Quakecon 2011 Keynote August 6, 2011

Ladies and gentelmen, John Carmack.

Quakecon 2011 in Full Swing August 5, 2011

The Quakecon, a convention to celebrate all things id Software has done, is in full swing out in Texas.  It was orignally designed by the fans so they could get all together in one place to network their computers together to play Quake without any latency.  Now it is major commercial press event where id gets to show the fans what they’ve been working on, and give the fans the chance to meet the developers who made the games they love.

It’s in full swing in Texas right now, and you can be sure that plenty of RAGE news is probably going to be coming out of it.  For right now I haven’t been able to find any videos of the initial festivities, but there is an official up right now which is a good canadate for getting some good videos up.  In fact they already posted some videos of the convention’s setup.  If you ever wanted to know what it takes to host a giant LAN party, here’s a peek.

To celebrate this event, I’ve noticed that RAGE related Avatar gear has gone on sale on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

TV Length Documentary on the History of Bungie Released August 4, 2011

With Bungie’s ties to Microsoft very close to being completely severed, Bungie has gone all out and released a broadcast television length (55 minutes!) documentary about their company’s twenty year history.  It includes interviews from all the major current and former Bungie employees.

I have to say a lot of this footage was not shot for this documentary, I definatly saw some of it from a bunch of previous Bungie documentaries including the “10 steps to world domination” documentary that was exclusive to the Halo 3 Legendary Edition, as well as inteviews going back as far as Halo 2’s development.  That said, that makes this very much in the style of a “Behind the Music” documentary, as there are current interviews in it with these people, cut together with earlier interviews.  It’s a very good choice.  If you’re a gaming history buff like I am, its a great watch, and if you’re a Bungie or Halo fan, you owe it to yourself to see just what went into making that game.

Nintendo 3DS Price Dropping to $170 July 29, 2011

In a shocking move, Nintendo has announced they intend to drop the price of the recently released Nintendo 3DS handheld from its launch price of $250US to $170US, a price drop of eighty dollars!

The 3DS is the successor to the extremely popular series of Nintendo handhelds, starting with the Game and Watch, moving to the extremely popular Game Boy series, and finally the Nintendo DS series of handhelds.  Since the Game Boy, Nintendo has been the clear market leader of the handheld generations, defeating such rivals as Atari, Sega and even Sony in the previous handheld generations (based upon unit sales).  It was expected by many in the gaming media that the 3DS would continue this trend and meet with massive initial sales, but once the handheld launched, sales petered out.

The 3DS has not had the initial sales that Nintendo was hoping for.  Since it’s launch it is still shy of selling one million units.  Many third party exclusive games for the platform have either been delayed or outright cancelled due to the currently low install base.

Nintendo has admitted the new price for the unit is no longer profitable for them, but they do expect it to not stay this way.  My guess is they intend to increase production of the units, which will bring costs down, but this would be a double edged sword if they exceed demand for the handheld.  They also said the reason for the price drop so soon after launch is due to harsh memories over the GameCube, and the belief if they had dropped the price of the console sooner, they could’ve had better sales in the earlier years of the console’s lifespan.  As such the GameCube finished last in the previous console generation, behind the PS2 and Xbox, and did not get the total amount of units sold they needed to consider it a success to themselves.

The price drop is expected to come in August.  I believe Nintendo is hoping to have a good price for the unit lined up before the holiday season in an attempt to become more affordable to customers in time for Christmas.  This drop is also timed to come before Sony launches their handheld, the Playstation Vita, which is expected to launch this fall at a price of $250 for WiFi only and $300 for a 3G/WiFi model.

Anyone who currently has a 3DS and bought it at the initial launch price will be given free access to a bunch of exclusive Virtual Console downloadable games.

RAGE Behind the Scenes Part 5 July 28, 2011

The fifth part of the RAGE behind the scenes series has been released on Bethesda’s Official YouTube Channel, and this one focuses on the game’s enemies.  You get to see the different types of enemies, how each will react to you, and what went into creating them.  It really was interesting to see that id Software is is using motion capture this time around, with thousands of unique animations possible in the game.

The behind the scenes series for RAGE will have one final part to go.  RAGE is coming October, 2011 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Darkness II Comic Con Panel July 28, 2011

Another SDCC 2011 panel has been released to the web for all to see, and it is for the recently delayed sequel to one of the best comic to game adaptations I ever played, The Darkness II.  The panel is joined by the original comic creator, the game’s project lead, and (of course) Mike Patton as the Darkness.

That Darkling imp statue was a cool giveaway they were doing at Comic Con, but if you were like me, who didn’t attend, 2K has stated they will be giving away some of those in the official twitter feed.

The Darkness II is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in Feb, 2012.

Uncharted 3 Comic-Con Panel July 28, 2011

The San Diego Comic Con (SDCC 2011) has wrapped for the year, but there was a huge gaming presence at it this year.  One of the major panels for the show was the Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Panel, which featured members of the development team and cast.

Writer Amy Henning, actor Nolan North, and actress Emily Rose were among the alumni on the panel discussing the PS3 exclusive, they also showed some exclusive game footage which hasn’t been seen before!  Clocking in at around 45 minutes, it’s a pretty lengthy discussion, but if you have the time it’s totally worth watching.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is coming November 1st, 2011 exclusive to the Playstation 3.

First Duke Nukem Forever DLC to Release This Fall July 26, 2011

Gearbox Software has officially announced in a twitter post that the first DLC pack for Duke Nukem Forever will release this fall.  The DLC will add four new multiplayer maps, three new multiplayer modes, and a new weapon unique to each map ranging from sticky grenades to the DFG (which might be a parody of the BFG, the Big…uh…freakin’…gun).  New game modes involve a new twist on Hot Potato, which the objective will be to see who can hold onto a babe for the longest, and a new mode called Hail to the King.

Duke Nukem Forever’s multiplayer was not considered one of the major highlights of the game upon release.  There were only a few maps at release, and gameplay was quite unbalanced.  This DLC pack looks to be the answer to that.  From the looks of it, this map pack is intended to be a parody of other multiplayer gametypes ranging from Doom to Call of Duty.

As promised, this DLC will be free to all First Access Club members.  The Duke Nukem Forever Hail to the Icons DLC pack is coming this fall for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.  Details about a chance to play the DLC pack early are included in the link.

Mortal Kombat Legacy Stupidity July 25, 2011

This weekend, the final episode of the online webseries Mortal Kombat: Legacy was released. Now, I’ve been pretty lapse to link the series up on a regular basis (I think the last one I embedded was Episode 4) so since the series was finished, my intention was to link up the newest episode and all the previous episodes I missed, but I can’t do that…because WB has issued copyright takedowns of all the previous episodes. For those of you who don’t know, it was Warner Bros who released that series online in the first place!

There’s stupidity, and then there’s just shooting yourselves in the foot. Does Warner Bros not know they OWN what has been posted up already, and they were responsible for putting it online in the first place? What idiot at WB whose job it is to regularly sue people who show even the slightest second of something they might own thought that video was invalid? Now I understand WB might have owned at some point every movie ever made, but in that case it might be easier to just send notices to the few videos who didn’t put up something they owned on it and ban every other video on YouTube!

Well, here’s the final episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy. Try to catch it quick before the bean counters take it down for no reason too!

Mortal Kombat is out for Xbox 360 and PS3 right now.

ESA Intends to Collect 1.1 Million in Legal Fees from California July 25, 2011

Just as they had with every state they successfully defeated who tried to pass illegal laws, the ESA has just issued a press release saying they intend to collect $1.1 million dollars from the state of California after defeating them on the Supreme Court level. This money will cover their legal expenses fighting their unconstitutional video game law.

The intention of the ESA all along has been to show these states that passing illegal laws would fail and end up harming their states more than the media publicity brought by their passage would help their political careers individually. According to the ESA, they were able to win eight times in similar cases and collect fees in every win from the various states they defeated. They have made it no secret to the states they will do this to them if they pass laws that violate the first amendment. In fact this tactic had prevented one state governor from signing a similar law which already had passed in the legislature.

As I feel is becoming a repeated statement about the state of California, you couldn’t tell them any of this. Leland Yee (D) and the Govenator (R) thought they were right and they were going to force this passage unless they were stopped. And now, like all tragedies, it is the people of that state who will suffer. The law was clearly not on their side. The similar state laws all lost. They were wasting further state money in legal defenses appealing in a futile battle. No one forced Yee or the Govenator to continue to appeal the law, but they did it anyway at the state’s expense.

So now California has one more bill to pay, one they CHOSE to pay. The Govenator did not seek a new term, but If I was a voter in the state, I would be asking for Yee’s resignation right about now.