Category: News (Page 86 of 108)

Little Gray beats World of Warcraft

December 2, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

Yes, someone has done the impossible – someone has beaten World of Warcraft. The honor goes to a Taiwanese player known as “Little Gray,” and while you can’t technically beat WoW, he’s as close as anyone I’ve ever heard of. Little Gray managed to complete 984 out of the 984 possible achievements in the game.

Now technically he’s still missing an achievement. There’s a bug that allows him the 100% completion, even though he’s still missing a Winter Veil quest from the upcoming festivities. Being that he’s done the other 983 quests, though, I’d be willing to bet he’ll go ahead and round things out as soon as he can.

Though we’ll probably never know, I’d be interested to see his time /played. I know some people who play a lot, and I used to be someone who played a lot and I was nowhere close to his figure. I don’t even think I was at half when I quit playing. Whatever the figure, I’m sure it’s obscene.

Source: CVG

Activision, MMO, News

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Gameloft cutting back on Android development

November 22, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

Android may finally be on the handset of your dreams, but it’s too late for mobile game developer Gameloft. The french developer said it has significantly cut its investment in the Android platform due to underwhelming revenues.

“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” said Gameloft’s finance director, Alexandre de Rochefort. There must be a bit of meaning lost in translation of the word “neatly” from french to english because I would hardly call the App Store neat. That’s not to say the decision doesn’t make sense.

According to Rochefort, Gameloft is selling 400 times the number of apps on the App Store as on Android devices. Obviously there are a lot of factors to consider, market share being prime among them. But even if market share were closer I’d imagine Gameloft would struggle with the number of different devices Android runs. With so much different hardware it’s just easier to design apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch and support them.

Source: Washington Post

Mobile Gaming, News

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Activision looking to further monetize online gameplay

November 16, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

It looks like Activision likes the idea of monetizing online gameplay for more than just World of Warcraft. Speaking at the BMO Capital Markets Conference this week, Activision CFO Thomas Tippl said he liked the idea of spreading the WoW business model to other games in the Activision lineup. From the context, it sounds like that means subscription fees, which would make all sorts of people unhappy.

“We have great experience also on Call of Duty with the success we had on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. A lot of that knowledge is getting actually built into the Battle.Net platform and the design of that,” Tippl said. “I think it’s been mutually beneficial, and you should expect us to test and ultimately launch additional online monetization models of some of some of our biggest franchises like Call of Duty.” So there’s also some potential for microtransactions, possibly for map packs or special equipment.

Tippl also mentioned the demand from the gaming community to pay for extended support for games. Now I’m not sure why that would be the case, especially for games like Call of Duty. I usually find it worse for FPS games to get tons and tons of maps. That says nothing of the backlash from PC players over paying for something that has traditionally been available for free if Activision goes the subscription route.

Whatever Activision chooses, it probably won’t be good for anyone. I understand the need to make money for the fast-approaching day people stop buying Rock Band, but maybe this isn’t the best way to do that.

Activision, News

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Modern Warfare’s Ghost might get a spin-off

November 15, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

I’ve only played through a few levels of the Modern Warfare 2 campaign, but it’s easily some of the best FPS campaigning I’ve enjoyed. Flashy guns, complicated situations, and characters with a whole bunch of issues always makes for an interesting story. Interesting enough, in fact, that Infinity Ward is thinking about giving one of those guys a solo gig. Yes, rumor has it that Ghost, the creeper with the skull mask, just might get his own game.

According to Craig Fairbrass, the voice-actor who played Ghost in MW2, things are looking like this: “I’m now voicing a guy called Ghost, who now just got a spin-off comic of his own and they’re talking about another little game to go with it.” Fans of the series probably got that little six-part comic, but does he mean the same thing by “little game?” Could Infinity Ward be looking at an iPhone game? It doesn’t seem likely that they would make a full-blown spinoff for a series that’s not typically character driven. Who does Ghost think he is, anyway, Master Chief? Puh-lease.

Source: That Video Game Blog

News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360

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Modern Warfare 2 sells…a whole bunch on day one

November 12, 2009 / Jeff Morgan

Alongside the release of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 there’s a war of numbers breaking out. Analysts are trying to be the first to pin down a sales estimate, a number that has so far varied by several million units. At first it was Ben Schachter claiming 7 million for day one. Michael Pachter thinks Ben’s crazy, and estimates just 4 million copies for the first day. I’m inclined to trust Pachter, since even he puts things over the top at times.

Whatever the real number, it has a lot of zeroes, and that’s got to make Activision pretty happy. Most analysts still think the 12 million unit estimate for the quarter through December is conservative. That puts total sales by year end somewhere around $700 million, which is just obscene. By comparison, Halo 3 just made it through 8 million units in its first 3 months. As a throwback, Joystiq also mentioned that Street Fighter II, which literally everyone I knew owned, sold 6.3 million units total worldwide.

Hopefully the end of the quarter will bring some hard and fast numbers for us. Until then, go throw some knives at some people. It’s insanely fun.