Hotel Giant 2 Now Available On PC

SouthPeak Games, in conjunction with Nobilis Games, has announced that Hotel Giant 2 for PC is now available on retail shelves. The follow-up is a perfect blend of management, decoration, and simulation. In this bigger and better sequel, players will be given a chance to transform and conquer some of the most prestigious hotels on Earth. Richard Iggo, Vice President of Marketing at SouthPeak commented:

“Hotel Giant has seen great success worldwide with over 1 million units sold. “We recognize the tremendous success that this franchise has had internationally and we’re thrilled to bring the sequel to North America as we look to grow our business and our brand.”

With over 26 hotels to manage in dazzling destinations like Paris, Phuket and Rome, Hotel Giant 2 gives players the freedom to let their imagination run wild. Hospitality mavens can design their own rooms, add services like restaurants and spas, and use over 1500 items to decorate and satisfy their customers.

The fully customizable hotels equip players with the power to entertain and satisfy even the most discerning hotel guest. Players will be able to observe and address their patrons to learn their personalities and desires, ensuring customers that all of their needs will be met. Whether players add a gym, pool or even add specific menu items at their restaurants, players will be given the opportunity to do it all while discovering how to earn a profit, gain prestige and command the best hotels in the world.

David Crane Gets Pioneer Award

David Crane, the man who created the Pitfall game and more recently the remake of his game 'A Boy and his Blob' has received the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Pioneer Award for his role in videogames first foundations.

He will officially get it on February 18th at the D.I.C.E. Summit's 13th annual Interactive Achievement Awards held in Las Vegas. Crane commented:

"The Atari 2600 was by far the most challenging platform in the history of gaming. And the very challenges that had many people tearing out their hair made it the most fun for me, unlike today, games for the Atari game system were developed by a single person. Each of us did all of the design, graphics, music, sound effects and even the play-testing for our own games.”

Congrats David!

Heavy Rain Demo Coming On February 11th

Sony has announced a demo for Heavy Rain is set to arrive in Europe and the US on February 11th, ahead of the game's release in the US on February 23rd and in Europe on February 26th.

Marvelous Entertainment Cuts Wages For Executives

Earlier this week, we reported that Marvelous had sold its 50% stake of Rising Star Games. It looks like the economic situation isn’t at its most.

Following a different move from most publishers, instead of cutting personnel they have decreased the wage the execs receive by 15-17%, the directors were hit a bit harder with a 25-43% cut and, most impressive of all, CEO has reduced his own pay by 77%!

Now those are real solutions. Let’s just hope they don’t follow up with a staff cut.

Source: Siliconera

Cryptic Announce First Paid Expanion To Champions Online

Cryptic has announced the first paid expansion for Champions Online. Titled, 'Vibora Bay' the expansion is described as “one of the Gulf Coast’s largest and most exciting cities”.

Pricing is yet to be confirmed, but the developer stated it would be less than a fully boxed retail title, although it won't be pennies with it being an entirely new zone to the game.

No release date was specified in the announcement.

50% Of Brits Would Buy An Apple Console If It Was Available

Apple’s popularity is at a peak moment. The iPod Touch and the iPhone have raised the company name to an unprecedented state of respect.

Retail website myvouchercodes.co.uk made a poll asking 2000 users whether they believe there is an Apple game console on the way and whether they would buy it or not. 1 out of 3 believe the project exists and 50% would definitely buy it if it existed. In fact, 81% also stated that Apple releasing a console would be the worst hit Microsoft’s Xbox 360 could take.

For time being, Apple is concentrating on the release of its new iPad.

Source: TechRadar

Capcom Announce Mega Man Zero Collection Coming To DS

Capcom has announced that the Mega Man Zero Collection is coming to Nintendo DS. The Mega Man Zero Collection is comprised of all four Mega Man Zero titles bundled together. Having sold over 500 thousand units in North America, all four titles will be available on one DS cartridge for the first time. The portable Mega Man fun will begin when the title arrives in early Summer 2010.

Green Man Games Will Massively Increase The PC Market

The new preowned digital distributor Green Man Games has caught much attention lately due to the unique market they are aiming at. Digital games have always had the disadvantage of having no resale value for the owner; therefore the digital market has so far been a growing market still waiting to explode. Company CEO Paul Sulyok commented:

"We're not aiming at cannibalising the new game market. If I am a price sensitive customer, if I've got £20 to buy a £34.99 game, I will get that game for £20 be it on eBay or be it on a BitTorrent website. What we're doing is targeting the second hand grey market."

The aim of the service is to offer publishers some revenue from the up to now retail exclusive pre-owned service, plus at the same time giving some unique info on how the players individually play their games. Sulyok added:

"It's going to massively grow the current PC market. It's not coming from a technical standpoint – it's coming from a how do we grow this in order to get more people playing PC games. We know there are all those PCs out there – so how can we engage with those customers? We know they've got broadband, so we want to get it out there and get it to people and encourage them to try new games."

According to Green Man Games many publishers are backing the service which will start in March in the UK and then gradually into the rest of Europe and the US. The products offered will defer depending on licensing rights from Europe to the US although it is expected to have over 400 games available from launch.

Brickley Comments On DLC Contained On Retail Discs

Rebellion’s David Brickley has shared his thoughts on downloadable content already available on game discs and believes there's no justification to charge gamers extra for it:

“It’s quite simple to explain, but I do think players are entirely right – if the content is on the disc already there’s absolutely no justification for studios to offer DLC which is essentially an unlock key or something."

“But I guess what doesn’t come across to some people is that when a game hits the shelves, it’s probably been wrapped up for four or five months in any true sense."

“The time between finishing the game and retail is usually spent on debugging – you can spend months and months just fixing errors and glitches to ensure the product is finished and ready for release. Then when you factor in the console approval and the manufacturing process, you’re talking about a substantial part of the game’s overall development time."

“While all of that stuff is going on, it tends to free up resources at the studio, so they can make items that can be added on as DLC afterwards."

“I think people outside of that process assume that the development of a game and its DLC are executed in parallel, and that’s really not the case."

Interesting stuff. Rebellion's latest title, Aliens Vs Predator, published by Sega is set to release next month on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Asus Launches Worlds First 3D Gaming Laptop

The G51J 3D has been announced by ASUS and with Nvidia's 3D Vision it is bringing 3D graphics to gamers on the move. The Specs are as follows:

A Core i7 720QM processor
4GB of DDR3 RAM
GeForce GTX 260M
Windows Home Premium 64-bit
2x 500GB hard disks
A Blu-ray drive
15.6in LED screen with a resolution of 1366x768 and supports the 120Hz refresh rate required by Nvidia's 3D Vision shutter glasses.

The price tag for this awesome spec? Around £1,699 including VAT. It will be available from February.

How it works is, the glasses are comprised of two slightly different lenses and each lens blocks every alternate frame meaning each eye will only see 60 frames per second, the frames subtle difference also tricks the brain into thinking it is seeing a true 3D scene. Over 400 games currently work with 3D Vision. Phil Eisler, General Manager of 3D Vision commented:

"Nvidia is excited about the world’s first 3D Vision laptop. The Asus G51J 3D will set the standard by which gaming and 3D notebooks will be judged. Congratulations to Asus for achieving this monumental milestone!”

Until the 31st March 2010, the G51J 3D will come with vouchers enabling customers to download the Avatar 3D game for free as well as a Razer gaming mouse. It will also be covered by a two-year collect and return warranty.

Firemint And Tapolous Declare Their Delight For The iPad Capabilities

Firemint and Tapulous, two of the key developers of games for the iPhone/iTouch responsible for the acclaimed Flight Control and Tap Tap Revenge respectively, have shown their intention of developing games for the iPad which was announced yesterday for a March release. Firemint said they will start exploiting the iPad capabilities from day one:

"Flight Control will work perfectly on iPad without any changes from us. But we want to ensure a delightful experience on iPad that feels just right.”

Seems the iPad is off for a fresh start!

Rein: "iPad Will Be Great For Gaming"

We don’t mean to go on about the iPad but it’s all over the damn place this week. Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games had a front row seat at the unveiling yesterday and is definitely impressed at Apple's latest gadget:

"I think iPad will be great for gaming and I suspect we'll see many games that make use of the differentiated form factor of the iPad."

Epic Games' Unreal Engine was recently and successfully transposed to the iPhone 3GS, a game development platform which could well be the primary choice for action and FPS games on the device.

With the iPad’s greater performance ability and the Unreal Engine we could see some great gaming development for the promising gadget.

"Apple has done a great job at constantly improving the user experience on Mac and iPhone so I can only imagine where this platform can go in the future."

id Software Is Happy With Zenimax Deal

A big commotion was created in the games industry when Zenimax bought the always independent id Software. Questions were raised respecting the quality of future titles and the influence that Zenimax could have over id Software creativity at making games. Six months later, Id CEO Todd Hollenshead has commented on the present situation:

“Of course, everyone looks at it as, “Well, id was purchased by Zenimax!” but I think it’s just as true that we acquired an internal publishing capacity. That’s really what the relationship is. As much as we have valued our publishing relationships with other third-party publishers in the past, there is a difference, because we were separate companies. Although we were trying to work together, ultimately there is an idea that we have divergent goals.”

John Carmack had suggested some time ago that the team wanted some publisher support influenced by major publishers pushing more resources for internal development teams. Hollenshead added:

“It’s actually worked out really well. They value development for its own sake, rather than just trying to put something in a box and relying on marketing for sales.”

If they keep up with the level of past games no one will care!

Sony Games Division Expected To Exceed Forecasted Profit

Large Japanese newspaper Nikkei, has said that Sony's games division "will post its first operating profit in four quarters in the October-December period."

According to Reuters, the paper predicts that the division will "likely post an operating profit of about 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) for the October-December quarter, helped by a recovery in its video game and LCD TV operations."

So Japan’s industry is doing better than ours it seems.

Sony Doesn't Consider The iPad A Threat To PSP

The iPad was officially announced yesterday with both Electronic Arts and Gameloft backing it with a whole set of system specific games as well as all the existing iPhone/iTouch games compatibility.

Sony has commented that the iPad for videogames will only wet consumer’s appetite for a dedicated device, like for example their PSP console. John Koller, in charge of Hardware Marketing at Sony, commented that since the iPhone was released they have tripled the PSP units sold worldwide:

"Apple's entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony. When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP."

That is being highly optimistic…

Analysts Not Convinced At iPad’s Gaming Potential

Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter and EEDAR's Jesse Divnich have conveyed their doubts about the new Apple device as a gaming platform, and that it will struggle to fight its way into the current hand held gaming market. Pachter, in advance of the actual unveiling commented:

"The Apple tablet is going to be priced pretty high, certainly more than $300, so it's going to have limited appeal to gamers, although some people will buy it obviously."

"I think the early offerings on the tablet will be a lot closer to iPod Touch/iPhone style games, and then probably morph into DS kind of games and then ultimately will morph into PSP quality games."

Meanwhile Divnich commented:

"Right now the iPhone infrastructure is not conducive to a healthy bottom line for third-party publishers. Games are just too cheap with the most premium of games retailing on the iPhone for $10 (or $7 in publisher revenue). "

"If third-party publishers are going to treat the iPad as a serious gaming device the average selling price per game has to at least double, which is difficult to achieve, especially when you consider that your $19.99 game in the App Store is competing against games that sell for $1 to $5."

According to Apple, the iPad will retail at $499 (£308) – as a starting price.

Rockstar Releases True West - A Back Story To Red Dead Redemption

Rockstar has made public through its website a set of posts that will deepen on the Red Dead Redemption historical moment showing what the inspiration was about and their attempt to make a realistic beginning of the 20th century western.

The title of this series of stories is True West: Bad Guys Gone Good… and Vice-versa and it will go through a set of real characters that were changed for good (or for bad) in Red Dead Redemption’s historical background. The first episode is dedicated to Frank James. An extract from the post reads:

"Unlike the pure fantasy of most videogames, the conditions that amount to Red Dead Redemption’s back story – changed man, former outlaw John Marston being strong-armed back into a life of violence by a desperate and underhanded government agency – are very real."

If you’re interested you can read more here.