Russ Pitts

Stories By Russ Pitts

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  Gaming

  Gaming By Russ Pitts

  Bethesda's Pete Hines on Skyrim, sports, and specialization

  With the video game industry seemingly headed toward smaller, cheaper, more casual and less complex game experiences, it's somewhat of an anomaly to see Bethesda Game Studios continuing to hit the ball out of the park with games that are the exact opposite: long, expensive and incredibly dense. Starting with the 2002 release of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Bethesda has focused almost exclusively on lavish RPG experiences. Ten years later, Skyrim looks to continue that trend to a round decade and beyond. I recently spoke with Bethesda VP of Marketing Pete Hines about what makes the developer's RPGs "bulletproof" against gaming's current "less is more" trend. "We do what we do best," said Hines. "We make big, crazy RPGs, and fortunately for us the previous ones have done really well so there's no reason for us not to keep making them. If that's what we loved doing and nobody wanted to play them, we'd have a problem on our hands."

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  Nintendo

  Nintendo By Russ Pitts

  Experts on Nintendo's immediate future, post-losses

  Last week's news was tragic for Nintendo: Profits for its fiscal first half were deeply in the red to the tune of $926 million. A near $1-billion six-month loss is potentially catastrophic for most companies, but for a game company like Nintendo the profits typically come at the end of the fiscal year, the period ending in March, which includes the heavy holiday buying season. First and second quarter losses are not unheard of; they're even expected. What isn't expected, at least for Nintendo, is a potential loss for the entire fiscal year, which is what Nintendo is facing this year, projecting revenues $264 million in the red for the first time since the company began reporting profits in 1981. To get some perspective on what this means for Nintendo and, perhaps, the game industry, I spoke with two men who have been following recent events intently, and Nintendo as a whole for most of its existence: Kyle Orland, News Editor at Gamasutra, founder of Super Mario Bros. HQ and self-confessed "Nintendo fanboy," and Bill Harris, industry analyst and blogger at Dubious Quality.

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  Reviews

  Reviews By Russ Pitts

  Infamous 2: Festival of Blood review: Vamps and amps

  The world of Infamous is all about character. The settings, from urban-gothic Empire City to moss-drenched, sweltering New Marais, ooze character. The protagonists, particularly Nascar-ready Cole McGrath and his bro-friend Zeke, are studies in character, seemingly ripped from a television show you've known and loved for years. And then there's you, the player. Do you have character? What sort? Will you be a good witch or a bad witch? Your character will determine how the games play out, and how the game world responds to you. For the standalone PSN downloadable Festival of Blood, Sucker Punch has turned a hat trick whipping up a tasty little Halloween treat that, in spite of its brevity, follows in the tradition of its larger franchise and provides some of the most intriguing game experiences of any game available now, downloadable or not. Without a doubt, it has the most character of any three-hour game I have ever played.

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  Nintendo

  Nintendo By Russ Pitts

  Editorial -- Nintendo's creeping doom: how the company came to misplace $926 million

  More terrible news from Japan: Nintendo has posted a $926 million loss for the first half of the fiscal year ending in March 2012. Take a second look at that number. That's 926 million dollars. As in "very close to a billion." The sheer volume of that amount of cash is staggering. In ones, it would fill a room roughly the size of the one Scrooge McDuck uses to hold his gold. Now imagine simply handing that money over to ... someone. Iwata, perhaps. The point is, you had it and now it's gone. Sucks, right? OK, now you know how Nintendo feels. It gets worse.

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  Reviews

  Reviews By Russ Pitts

  Sideway: New York review: Urban blight

  It had to happen sometime. With the veritable explosion of videogaming across all media, on all platforms and within all demographics, there simply had to come a game - at some point - to which one could un-ironically attach the label "urban." That time is now, and that game is Sideway: New York. Sideway is a funky and hip (almost too hip) platformer in which you play as Nox, a young graffiti artist who enters the world of Sideway to rescue his girlfriend from the evil villain Spray. In so doing, he becomes a part of the gritty graffiti landscape of New York City, adventuring across the walls and rooftops of the urban jungle, collecting tags and eliminating the spray-painted obstacles in his way. It's a novel concept that's amazing to look at, and, unfortunately, that's just about where the praise ends.

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