ATLANTA – Sony Corp.’s U.S. video game division is adding a slick visual program to the PlayStation 3 game system that delivers news headlines, weather reports and webcam views from around the globe.
The new touches come as an upgrade to Folding(at)home, an earlier PS3 feature that benefits Stanford University’s protein research project. Users donate a bit of their PS3’s processing power when they’re not gaming to help researchers study the effects of protein folding on diseases.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A new videogame allows players to conjure up their own design ideas and create playable content that can be uploaded and shared.
And gamers can do it from the privacy of their own home with Sony Computer Entertainment America’s LittleBigPlanet.
For years, PC gamers have been able to modify games like Unreal Tournament 3 and Half-Life 2 to create playable levels and linear entertainment (“Machinima”).
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd plans to launch a new model of its DS handheld machine that can take pictures and play music by the end of the year, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.
The move would pit the top-selling portable game gear with Apple Inc iPod and camera-embedded cellphones in general.
The “Spore” computer game is off to a good start with 1 million games sold at a retail, Electronic Arts said today. The computer game, one of the most ambitious ever made, took famed developer Will Wright seven years to make. It launched on Sept. 7.
The game let’s you create your own creatures and shepherd them through life from single-cell animals all the way up to a galaxy-dominating species. EA said today that more than 25 million creatures have been created and uploaded to the Sporepedia. Players can download those creatures into their own single-player games and have their creatures compete against the downloaded creatures.
We’ve been intrigued by Sony’s PlayStation Home concept for, like, ever now, but considering just how long the thing has been delayed, we’re trying to avoid any contact with pre-launch fodder in order to keep our hopes low. That being the case, we realize not all of you care to safeguard your hearts in the way we have ours, so we felt it prudent — nay, necessary — to pass along PS3 Fanboy’s in-depth walkthrough of the service. SCEA’s Jack Buser recently took the time to sit down and open up for a marvelous preview of the Plaza, Game Space and lots of other nooks and crannies we’re sure you’re interested in venturing into. To the read link, we send you. Try not to get lost, okay?
Team Fortress fans who have been getting their fix via the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box are in for a shock: The updates coming to the PC and Xbox 360 versions of TF2 won’t be landing on Sony’s console, reports 1up.
Additionally, the monolithic console is unlikely to ever see any updates from Valve. “We don’t have PlayStation developers,” said Valve marketing head Doug Lombardi.
“They’re not doing ongoing development on The Orange Box for the PS3.”
Sidney K. Meier (born February 24, 1954, in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada) is an American programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games. Meier has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry. Meier is a Director of Creative Development for computer game developer Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996.
Career
Sid Meier founded MicroProse together with Bill Stealey in 1982. At MicroProse, Meier developed the game series for which he is most widely recognized, Civilization, although he designed only the first installment. Meier eventually left MicroProse and in 1996 founded Firaxis Games along with veteran designer and gaming executive Jeff Briggs. Today Firaxis makes strategy games, many of which are follow-ups to Meier titles, such as Civilization IV and Pirates!.
Firaxis Games is a computer game developer. It was founded in 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs, and Brian Reynolds upon leaving Microprose. The company focuses on strategy games and is based in Hunt Valley, Maryland in the United States.
Firaxis has produced several games, including Gettysburg and Antietam, based on their namesake famous American Civil War battles, and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, a space colonization game taking place in the Alpha Centauri star system. In early 2000, co-founder Brian Reynolds parted with Firaxis to form his new studio, Big Huge Games. Firaxis Games then went on to release Sid Meier’s SimGolf, a golf course building/management game. Perhaps their most popular releases have been Civilization III, and later Civilization IV, sequels to Meier’s original Civilization game.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) is an American publisher, developer, and distributor of video and computer games and video game peripherals. The company’s headquarters are in New York City, United States, with international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Development studio locations include San Diego, Vancouver, Toronto and Austin, Texas.
Take-Two has developed and published many notable games, including the Grand Theft Auto series, the Midnight Club racing series, controversial games Manhunt and Manhunt 2 and most recently BioShock. It owns 2K Games, formerly Visual Concepts prior to its purchase from Sega, and publishes its popular 2K Sports titles. It also acted as the publisher of Bethesda Softwork’s 2006 game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Take-Two is the target of a hostile takeover bid from rival Electronic Arts issued in February 2008. The bid expired August 18, 2008, and, according to Take-Two, will not be renewed. However, according to CNET, the two companies entered into confidential discussions on August 25, 2008.
Electronic Arts (EA) (NASDAQ: ERTS) is a Worldwide American developer, marketer, publisher, and distributor of computer and video games. Established in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for its games. Originally, EA was a home computing game publisher. In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s.
EA later grew via acquisition of several successful developers. By the early 2000s, EA had become one of the world’s largest third-party publishers. In 2007 EA ranked 8th on the list of largest software companies in the world. In May 2008, the company reported net annual revenue of US$4.02 billion in fiscal year 2008. Currently, EA’s most successful products are sports games published under its EA Sports label, games based on popular movie licenses and games from long-running franchises like Road Rash, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, The Sims, Battlefield and the later games in the Burnout and Command & Conquer series.
