The top 10 children’s video games coming your way
At this year’s E3 show, it was difficult to ignore publishers’ acknowledgment of the growing children’s market, including indie-influenced titles (such as Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life), a broadening scope of LEGO titles (LEGO Rock Band, LEGO Indiana Jones 2, and LEGO Harry Potter), and publishers’ return to the Mario Kart-influenced racing genre (Need for Speed Nitro, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing). Here are my picks for the best children’s titles of the show.
1. Scribblenauts (developer:… Continue Reading
The top ten video games of the coming year
At the E3 convention in Los Angeles last week I got to see a lot of what the video game industry has to offer in the coming year. Hands down, the best technology I saw at the show came from Microsoft in the form of Project Natal, the company’s motion-sensing system which detects your body movements and relegates the handheld controller to the dust bin. But since that system isn’t part of a game yet,… Continue Reading
Ubisoft lives and breathes the convergence of games and movies
Ubisoft showed off its work with one of Hollywood’s most technology-minded directors, James Cameron, at a press conference at the E3 game conference today in Los Angeles.
Ubisoft’s flagship title this year is Avatar, a game based on Cameron’s high-profile movie. Cameron came out on stage and went through a lengthy description of Avatar, which debuts Dec. 18. He has been working on the movie for more than four years and first conceived the idea of doing the film, which has photorealistic… Continue Reading
Ubisoft closes a year of expansion and profits for game business
Ubisoft reported fiscal year results with good sales growth and a decent profit despite the recession. For the year ended March 31, the French game publisher reported sales of $1.47 billion, up 18.4 percent from $1.3 billion a year earlier.
Net income was $95.6 million, down 37 percent from $152 million a year earlier. The Paris-based company reported the strong growth in the face of economic headwinds and its own aggressive expansion. One of the strongest… Continue Reading
GeoEye’s satellite data used in UbiSoft’s new Tom Clancy game, H.A.W.X
GeoEye spent about $100 million sending a satellite into the sky so that you could see realistic ground imagery in a new Tom Clancy air combat game.
Not exactly. But the data from a satellite 423 miles high has been integrated into UbiSoft’s new game, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., a modern jet combat game set above real-world locations (see the trailer here). The game debuts next week on various game consoles and the PC.
The data comes from… Continue Reading
Ubisoft pulls on its Action Pants, acquiring studio in Vancouver
French game publishing giant Ubisoft announced today that it has acquired Vancouver, Canada-based Action Pants, a game studio with more than 110 employees.
Vancouver has been one of the great regions for producing video game talent. Electronic Arts has a big operation there amid a bunch of startup game studios, which is why Ubisoft is moving in on the turf.
Action Pants was established in 2006 by game veterans Simon Andrews, Nik Palmer and Omar Al-Khafaji. It… Continue Reading
Are profits in video games shifting from the West to the East?
The worldwide video game industry is experiencing healthy revenue growth. In the U.S., sales grew 19 percent to $22 billion in 2008, according to market researcher NPD. That has been a cause for much celebration as games outrun the recession.
But market researcher DFC Intelligence in La Jolla, Calif., has a different take. In a report today, the company asked whether revenue gains are coming at the expense of profits. And while U.S. companies have collectively… Continue Reading
Ubisoft snaps up a South American game developer
French video game giant Ubisoft has acquired Brazilian game developer Southlogic Studios.
Southlogic is the longest-standing game developer in Brazil, with a team of 20 developers and headquarters in Porto Alegre. It has created titles for the PC, handhelds, and home game consoles. It also provides art outsourcing and game adaptation services. Most recently, it worked on Ubisoft’s Imagine: Wedding Designer for the Nintendo DS.
It’ll be interesting to see if South America emerges as the next… Continue Reading
The good, the bad and the ugly in Nintendo’s upcoming lineup
Nintendo showed off both its strengths and weaknesses as a game company last week in San Francisco as it debuted its lineup for fall 2008 and games for next year.
Over two days, I saw games that I liked, including the wonderfully creative “Wii Music,” and games that I hated, like Activision Blizzard’s “Call of Duty: World at War” for the Wii. And then there were weird games, like “Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party,” which required… Continue Reading
E3: hate it or love it? Game industry wrestles with how to boost next year’s show
There are so many posts going up about who loved or hated E3 that the discussion over the show format is overshadowing coverage of the video games previewed in Los Angeles last week. The elegies for E3 are flowing throughout the Internet.
Industry agent Keith Boesky said people told him that the empty hallways were “post apocalyptic.” A telling moment for me: Tom Russo, former G4TV programming head, waved at me from a few hundred yards… Continue Reading
E3 trendspotting: Game publishers turning more to girl gamers
LOS ANGELES—With the influx of fresh new gamers, thanks in large part to the popularity of mass-market game machines, the DS and the Wii, more game companies than ever are jumping on the girl gamer bandwagon. Practically every booth at this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit this year had something to offer for female gamers of various demographics.
The breadth of games ranged from Nintendo DS titles like Namco Bandai’s “National Geographic Panda” and Legacy… Continue Reading
The top 10 sleeper video games of E3
The big video games of the E3 Media and Business Summit have been blasted across magazine covers and websites for the past few months, but the show still offers a large selection of lesser-known games that are worth a look—even if they lack the marketing muscle of the blockbusters. The following list contains solid sleepers, some of which have received positive buzz and press coverage, but none of which made Dean Takahashi’s “most anticipated” games… Continue Reading
John Antal on making a video game, novel and history book all at once
Cross-media content is the wave of the future, and John Antal shows what’s possible when you think beyond just one medium. He is a retired colonel who spent 30 years in the U.S. Army. He is also the chief of staff and military and historical director at Gearbox Software, the maker of the “Brothers in Arms” video games being published by UbiSoft. The latest edition is “Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway,” which Antal turned into… Continue Reading