EA: A ’small number’ of Boom Blox devs let go
Electronic Arts claims a “small number of employees were impacted” by the publisher’s decision to move Boom Blox development from EA Los Angeles to EA Bright Light Studio in Guildford, UK. Kotaku obtained a quote from the publisher, which notes that the move has nothing to do with the company’s “restructuring” and is a routine event in a global studio organization to “leverage development strengths.”
The history of the Boom Blox franchise at EA has been pretty shaky since the first title was launched. The original game wasn’t an explosive hit at the start, but eventually sold half a million copies. The division that was supposed to handle the franchise shut down afterward. Although critically acclaimed, the Boom Blox series just hasn’t been a breakout success.
EA: A ’small number’ of Boom Blox devs let go originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
EA: ‘Sharp and distinct’ console transition unlikely
It’s not exactly surprising to hear EA Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown say that we won’t see the “sharp and distinct console transition like we’ve seen in the past.” It’s a notion we’ve heard before and something that THQ boss Brian Farrell explained a couple years back, dividing the current cycle into three distinct sub-cycles: handheld, Wii and another group of Xbox 360 with PS3.
Brown’s issue had more to do with pricing, noting that half the PS2’s sales occurred after the console hit $150, which the PS3 at $300 is nowhere close to. Comparing it to the last console cycle, Brown doesn’t feel pricing has come down to where the publisher would have expected it to. Given the amount of investment required in the current round of HD gaming, it’s unlikely we’ll see publishers wanting to invest heavily into whatever’s next — especially in this economy.
[Via IndustryGamers]
EA: ‘Sharp and distinct’ console transition unlikely originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Rock Band Weekly: HIM, Marilyn Manson, The Police
Last week, the Rock Band Store got a few healthy slices of Americana with tracks from Otis Redding and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. This week’s offerings are much more foreign — there’s a three-pack from Finnish rock band HIM, a song from Britain’s One Night Only, a track from The Police, and a song from Marilyn Manson, whom we all know actually descends from an extinct alien race whose name our human tongues could never hope to pronounce.
Click past the jump for the full list of new additions!
Continue reading Rock Band Weekly: HIM, Marilyn Manson, The Police
Rock Band Weekly: HIM, Marilyn Manson, The Police originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
NintendoWare Weekly: Phoenix Wright, Sonic & Knuckles, Spotto!
As expected, today marks the release of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All on WiIWare. Capcom’s lawyer-’em-up is joined by a plethora of new titles, so if you have some extra pocket change or a packed piggy bank, you’ll want to head past the break and see what’s available for download this week.
Continue reading NintendoWare Weekly: Phoenix Wright, Sonic & Knuckles, Spotto!
NintendoWare Weekly: Phoenix Wright, Sonic & Knuckles, Spotto! originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
EA Hasbro games sold eight million units at retail in 2009
Not since The Bushwhackers have we seen such an excellent pairing of two entities. EA and Hasbro’s partnership has paid off in dividends, as a recent press release boasts that eight million copies of Hasbro titles have been sold in the US alone at retail last year. The eight million figure applies only to retail releases, not digitally distributed titles across consoles and mobile — which admittedly have also been successful.
The release has some other interesting tidbits, like how the combined efforts of the two have seen 20 different Hasbro brands released on 18 major digital platforms. EA attributes the success of these games to three things: the rise in popularity of family-friendly video games; a demand for games targeting girls; and the popularity of Hasbro’s well-known toys and games.
Any way you slice it, we’re glad it’s been such a fruitful venture for both companies, because we’ll soon get to play Risk on our Xbox 360. It’s only about a billion years too late, but, hey, we’ll take it! And we’ll also take Asia - you’ll never stop us now!
EA Hasbro games sold eight million units at retail in 2009 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Schappert clarifies EA’s sweeping DLC and online strategy
During this week’s quarterly earning’s report, EA COO John Schappert answered an investor question with a somewhat vague but potentially far-reaching comment regarding the publisher’s future strategy for implementing online functionality into its games. “In fiscal 2011 [from April 31, 2010 to March 31, 2011], every one of EA’s releases will have an online component, both downloadable content and online play,” Schappert said, according to a VG247 report. CFO Eric Brown then cited Mass Effect 2’s Cerberus Network as the company’s “most recent example” of how this plan might manifest.
The obvious question: Does the plan apply to all platforms, including Wii, DS, PSP, and mobile? Schappert clarified to Joystiq today: “My statement wasn’t in reference to any specific platform as most of our titles are multiplatform and have different features per platform. Though you can expect our PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 titles to have very robust online features. Of course, depending on the title, this may extend to other platforms as well.”
While this clarification is not exactly the firestarter statement one might interpret from Schappert’s original comment, the plan still raises concerns — based on recent experiences — that EA games’ online components could continue to induce headaches so long as they are tied to EA.com accounts and the issues that have arisen as EA has increased its DLC efforts. If the plan is to include online components in all EA games in the future, then the wrinkles need to be ironed out of Project Ten Dollar now.
Schappert clarifies EA’s sweeping DLC and online strategy originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Riccitiello reckons console price cuts came too late
Yesterday’s EA earnings call was packed with tidbits about upcoming games but, as reported by VG247, there was time for some minor mudslinging as well. During the call, EA CEO John Riccitiello was asked about industry health and tie ratios, and said “I think a… factor in 2009 was sort of a lack of aggressive pricing on first-party if you will, a little bit too late with their price-cuts.”
He later added that console use was actually up, even in the face of social gaming platforms like Facebook. So, think what you will about Riccy’s stance on price cut timing, the one thing that’s certain is that we‘re not to blame.
Riccitiello reckons console price cuts came too late originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
The Many Failures of Mass Effect 2
One of our writers posted a critique of the latest wildly-popular BioWare RPG, Mass Effect 2, on our sister site, InfoAddict, and it’s seriously stirred up the emotions of quite a few fanboys so we thought we’d reprint it here for you to enjoy (or hate) too. (If you’d like to read some of the encouraging comments and fiery criticisms left on the original post, you can find it here.)
With an average score of 96 on Metacritic, one would be justified in believing Mass Effect 2 has little room for improvement. An overwhelming majority of so-called game critics have weighed-in, predictably showering Bioware’s latest RPG with roses and garlands.
Bioware is one of a select number of game companies that receives a +3 modifier in review scores. So take an average game that would normally receive a 7, add Bioware’s name to the box, and oila! Instant 10. While this may be great for Bioware’s bottom-line, it’s actually a grave disservice to the company and gamers, not to mention a glowing example of everything that is wrong in game journalism; criticism specifically.
Having played and finished Mass Effect 2, I can safely say, without reservation or hesitation, that Bioware’s latest RPG is a complete mess, from top-to-bottom and not a product worthy of Bioware’s heritage.
Before I launch my critiques, allow me to post a comment from Bioware’s very own Ray Muzyka that appeared in a recent interview given to Computer & Video Games:
Early feedback and reviews for Mass Effect 2 have been hugely positive. You must be delighted?
We look at it really practically. We’ve had a lot of 90-rated games right? Pretty much every game we’ve ever released has been 90-plus. So we take it in our stride. We kind of look at it that sometimes our teams are our worst critics in terms of the way they look at our past work.
While we’re really ecstatic about the feedback we also look at it and say ‘Where are the opportunities for improvement? How do we make the next installment in this trilogy better? How do we make the next installment of Dragon Age better? How do we make Star Wars: The Old Republic better?’ I look more to the future than to the past.
It’s interesting being at the EA meetings and receiving the launch congratulations. I appreciate it and it’s nice to receive nice words and congratulations, but I’m more interested in how we drive success in the future, how we make our next games even better than Mass Effect.
Well Ray, if you want to know how to improve your franchise then I highly recommend you don’t read any actual reviews, because my brethren in the journalism community are rabid fanboys who unfortunately have bylines. You also won’t find much at Metacritic because they de-list any site that has review scores that are not within some arbitrary average, which defeats the entire purpose of aggregate reviews when you remove low scores.
So Ray, that leaves you and me…and few lonely stragglers shouted down in forum posts. Besides, the public has spoken with their wallets: they love Mass Effect 2. Then again, people love the Transformers movies. There is no accounting for taste, but there is bookkeeping when it comes to quality.
Enough preamble.
Mako Gone = Great, Planet Survey = Bad
One of the many aspects of the original Mass Effect I despised was the awful Mako, an ATV the player drove to explore planets. The problem was the physics behind the Mako, which made it feel like a lame arcade game with all of its bouncing around and assorted nonsense. Bioware obviously heard people’s criticism but instead of fixing the issue they simply removed the feature altogether. Unfortunately, their overall solution is to have the player survey planets from the Normandy, a truly boring and repetitive process that involves holding the mouse button down as you scan the surface of a planet for minerals. This is presented in such a boring and uninteresting way that it comes across as a huge speed bump for the game, a necessary evil imposed on the player because you need those resources to create new upgrades.
Mass Effect 3 Improvement: Make surveying a planet challenging and truly interactive. Make it an experience. Develop an economic model that powers the entire enterprise, have the player fight off enemies for resources, invest in mines and factories. There are a lot of ways to handle this besides looking at a boring planet display and hovering your mouse over the surface. This concept wouldn’t pass muster as a free iPhone app.
The British Romans Effect
Mass Effect 2 places you within a bustling galaxy packed with many alien species and cultures. Unfortunately, they all speak English and have human mannerisms. They are alien in look only, which is quite lazy on the part of the designers. Perhaps Bioware believes people can’t stomach subtitles or have low reading comprehension. Whatever their reasoning, Mass Effect 2 reminds me of several TV shows recently, like Rome and the new Spartacus, wherein all the Romans have a British accent because the production company in question is British. At least when George Lucas made Star Wars, his aliens sounded and behaved like aliens, complete with subtitles. No one complained and it made the universe feel like it had aliens with tangible cultures. When George made the second trilogy, he drifted away from alien languages and we were left with Jar Jar Binks.
Mass Effect 3 Improvement: Develop alien languages for at least a few major species so your game doesn’t feel so culturally and racially vacant.
EA: Rock Band deal with Viacom only through March 2010
If you’re wondering where Rock Band 3 is, a year and a half after Rock Band 2 and five months after the launch of The Beatles: Rock Band, it seems EA isn’t sure it’s going to get to publish it. During an investor conference call, EA execs revealed that the publisher’s deal with Viacom (the company that owns MTV, Harmonix, Rock Band and maybe you as well) is only active through fiscal year 2010 (which ends March 31).
Presumably the deal somehow includes the yet-to-be-released Green Day: Rock Band — but EA’s unlikely to announce any more Rock Band games until it knows it has the license locked down for another year.
EA: Rock Band deal with Viacom only through March 2010 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Dead Space 2 and EA’s Epic shooter slated for early 2011
EA’s tentative release schedule for Q4 of its fiscal 2011 (or, as us normal people call it, January-March 2011) contains more than a few intriguing entries. You already heard about the new Dragon Age game — but listed just below that is an untitled “Shooter from Epic TBA.” Of course, this can only mean one thing: Gears of Madden 2012 is within spitting distance of becoming a sweet reality! Wait — what’s that? Oh, right, the listing more likely points to new speculative details about that possible “Bulletstorm” project from Epic’s People Can Fly studio. How … unofficial.
Also listed under the early 2011 releases is Dead Space 2, which EA had previously promised would drop before next March. The excitement level of the remaining games drops off like the deep end of a pool: The list includes (deep breath) a new Need For Speed on consoles and PC (in addition to an apparent Holiday 2010 release), a downloadable “action” game, a new fighting game designated as a “sports” title, a new Hasbro game (more Family Game Night?), and new installments in the Sims and Spore franchises.
Dead Space 2 and EA’s Epic shooter slated for early 2011 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Top 10 Best Selling Games
-
