Precursor Games (the team behind the upcoming Eternal Darkness sequel “Shadow of the Eternals“) is made up entirely of former staff of Silicon Knights, according to CEO Paul Caporicci, but he maintains that the two companies are entirely separate entities.

Silicon Knights– a Canadian based developer– has been having intense legal troubles over the last 5 or 6 years after losing a lawsuit to Epic Games over Unreal Engine licensing fees, and now, some folks are worried that the skeleton of that company left and built a new company– Precursor Games– to avoid having to pay damages. This allowed them to purchase assets from Silicon Knights in order to build Shadow of the Eternals, the pseudo-sequel to a game that was built by Silicon Knights in the first place.

Quite an odd situation, but I’m happy that we’re getting a sequel to Eternal Darkness.

Via CVG

Silicon Knights appears to have closed its office, sold off assets

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

We still don’t know too much about the situation, but various outlets have been reporting that Eternal Darkness and Too Human developer Silicon Knights has closed its office and sold off their assets to other companies. This comes in light of the fact that their most famous property– Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem— is getting a spiritual successor developed by Precursor Games called “Shadow of the Eternals“, and amidst the word that Precursor had actually purchased various assets from Silicon Knights in order to work on it.

There were still rumblings yesterday from the few Silicon Knights employees left who said the company is “very much alive”, but as time chugs forward it’s starting to look like that may not be the case.

Via Joystiq

15 EA games are going to skip Wii U due to its lack of support for Frostbite 3

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments

Madden is out the door, FIFA is up in the air, and now we’re hearing that a total of 15 games are set to skip out on Wii U due to the console’s poor testing when put up against EA’s ‘Frostbite 2’ and (consequently) ‘Frostbite 3’ engines. We don’t know for sure which games will be skipping the console, but it’s a safe bet that Battlefield, Mass Effect, and some of the studio’s Star Wars titles won’t be hitting Nintendo’s home console when they come to PS4 and the next generation Xbox.

So when it comes down to it, much like with Wii, Wii U owners may just have to give up on multiplatform support. We’ll certainly have good third party games (it’ll be much cheaper to developer for Wii U than PS4, after all) and great indie titles, but when it comes to these big-budget action games, we seem to be missing out on pretty much everything! Which may not be much of a loss given that most of us bought a Wii U for Nintendo first party titles and other games like that anyway.

Via VideoGamer

Will Wright talks about the three developers he admires most: Miyamoto, Molyneux, and Sid Meier

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

“[Miyamoto] always takes the player first. Right off the bat he works with the controller, what does it feel like, how tactile and kinesthetic is what he’s working on. He works from the inside out: ‘what is the first five second player experience?’ So his games have this craftsmanship behind them that’s amazing and unique.”
“I think Peter Molyneux takes a lot of risks. He’s got this vicarious thing about dealing with little worlds full of little people which very much matches my sensibilities in a way.”

“I’ve always enjoyed [Sid Meier’s] games. His games are just playable, they’re just like a comfortable chair you sit in. I grew up playing board games, and Sid did as well. Sid in some ways is recapitulating our youth, the kind of games we would play back then.”

– Will Wright

Despite some player apprehension regarding the choice of Peter Molyneux, I think Wright has made three very good choices on an idealogical level. These three developers don’t always deliver on their promises and don’t always live up to what Wright has said about them, but when they do they truly make some fantastic games. They’re the type of people that the gaming industry should be all about!

Via Joystiq

Precursor CEO talks being laid off, and how that turned into ‘Shadow of the Eternals’

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U | 0 comments

“As many people can relate, being laid off is an emotionally distressing experience. When this happened to me, I was determined to turn this toward more positive ends. I began reaching out to others to see if they were interested in starting something brand new, using lessons learned from past experiences.
Denis Dyack was my first choice for Creative, as he has a keen understanding on the creative aspects of game development. It saddens me to read that people’s impressions of him are painted by anonymous accounts of other individuals. I’ve known Denis for 10 years now, and from first hand experience I consider him to be one of the most honourable people I know, and undeserving of the amount of negative accusations he receives.”

“I knew Shawn Jackson’s attention to detail, enthusiasm and experience would really balance our management team as Chief Operating Officer. The rest of the Precursor team is equally talented, and I’m amazed by the results we’ve achieved with our demo. Precursor Games has been built from the ground up to do something new, and we are excited to show and work with you on our first project—‘Shadows of the Eternals’.”

– Precursor Games CEO Paul Caporicci

It sounds like they’re definitely passionate about this project, but I’m still concerned that the likes of Dyack and Caporicci have gotten themselves into a bit of an Epic Mickey, trying to create something behind which there is far too much creative passion and not enough technical understanding. That being said, the company has said that they’re in regular contact with Nintendo about the project, and if anyone has a technical understanding of game design, it’s the Big N!

Via Siliconera

Capcom’s Svesson: “Very polarized opinions” within Capcom regarding cancelled Mega Man FPS

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

The recently revealed (and recently cancelled) Mega Man FPS Maverick Hunter split the fan community in two. Admittedly, the opinions towards the negative were slightly more prevalent than those towards the positive, but the polarity of the opinions was nevertheless rather extreme, and Capcom’s Christian Svensson said that the thoughts on the game from within the company were also mixed:

“Given the lack of consensus in this thread alone, that should tell you what you needed to know. Suffice to say, there were very polarized opinions internally on this project as well.”

– Capcom USA Senior Vice-President Christian Svensson

Perhaps it’s for the best that the project was cancelled. I know that I certainly wasn’t the biggest fan of the style they chose for it!

Via Siliconera

Suda51 talks about working with publishers, says that the partnership with GungHo should allow sales and creativity to go hand in hand

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

“Each publisher operates a different way, has different strategic ideas, so in terms of sales, what they did, was they kept creating what they thought was good. But in terms of publishing, it was a different company’s strategic choice. So we believe that back then, when we were completely indie without a group company to be together with, we weren’t able to translate our creative directly into sales because that was the part where there was always a wall between creative and sales transition wise.”

“Now that we’re one big group together and we’ll be publishing our own titles as Grasshopper, we believe that the creative side and the sales side will have a better connection. We definitely believe that it will transfer to good sales because we will be able to choose our own strategy.”

– Suda51

I’ve gotta admit… I’m not exactly sure what Suda is saying here! It’s something relating to publishers getting in the way of creativity, and therefore sales, but it’s also sounding like he’s saying that when you work with a third-party publisher, the creativity no longer translates into sales despite still being there. Ah well. At least he says the partnership with GungHo should allow their creative vision to translate into sales for them!

Via Gamespot

Gearbox says ‘Aliens’ lawsuit claiming false advertising is “beyond meritless”

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U | 0 comments

“Attempting to wring a class action lawsuit out of a demonstration is beyond meritless. We continue to support the game, and will defend the rights of entertainers to share their works-in-progress without fear of frivolous litigation.”

– Gearbox Statement

They’re sort of obligated to say this because they’re being sued and they don’t want to lose the case, but I wonder if they have a point. They should definitely be allowed to share a work in progress… but if the work in progress looks so much better than the final product? I don’t know! Maybe, maybe not. I’m not much for legalese.

Via Gamespot

Katie Couric asks for “the positive side” of violent video games via Twitter

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

So apparently Katie Couric ran an hour-long piece about video games and how they ruin lives and make some people kill people last Monday, which upset some gamers. So Katie decided to rectify the situation by asking gamers what they think the positive aspects of violent games are… via Twitter!

Passionate gamers upset w convo whether violent video games can contribute to v behavior. Tweet the positive side of violent v games? Thanx!
— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) May 3, 2013

She says she’s going to use the replies in an upcoming show, but we don’t know what the show was about. I think we all know by this point that this argument is useless to have. People who run specials about video games being a catalyst for violence but neglect to do the same for some significantly larger contributing factors aren’t people I care much to debate with!

Via Gamespot

NPD survey finds an increase in gaming overall, over half of gamers prefer buying physical media to digital

Posted on 11 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

NPD’s yearly “Online Gaming Report” has come out today, detailing for us the many habits of those gamers who play games online, what they’re playing, how much they’re playing, and how they like to play. Here’s the breakdown:

– 72% of gamers in the U.S. play online, up 5% over last year
– Hours-played-per-week is up 9% overall, 6% for online gaming
– People are playing games more often, for longer across “virtually every type of device”
– PC is the top platform for online gaming
– Online gaming through PC is shrinking, while online gaming through mobile devices is growing
– 62% of gamers prefer buying physical games to digital
– Survey questioned 8,867 people ages 2 and older

Via Gamespot