Category: Industry News

Pixel Count: Gaming Trends?

After the last few weeks, it’s been hard for me not to be a bit of a gaming grump when it comes to trends in the video game industry. Sometimes it’s easy to look at all the ways the hobby’s changing, from DRM to microtransactions to the idea of games as a service instead of games as a product… and just feel a bit let down.

But then some great games come out like Bioshock: Infinite and Tomb Raider, and you start to feel a bit more hopeful. Like maybe some teams are out there still thinking about us and trying to make games we’ll enjoy. So in that vein, I thought today’s Pixel Count would focus on the positive: what gaming trends do you love about the industry right now! Tell us why in the comments!

What trend are you most excited about in gaming?

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The GamerSushi Show, Ep 65: Sushians Assemble!

the gamersushi show john riccitiello leaves ea

After a short break from the cast, we’ve got a whole crew on for this edition of The GamerSushi Show! That’s right, Nick joins us for the entire cast. We were pretty excited when we saw him pop up on Skype.

As for what we talk about during the cast, we have a fairly restrained conversation about SimCity, discuss John Riccitiello leaving EA and what that means for the company, and Jeff breaks down why he thinks Tomb Raider is awesome. Anthony then has an unscheduled rant about Final Fantasy Versus XIII reportedly being turned into Final Fantasy XV for the PlayStation 4. It’s fairly entertaining.

So, you know what to do. Listen to the podcast, rate it up on the iTunes with all the stars you can muster, and be nice to each other. Seriously, find a gamer and give them a hug. We’re an angry group of people that just want to be loved.

0:00 – 2:04 Intro
2:04 – 21:00 SimCity
21:02 – 28:24 John Riccitiello Leaves EA
28:25 – 46:20 Tomb Raider
46:21 – 54:55 Pre-Ordering Games and BioShock Infinite
54:56 – 1:05:24 – Final Fantasy Versus XIII Goes Next-Gen/Anthony’s Square Rant
1:05:25 – 1:08:38 Outro

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John Riccitiello Leaves His Job as EA’s CEO

john riccitiello leaves ea

While the writing might have been on the wall for a while, it still came as a bit of a shock this past Monday when John Riccitiello left his position as EA’s CEO. Citing lower than expected financial targets, Mr. Riccitiello’s turn as EA’s CEO will officially be done on March 30, where he will be replaced by Larry Probst (EA’s former CEO from 1991-2007) for the interim. Riccitiello said this about his departure in a letter to the company:

This is a tough decision, but it all comes down to accountability. The progress EA has made on transitioning to digital games and services is something I’m extremely proud of. However, it currently looks like we will come in at the low end of, or slightly below, the financial guidance we issued in January, and we have fallen short of the internal operating plan we set one year ago. EA’s shareholders and employees expect better and I am accountable for the miss.

As part of his separation agreement, Riccitiello will receive 24 months of payment, which is not a shabby deal, all things considered. Continue reading John Riccitiello Leaves His Job as EA’s CEO

Penny-Arcade Goes Hands-On with Elder Scrolls Online

Elder Scrolls online

Dragonborn Sushians, hark! For Did You See This Wednesday, we’re pointing you to one of many hands-on previews that press outlets scooped this past week with Bethesda’s upcoming MMO of their popular RPG series, The Elder Scrolls.

Penny-Arcade’s preview of The Elder Scrolls Online in particular has some nice, juicy info for any of you that have been hurting for more details about what it’ll be like to run around in the lands we’ve visited in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. For the most part, the game seems to deliver generic MMO fare, although the combat sounds a bit more interesting than what you’d usually see in a WoW clone. Continue reading Penny-Arcade Goes Hands-On with Elder Scrolls Online

Would You Rather: 2013 Edition

Welcome, Sushians, to the first Would You Rather of 2013! Actually, this is the first Would You Rather since Spring of 2012, which is a little insane to think about. How were you guys getting your fix of Sophie’s Choice style questions about video games without us? How?!

While you’re reeling over the awesomeness of finally getting a new Would You Rather, you should peruse some of these questions and write your own answers. These questions are inspired by some of the issues we’ve seen in games recently, from Sim City’s DRM to Tomb Raider’s updates and Gears of War Judgment’s lack of a horde mode. Feel free to make your answers as lengthy as you want. You’ll get extra points if you insult one of the other GS writers, too.

Continue reading Would You Rather: 2013 Edition

Call of Duty “Almost Ruined” a Generation of Gamers, Says Red Orchestra Dev

call of duty ruining gamers

Call of Duty is, without a doubt, the most popular online FPS game of our time. Millions of people have played it and become accustom to the mechanics, so much so to the point where if you want to make a successful shooter, you have to ape the way CoD plays and feels to a certain degree.

Not so with Red Orchestra 2, which has an upcoming expansion in the form of Rising Storm. PC Gamer spoke to Tripwire Interactive President John Gibson about the expansion, but also about how he feels that Call of Duty has “almost ruined” a generation of gamers.

His frustration mostly stems from trying to create “Action Mode”, a blend of Red Orchestra and Call of Duty and not being able to make it work. Call of Duty players were called in to consult on the mode and the mechanics for RO2 just aren’t compatible with the way CoD plays. Continue reading Call of Duty “Almost Ruined” a Generation of Gamers, Says Red Orchestra Dev

Pleasing the Princess: Hacking Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong

I love this story.

In the midst of some of the crazy “controversies” (and I use that term loosely) that discuss the role of sexism in gaming culture and the industry at large — including the frothing attacks that were leveled against Anita Sarkeesian for daring to study the role of women in video games (the first video is fantastic, by the way), the bumbled PR about Tomb Raider, and the “Bros Before Hos” trophy in God of War — it’s nice to get a more touching story about why all of this stuff actually matters.

Mike Mika, a former video game designer for Atari, recently took up a “father of the year” level quest to please his 3 year old daughter when he realized how sad she was that she couldn’t play as Pauline, the princess in Donkey Kong, in order to save Mario. Mike, being a knowledgeable sort of dude, set to some pretty impressive work. Continue reading Pleasing the Princess: Hacking Donkey Kong

Pixel Count: Great Expectations

Between Sim City, and the new announcement of Assassin’s Creed 4, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way gamers set and manage their own expectations when it comes to new games.

The disappointment for Sim City comes from knowing that a ridiculously good game might be lying beneath the surface of some extremely frustrating mechanical issues. From the servers not working (I was put into a 20 minute queue last night in the middle of a session) to the ancient-feeling social interactions, and some of the really odd rules of gameplay (too-small cities and some unhelpfully helpful Sim guides), I’m disappointed because Sim City might be a masterpiece completely stepping on its own feet.

With Assassin’s Creed 3, I felt a little lured into a game that was ultimately a total bomb. From carefully selected vertical slices of gameplay for hands-on previews to unbelievably cleverly edited trailers, Assassin’s Creed 3 looked set to put the series back to what it was with Brotherhood, while simultaneously striking out in a bold, new direction. What we got instead was a total mess, and it made me evaluate the way I take in my gaming news, which I’m already pretty strict about to begin with. Needless to say, I won’t be excited about AC4 anytime soon.

So I figured for today’s poll I’d ask you guys where you derive most of your expectations for upcoming games. Hit up the poll, and then the comments!

Where do you get expectations for an upcoming game?

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Random Encounters III

Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag

Time for another edition of Random Encounters, where I share my thoughts on a variety of subjects that are currently on my mind:

1. I have no proof and only baseless Internet speculation, but I can’t help but wonder if Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag was originally a side-story like the Ezio trilogy and was rebranded as a numbered sequel in order to take people’s mind off the bitter disappointment that was Assassin’s Creed 3. It just seems odd that the AC 4 is in roughly the same time period and is a prequel, which means it might not even forward the Desmond story set in the future. We will have to wait and see, but if that is the case, it’s kind of disgusting, akin to Square Enix allegedly releasing Final Fantasy Versus XIII as Final Fantasy XV. Continue reading Random Encounters III

GamerSushi Asks: Sim City’s Launch Woes?

Sim City

So you guys might have heard about this game called Sim City that came out this week. Apparently lots of people are playing it, and everything that EA has done with the launch has been so brilliant that people are throwing parades for it, both in their game’s city streets and in real life. It’s being heralded as the way to do a launch right, and a bastion of hope for how to do an “always online” DRM.

OK, none of that is true. At all. In fact, lots of people can’t even play the game yet.

In what might have been a worse launch disaster than Diablo III, Sim City points to a somewhat grim future for “always online” single player games on the PC. The game’s servers have been so overloaded that people are having trouble playing, saving cities, seeing their friends and more. In fact, EA is having to turn off features that supposedly made “always online” necessary in the first place, just to help people connect. Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: Sim City’s Launch Woes?

Here’s the World Premier Trailer of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Seems that this last week has been pretty slow for gaming news, so we only have the premier trailer for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to show you today. While it’s all pre-rendered, as is the way with Ubisoft’s announcement trailers for Assassin’s Creed, it does get me hyped for the game against my better judgement. In Black Flag, you’ll be playing as Edward Kenway, father of Haytham Kenway from Assassin’s Creed 3 and protagonist Connor’s grandfather. In the trailer, infamous pirate Blackbeard gives us an introduction to our new assassin.

This seems a little odd for the series, as pirate and assassin don’t really mix, but I’m down for it. Apparently the game world is an open ocean with a few major ports and a lot of little islands to explore. So far I’m down with Assassin’s Creed IV, but I’m definitely waiting for a bit after release before I buy it. What say you? Are you on board with Assassin’s Creed IV? Did the trailer work its magic on you?

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 63: Podcast with Butterfly Wings

the gamersushi show, ep 63

Welcome back to The GamerSushi Show! We’re releasing these at a fairly decent clip, aren’t we? You’d think with how dry the gaming industry has been news wise recently we’d have nothing to talk about every week, but here we are again, invading your media players.

It’s another three man team, but this time in the usual combination of Eddy, Jeff and Anthony. They may be lacking Nick and myself, but they still manage to have a rousing conversation anyways. They talk about some older games then launch into Ni no Kuni and next Tuesday’s Tomb Raider, then they talk news which includes the announcement of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and the fact that those scamps over at EA are continuing with microtransactions for the next gen.

Listen, rate and comment! Thanks for stopping by!

0:00 – 0:54 Intro
0:55 – 3:54 Nick Hates The Walking Dead
3:55 – 13:52 Jeff’s Steam Box and Saint’s Row 3
13:53 – 20:11 Far Cry 3
20:12 – 27:03 Ni no Kuni
27:04 – 34:51 Tomb Raider
34:52 – 37:51 Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
37:52 – 50:38 EA microtransactions and Xbox successor deal
50:39 – 54:40 Next gen budgets
54:41 – 56:42 Outro

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Ubisoft Hoists Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

assassins creed 4 black flag

Avast, landlubber! After a pre-order poster for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag leaked earlier this week, Ubisoft went ahead and confirmed that the game and its pirate setting are real and there will be an official reveal on Monday, March 4. The game has been announced for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC and WiiU, but you know this is coming to the PS4 and the Xbox successor as well.

There are no firm details about the game other than that it will be a pirate-themed game based on the open sea and will be set in a new time period as well as feature a different protagonist. Based on the box-art, which I used for the image, the time period won’t be radically different from the Revolutionary America setting from Assassin’s Creed 3.

The naval battles were my favorite part of the previous game, so I’m glad Ubisoft is running with the one new addition to the series that worked well. I’ve made my dislike of AC3 well known, but I can’t help but be a little excited for Black Flag. A pirate that follows the creed would make for an excellent protagonist indeed, and hopefully a departure from the more or less morally-upright main characters of games past.

What do you guys think about this announcement? Are you excited for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag? Would you rather this game sank to Davy Jones’ Locker? Will the game use the term “poop deck” with a straight face?

Source – IGN

All Future EA Titles To Have Microtransactions

DS 3 Bench

It’s Stop The Presses Thursday!

The announcement that Dead Space 3 has a microtransaction option was merely the opening salvo in what appears to be an all-out assault on your wallet by EA. The publishing giant revealed today, via Develop, that they plan to make microtransactions a major part of their strategy by including them in all future releases, at least for the foreseeable future. But let’s face it, much like an unwanted house guest, once these things get in, they are never going to go away.

CFO Blake Jorgensen, speaking at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, said:

“We’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business.”

Continue reading All Future EA Titles To Have Microtransactions

This Week’s Videos: Video Game Locations and Watch Dogs

Hola, Sushians. For Did You See This Wednesday, I bring great gaming gifts, like a spice trader who’s wandered across the internet’s vast desert on camelback.

OK actually, I just found some cool stuff I thought you guys might like to see. We’ve got two videos here. The first is an original piece by Tim Hijikema, who, if you’ll remember, made the excellent Video Game Planets piece almost a year ago.

In his new video, Video Game Locations, Tim re-creates classic video game locales, from Hyrule to Vice City. Set to excellent music, this thing is a crazy nostalgia tour. Can you name them all?

Continue reading This Week’s Videos: Video Game Locations and Watch Dogs

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 62: All About the PlayStation 4

playstation 4

There was one topic of conversation that dominated this episode of The GamerSushi Show, and you can probably guess what that is. Sony’s reveal of the PlayStation 4 has the gaming world turned on its head and a three man team consisting of myself, Jeff and Nick dissect the press conference.

Seeing as how the reveal was so dominating, we don’t talk about much else during the show, but we’d love to hear your thoughts on the PlayStation 4! Listen, rate, and come at us, bros!

0:00 – 2:14 Intro
2:15 – 1:08:38 PlayStation 4

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Sony Reveals the PlayStation 4

playstation 4 controller

It’s Stop the Presses Thursday, and boy do we have something for you!

Last night at a press event in Manhattan, Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4, officially ushering in the next generation of consoles. The press conference showcased the system’s architecture, which is designed to be simple in response to the criticisms of the PlayStation 3 being too complex to develop on, the controller, the new social aspect of the PS4, and of course, the games.

The PlayStation 4 is running on an x86-64 8-core CPU, just like our wise Bearded One hypothesized two weeks ago during the podcast. It has a next-gen Radeon GPU along with 8gb of GDDR5 RAM and all of the other bells and whistles you’d expect: Blu-ray, an internal hard-drive of an unspecified size, USB 3.0, all that kind of stuff.

The leaked controller from a few weeks back turned out to be completely legitimate. As you can see in the image above, it features a touchscreen similar to the one of the back of PS Vita along with a giant blue bar that performs a Move-type function. The controller also has upgraded Sixaxis and rumble and, thankfully, the shoulder buttons and the analog sticks have been modified. It now has a headphone jack and the all-important, brand spanking new Share button. Continue reading Sony Reveals the PlayStation 4

Cage Fight: Grow Up, Gamers

Beyond: Two Souls

Time for Did You See This Wednesday!

Never one to stray from a controversial comment, David Cage, creator of Heavy Rain and the upcoming Beyond: Two Souls for the PS3, caused quite a stir at the DICE summit with some of his remarks regarding the direction he feels the game industry needs to go if it wants to evolve as an art form. Calling it a “Peter Pan-complex”, Cage pointed out that the vast majority of games are made for teens and children and the industry should strive to tackle more mature themes and not just a mature shooter, but expand mechanics beyond jumping, punching and shooting. Basically: maturity doesn’t equal violence.

Cage sat down with Chris Kohler of Wired.com for an extensive follow-up interview. The interview is worth reading Getting to the crux of the matter, Kohler asks Cage what are the consequences of the game industry not growing up and his answer is surprising in its reasonableness: Continue reading Cage Fight: Grow Up, Gamers

Pixel Count: How Do You Prefer Your Hype?

The reveal of Bungie’s newest property, Destiny, has had me thinking this week about the nature of hype in the video game realm. With everything from years-out announcements to games that get stuck in an endless development cycle, games that get dropped on us just a few months before release and more, we’ve seen the whole gamut of hype. Sometimes it is a bit much for our poor hearts, methinks.

But while I’m excited about the little snippets that Bungie showed off, I can’t help but feel like maybe the announcement had been just a tad overhyped in the week prior. Bungie explained a little of what Destiny is, but there’s still so much we don’t know, and for a game that seems built around its high concept that we may or may not have seen before, it seems like maybe that information is necessary. In the end, it comes down to strategy, and how each developer feels that they can ultimately sell more copies.

All that to ask you guys today’s poll question. How do you prefer your video game hype? Go!

How do you prefer your hype?

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Bungie Reveals Project Destiny

After a couple of years of silence, Bungie has spilled the beans on their ambitious, imaginative project, Destiny. In one of their famous ViDocs, the house that built Halo unveiled its new shared-world shooter. While it’s hard to know what it is exactly at this point, the implication seems to be a persistent online sandbox world, where the players have an affect on the world and the story. It sounds like an MMO, but also with a few elements such as DayZ.

Bungie plans to unfold this universe over the course of 10 years. And what a universe to play in. I could go on and on about the art style, which reminds me of both Halo and Mass Effect, but with a touch of ruin seen from something like Enslaved. While most of what we see in the video is concept art, we do get a couple of bits of gameplay towards the end. You should really just watch it for yourself.

What do you guys think of Destiny, upon its first reveal? I have to admit, it’s a bit bittersweet to see the game’s scope and style, knowing that I had a chance to be at Bungie for all of this. I’m curious to see what else they have in store for us, and what other things they’ll release about the game in the coming months.