that can be played cross-platform between Xbox 360 and PC via Xbox Live and Games for Windows—Live.
Game Studio 2.0 also fully supports game development with all versions of the Microsoft Visual Studio product line.
The original XNA Game Studio launched about a year ago, and boasts around 750,000 downloads. More than 300 universities have adopted the software, and Satchell said that some bigger developers have told him that they have used XNA Game Studio for very raw prototyping before moving onto more serious prototyping using XDK or DirectX SDK.
Microsoft will also provide a free academic trial membership in the XNA Creators Club beginning in January.
Dream-Build-Play 2008
Microsoft also announced its Dream-Build-Play 2008 game development competition. Registration for the Silicon Minds Warm-Up Challenge begins this week, and winners of that challenge will be announced at the Game Developers Conference in February, where details of the main challenge will be revealed.
Warm-Up Challenge prizes include an opportunity to interview for an internship with one of the challenge’s organizers: Microsoft Research’s Machine Learning Group in Cambridge, England; Rare Ltd.; and Lionhead Studios. The challenge will be to create a small game based around A.I.
Blizzard: Published by: wes213 on Saturday, December 15, 2007
World of Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo house Blizzard has confirmed that it is working on a “next-gen” MMO.
Blizzard has only served to heighten speculation concerning its future plans by making a statement announcing that it is working on a new MMO which has nothing to do with a World of Warcraft expansion.
Gossip began to fly after the developer posted a number of jobs on the US recruitment page of its website advertising for staff for a “next-gen MMO”.
In response to frenzied speculation on the World of Warcraft forums, a Blizzard rep made the following post. "It is an unannounced Next-Gen MMO. And that doesn't mean an expansion for World of Warcraft either."
While further details surrounding the project are still being kept tightly under wraps, the term next-gen isn’t one generally associated with PC gaming, only heightening speculation that the game in question could be headed to Xbox 360 and / or PS3, despite the fact that the company said recently that it would remain focused primarily on PC games following the merger of its parent company Vivendi Games and Activision.
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences announced Wednesday that Blizzard president, CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime had become the organization's 11th Hall of Fame inductee.
When many of the year’s biggest games involve shooting people in the face, it should be no surprise that violence in games was again a common theme in videogame politics in 2007.
Contrary to popular belief, however, there are many popular titles that don’t involve bullets in bedlam. But you’re not going to hear politicians rally against the carpel tunnel you’ve developed from Guitar Hero. That kind of stuff doesn’t win votes.
And in an industry where blood and guts in games frequently splash headlines, former Entertainment Software Association boss Doug Lowenstein was well-aware of the challenges the industry would face after he left his post for new opportunities earlier this year.
"Damn it, get up there and defend [your work]," he implored in what would be his farewell speech at the Las Vegas DICE Summit in February. "… If you want to be controversial, fine, … that’s great. But damn it, don’t duck and cover when the shit hits the fan.”
Manhunt 2
And the shit did hit the fan in June, when Rockstar and Take-Two’s Manhunt 2 was granted an "AO" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board due to the game’s violent content. It proved to be one of the first big, public challenges for the newly-appointed management at Take-Two, and a microcosm for the struggle between the entire games industry and legislators. Manhunt 2 was edited, re-rated under an “M,” released in October, was hacked into, in turn releasing said violent content in the PSP version, and politicians, much like ambulance chasers, were all over it like stink on Donkey Kong.
In effect, Manhunt 2 acted as a catalyst for much of the videogame-related political headlines throughout the year.
In August, California Sen. Leland Yee demanded that the ESRB make the ratings process more transparent following the ESRB’s re-rating of the game, just a few months after the Federal Trade Commission lauded the ESRB for the strides made in keeping mature games out of minors’ hands. In November, the cross-party quartet of US Senators including Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh and Sam Brownback made a similar demand, calling for a “thorough review” of the ESRB in the wake of Manhunt 2’s release.
And after all that, the game launched to ho-hum sales and lukewarm reviews—a truly anticlimactic event upon which so much time, money and energy had been spent. But it still served, and continues to serve, as yet another lesson to an industry whose audience is now old enough to think for themselves.
While a lot’s been written about Wii shortages this holiday season, Microsoft UK says its struggling to satisfy demand for Xbox 360 as the Christmas hardware race heats up.
“We're struggling to meet the demand from every retailer every week. I think we've probably done it better than some of our cohorts out there, but it's a weekly thing - we're getting stock in, we're getting it straight out to the retailers who need it,” Stephen McGill, head of gaming & entertainment for Xbox UK, told GameSpot.
“It's been a great, great year, and obviously Christmas isn't over yet, and there's still a few more weeks... People are out there manically trying to find parking spaces to buy their Christmas presents, and it sounds like Xboxes are on the list for a lot of people,” he added.
Last week a Nintendo UK spokesperson said that the company was considering pulling Wii adverts this holiday season so as not to fuel already insatiable demand for the system, while yesterday Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that 200,000 PS3s were being sold on a weekly basis in Europe.
THE SMURFS - Village Party launches in June on all Platforms! Publisher Microids (@Microids_off) and IMPS revealed The Smurfs - Village Party, a new party/adventure game developed by Balio Studio (@BalioStudio) coming to Xbox Series, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, ..
HQ Network: 8,845 | 
Guests: 4748 |
Members: 1
