VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft create a human rights code of conduct — The three giants have been under pressure from several groups for their dealings in China among other places. Now they will adopt a formal code of conduct. Time will tell if that actually means anything or not. The San Francisco Chronicle got a copy of the document.

What’s in the early Windows 7 build? — Microsoft will show it off on Tuesday at its PDC show in Los Angeles, but ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley got an early look. Among the goodies: A new animation framework, multi-touch support (which was previously stated), a new task bar and the “ribbon” interface. In 13 paragraphs, Vista is only mentioned twice. That has to be music to Microsoft’s ears.

Intel apologizes for hurting Apple’s feelings on the iPhone — An executive for the chip maker suggested the popular mobile device wasn’t any good at browsing the Internet. Another exec at Intel, which provides chips for Apple’s computer lines, corrected him saying Intel’s own chips couldn’t match the battery performance the ARM chips (which Apple uses) get. CNET has more.

The global economic meltdown continues — Now poor nations along with the rich ones are facing troubling times. The Wall Street Journal has more.

MySpace rolls out the 2.0 version of its profiles — They now feature drag-and-drop capabilities. Drag-and-drop? 2.0? Is this 2000 or 2008? An improvement, but it still doesn’t correct perhaps the biggest problem with MySpace profiles — users’ tastes. TechCrunch has screenshots.

The FCC will vote on the “white space” on Election Day — Let’s hope people aren’t too distracted by that other voting taking place on the day, this will be potentially very important for the future of wireless communications — namely the Internet. Mashable has more.

The startup “undertaker” — peHUB has a Q&A with a guy responsible for shuttering companies when times get tough.

Early E-Voting problems in West Virginia — America is filled with brilliant minds and great technology. Why can’t we figure out how to vote with a computerized system? Techdirt has more.

Walt Mossberg thinks the new MacBook Pro sucks… — …the life out of its batteries quicker than the old version, at least. That makes me happy, as I have the old one.

A film company may buy Epic Games — Legendary Pictures, which is making the Gears of War movie, apparently is trying to buy the whole game studio (it makes Gears of War), according to Variety. Epic’s vice president Mark Rein denies the rumor.

E for All shuts down — The video game conference put on by IDG is done thanks to a revival of the larger E3 show. GameDaily has the story.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–When it comes to this Christmas, Epic Games‘ “Gears of War 2” should sell a lot of copies, and potentially a lot of hardware, for publisher Microsoft. The first “Gears of War” sci-fi shooting game debuted in 2006 and sold more than five million copies, giving Microsoft a critical new franchise in the console war. With the new game now complete, Cliff Belszinski, lead design director at Epic Games, was on hand to discuss his sequel as game journalists played Gears of War 2 for three days straight at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf ballroom.

VB: How challenging was it to live up to the lofty expectations gamers have with this sequel?

CB: I think we lived up to the expectations for the first game and I think the hype train is in full effect again. I hope we live up to the expectations for this game. At the same time, there are some people who are out there wondering if it’s just Gears 1.5, but if you really look at everything that’s in there, it’s very much Gears 2. We didn’t rehash the krill, we’re not rehashing the berserker. There’s so many things we’re putting into the game. The campaign is far more robust and longer and there are definitely more twists and turns and water cooler moments around every single corner. That’s the game we set out to build. It’s so hard to do an interview when I’m watching people getting pummeled (in the game) in the background.

VB: There were those non-core gamers who found the original Gears challenging. How important was the casual gamer this time around?

CB: In the campaign for players to be able to play on different difficulties — one player can play on casual, the other can play on hardcore — the mantra was that we couldn’t make the Casual difficulty easy enough. I can try to die when I play in casual but I have to rub up against Locusts and yell, “Come on, kill me!” And that’s okay because you have no idea how bad a casual gamer can truly be at the game. We want them to play the game and be sucked into the universe and finish the game. We want them to potentially finish with a friend and become a fan of the characters and the setting. Everyone’s all scared of this casual gaming boom and I say, “Bring it on!” We want them to play Gears.

VB: With Gears and Unreal Tournament tagged as mature-rated franchises, would you like to make a game franchise open to the Teen or Everyone audiences one day?

CB: Sure, maybe somewhere down the line. But I have the feeling I’m going to be in the hardcore, sci-fi head space for a while. I have plenty of ideas for different universes. I did do Jazz Jackrabbit a long time ago, so who knows what will happen. We won’t be getting around to do Wii games any time soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Capps, president of hit video game developer Epic Games announced today that Electronic Arts will publish a new action game from Epic’s new subsidiary, People Can Fly.

People Can Fly is the game developer based in Poland which created the hit “Painkiller” shooting game. I sat down with Capps today in a joint interview with VentureBeat contributor John Gaudiosi.

Capps, a former professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, can be considered the adult supervisor at Epic. As president since April, he is charged with expanding the company’s repertoire beyond hits such as “Gears of War” and “Unreal.”

VB: So you guys are getting promiscuous now?

MC: What?

VB: You’re moving from publisher to publisher, from Sony to Microsoft, and now EA.

MC: Sleeping around with publishers? Well, nine of ten publishers are using our Unreal Engine technology (for graphics) now.

VB: Clearly, you’re not attached to one publisher.

MC: We’re matching titles and publishers. This particular title was a good fit for their portfolio. They were the most passionate about this title…We don’t do a bidding war. That’s not what it’s about anymore. Luckily, for us, it’s about trying to find a fit and passion for a product. The ideas about how they planned to market the title were a fit.

VB: Epic’s style and EA’s style have not been synonymous in the past.

MC: Five years ago, we would have never worked with EA. They were focused on internal development. They were the big corporate machine that was not a fit for an indie developer like Epic — especially a “primadonna” indie developer like Epic. They really changed their focus. “The Orange Box,” (which EA published for developer Valve) says it all. I talked to Gabe Newell of Valve and asked what their experience was like. They had a really good experience. EA didn’t own that game. They marketed it and distributed it and everybody made buckets of money. Rock Band worked the same way. We talked to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk at BioWare. Inside the company, they said they watched the meetings where they discussed the products and every game was treated as a star in a portfolio. It’s still the honeymoon phase. Ask me in six months. Read the rest of this entry »

Expanding its push into high-quality game talent, Electronic Arts has signed up two new game development firms to produce future titles.

The partners include Epic Games, the creator of Microsoft’s bestseller, “Gears of War.” Epic Games is going to make a new game that EA will publish, said Epic president Mike Capps. Capps didn’t say what the game would be. The title is likely to be a big one, since Epic’s games sell in the millions. It will also be bloody, as Gears of War features “chainsaw bayonets.”

“You guys are really going to dig it,” Capps said, speaking to a group of journalists at EA’s headquarters in Redwood City, Calif.

The other partner is Grasshopper Manufacture of Japan, a studio run by some well known game developers: Suda51 and Shinji Mikami. The latter is the creator of the “Resident Evil” series that has sold millions of copies and is the subject of a few decent zombie horror movies. The alliance with the Japanese game developers is very unusual, considering EA has very little presence in the Japanese market. The title isn’t being described yet, but Mikami said it will be “dark, scary and exciting.” This is coming from the guy who is behind the zombie shooting franchise.

“It’s just like Ichiro and the Seattle Mariners,” Suda51 said on stage at EA’s headquarters. Mikami said, “I want to earn as much as Ichiro.”

EA hasn’t had the reputation of incubating the best talent inside its own studios. EA has some talented studios for sure, but some of the developers want to be on their own. The EA Partners program is a way to reach more of the independent developers who can create huge blockbusters. In the past year, it signed up partners that produced big hits such as “Rock Band,” “Crysis,” and “The Orange Box.” It also signed up id Software, creator of “Doom” and the upcoming “Rage” games, at E3.

With these two deals, EA is tapping key talent that has been monopolized in the past by rivals such as Capcom and Microsoft. EA Partners is a program where the company works with independent developers to publish their games across a wide range of platforms and get them into as many stores as possible. EA has the global infrastructure to get big games off the ground and that’s what attracts the developers.

For the first time in a few years, I’m not one of the E3 judges who evaluate the best games of the video game industry for GameCriticsAwards.com. Not to worry. I’ve filled up my schedule and I won’t have to try to see every single big game. But I’m a game fan at heart and I’ll be going to the show not just to write about business, but to evaluate the best games from my own point of view. Here are my picks for the “most anticipated” games of the show. This post is much more in tune with my old job of being a game reviewer. But you can expect me to voice my opinion on the best of what I see. It’s a good exercise to give readers a flavor for where the innovation is strongest in the $50 billion video game industry, which is finally drawing its share of high-caliber financial investors.

Fallout 3 (PC, Xbox 360, PS 3) Bethesda Softworks, Oct. 2008. Although I hesitate from putting anything with a “3″ after its name on a list of innovative titles, this game has consistently won buzz and it takes pains to create a graphically beautiful rendering of a world after a nuclear war in the year 2077. The Capital Wasteland is chock full of radioactive creatures and mechanical beasts. It’s also got a wry sense of humor, which tells you that mixing serious subjects with humor — such as playing happy music in the midst of a destroyed world — is one way to broaden the audience for a first-person (action role-playing game) shooter. That’s a lesson of last year’s BioShock.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Epic Games, Nov. 2008. OK, OK. More of the same. Yes, it’s in a post-apocalyptic world again. But these one has been ravaged not by nukes but by an underground race of demon thugs who are among the hardest things to kill with a game controller. This is the kind of game with gripping sound and graphics that makes you want to buy a 1080p high-definition TV. The story picks up six months after the last epic battle to save humanity and takes the previous third-person shooter title a step further in tactical combat. You can, for instance, duel another player with a chainsaw bayonet and wound your enemies in the legs before you decapitate them. The previous game helped get the Xbox 360 established in the market and sold 4.7 million units worldwide. That’s $282 million sales at retail.

Wii Music (Nintendo Wii) Nintendo, no date. Now we’re finally getting into the cute little Nintendo characters that everybody loves. The industry’s leading innovator has taken its own sweet time with this title. Consider it Nintendo’s answer to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It’s overdue for release and predictions suggest that it’s highly likely that Nintendo will finally show off this title. Music has become extremely popular in games and it represents the most-proven way to broaden the video game audience to females, young kids, and older gamers. This title will be innovative because it can make use of the Wii’s motion detection to allow you to play conductor for a virtual orchestra by moving your arms around. Nintendo demoed this game at E3 in 2006. It’s time to let it out of the bag.

Spore (PC, Mac), Electronic Arts/Maxis, Sept. 7, 2008. They’ve been talking about it since 2005, but EA’s Maxis division is at the finish line for Will Wright’s latest brainstorm. Nobody questions that this is an original title. You can create your own cell-like creatures, races of creatures, and galactic civilizations in the ultimate god-like simulation from the creator of SimCity and the Sims. The later has sold more than 100 million units since it debuted in 2000. If EA executes on Wright’s vision, the sky is the limit for the sales of this title. There are, however, plenty of people who are worried that this game is the most over-hyped in video game industry history.

Resistance 2 (PS 3) Sony/Insomniac Games, holiday 2008. I was thinking of putting Killzone 2 on the list and I have no doubt Sony will give a pulse-pounding demo again and we won’t see that game appear anytime soon. The next-best thing on the PS 3 is Resistance 2, the latest game from Ted Price’s Insomniac Games, one of Sony’s few golden geese in game production. The first title enabled the PS 3 to get off the ground in 2006 and it has a good grudge match going with the Gears of War 2. I trust that Insomniac is going to to up the ante to make sure that this title doesn’t get lost in the console war.

LittleBigPlanet (PS 3) Sony/Media Molecule, Oct. 2008. The biggest compliment for this game is that it’s something you would expect from Nintendo. It has cute rag-doll characters and is a side-to-side movement game, like the old 2-D platform games of years past. But it has photorealistic 3-D graphics and the ability to mix and match character appearances and their accoutrements so that they’re uniquely your own creations. Then you use those characters as a team to try and get past a series of puzzle-obstacles in their paths.

Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360, PS 3) Capcom, 2009. This title is going to be bloody and controversial, even more so than your typical zombie-shooting game. Gamers and the makers of this franchise have long known there is a joy to blowing the heads off of zombies. It’s likely to be a slow-moving game compared to other fast shooters, but that gives you time to think of how you’re going to take out the nearest zombies with limited ammo. You’ll be thinking, “My kingdom for one more shotgun shell.” The stories in this series are good, even if they’re some kind of weird derivative of “Night of the Living Dead.” If RE5 is anything like Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo GameCube, it will be a hit.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS 3), Square Enix, no date. I can’t say that I’ve ever finished one of these games but they’re always beautiful to look at. The series always has a new story that keeps the gamers coming back and the game play, which is in the turn-based role-playing game style that many don’t like, keeps on getting better. For sure, you spend a lot of time watching cinematics in this kind of game rather than mashing buttons, but this is where games are pushing the envelope on movie-like effects.

Fable 2 (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Lionhead Studios, Oct. 2008. Peter Molyneux, the head of Lionhead, always gives eloquent demos when he shows off his titles. He creates a kind of reality distortion field, and sometimes there is a comedown when the games don’t come out as good as he says they will be. But Molyneux is on the right track for making great works of art that emotionally move you. Fable 2 sets up moral dilemmas and dramas. You can use your pet dog as a scout, but you’ll regret if you let Rover die as he helps get you out of a scrape. That’s an emotional attachment that Molyneux is counting on.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS 2, PSP, DS), LucasArts, Sept. 16, 2008. This game was probably too long in the making and might be the reason for a big change in management at George Lucas’s video game studio. But it has lifelike environments with physically accurate features, like leaves that move in the wind or cliffs that create rock sides when they’re hit with explosives. It also has realistically animated human characters who react intelligently to what happens to them. That foundation is the perfect underpinning for a game that allows you to use “the Force” the way always wanted to. You can pick up anything in the game and, with Jedi powers, throw it at anything else. Also, the story is probably one of the most intriguing that I’ve ever seen in the Star Wars universe. It’s been a long time coming, but hopefully it will live up to the build up.

Other titles worth noting:

Halo Wars (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Ensemble Studios/Bungie, Oct. 2008. Like playing Halo, only with little tiny miniatures in real time.

Tomb Raider Underworld (Wii, PS 2, PS 3, Xbox 360, PC, DS) Eidos/Crystal Dynamics, holiday 2008. The latest in the Lara Croft series.

Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii), MTV Games/Harmonix, Sept. 2008. Bang a drum. Get it on.

Call of Duty: World at War (PC, Xbox 360, PS 3) Activision/Treyarch, fall 2008. The same engine as Call of Duty 4, but back in World War II in places such as the Pacific theater. That means jungle warfare.

Here are some other lists to compare mine to:

Big Download’s top PC games list

Next Generation’s top 30 anticipated titles

GameSpot’s list

IGN’s top PC games list

GamePro’s list