Gadgets and Video Games

In fairness, Metanet Software’s first video for Robotology (found after the break) is more physics demo than it is gameplay demo — or even proof of concept, for that matter. Though considering the pedigree behind the game (Metanet made N+ , this week’s Xbox Live deal !), we’re willing to overlook the less than thrilling minute-plus video in celebration of the sheer tenacity with which Metanet attacks its game development. In fact, according to the Metanet website , the action in the video represents, “almost 800 lines of code, painstakingly hand-transcribed from graph paper and Flash mockups” — oh my! Here’s hoping it all pays off when the game ships ..

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The first video of N+ dev’s ‘Robotology’

Valve isn’t quite as against the idea of developing games for the PS3 as we previously thought. Speaking to Valve’s Doug Lombardi at the Left 4 Dead 2 event in London today (look out for the full interview soon), we discovered that the company is still “up on the idea” of developing for the PS3 — it’s just waiting until it has hired some decent PS3 coders. “If you look at The Orange Box — PC: 96 on Metacritic, 360: 96 on Metacritic, PS3 like… 84 or something

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Valve ‘up’ on idea of PS3 development, waiting to build talented PS3 team

During an interview with GameBusiness.jp , Sony’s product planning division head honcho, Naoya Matsui, commented that Sony always had plans to go UMD -less, and that the PSP Go is the fruition of all that planning. “We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning,” Matsui said. He further makes his case by stating, “But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy.

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Sony: PSP without UMD ‘always the plan’

During an interview with GameBusiness.jp , Sony’s product planning division head honcho, Naoya Matsui, commented that Sony always had plans to go UMD -less, and that the PSP Go is the fruition of all that planning. “We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning,” Matsui said. He further makes his case by stating, “But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy.

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Sony: PSP without UMD ‘always the plan’

Trademarks for both Fitness Hero and Workout Hero have been registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Siliconera , which spends its summer afternoons looking up trademarks, found the listings aren’t by Activision, but by VPT Technologies, an exergaming developer. We said it before — when Gearbox Software registered War Hero — doesn’t Activision own the word “hero” in relation to any video game by this point? We know Activision is litigious — even when it’s wrong . Some attorney on retainer should be all over this

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Fitness Hero! Workout Hero! (Not from Activision, though!)

Although Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter, predicts PS2 will become somewhat irrelevant in 2009 , he doesn’t discount the combined strength of the PlayStation brand. He remains optimistic for the entire PlayStation family as he expects “software sales for Sony consoles to account for 31% of all game software sold worldwide.” Pachter indicated in Wedbush’s annual Interactive Industry Report that, while the numbers have been dwindling for PS2, overall worldwide software sales for PS3 titles have more than doubled within the last year. In 2008, 62.4 million units of PS3 software titles have been sold — a huge step up from the 29.6 million units sold in 2007.

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Pachter: PlayStation software sales will account for 31% of all games sold worldwide in 2009

Despite the fact that the PS2 saw a sizable price cut just three months ago , Michael Pachter is claiming that the system is nearing the point of complete insignificance. In Wedbush’s “2009 Interactive Industry Report,” Pachter explains that he expects “PS2 software sales to decline sufficiently (around 64%) to be almost irrelevant to overall software sales growth, with PS2 software comprising less than 4% of overall software sales in 2009.” Sony’s probably not ready to give up on its most cost-efficient console, but as history has proven, nothing gold can stay in the fast-paced, constantly evolving world of video gaming hardware. Pachter: PS2 software sales to become ‘almost irrelevant’ in 2009 originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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Pachter: PS2 software sales to become ‘almost irrelevant’ in 2009

While speaking with id Software ’s John Carmack and Escalation Studios’ Tom Mustaine yesterday, we only briefly broached the subject of iPhone game pricing. Doom Resurrection ’s lofty (by App Store standards) $10 price tag puts it in a particularly prickly situation, with Carmack telling us that “convincing people who’ve been spending $1 on games to spend $10 is a real problem.” We can imagine! He’s not entirely without hope, however, as he looks at Resurrection as a value proposition, trading higher production values for higher costs. In fact, Carmack’s hoping to set a precedent with DR that will allow for “bigger iPhone games” in the future — something he says he’d like to see a lot more of. “There’s only so much you can do with games that cost two or three dollars — there’s only so much production value you can put into that,” he told us. The clear answer: Make Doom -based alien flatulence apps

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Carmack hopes Doom will kick off ‘bigger’ iPhone games in future

Monolith Productions — the developers behind titles such as F.E.A.R ., Condemned , and, if you’re an older gamer, No One Lives Forever — are looking for a software engineer for a ” triple-A next-generation console title,” as a recent job posting on the developer’s site points out. Further down into the nitty-gritty of the listing, you’ll find a brief description for this new Xbox 360, PS3, and PC title: ” Work closely with engineers, designers, and artists on the creation of game systems for a cutting-edge first-person action game on PlayStation 3, XBox 360 and PC.” And, sadly, that’s about all of the information on the game the job listing provides. With F.E.A.R.

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Monolith hiring for new ‘first-person action game’

Though he didn’t exactly spell out what it’s going to be or when it’s going to be hitting digital shelves, id Software’s John Carmack told us his newest iPhone game will be getting DLC. He let slip yesterday morning during an interview about recently released Doom Resurrection that the game would be getting DLC “sometime soon” — downloadable content just became an option for iPhone games, with the launch of OS 3.0 . When we pressed him on whether we’d see downloadable anything for the upcoming flood of id Software games coming to the iPhone , he kept his cards a bit closer to his chest, saying it’s technically “possible” but nothing’s set in stone yet

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Doom Resurrection getting DLC, ‘possible’ for other id titles