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News: WB Interactive: Subscription MMOs not dead yet

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:01:09 +0000

Adam Mersky, digital communications director at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, has questioned the notion that subscription MMOs are a dying breed.

Warner Bros. owns Turbine Inc., the developer behind the The Lord Of The Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online, both of which enjoyed great success after switching to the free-to-play business model.

However, speaking to our sister site Eurogamer, Mersky doubts the widely held belief that subscription-based MMOs are now a thing of the past.

News: 13 year old Everquest goes free-to-play

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:01:07 +0000

EverQuest, Sony Online Entertainment’s venerable MMO, will be adopting a free-to-play business model as it reaches its thirteenth anniversary.

The game, which has seen numerous updates, and runs concurrently with its sequel, EverQuest II, will turn thirteen in March. Various new payment methods will be introduced as it does, including a free-to-play option, game unlocks and the traditional full subscription model.

Three payment tiers will be established: free-to-play, which offers the lowest level of access, a one off $5 payment which gives ‘silver’ access, and the $15 a month ‘gold’ access.

Article: In Theory: Can Wii U Offer Next-Gen Power?

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:01:06 +0000

It’s been a week of measurements, comparisons and percentages. The next-generation Xbox will be six times more powerful than the 360, and 20 per cent more powerful than the Wii U. As for Nintendo’s next-gen console, apparently that’s packing twice the power of Microsoft’s current offering. Meanwhile, as Digital Foundry recently revealed, Raspberry Pi’s graphics core features 2x the performance of the SGX543 MP2 in the Apple iPhone 4S. Of all of the above, we strongly suspect that only one will actually be backed up by meaningful benchmarks (hint: it’s the last one).

As for the Wii U and Nextbox figures, we’re almost certainly as much in the dark as we ever were. One thing we really need to nail down straight away though is the concept of “power” and how it is measured – no actual metrics are attached to the rumours, essentially making the statements rather ambiguous but we’ll assume they relate to processing and rendering performance. That being the case, the notion of Microsoft basing its next-gen machine around a £50 graphics core with low-end PC gaming performance only makes sense if it’s planning to make the console exceptionally cheap from launch, with a Wii-style limited lifespan. Somehow, the idea of sustaining a console generation until 2020 and beyond with a Radeon HD 6670 seems somewhat improbable.

But what of the idea that Wii U is twice as powerful as the Xbox 360? It’s the sort of story that we would really want to believe, but a look at everything we do know about Wii U suggests that it’s not very likely.

News: Microsoft: No new Xbox in 2012

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:01:04 +0000

Microsoft France’s director of marketing has made it clear that we will not see a new Xbox console in 2012, despite rumours to the contrary.

“We’re in an industry that talks a lot, that likes to tell stories. I am not convinced things will happen this year,” he told LePoint.fr

“Xbox 360′s cycle is not at all finished. The proof is that we don’t see the logic in cutting the price this year. E3 is still premature. What’s certain is that there’ll be nothing new in 2012.”

News: Report: Facebook IPO filing set for this week

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:01:03 +0000

Reports from America suggest that Facebook could be filing the S-1 for its $10 billion IPO as early as today,with an expected valuation somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion.

According to the Wall Street Journal Facebook is aiming for the IPO between April and June, and papers will be filed this week.

The filing will reveal some of the financial workings behind the social networking giant.

News: Eurogamer’s unique traffic surges 10% to 5.7m monthly users

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:01:01 +0000

Unique visits to the eleven pan-European Eurogamer sites have risen by over ten per cent since last year, the latest traffic numbers have shown.

The final tally for unique browser visits for Eurogamer.net and its ten other foreign language editions was 5,778,816 between November 1 and 31, 2011. Over 42 million pages of content was viewed across the eleven portals during that same period, setting another new traffic record.

Not included in those figures are the traffic totals for other Eurogamer network sites, including Rock Paper Shotgun, Nintendo Life, Industry Gamers, Industry.biz and VG247.

News: Enslaved lead joins Splash Damage

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:00:59 +0000

Marc Fascia, previously the lead gameplay programmer at Ninja Theory, has joined Splash Damage as technical director.

“I’m really happy to be trusted with this incredible responsibility at Splash Damage,” he said.

“We’re working on some great things, and managing such a big and talented programming team, across multiple varied and challenging projects, is a wonderful opportunity. I love multiplayer and Splash Damage suits my passion perfectly.”

Syndicate Argentina GR GamePlay Demo

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:00:56 +0000

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Hopefully you’ve downloaded the recently released Syndicate four-player co-op demo on Xbox Live and PSN. In case you haven’t, we previewed the map a few weeks ago, and have just posted another video featuring more co-op gameplay. If you want to see how the game ratchets up the difficulty in the later stages, here’s a look at Argentina, one of the maps near the end of the co-op missions…

Syndicate Colorado GR GamePlay Demo

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:00:56 +0000

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If you haven’t checked out the Syndicate four-player demo on Xbox Live and PSN, you should really hop on and download it as soon as you can. It’s a fairly intense run through this futuristic shooter. In the meantime, we’ve got video footage from another later level in the game. Take a look at the Colorado map…

Phantom Breaker

dondada — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:00:55 +0000