Speaking with NowGamer, TT Fusion’s lead developer for the upcoming LEGO City: Undercover has said that the studio isn’t looking at making an NFC-based, figurine-attached game using LEGO figures anytime soon, despite the facts that such an idea would clearly be ridiculously popular, and the Wii U Gamepad already has NFC technology built into it.

Perhaps the studio simply wants to release their new game first, see what kind of press it gets, and then think about doing something new and interesting like that. Something tells me they’ll be more interesting in simply making another open-world LEGO City game though.

Via NowGamer

‘Watch Dogs’ lead designer leaves Ubisoft, joins EA to work on Need for Speed

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

It’s unknown how reactionary this particular story should be as details are somewhat fuzzy, but here’s what’s known so far:

Jamie Keen worked at Ubisoft Montreal during the development of Far Cry 3, where he acted as lead game designer. This week, some of the gaming press took a look at his LinkedIn profile, and discovered that it lists him leaving Ubisoft Montreal in February 2012 to join up with EA and work on their upcoming Need for Speed title– many months before he finished work on Far Cry 3. Some are suggesting this is a typo, and it means to read “February 2013”. If it does, it means that he left during the development of Watch Dogs, on which he was also said to be lead designer.

If it isn’t a typo and he did leave in 2012, it means he was never lead designer on Watch Dogs and he didn’t finish work on Far Cry 3, which seems unlikely. Why he left the company in the first place is unknown, but we’ll keep you posted if this goes anywhere!

Via VideoGamer

PETA: Assassin’s Creed IV whaling mechanic is “disgraceful”

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

“Whaling – that is, shooting whales with harpoons and leaving them to struggle for an hour or more before they die or are hacked apart while they are still alive – may seem like something out of the history books, but this bloody industry still goes on today in the face of international condemnation, and it’s disgraceful for any game to glorify it.”

“PETA encourages video game companies to create games that celebrate animals – not games that promote hurting and killing them.

– PETA Statement

PETA is no stranger to criticizing video games– they’ve said themselves that they intentionally blow things out of proportion in order to draw attention to their legitimate cause– and today we get to hear about their opinions on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, specifically the game’s whaling mechanic.

Whether the criticism is legitimate or not isn’t really up for debate– even PETA would likely admit (behind closed doors, of course) that going after artistic mediums isn’t always wholesome– but the question of whether the game is “glorifying” the action is still completely unknown. Plenty of games have violence, but not all of them glorify it, and we’ll have to wait and see whether this particular mechanic is made out to be a moral positive or simply a fact of life, as it was back then.

Via VideoGamer

All of EA’s future games will utilize micro-transactions of some kind

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

After we heard that Dead Space 3 would give players the ability to pay a few extra bucks for upgrades to weapons, items, and armor in-game, a lot of people were concerned: If EA was bringing this trendy business practice into a truly core franchise like Dead Space, what would games like Madden and The Sims look like in the future? According to the mega-publisher, they’ll look awfully similar:

“The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games. 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.”

– EA CFO Blake Jorgensen

I can’t imagine too many gamers are happy about this, but if history is any indication, these things will pass. Such things are trendy now– like social networking interaction– but they don’t represent the core of what the fun of games is about, and they can be ignored. Only when EA starts forcing you to participate in the micro transaction model should you be worried!

Via NowGamer

The back of the rumored Assassin’s Creed IV poster shows a map of Cuba

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

While most had guessed by this point that the upcoming reveal of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag would be pirate-related, this new discovery (from the same tipster that brought Kotaku the original promotional poster image) cements it. As you can see, the image is a map of Cuba and the surrounding islands as well as a full-view version in the bottom left corner that says “The Coastlands of Florida”.

Whether this is the only location in the game is anyone’s guess, but it will most certainly end up being one of them.

Via Kotaku

Nintendo outlines desire for stricter piracy prevention, sends recommendations to U.S. Trade Representative

Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

It’s no surprise to anyone that Nintendo doesn’t like folks pirating their games, but in recent years it has come to the attention of the general public that piracy doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on game sales as far as the big picture is concerned– after all, both the gaming industry (Nintendo included) and Hollywood have seen profits skyrocket over the last five or ten years, despite the fact that piracy is more prevalent than ever before– but that doesn’t mean companies like the Big N are going to stop trying to fight piracy in whatever ways they can. This time around, they’re asking the U.S. to target countries like Brazil and China with raids to make examples of folks who share pirated material.

“Nintendo, along with its publishers and developers, is injured by the prevalence and ease of illegal online distribution. In the past few years, the scope of online piracy for Nintendo has grown dramatically. Every month tens of thousands of illegal Nintendo game files are detected on the Internet. The legal environment to limit the flow of these files remains extremely challenging.”

– Nintendo statement

Even Nintendo isn’t immune to silly lapses in logic at times! Not to say piracy isn’t an issue at all– just that they’re doing more than fine (well, save for Wii U sales) even with piracy more rampant than ever. Isn’t that good enough!?

Via TorrentFreak

Goodbye Galaxy Games: We want Homebrew games without the potential for piracy

Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in 3DS, 3DS eShop, General Gaming, General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

Homebrew has always been a thorn in Nintendo’s side from their perspective, but a lot of people use the “hack”– including myself at one point– to run goofy indie games, fun applications, and to expand the functionality of their console. One of the lesser-used features of homebrew is open game development. A lot of people can’t get 3DS dev kits for various reasons, so they resort to hacking the console, making “homebrew” games, and releasing them to the homebrew community. The inevitable consequence of this is that people mis-use the hacks and pirate games that people worked hard on.

Goodbye Galaxy Games is working on a potential fix, however, that lets you create and test your homebrew games with nothing more than free PC software and a small 3DS app– all without having to hack the console, and they say that the games can exist without the piracy.

We had all these talks about piracy and homebrew the last few weeks. And the problems with homebrew is that most of these hacks later get abused for piracy means. Now imagine you can just use your retail 3DS to make games, and you don’t need to hack it! No need for a R4 card! No need for weird custom hardware or tools! No need for piracy!

– Goodbye Galaxy Games lead Hugo Smits

The real question for them is whether Nintendo would allow them to release this piracy-free development software on the eShop like they’d like to. I would doubt it, but maybe the Big N is feeling humbled considering the sales of Wii U lately!

Via Goodbye Galaxy Games Blog

G4 to become ‘Esquire Network’ on April 22nd

Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

We’ve reported on this before, but now we finally have an official date: Starting April 22nd, anyone who currently gets G4TV via their cable or satellite provider will awaken to a brand new channel to replace to dying-brand that was G4. The new name will be the “Esquire Network” and will feature programming similar to ‘Bravo’ but “for men”. It is, as they say, for “the modern man, what being a man today is all about”.

Which mostly sounds like a bunch of vaguely sexist baloney to me, but I guess they think people will watch it! With any luck this will be the last that you hear of the network, since they will feature no gaming related programming whatsoever.

Via Gamespot

Former Microsoft employee says the company almost bought SEGA, instead came out with Xbox to combat Sony

Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories | 0 comments

Well here’s something I didn’t know: Back in the early 2000s, Microsoft was strongly considering purchasing SEGA and using them to make a game console to combat Sony! I guess it makes sense if you think about it, and it would have been significantly cheaper to buy SEGA and use their resources for game console development as opposed to starting from scratch on your own. So why didn’t the deal work out?

“There were three companies at that point in time, I think this was [Sony,] SEGA and Nintendo. There was always talk maybe we buy SEGA or something like that; that never materialised, but we were actually able to license them what they call Windows CE, the younger brother of Windows, to run on their system and make that their platform.
“But for Bill [Gates] this wasn’t enough, he didn’t think that SEGA had enough muscle to eventually stop Sony so we did our own Xbox thing.”

– Former Microsoft Employee Joachim Kempin

Man, wouldn’t it be weird if SEGA was still in the business of making consoles!? Especially if they were owned by Microsoft! I’m not sure that things would have gone better for both companies in the long run though, considering how successful the Xbox brand has been worldwide.

Via IGN

Crytek likely won’t continue the ‘Darksiders’ franchise after hiring core Vigil staffers

Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments

When THQ was forced to sell all of their assets, one of the teams that didn’t sell in their entirety was Darksiders developer ‘Vigil Games’. The folks over at Crytek ended up hiring a good group of the core members of Vigil and forming a brand new branch of Crytek in Austin, Texas, but apparently the new team won’t be continuing on with Darksiders 3:

“We had chosen Austin as the destination for [our U.S. branch], and we needed a lean and core team of experts to run the studio. At the same time, we didn’t want to continue with Darksiders 3, since that doesn’t fit with our strategy. So when I heard that [THQ laid off everyone at Vigil], I decided on Saturday morning to fly out to meet with them to see if the team would be interested to join our mission, which is significantly different than what this team has done before.” – Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli

Apparently Crytek is giving the new studio plenty of breathing room as far as the exact type of game they want to create, so long as they follow the main internal Crytek goal.

“The team identifies as what they want to do. Right now, they just know what the strategy of Crytek is and the framework we need to satisfy, but none of that drives what the game is about.” – Cervat Yerli

Via CVG