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GDC 2011: Allods Online orders a mega-patch with a launch on the side
It's utterly bizarre to consider that Allods Online, for as long as it's been out and playable by the masses, has yet to leave the boundaries of open beta. As we mentioned yesterday, this is about to change, as gPotato announced that the next patch would finally bring the title to an official release. And what a patch this is! Allods players will feast upon a gourmet meal with all the fixins, including a rise in the level cap from 42 to 47. This means that the talent grids are getting bigger as a result, so expect new skills and abilities across the board. Players will receive a talent point reset to let them rebuild their characters if so desired. Check out 16 brand-new screenshots of the patch below, and hit the jump for an in-depth look at Allods' growth and illuminating videos! %Gallery-91331%
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron preview: No problem
When I played El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron at last year's Tokyo Game Show, I was told I was playing a toned-down demo version, the difficulty mellowed to allow the public to make its way through the demo. That was not the case in the version shown during GDC this week. In fact, my avatar Enoch got his ass -- well-appointed in limited-edition Edwin jeans -- handed to him. But as he says in the event of his (near) defeat, "It's okay. No problem."%Gallery-118277%
Dead Island preview: Paradise in shambles
Last month's debut of the emotionally-charged trailer for Dead Island, a game completely forgotten (if ever known at all), instantly rocketed developer Techland's zombie vacation nightmare into the spotlight, spawning a number of homages and an absolute thirst to know: Could the game possibly be as good as the cinematic teaser? After witnessing an all-too-brief gameplay demo at GDC this week, I began to answer that question for myself, likening Dead Island to a mash-up of Dead Rising 2, Borderlands, Breakdown and, to a much lesser extent than you'd think, Left 4 Dead 2 -- oh, and even some Far Cry 2 sprinkled in there. That sounds a bit chaotic, sure, but this is a zombie game. Dead Island begins shortly after the zombie emergence depicted in the dramatic trailer, with players controlling one of four possible lead characters, each representing a different class. In the demo I was shown, the developer played as the "tank" character -- powerful, but slow. %Gallery-118289%
GDC 2011: Tatem Games' Carnivores and RoboSockets
Tatem Games is a mobile games studio out of Ukraine that's been making games since the mid-'90s. They originally started with PC games, CEO Igor Karev told me here at GDC 2011, but lately the company's focus has been on the iPhone and the iPad. "It's about timing," Karev says, "we can make cool games, and not spend two years on them." The company's biggest titles are the Carnivores games, a series of 3D "hunting" games (though the titles have grown to encompass more than just killing things) that started out on the PC and have since garnered 3.5 million downloads. The Carnivores games have a dedicated user base, and Tatem closely follows customers' advice, structuring updates around iTunes comments and input. There is an update due out soon that will bring more mythical creatures into the games, as well as new weapons to use and a new game mode requested by users who don't want to kill the animals; it'll be a photo hunting mode instead, letting the player wander the world with a camera rather than a gun.
GDC 2011: GamersFirst on resurrecting San Paro with APB Reloaded
It's not often that interesting game concepts are given a second chance after an ugly crash and burn, so naturally we jumped at the opportunity to talk to GamersFirst about its APB Reloaded reclamation project. If you're new to the MMO scene, or simply haven't been paying attention over the past year: Realtime Worlds' All Points Bulletin looked poised to bring a gritty, ultra-customizable cops-and-robbers shooter to MMO players everywhere. To say that a lot of people were looking forward to APB is something of an understatement (Massively even heralded it as our most anticipated title of 2010). The reality of the game was something of a downer, though, and while our own first impressions were disappointedly optimistic, other reviewers weren't as kind as the game went belly up along with its parent studio. Enter GamersFirst, a free-to-play outfit bent on salvaging the considerable potential of San Paro and transforming it from a buggy mess into a playable AAA MMO. Join us after the cut as we talk with producer Jon-Enee Merriex at GDC 2011 regarding the challenges inherent in the resurrection as well as some of the new (and newly functional) features APB fans can expect.
Sony announces Move.me application for researchers and hobbyists, promises improvements to PlayStation Home
The PlayStation Move may not have proven to be as instantly hackable as Microsoft's Kinect, but it looks like Sony is now trying to change that -- it's just announced its new Move.me server application that promises to let researchers, hobbyists and others use the Move as a controller for a PC, with the PlayStation 3 handling all the work in between. It will be available for download from the PlayStation Network this spring, although you can also try your luck with Sony's early-product seeding program if you'd like to get it sooner -- no PS3 SDK or licensing agreement is required. In other PlayStation news, Sony's also confirmed that it's now working on version 1.5 of PlayStation Home, which promises to add real-time multiplayer gaming functionality to the virtual world, along with improved physics and refined graphics. Details on it are otherwise still fairly light, but it's also slated for a public release sometime this spring. Head on past the break for the official word on both announcements from Sony.
Pac-Man creator reminisces about classic game design, calls for creativity
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani wants the next Pac-Man game to be about "a singing Pac-Man." Not a musical, "not Chicago," but more of a Blues Brothers type thing, he told a packed house at his GDC postmortem. Nobody there knew what that meant either. In the hourlong presentation, Iwatani shared concept art from the thirty-year-old arcade classic, including the hand-drawn concept for the famous Pac-Man death animation, and even a chart of ghost speeds. He identified the design of Pac-Man as female-focused, with an emphasis on "eating" as a verb ("Girls love to eat desserts," Iwatani explained. "My wife often eats desserts.") and cute characters, including cute enemies.
GDC 2011: New Iris Online videos show off mounts, classes
If you've been following the adorably epic Iris Online, you'll know that the game has had its share of exciting developments over the last few months. Furthering that theme, members of the gPotato team sat down with Massively to show off some new cool videos at this week's GDC 2011! One video shows off the three races and 15 classes you can find in the game as well as gives a look at the tarot card system. Players will hunt after and gather a collection of cards that, once completed, can be used to buff the player and even predict the future! Forget the Magic 8-Ball -- tarot cards rule. The second video details mounts -- a lot of new mounts. Want to ride a motorcyle or polar bear? Iris has them. There are also some new dungeons and epic bosses, a ton of beautiful detailed landscapes, and a look at a system that allows players to transform into actual monsters, enabling them to fight as those monsters or to sneak past aggro. You will also be able to see PvP battles like capture-the-flag, PvP zones that players will fight their way through, and even a bout of friendly dueling. Now, what are you waiting for? Click past the cut and watch!
PS3 stats: Over 41 million consoles sold, PSN revenue up 70 percent in 2010 [update: it's actually 47.9 million]
Update: After contacting Sony to confirm the figures, a representative told us that the figure presented in the slide above was incorrect. Through the end of 2010, Sony actually sold 47.9 million PS3 consoles. Original post: During the PlayStation Network Analysis panel at GDC, SCEA digital distribution manager Pierre Gravereau provided some platform stats to attendees, revealing worldwide sales of over 41.6 million PS3 consoles. More than 80 percent of consoles are connected to the internet and have spawned 70 million PSN accounts. Gravereau boasted about the success of PSN in 2010, saying traffic to the PlayStation Store increased by 60 percent compared to the previous year and Sony subsequently saw a 70 percent spike in revenue. Even without exact hard figures, it's quite a dramatic uptick. Now, we're no bussinessologists, but if you ask us (you asked, right?), we'd have to attribute Sony's success in 2010 to one thing: KB.
Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX543MP2 really is faster, better, stronger (video)
You may have heard of the PowerVR SGX543MP -- you know, the GPU behind Sony's NGP and possibly on its way to the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 -- but chances are, you've yet to see it working up close. Well, feast your graphics-hungry eyes on this: that's Rightware's Tai Chi benchmark running on a tellingly sheathed device at GDC 2011, working the MP2 (dual-core) iteration of the processor, and that fine smartphone to its right is the Nexus S, sporting the PowerVR SGX540 you've come to know and love. As you can tell, Imagination Technologies' promises of 4X the performance aren't just baseless boasts -- the lady on the left moves with grace and fluidity, while her counterpart on the right is all sorts of herky-jerky. Think that's fast? Check out what the GPU can do with two more cores. Sean Hollister contributed to this report.
Yu Suzuki reflects on Sega career, teases Shenmue
Longtime Sega producer Yu Suzuki delivered his first-ever American talk at GDC, providing a history of his experiences at Sega, from Champion Boxing through the canceled Psy-Phi, a touch-screen based arcade fighting title. It was canceled, by the way, because it hurt players' fingers. He mused that it would work on DS or Kinect, where either a stylus or several feet of air come between your fingers and the screen.
OnLive roadmap: Achievements, voice chat and more inbound
The future features of cloud-based gaming service OnLive got a little less nebulous during the company's GDC 2011 panel. Speaking to developers, its VP of engineering, Joe Bentley, laid out a list of advancements gamers can expect by the end of the year. Among the new features being rolled out for game makers to implement are achievements (not detailed, but we're guessing these are derived from the console versions), voice chat, game invites and the ability to directly upload Brag Clips to YouTube. The latest version of the OnLive SDK will also enable developers to let their games support wireless controllers when played on mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone and Android-powered contraptions. (But not actual androids -- those guys hate it when you press their buttons.)
Infinity Blade more successful than Shadow Complex, Rein says
Though Epic Games doesn't divulge direct sales figures, vice president Mark Rein did give me something to work with: Infinity Blade has been more successful than Shadow Complex. "Hugely successful," in fact. Right now, if you check the leaderboard data (best overall score) for Shadow Complex, you will see the names of 545,023 players. While Rein's comment doesn't necessarily confirm that Infinity Blade has been downloaded more times than Shadow Complex, the former game's lower asking price – $5.99 versus Shadow Complex's $15 – would make it "more successful" either in terms of downloads or revenue. If it's revenue, our napkin math indicates the iOS-exclusive title being downloaded by at least 1,362,557.5 people, two-and-a-half times the total number of entries on Shadow Complex's leaderboard. If we're talking number of downloads, Infinity Blade should have at least bested Shadow Complex's 545K units.
GDC: Stardock's Brad Wardell explains the failure of Elemental and how he's making it up to fans
"Unlike the other examples you've heard tonight, this game shipped. It's at the store right now. At Walmart. Yeah." -- Brad Wardell, president and CEO of Stardock. That ominous statement was slipped into the middle of Brad Wardell's "Failure Workshop" speech this afternoon, where the Stardock head discussed a project he now considers a full-on failure: Elemental: War of Magic. He was just one of five separate developers detailing a project that went awry. "If someone had an idea, we'd say 'Oh sure, go ahead! Throw that in!,'" Wardell explained, describing the disorganized nature of Elemental's development. "That works okay if you have seven guys," he said, continuing, "It doesn't work so well when you have 18 guys."
Seen@GDC: Dillinger Escape Plan tears through the Homefront rally
10,000 red balloons? Sure. Speeches by global experts? You bet! A whole mess of hired protesters? Also that! But Dillinger Escape Plan? That we did not expect to see at THQ's Homefront rally this morning outside of GDC. And how does THQ's veep of Core Games explain the inclusion of the hardcore show? "They're a great local band who would bring people out!" he told us. "Even in the rain!" And we can't help but agree with the former statement (aren't they from New Jersey, Danny?). Alongside the red (allegedly biodegradeable) balloons and red Homefront signs Dillinger Escape Plan fans and passersby both enjoyed the hardcore music stylings of classic Dillinger Escape Plan tunes. There's also a strong possibility that some folks were moshing. Bilson continued, explaining the rally as a means "to highlight the story aspects of Homefront." He also hesitantly admitted, "We're trying to do more and more things to market our game. Just trying to do something different, ya know?" He further detailed the rally as showing off Homefront's "social science fiction," and hopes it'll "get people thinking about more than just pulling triggers." It certainly got us thinking about more than just pulling triggers. For instance -- making sure we weren't being trampled by die-hard Dillinger Escape Plan fans.%Gallery-118275%
CE-Oh no he didn't!: NGP will be 'dead on arrival,' says ngmoco boss
In all honesty, you would expect the leader of a team concerned exclusively with producing games for smartphone platforms like iOS and Android to be dismissive of a new dedicated handheld console's chances, but it's still jarring to hear such a strident dismissal of the Sony NGP's chances. In an interview at GDC this year -- yes, the same place where we were treated to some very impressive demos of the NGP's performance -- ngmoco CEO Neil Young has expressed his belief that Sony's next PSP will be "dead on arrival." Claiming that the new portable will be incapable of competing with the rich ecosystems and affordable pricing models that smartphones now offer, Young says not even the crazy specs or PS3-like gaming will help the NGP survive. This echoes comments from Satoru Iwata last year saying that Apple, not Sony, is the "enemy of the future" for handheld consoles, though Young does close off on a positive note, saying that he sees brighter prospects for the 3DS thanks to Nintendo's rich collection of own-brand franchises and reserves of fan loyalty. So that's it, folks, better start selling those Sony shares while they're still worth something! Or not, it's up to you. [Thanks, Dominick]
Trenched is Double Fine's next game, 'is extremely, extremely manly'
Tucked away at the very end of the Game Developer's Choice Awards ceremony tonight was the announcement teaser for Trenched, the latest in developer Double Fine's series of downloadable games. This one is being published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox Live Arcade and we've got an off-screen capture of what Tim Schafer called the "extremely, extremely manly" trailer for you just after the break. [Update 12:50am – We've put the official, non-shakycam trailer after the break for your viewing pleasure.]%Gallery-118276%
Sony's NGP at GDC 2011: more video of the quad-core marvel in action
The headline just about says it all -- we've got some new footage (as opposed to what we've seen before) of Sony's NGP for all you gamers to drool over. Today at GDC 2011, we saw a live demo of Uncharted, Little Deviants, and the NGP's augmented reality capabilities. We were, once again, impressed by Sony's latest piece of gaming hardware, but don't take our word for it, see for yourself in video footage above and after the break. And, oh-by-the-way, we gleaned a few new tidbits about the handheld powerhouse that developers may want to know -- retail game cartridges will be only 2GB or 4GB in size (notable because the average PS3 title is 9GB), and Sony recommends that devs looking to port PS3 titles to the NGP should simplify their models, shaders and textures to make them work. Now if only Sony would spill the beans about how much the thing'll cost. Update: We didn't completely care for how our original Uncharted footage looked, so we uploaded a slightly higher-quality version. Enjoy!
Live from the IGF/GDC Awards 2011
We're here, live from the IGF slash GDC Awards, and things are just getting underway. We promise laughs, tears, and maybe even some expletives. Join us after the break. Unless you're scared.
HP TouchPad shoots down planes, shows off next-gen Snapdragon's GPU (video)
We're willing to bet Qualcomm's Adreno 220 GPU is an abstract concept to most readers, but we can put it into perspective real quick -- here it is in the HP TouchPad, pumping pixels and mapping textures to a seriously stunning little air combat game. We got our hands on the webOS 3.0 tablet and gave Polarbit's Armageddon Squadron II a whirl at GDC 2011, and the experience felt pretty solid overall, framerate only dipping significantly when unleashing a hefty barrage of rockets upon your foes. What's more, the tablet easily -- and automatically -- paused our game when flexing webOS's multitasking muscle to check a text message that had just come in. What's that you say? You're wondering how the HP TouchPad does text messages? Well, it doesn't quite -- it requires a webOS smartphone paired via Bluetooth to share the cellular modem for texts and calls. But you knew that already, right? Armageddon Squadron wasn't the only title Qualcomm had handy to show off the power of the Adreno 220, though, as SouthEnd Interactive's Desert Winds seems to be the feather in the company's cap. It's a 3D action-adventure title starring some very fancy lighting effects for a mobile game -- not to mention a buxom female swordslinger who dredges up memories of ATI's Ruby. See that after the break! Update: Adreno 220 is actually a single-core GPU, part of the dual-core Snapdragon 8x60 system-on-a-chip.
