It’s official, the videogame streaming service OnLive will debut on June 17 in the US, which is also the last day of E3. Their will be a monthly subscription of $14.95 and other fees like renting or owning a game will be extra.
According to COO Mike McGarvey, who talked to MCV, the membership price “provides access to an ever-increasing library of high-end, new release game content and a host of exclusive community feature such as Brag Clips and massive spectating.” He also noted that “individual titles will be available for purchase or rental on an a la carte basis. Specific game pricing, including rentals,purchases and loyalty programs, will be announced prior to the consumer launch event at E3. We’ll also be announcing additional loyalty and discount programs for consumers in the coming months.”
When the service launches, it will only be available for both the PC and Mac; however, the home Micro Console — which allows games to played on any TV — is scheduled before years end. “For the initial rollout of the consumer service, we are focusing on delivering high-performance games to PCs and Macs and we will be making an announcement regarding our plans for the MicroConsole rollout later on in the year,” said McGarvey.
Three titles have been confirmed when OnLive launches on the internet, which are Ubisoft’sAssassin’s Creed II and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, along with THQ’sMetro 2033. Although, expect more to be announced soon — maybe even tonight when OnLive has a keynote during GDC.
It’s been known for awhile that Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros and THQ have all jumped on the OnLive bandwagon. However, up until this point the biggest publisher in the world — Activision — has yet to be sold on the streaming service concept.
After the jump, read about what I think is the biggest hurdle for OnLive. (more…)
BioWare has created some of the most sought-after games of this generation. FromMass Effect to Dragon Age, the studio has redefined RPGs for the home console. The company has been so successful that they announced last year that they are opening up a whole new studio in Montreal, Quebec, which means more original games will come out from the studio.
While having a live chat with Eurogamer earlier today, the CEO of BioWare Ray Muzyka confirmed with viewers that BioWare is developing titles for the PlayStation 3. When asked if some games, not necessarily for the PS3, will be unveiled at this year’s E3, he responded with the simple answer of “yes!”
Sadly, he didn’t reveal if we should expect completely new titles or sequels to already successful franchises. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something about Mass Effect 3, even if it’s a tease. Muzyka has confirmed the third installment of the space RPG is already in the early development stages.
In the beginning of the month, lead designer over at Epic Games Cliff Bleszinski, tweeted that he has some “awesome shit” to share to everyone who loves his games. Obviously, with the vague description people could only speculate exactly what he was referring too. Most people, including me, are assuming he’s hinting towards the announcement of Gears of War 3, which Epic Games has a contract with Microsoft to develop.
Now, Bleszinski has tweeted that whatever he has been talking about, we’ll be hearing about in short time.
“Kick ass news soon. Very soon. Watch this space…”
I think soon is referring to an upcoming event, which could be a couple things. First, Microsoft has just confirmed X10, which is an Xbox 360-only event and will be held in San Francisco on February 11th. If I were to bet, I would think this is when this “kick ass news” will be revealed to the world. However, a month later in the same city, the annual GDC will take place. So don’t be surprised that’s where we’ll first hear about whatever Cliff Bleszinski is tweeting about. And remember, Gears of War 2 was unveiled to the world at GDC 2008.
CEOSteve Ballmer took the stage this evening at CES Microsoft keynote speech. One of the first things that was on his agenda was to discuss the success of the company’s Xbox 360. According to him, the Xbox 360 has sold 39 million units since it launched back in November of 2005. However, what was more important was the number of software that has been sold, since the original Xbox debuted in 2001.
Microsoft has tallied the total number of games sold since the historic launch almost ten years ago and it stands at about 500 million, which is almost the same number of people living in North America. Obviously, that number would translate well when it comes to how much cash flow came into the seattle-based company, and apparently that would equal to about $20 BILLION.
It’s an easy case to prove that Microsoft entering the gaming industry was a good thing, even with the criticism it received when they first announced the original Xbox during the first half of last decade. Although, even with those great numbers, the company is more than likely still in the red. For the longest time, for every system sold with the original Xbox, Microsoft was loosing quite a bit of money since the debut of the first Xbox — a trend that would later continue when the Xbox 360 launched four years later. Thankfully for Microsoft, this was the plan, and they are not looking to make a quick buck out of their console; but they anticipated well before they unveiled the Xbox that this would be a long term goal, which is still to be the king of the videogames…. They obviously still have a long way to go — but don’t count them out just yet.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Medal of Honor going all modern combat on everyone. If you didn’t hear, Electronic Arts announced last week that their successful series will put the World War II theme on the back-burner and have this newest installment be told in today’s era. It’s pretty obvious the company has seen what their rival, the Call of Duty series, from Activision, and they have experienced nothing but a lucrative bank account since they decided to take the game into the modern times.
Last night, EA showed off to the world for the first time a trailer for the Medal of Honor reboot. After watching it, it’s hard not to compare the title to Modern Warfare 2, not like we weren’t already doing that in the first place. So the question is, how does it measure up to MW2? Well, it’s too soon to know really. But so far, I’m mighty impressed — in fact graphically speaking, it looks as good as Modern Warfare, maybe even a tad better. Of course, EA is only hand picking what scenes look fantastic, so when people do watch it and think Call of Duty, they might think it could be a MW2 killer — that’s kinda the point of the trailer.
But before anyone jumps on the Medal of Honor bandwagon, let some people play it and let the previews trickle down a little bit, before we give it the first-person shooter crown. But it’s definitely something I’m gonna be watching out for in the near future.
During the Video Game Awards, Bungie revealed the first trailer of their last Halo game they’re developing. While not much has been talked about the upcoming Halo: Reach title, we did get some alleged leaked photos of the game in action. Last night, the long trailer somewhat proved those screen-captures were real because if you analyzes them, you would have seen what looked like a Spartan hand holding various guns.
When the trailer aired last night, we saw a whole bunch of Spartans, some with masks and some without. What this ultimately proved is that players who buy the game, will more than likely play as the famed Spartans of the Halo universe, and not a military guy like in the last and perhaps disappointing Halo title, ODST.
Graphically speaking, Halo: Reach looks considerably better when compared to the last two entries of the series. You could probably contribute a number of reasons why this would be. For one, Bungie might have been pushed a little to hard by Microsoft to bust out Halo 3 within the year the company’s competitors, and Nintento, systems were out for a year. So Bungie had a decision — improve the visuals and make it compete with other next-generation titles, or sacrifice that and perfect the gameplay. Obviously, they made the right choice by focusing on how well the game played.
But what Bungie has proven with this latest trailer is they still have it. The game looks like what many of us were hoping Halo 3 would have looked like back in 2007. So combine that with the gameplay of Halo — this just might be one of the best games to come out in 2010.
One of my favorite series of all time is Prince of Persia. When I learned that Disney greenlit a film adaption of the videogame, I was ecstatic beyond belief — especially when you consider the games never sold up to expectations. Ubisoft is obviously banking on the fact the franchise can now finally become a smash-hit, something it should have been years ago. But this time, it should have some momentum because of the movie.
This May, when the film hits theaters, Ubisoft announced earlier in the week that a sequel to the film and videogame of the Sands of Time will be in stores. They decided to debut the trailer at the Video Game Awards, but sadly everything looks CGish.
The only real news to come out of the clip, is the design of how the Prince will look this time around. He looks more like the film character, and less like the star from the Sands of Time videogame.
Activision teased us with a trailer last week, showing off a cop inside the city of Hong Kong. Some were convinced that it was Stranglehold 2, and if you were one of them — you were wrong. Today, we get to see the full trailer of what this game was, and we now know it was True Crime 3.
Tonight is one of the biggest nights in the videogame industry because Spike TV is broadcasting the seventh annual Video Game Awards. While it pales in comparison to such conventions as the Electronic Entertainment Expo; it does give us a glimpse into what games we should expect in 2010 — thanks to the world premier trailers, announcements and surprises during the show. Not only that, it will honor the very best of what 2009 had to offer, by handing out select VMA awards to the outstanding titles of this past year.
After the jump, we will live blog the award ceremony. If all you want to see is the latest trailer, just refresh our homepage, and it will be below this live blog — as we are making this a sticky post until the show ends.(more…)
Oh no, Blizzard isn’t going to be happy with the people who run the Las Vegas Convention Centre website. According to the official site of the convention centre, Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon, the company’s own expo, will be hosted by the convention centre in Sin City. The site also mentioned the sought-after expo will not only be in Vegas, but take place on the 30th and 31st of July in 2010.
This past summer BlizzCon was held inside the confines of the Anaheim Convention Center in California, which has a size of about 800,000 square feet. The LVCC is considerably bigger… scratch that — it’s a lot bigger. According to the site, it is one of the largest convention centers in the world and is listed at 3,200,000 square feet.
Somehow Namco Bandi announcing a videogame adaption of the classic movie Clash of the Titans, fell under the radar during Gamescom. According to the company, the Xbox 360 and PS3 game will follow the movie but at the same time expand on the ‘Clash of the Titans’ universe. The hack-n-slash game, is currently being developed by Japan-based studio Game Republic, who also created the not-so-fun title Genji: Days of the Blade, which was released soon after the PlayStation 3 launch.
IGN is reporting that players can expect to see over 100 Greek mythology characters included in the game, which can rage from anywhere from minotaurs to Cyclopes. From the sounds of it, Namco Bandi is hoping to create something similar to God of War and for those who don’t know, the series takes place during Greek mythology times.
I just hope when the game actually comes out, it’ll feel different than the famous God of War franchise. While I love GoW, I also grew up watching Clash of the Titans and both have a completely different way on telling the history of Greek mythology. I just hope Game Republic realizes this and decides not to play it safe and try to clone God of War. If they go in that direction, it could be a great mistake because I can’t see them creating a game anywhere near the quality of God of War.
It should also be noted that a remake of Clash of the Titansis expected to hit theaters next year.
Namco Bandi expects Clash of the Titans to ship on March 26, 2010.
By: Derek Matias on August 20th, 2009 pm31 8:18 pm
(Game Unicon Staff rush to get the Convention set-up.)
Tonight I got a chance to preview Game Unicon so I thought I’d give you a sneak peak. As I write this Game Unicon staff are working non-stop to get this event set-up. While one group of staffers are busy setting up “free play rooms” where attendees can go in and play games, others are setting up the tournament room where gamers will go to show off what they’ve got.
(One of many rows of TV’s where gamers will be playing games.)
Aside from free play rooms and tournaments, Game Unicon will offer a free play arcade, concerts, and vendors. There will be multiple vendors selling everything from old-school games to action figures.
(One of the many vendor sections being set-up at Game Unicon.)
The best part is that you can attend for 3 days straight all day, all night. Now seeing as this is the event’s first year you will have to go to find out what it is all about. For up to date information on Game Unicon vist their site at GameUnicon.com
And be sure to check out our coverage of the event over the weekend.
To everyone that lives in or around the Massachusetts area, we just wanted to remind you that “the biggest video game convention in the history of New England” begins tomorrow. Game Unicon takes place at the Best Western Royal Plaza in Marlborough, MA and when doors open at 11:00 am on Friday, they won’t close until the last day of the convention which is on Sunday at 6:00 pm.
The convention will showcase some of the best gaming tournaments in the country and will have over $10,000 in cash prizes. Some of the games included in the playoffs are; Halo 3,Street Fighter IV, Super Smash Bros. (Brawl and Melee), Rock Band, Gears of War 2 and Madden 10. They are even going to have some classic titles for you to compete in, like a Tetris tournament and a Battletoads speedrun; where the faster player to beat the game wins.
Read more about what the convention has to offer after the jump. (more…)
