t5 labs announced Friday details of a new “instant gaming” platform that enables people to play PC games via terrestrial set-top-boxes (STBs).
According to t5 labs, the “virtual games console” will enable consumers to play console-quality games with nothing to install or download.
Cable TV and IPTV (TV over broadband) operators will run standard PC games and t5 labs software on central servers. The software will allow PC titles to be streamed seamlessly to living rooms on an on-demand basis, either using a pay-to-play or subscription model, and will enable network operators to re-use their existing infrastructure to add video games to their offerings.
t5 labs believes that ease of use and access will allow publishers to reach out to new audiences using a standard platform where games are impossible to pirate and for which there is no second-hand market.
Graham Clemie, founder and CEO of t5 labs, insisted that latency would not be an issue with the service.
“Many people already enjoy playing online games. In some ways, latency with Instant Gaming will be less. Instead of connecting across the public Internet to perhaps the sole server in a country, in our case, the service will effectively be run over a private network, owned and operated by network operators and hosted at several sites across each country. The physical distance will be far lower and the operator can optimise their routers to prioritise the Instant Gaming traffic.
“Most importantly, our patent-pending technology vastly accelerates the compression process. This works by intercepting commands issued by the games software and exploiting the resulting knowledge of the objects on a screen and how they move. This can result in a 50% to 80% reduction in processing time.”
The announcement was well received by Blitz CEO Philip Oliver. "I've been at the forefront of the gaming industry for almost 25 years and there are very few occasions that I've seen something truly ground-breaking,” he said. “When I heard what t5 labs were offering I was understandably skeptical, but on learning more I became incredibly excited by the potential of this technology to revolutionize and broaden the gaming market."
Weekly Xbox 360 sales jumped phenomenally in Japan during the week ended November 4 to outsell Sony’s rival next-gen console.
The latest data from Media Create shows that weekly Xbox 360 sales rose from 3,718 to 17,673, while PS3 sales fell slightly to 17,434. The rise in 360 sales is most likely attributable to the successful release of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, which sold almost 80,000 copies in its first week on sale to enter the Japanese software chart at No2.
In comparison, Mario Galaxy, which shifted over 250,000 copies in its debut week, helped boost Wii sales by only 10,000 units.
Nintendo’s DS is still the clear frontrunner in Japan, while Sony’s handheld PSP again fell just short of the 60,000 sales barrier.
Weekly hardware sales from October 29 to November 4:
Nintendo DS - 78,599
PSP - 59,714
Wii - 37,617
Xbox 360 - 17,673
PlayStation 3 - 17,434
PlayStation 2 - 10,209
Game Boy Advance SP - 206
GameCube – 155
Game Boy Micro - 113
SIERRA ENTERTAINMENT’S AWARD-WINNING F.E.A.R.™ FRANCHISE RETURNS THIS HOLIDAY
F.E.A.R.™ Hits Retail with Stand-Alone Expansion Packs F.E.A.R. Files™ for Xbox 360® and Perseus Mandate™ for PC
LOS ANGELES – November 7, 2007 – Sierra Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Games, announced the latest installments for the award-winning F.E.A.R.™ (First Encounter Assault Recon), are now available for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC. F.E.A.R. Files, the complete stand-alone expansion pack series exclusive for the Xbox 360 and F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, the second expansion pack to the award-winning PC title, are both currently available at major retailers nationwide.
In Perseus Mandate for Windows-based PC, players face off against new enemies as they take point on a second F.E.A.R. team investigating the mysterious paranormal phenomena at Armacham. Perseus Mandate features several robust multiplayer modes available to players online, including a deeply immersive storyline that runs parallel to the original F.E.A.R. and first expansion pack Extraction Point. The second expansion pack reveals a new perspective on the initial disturbance, challenging players to find out what Perseus actually is and why the Nightcrawlers have been called in to collect it.
In F.E.A.R. Files, exclusive for the Xbox 360, gamers will combat paranormal situations in two action-packed campaigns. F.E.A.R. Files is two games in one package – the brand new Perseus Mandate campaign and the award-winning expansion pack Extraction Point. F.E.A.R. Files features several new Instant Action and multiplayer maps, along with a variety of new weaponry available to the player. Gamers can look forward to the same psychological twists and turns they’ve come to expect from the F.E.A.R. franchise as they battle their way through each terrifying campaign.
“Since its launch, F.E.A.R. has been adopted by several million players around the world,” said Pascal Brochier, president, Global Retail for Vivendi Games. “This next chapter in the F.E.A.R. universe will further solidify the global success of the franchise, while giving the community an opportunity to experience another level of compelling F.E.A.R. content.”
F.E.A.R. Files was developed by TimeGate Studios in conjunction with Day One Studios. F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate was developed by TimeGate Studios. To get more information on both games please visit www.whatisfear.com.
Back in August, when TheFeed reported on the Piss-Screen urine stream-powered racing videogame, we knew that, like many great inventions, scientific breakthroughs, and advancements in Mankind’s yet nascent knowledge of the universe, it would inevitably be met with derision and scorn by a world far too unwilling to evolve and face the strange changes.
Well, it took a few months, but Belgian police have cracked down on this Galileo of the gaming age, banning a version of the game entitled Place To Pee from the GamePower Expo in Gent, Belgium. It seems the Flemish flatfoots consider the game, which allows players to control the direction of their on-screen cars by aiming their streams of liquid waste at a censor placed in a urinal, an “indecency offense.”
The historians at TheFeed are hardly surprised by the setting of this first Piss-Screen protest, occurring as it has in the city of Gent in the Flanders province of Belgium, which is widely known to have been named after Bible-thumping The Simpsons neighbor, Ned Flanders, sometime in the mid-9th century.
Xbox LIVE is the first and most comprehensive unified online entertainment network seamlessly integrated throughout the entire console experience, making it easy for people to find the friends, games and entertainment they want from the moment they power on their Xbox 360 system.
Xbox LIVE connects millions of members across 25 countries to enjoy hundreds of multiplayer games, downloadable games via Xbox LIVE Arcade, free and premium playable game demos, music videos, TV shows and movies in the United States as well as new game levels, characters and vehicles for all their favorite retail games.
On November 15, Xbox Live will turn five years old, and you’re invited to celebrate this fifth anniversary. Microsoft is planning a LIVE is 5IVE Celebration:
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has said that the company is committed to revitalising the James Bond brand - "one of the greatest videogame franchises of all time" - while revealing the publisher has two projects based on the license in development.
The publisher secured the Bond licence in 2006 after Electronic Arts ended its deal with MGM Interactive for the rights to create titles based on the James Bond films.
"Bond is one of the great videogame franchises of all time and that really was a result of Golden Eye," commented Kotick at a BMO Capital Markets conference.
"I think the key to re-energising the Bond franchise is going to be ultimately the highest possible game quality."
For Kotick, EA's Bond titles – which included GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and From Russia With Love – suffered because the publisher had too broad a portfolio, leaving the brand neglected.
"It suffered a lot because it wasn't a focal point of Electronic Arts' efforts over the past five years and they have such a broad portfolio of franchises that this one didn't get the attention it deserved," said Kotick.
"We have our best development studios working on the product, we have a second team working on another Bond product and we're putting great resources against it," he added.
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