BAD END: Bioware & Pandemic gobbled-up by EA
Posted by inpheaux on October 11th, 2007 at 7:14 pmAll bad news, all the time.
Out of nowhere, EA has decided that it would be super neat if they went ahead and bought-out Bioware and Pandemic, to build upon their game-development Empire of Doom. If they were another less-established pair of independent developers, sure, this would be pretty decent news, since it would mean stable [...]
Last remnant of FASA closes up shop
Posted by inpheaux on September 12th, 2007 at 8:35 pmAbout six years ago FASA Corporation, the Pen & Paper RPG Juggernaut responsible for such licenses as BattleTech and Shadowrun, abruptly closed up shop. Their works lived on, though, as their electronics division had recently been bought by Microsoft, and their PnP games were eventually licensed around to a variety of companies.
Today, FASA Studio, that [...]
EA drops online support for tons of games
Posted by inpheaux on August 3rd, 2007 at 4:04 pmEA, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that if you haven't upgraded your yearly sports games in the past two years, that you must not care about playing games online. So they don't need to support you anymore.
In one month, on 1 SEP 2007, EA will drop online support for the following games on the [...]
LucasArts’ Prez: Time is more important than Quality
Posted by inpheaux on June 17th, 2006 at 7:02 amFor anyone who's been attempting to play and enjoy recent games from LucasArts, a formerly epic game developer, this should seem like a no-brainer, but it's nice to see confirmation from up high. LucasArts cares more about deadlines than releasing good polished videogames.
Examine this wonderful quote from a recent interview LEC's President Jim Ward had [...]
Microsoft formally acquires Lionhead Studios
Posted by inpheaux on April 6th, 2006 at 10:38 amI say formally because gee, don't they practically own them already?
Well now they do, for real.
The good news here is that it won't result in any changes for us consumers. Had Lionhead been gobbled up by the competition, like EA or Ubisoft, Bad Things might have happened. EA, well, EA would have probably wanted to [...]
StarCraft: Ghost postponed indefinitely
Posted by inpheaux on March 25th, 2006 at 4:58 pmAfter nearly five years of development and a massive transition between two developers [three if you count the transition made when Blizzard acquired Swingin Ape Studios], Blizzard has finally shelved their StarCraft third-person sneaker/shooter.
In a press release yesterday, Blizzard President Mike Morhaime announced that the main reasoning behind the shelving boils down to the current [...]
Shadow of the Colossus cleans up at the GDC Awards
Posted by inpheaux on March 23rd, 2006 at 3:06 pmThe 2006 Game Developers conference has been going on all week and one of today's events was the presentation of the Game Developers Choice Awards, quite possibly the only videogame-related awards worth listening to.
The winners? Four games ended up taking everything: Shadow of the Colossus, Psychonauts, Guitar Hero and Nintendogs. I don't think I could [...]
Stargate: SG1 – The Alliance Canned? Again?
Posted by inpheaux on January 22nd, 2006 at 2:35 amSorry if this is starting to sound repetitive, but it looks like Stargate: SG1 - The Alliance may be down for the count this time.
In a post to their forums yesterday, one of the admins of the semi-official fansite Stargate-Game.com announced that he had word from inside Perception [the game's developers] stating that after years [...]
Majesco calls it quits
Posted by inpheaux on January 19th, 2006 at 1:07 pmWe've previously reported on the shaky ground Console & PC game publisher Majesco Games has been on over the course of the past year. From massive stock problems, to funding problems, to class action lawsuits brought on by their stockholders, to backing games that just didn't do well. Well, it seems Majesco has had enough.
Yesterday, [...]
Weekly Valve news – Lost Coast & Xbox Port
Posted by inpheaux on October 28th, 2005 at 8:25 amHey, Look. Stuff to download. If you've got Half-Life 2, restart Steam and you'll be presented with Lost Coast. What's Lost Coast? Quoth SteamPowered:
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, a single-player level custom-created to showcase High-Dynamic Range lighting (HDR) in the Source engine.
As this is effectively a tech demo, it has a quite hefty set of system [...]