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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.

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That’s right, folks — Harmonix has just revealed that Green Day: Rock Band will be available for all come June 8 on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Up to 6 players (3 mics; 3 instruments) will progress through the career of the trio, unlocking collectible images (more than 100, apparently) and some 40 minutes of “rare and unreleased” footage from interviews, outtakes and performances along the way.

As alluded to above, GD:RB will also sport the same vocal harmonizing feature that made The Beatles: Rock Band such a delight for mic hogs and comes loaded with 47 Green Day tracks, including “Brain Stew,” “Jaded,” “Hitchin’ a Ride,” “American Idiot,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

Oh, and if you’re looking to export these tunes, worry not: all 47 tracks are fully exportable to a console hard drive and playable in Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and the recently announced Rock Band 3. The export fee is $9.99 via Xbox Live or PSN. The export features is not available for the Wii system. Additionally, if you’ve picked up the six Green Day tunes already available as DLC, you can play them in the new game with added harmonies, “unique” visuals and more “exclusive archival material.”

Green Day: Rock Band will be available as a standalone game for Xbox 360 and PS3 for $59.99, while Wii owners will get a bit of a price break at $49.99. A special edition Green Day: Rock Band Plus will also come to Xbox 360 and PS3 for $69.99 and includes fancy packaging, an “export” feature (we assume, a voucher to export the disc tracks to the hard drive) and the six previously released Green Day DLC tracks.

Update: The GameStop pre-order bonus for the standalone game is an export voucher (for Xbox 360 or PS3). Essentially, pre-order GD:RB from GameStop, and you can export all 47 tracks to your console hard drive for free.

Green Day: Rock Band releases June 8 worldwide originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In an interview with Joystiq during the 2010 Game Developer’s Conference, THQ’s executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson let a few new details slip about the upcoming sequel to the critical-smash hit Red Faction: Guerrilla. “The new game takes [Red Faction] to a whole new place, it kind of goes back to the old Red Faction because about 80% of it is underground,” Bilson said. According to Bilson, the as-yet-properly-named sequel — which he describes as a “hybrid” between the first two titles in the Red Faction franchise and Guerrilla — is planned for release in March 2011. (In February, THQ’s annual investors conference call vaguely stated a Guerrilla sequel was planned for the company’s “fiscal 2011″ window.)

Bilson was tight-lipped on other details but did confirm the upcoming open-world third-person shooter would be far more “structured,” akin to a “narrative” shooter. The sequel will still feature the destructibility Bilson says cost THQ “a fortune” to develop for Guerrilla, but will have a much greater impact on cities built closer together in the tight confines of the new underground world.

Although Guerrilla captivated most critics (netting a Metacritic average of 85 across three platforms) the third-person shooter failed to meet THQ’s sales expectations. While Bilson said it would have been easy to scrap the characters and setting in the upcoming sequel and shift it into a new intellectual property — effectively severing its connection to Guerrilla’s poor retail showing — he felt the quality in the previous entry was too great to abandon the Red Faction universe.

The strategy now, says Bilson, is to expose gamers to the series in order to prepare them for the future, citing the recent Red Faction: Guerrilla giveaway promotion as an example of giving the title the exposure it “deserved” at launch. “Giving away the stock now, on Red Faction, is getting more people exposed to the IP because we’re going bigger on Red Faction next time,” Bilson told us. “If the game wasn’t so good, we wouldn’t be giving it away at all.”

Next Red Faction planned for March 2011, focus on franchise’s roots originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alex Alvarez is one of those people who obsessively played games and constantly doodled in a sketchbook as a kid. He studied art, but with no one career-oriented channel for that creativity, he didn’t find himself making a living as an artist until he stumbled into a job working on comic books. A few years later, he was explaining software to movie studios and eventually opened The Gnomon Workshop, which provides training to artists who are interested in the entertainment industry.

Alvarez recently finished a six-month stint working on James Cameron’s Avatar, and Gnomon just hosted the “Unleashed: The Art of Naughty Dog” art exhibit showing off works by many of the artists from Naughty Dog, several of whom went through classes at Gnomon. In our interview after thee break, Alvarez talks about the expanding reach of video games, looks back at his youth spent playing Ultima and Wizardry, and doles out plenty of advice for budding young artists.

Continue reading Interview: Alex Alvarez of The Gnomon Workshop

Interview: Alex Alvarez of The Gnomon Workshop originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In early 2009, Centerscore co-founder Oliver Miao was assigned an extremely daunting task. His studio had recently been acquired by EA Mobile, and his higher-ups had requested an iPhone version of the studio’s successful teen-dating sim series, Surviving High School. The difficulty didn’t come in developing the title, but rather, in monetizing it.

During his GDC panel titled “Surviving the iPhone: EA’s Original Game Bet,” Miao recounted the different business models Centerscore proposed to EA Mobile for SHS. The initial idea was to sell the game for 99 cents, and then hand out additional weekly “episodes” for free. While this would help build the brand, EA Mobile didn’t anticipate enough return on the investment. It was denied, and Centerscore was sent back to the drawing board.

The second idea was to offer the current episode of the game for free, but charge 99 cents for bundled episodes from previous weeks. This idea was also shot down, and Centerscore’s project was threatened with cancellation. Finally, the two parties came up with a solution that’s proven to be fairly lucrative: give the current episode for free, charge for previous episodes, and offer the next episode in advance for an additional 99 cents — quite an innovative business model.

Of course, Centerscore could have easily raked in the cash by simply charging $500 for one of its first mobile titles, Garfield Bowling. We can’t think of a price we wouldn’t pay for that gem.

GDC: Surviving High School creator talks clever, profitable microtransactions originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have no doubt you’ve been counting the days (likely via tick marks on the wall), waiting for more information on Zootfly/SouthPeak Games’ Prison Break, so you’ll be glad to hear that the game finally got a solid release date (March 30) and a price ($49.99 on 360/PS3, $39.99 on PC) today from its publisher.

Along with the mess of new screens we’ve dropped below into a gallery, this is just about the most flush we’ve been with Prison Break info in the entire history of the game’s development cycle — and it’s coming out in just under three weeks! As the game’s coming from the developer of Mr. T: The Game, we’re willing to give this one a shot just so we can support the company’s upcoming adventure into madness.

Prison Break escaping March 30; new screens released originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Massively multiplayer online game players in the States allegedly spent $3.8 billion last year, according to the Today’s Gamers MMO Focus Report by Gamesindustry.com and TNS. The report claims that the MMO market in the US has reached 46 million users, with 21 million paying for online games. The rest play without spending a dime (think “freemium”).

In a shocking upset victory dripping in sarcasm, World of Warcraft was the most popular MMO with the US, besting NeoPets, Club Penguin, Disney ToonTown and Runescape. Ah freemium, where even the traditional MMO companies can make money.

[Via Massively, Gamasutra]

Study: America spent $3.8 billion on MMOs in 2009 originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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click to enlarge

It’s impossible to avoid comparisons between EA’s upcoming Medal of Honor reboot and Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare series … so, I’ll just get it out of the way: Medal of Honor unapologetically follows in the footsteps of Call of Duty. In fact, I’m willing to raise the possibility that Medal of Honor could be the “true” sequel to the Call of Duty 4 campaign many of us are still waiting for after suffering through Modern Warfare 2’s increasingly preposterous storyline.

Recently, I got a peak at a new Medal of Honor trailer which lays it out like this: There are two sides to every war: the sledgehammer and the scalpel. What Call of Duty 4 did so well was to portray exactly how these two components work in tandem, as it featured scenarios in which large assaults aided small elite forces, and vice versa. Medal of Honor promises to recreate similar battlefield situations, with the “scalpel” represented by the Tier 1 Operators, an elite branch of SOCOM.

Continue reading Impressions: Medal of Honor

Impressions: Medal of Honor originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may not remember this, but in the days before Magna Cum Laude, Leisure Suit Larry games were adventure games. And funny. Series creator Al Lowe has revealed what would have been the plot for Leisure Suit Larry 8: Lust in Space, had upheaval at Sierra not prevented it from ever happening.

Essentially, Larry is captured by “amazonian warrior women” from a distant planet. They brainwash the perennially behind-the-times loser into believing he’s in a disco paradise. Then, they plan to use Larry to father a race of alien-human hybrids to take over the earth. “When he finally woke up, he realized: he had to figure out what was going on, find a way to stop the invasion and literally save the planet!”

So why didn’t this happen? Sierra tried to hire Lowe to design the game with only a promise that a contract would come later. Considering that the last thing we heard about Al Lowe was that his Sam Suede was being worked on again (without him), and without his knowledge, we believe he was right to be suspicious.

[Via Big Download]

Al Lowe reveals the ‘real’ Leisure Suit Larry 8 plot originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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