Gadgets and Video Games

Game industry analysis firm EEDAR dropped some interesting statistics during its GDC panel this year. The first half of the presentation — hosted by EEDAR president Geoffrey Zatkin — concerned new intellectual property in the games industry. According to Zatkin, the amount of new IP released has increased slightly over the last three years

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GDC 2010: EEDAR talks new IP strategy

[ Joe King ] Rhode Island bill S.2156 ( PDF ) is silly … ( How silly is it?

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ESA says Rhode Island game bill is unconstitutional, Jack Thompson … agrees?

Y’know, OnLive and Gaikai aren’t the only game-streaming services on the block. OTOY has been laying low for a minute, but the “other” game streaming service has finally made its big announcement : it’s going to release in Q2 2010. In fact, OTOY isn’t just a service for streaming games; there are now claims of streaming movies, PC applications and “other graphically-intensive applications” to any mobile device with a web browser. OTOY will employ AMD Fusion Render Cloud technology, a CPU/GPU server platform that will stream games straight into your see pee youz through the company’s software suite. And if you have no idea what that means, check out a demo of the service right here , courtesy of TechCrunch — basically, it’s like playing games on your computer.

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OTOY to launch in ‘Q2 2010′ through AMD partnership

Y’know, OnLive and Gaikai aren’t the only game-streaming services on the block. OTOY has been laying low for a minute, but the “other” game streaming service has finally made its big announcement : it’s going to release in Q2 2010. In fact, OTOY isn’t just a service for streaming games; there are now claims of streaming movies, PC applications and “other graphically-intensive applications” to any mobile device with a web browser. OTOY will employ AMD Fusion Render Cloud technology, a CPU/GPU server platform that will stream games straight into your see pee youz through the company’s software suite

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OTOY to launch in ‘Q2 2010′ through AMD partnership

Battle vs. Chess appears to bring Battle Chess to a new generation, with a similar hook and a name that just skirts a potential copyright lawsuit. With “upbeat combat visuals & mechanics,” the game sounds like a modern update of the classic chess game that let us watch chess pieces beat the stuffing out of each other. There don’t appear to be any videos showing BvC ’s animations.

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Liked Battle Chess? Meet Battle vs. Chess

Ubisoft has issued a recall for Collectors Edition copies of the submarine sim Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic , According to a report from the German site ComputerBase . Apparently, some offending World War II-related symbols (we’re guessing swastikas) were left in some of the bonus content, which violates German law . This only affects the Collectors Edition. The ComputerBase post briefly mentions the Ubisoft DRM that has been so problematic for players of Assassin’s Creed 2 and this game, confirming that the same scheme is in use there.

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Report: Silent Hunter 5 recalled in Germany

Sony’s GDC panel “Introducing the PlayStation Motion Controller was exactly that: An introduction to the newly named Move peripheral. David Coombes, Kirk Bender and Anton Mikhailov showcased a number of impressive tech demos, many of which demonstrated the Move’s incredible precision and low latency. One of the most impressive demos showcased full body tracking using an on-screen body puppet, not unlike one of Project Natal ’s tech demos

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PlayStation Move requires 1-2 MB of system memory

Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg is thrilled with February’s NPD numbers, and for good reason. The Xbox 360 took the top spot in home console sales last month, despite not being a Wii. According to the NPD , it’s the first time this has happened since the Halo 3 launch in 2007. BioShock 2 seems to have had something to do with the boost, with the Xbox 360 version topping the software charts (and the PS3 version absent from the top ten). Other notable software milestones: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is now the third best-selling game of all time, and Just Dance seems to have made a better pact with Satan than even Dante’s Inferno did

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February NPD: Xbox 360 and BioShock 2 sales heat up

Carrying on in the longstanding Epic Games tradition of offering up free upgrades to existing products, the developer, publisher and game engine creator announced this morning that it will be adding Steamworks support to Unreal Engine 3 . “With Valve offering these services free of charge, the idea of providing the Steamworks SDK [software development kit] to all Unreal Engine licensees was a no-brainer,” Epic VP Mark Rein notes in the announcement . As it turns out, Valve offered up the development tools to UE3 developers (via Epic) without charging a single penny. That said, this isn’t just a philanthropic gesture on Epic’s part, but rather a strategy aimed at targeting the large stable of games powered by Unreal Engine. “Epic’s technology is one of the most widely used engines in the industry and has powered many of the best games created in the past 10 years, on multiple platforms,” Valve prez Gabe Newell proclaims

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Epic giving Unreal Engine 3 devs free Steam SDK update

Alex Alvarez is one of those people who obsessively played games and constantly doodled in a sketchbook as a kid. He studied art, but with no one career-oriented channel for that creativity, he didn’t find himself making a living as an artist until he stumbled into a job working on comic books. A few years later, he was explaining software to movie studios and eventually opened The Gnomon Workshop , which provides training to artists who are interested in the entertainment industry. Alvarez recently finished a six-month stint working on James Cameron’s Avatar, and Gnomon just hosted the “Unleashed: The Art of Naughty Dog” art exhibit showing off works by many of the artists from Naughty Dog, several of whom went through classes at Gnomon. In our interview after thee break, Alvarez talks about the expanding reach of video games, looks back at his youth spent playing Ultima and Wizardry , and doles out plenty of advice for budding young artists

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Interview: Alex Alvarez of The Gnomon Workshop