BadPower.com Blog

During the Game Developers Conference, Eidos Montreal Art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete revealed that Deus Ex 3 has been officially renamed Deus Ex: Human Revolution. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Square-Enix actually trademarked it last month. The title accurately reflects the game’s story, which takes place before the events of the original Deus Ex. According to Jacques-Belletete, the world in Human Revolution is on the cusp of a “transhuman revolution,” the beginning on mankind’s first real foray into cybernetics. As such, the Eidos Montreal team came up with a very unique visual style for the game, taking the common aesthetics of cyberpunk and blending them with those of the European Renaissance — think Shakespeare meets Blade Runner.

If it sounds like a weird mix, it is. It was no easy task for the development team either, with Jacques-Belletete noting that it took well over a year to finally strike the right balance. But employing the talents of well-known artists Jim Murray and Thierry “Barontieri” Doizon, they managed to come up with an aesthetic that really works. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the concept art and pre-rendered characters we saw, so you’ll have to take our word for it.

As for the game itself, there aren’t many new details. The development team, which started as only a handful of people in 2007, has ballooned to over 130. Human Revolution runs on a proprietary engine and is played from a first-person perspective, though it pops into third-person for certain attacks and taking cover. Only a tiny sliver of actual gameplay was shown during the panel, including a few environments and a conversation between two characters. The environments in particular were impressive, especially the apartment of the main character, Adam Jensen.

Further details, like the release date and planned platforms, remain under wraps for the time being. One thing, however, is certain: We’re definitely ready to see more.

Impressions: Deus Ex: Human Revolution originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

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.

Body tracking is made possible by combining the Move and PS3’s head tracking capability. According to the presentation, the PS3 can also detect faces, going so far as to identify individuals through face contour and feature detection. The software will be able to recognize gender, age, smiles and when eyes open and close.

Coombes explained that all the calculations necessary to handle image processing are done by the Cell CPU, which apparently excels at the doing floating point calculations. The raw data can be processed incredibly quickly by the PS3, taking “under a frame” to translate to a game experience. And while Mikhailov didn’t reveal how much of the CPU’s overall power the Move controller requires, he did reveal that the memory demands are truly “insignificant” — 1-2 MB of system memory.

PlayStation Move requires 1-2 MB of system memory originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Following up yesterday’s announcement that Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes is getting an HD facelift and coming to Xbox Live and PSN, Ubisoft has revealed the first teaser trailer for the game. Amidst all of the quoted accolades and plumes of smoke are some actual tidbits of gameplay.

In short: this looks purty.

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes trailer offers taste of high-def wizardry originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

If InstantAction.com’s CEO Lou Castle is to be believed, we’re apparently going to be playing games pretty much wherever we want in the not-so-distant future. He’s just revealed plans (via IndustryGamers) to relaunch his site with a new business/distribution model and a partnership with game streaming service Gaikai. In addition to the already existing model of a quick download (a claimed 4 – 5 minutes) that still somewhat relies on your computer power to process the game’s graphics, IA will now offer a streaming option for those who’d prefer a quicker, less hardware reliant gaming experience. “It’s the perfect implementation of a thin client solution because when it’s available it’s brilliant and when it’s not available it’s ok … you only have to wait a couple minutes.”

The aforementioned streaming option (employing Gaikai) will also be embedabble on the web, as demonstrated with Assassin’s Creed (not to mention to us earlier today) “Now if people are reading a review of a game, they don’t have to go find it … they can play it right then and there in the browser.”

And that’s just the beginning — Castle clearly has an eye on digital distribution services when he talks about employing Facebook as “InstantAction’s Xbox Live.” IA’s new distribution model essentially promises to developers/publishers the ability to release games with a variety of payment methods (pay as you go, free-to-play, one-time charge, etc.) while incorporating the aforementioned embed and streaming functionalities.

So far, the company has inked one deal for distribution (with LucasArts for The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition) and Castle claims to be pursuing others right now. And apparently it won’t be too long before we get to check out the new system ourselves, as the revamped digital platform is said to be “launching soon.”

Gaikai and InstantAction team up for streaming, embeddable games originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sony Worldwide Studios VP Scott Rohde had the onerous task of introducing the first PlayStation Move games at Sony’s GDC press conference last night. We caught up with the executive after the show to talk about Sony’s plans for exploiting motion control and if hardcore gamers should be concerned about the future of the PS3 games library.

Our complete interview with Rohde follows:

It’s obviously going to take internal resources to develop games for PlayStation Move. How can you guarantee that this won’t take away from the resources devoted to traditional hardcore games?

Scott Rohde: The bottom line is, you know Worldwide Studios is a huge organization. I’m not sure exactly where it sits among other global publishers, but it’s right up there. There’s a lot of resources put into product development. I’m pretty proud of the roll that we’ve been on — with Uncharted 2 kind of sweeping the awards recently.

There’s plenty of resources to go around. It’s our heritage: we’re never going to compromise our core; great exclusive games. This is a new initiative to us. Some teams are looking into how they might incorporate motion control into some existing plans; others are totally focused on making the best sequels to the games we all love. It’s not something I’m worried about.

Continue reading Interview: Sony’s Scott Rohde on PlayStation Move

Interview: Sony’s Scott Rohde on PlayStation Move originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Continue reading PlayStation Move: the everything you need to know post

PlayStation Move: the everything you need to know post originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Surprise! Major MMOs cost batty-bonkers-cuckoo amounts of money to produce. Eurogamer reports that Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown said as much today, describing Star Wars: The Old Republic as the “largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company.” EA is apparently betting big on having something like Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft with The Old Republic. Brown guesstimates that WoW cost about $100 million to launch back in 2004 — the game makes something like that now in a month.

The executive explained that the average game costs about $30 million to produce, but that “any MMO costs significantly more than that.” With an expected spring 2011 release, hopefully EA will start making a return at that time on its investment in a galaxy far, far away. Otherwise, the gaping maw of the Rancor would be preferable to what investors will do.

SWTOR is EA’s most expensive project yet originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Even the not-so-keen-eyed observer has probably noticed by now that the PlayStation Move’s logo doesn’t really look like a letter “M.” That’s because it’s a letter “A,” as in “Arc,” the name which, according to multiple Sony sources who wished to remain anonymous, is what the peripheral was to be called at retail until the company was refused a trademark on the Arc name. In fact, we’ve been told that the change to “Move” was made quite recently, which further explains the incongruous logo.

If you think “Move” is an odd name for Sony’s motion controller, these same sources assured us that we got lucky – many of the other proposed names following the trademark denial were ranged from silly to awful, they said. When we suggested that “PlayStation Boogie” was about as bad as we could imagine, we were told, “Actually, that’s an improvement over a lot of them.”

Keep an eye on the Move logo — we wouldn’t be surprised if Sony’s marketing department adds a little extra blue ink before E3, making it a true (stylized) letter “M.”

‘Arc’ lives on in PlayStation Move’s logo originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

During its GDC 2010 conference Sony has revealed that Zipper Interactive’s upcoming shooter SOCOM 4 will support the (just officially named) PlayStation Move motion controller. Controlling the shooter requires the PlayStation Move and its optional secondary device known as the Move “Sub-controller” — a wand like device which sports an analog stick.

During Sony’s Game Developer’s Conference keynote SOCOM 4 was demoed using the precise motion-control scheme to varying accuracy success. PlayStation Move support was also showcased in a demo for LittleBigPlanet (originally shown at TGS 2009) where PlayStation Move players could interact with the environment around Sackboy (or Sackgirl!).

Sony also featured a handful of mini-games for an upcoming compilation title titled Sports Champions, including a gladiator-style fighter and table tennis. The PlayStation Move will release later this year in a variety of bundles.

SOCOM 4 to support PlayStation Move originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments