Gadgets and Video Games

EEDAR hosted a two part panel at GDC this year. In the second half of the panel — you can read about the first half here — Jesse Divnich presented the results of an Xbox Live Achievement study the firm recently conducted. The info was pulled from a pool of 32 million data points — provided by MyGamerCard.net — and centered on a random sampling of 100 different Xbox 360 games. Probably the most interesting statistic that Divnich dropped: An average of only 4 percent of Xbox gamers actually managed to earn all of the achievements in any given game

More here: 
GDC 2010: EEDAR on Achievements, user behavior

Earlier this month, Take-Two announced the potential movement of one of the titles planned for release in its fiscal fourth quarter, extending from August to October. The choices were: LA Noire , Mafia 2 , Max Payne 3 , or Civilization V . During our demo of Mafia 2 on Wednesday, we were told the game would make its Q4 release, removing it from the list of potentially delayed titles.

See the original post here: 
Q4 release for Mafia 2 (re)confirmed; Payne, Noire, Civ V still on hit list

In the video game industry, the talent (read: game developers) are often “hired guns,” if you will — part of a developer that is either wholly owned by a publisher (i.e. Infinity Ward’s relationship with Activision) or a developer that’s being contracted for development by a publisher (i.e. Ruffian Games ‘ relationship with Microsoft). Rarely, if ever, is an individual (or individuals, as is the case here) represented by a talent agency, nonetheless a fancy, bigtime Hollywood one like Creative Artists Agency.

See original here: 
Ex-Infinity Ward heads now represented by Creative Artists Agency

In a panel titled “Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2 ,” BioWare’s Christina Norman talked about the radical changes made to the second chapter in the Mass Effect trilogy.

Here is the original: 
BioWare’s Christina Norman defines goals for Mass Effect 3

The GDC 2010 Microtalks session was a frazzling experience in many ways. The format of the event essentially assures it. Ten lecturers — all from different sectors of the game industry — each spoke for five minutes and each were allowed to use 20 different slides.

Read more from the original source: 
GDC 2010 Microtalks: Big ideas, tiny speeches

Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week — but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII . Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews. While it’s certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu’s latest saga fare under more common rubrics? IGN ( 8.5 /10 ): “You’re getting this intense story about Japan’s seedy underbelly that’s set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you’re earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor.

Read the rest here: 
Metareview: Yakuza 3

The pricing scheme announced this week by OnLive , in which you’d pay $15 a month for the privilege of buying and renting games, won’t be the only way to interact with the streaming service. In addition to that “OnLive Game Service,” the company will open an “OnLive Game Portal” sometime after the June 17 launch of the main service. It sounds a lot like the browser-based streaming offered by competitor Gaikai . The Game Portal is a free browser-based service that allows streaming of a selection of demos, as well as a limited number of full games for rent — for a per-game fee, without the monthly charge. The selection of games is limited not just in number, but also “subject to available OnLive service capacity and whatever usage limits are associated with each given demo.” The Portal will work with the OnLive set top box, in addition to the browser plug-in

See the original post here: 
OnLive to offer ‘OnLive Game Portal’ service without monthly fee

After delivering a GDC panel on his cinematic inspiration, we met with Metroid: Other M producer Yoshio Sakamoto to ask him about everything from collaborating with Team Ninja, lessons learned from Metroid Prime, the newfound focus on story in the Metroid universe, and whether or not he played Chair’s Super Metroid love letter, Shadow Complex. Read on! Can you tell us about the process of working with Team Ninja.

See more here:
Interview: Metroid: Other M producer Yoshio Sakamoto

With the Japanese console release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift approaching , publisher Arc System Works sent out a new trailer of the HD fighting followup. Instead of uninterrupted footage of giant sprites brawling, Arc has presented what looks like the game’s intro, a hyperkinetic anime clip featuring dramatic poses, exciting fight sequences, and … the Earth being shot from orbit? At the end of the trailer, after the release date, is a brief reminder of the new character added to the console version of Continuum Shift: the new character μ-12

Read more here:
BlazBlue Continuum Shift trailer blazes appropriately

Having printed and shipped more than 3 million copies of BioShock 2 across the seas, publisher Take-Two is clearly leaning on its sequel to provide a strong sale wind to push the company through another successful quarter . Following its February 9 release, the Xbox 360 version of BioShock 2 cruised up the US sales charts, anchoring in the peak position, according to the NPD’s monthly report . For the PS3 version, the journey was not such a breeze, as it appeared to have come up against some bad weather. Despite the Xbox 360 edition’s #1 ranking in US February game sales, the PS3 version of BioShock 2 was curiously absent from the top ten listing. An NPD representative told Joystiq that the PS3 game recorded roughly 190.5k units sold last month, “just outside the top 10 at #11.” If anything’s to blame for this somewhat modest debut month, it’s Heavy Rain .

View original post here: 
NPD: BioShock 2 Feb. PS3 sales just shy of 200k mark