http://www.gamedev.net/Maximum game development!en-ushttp://www.gamedev.net/pics/gdnet-88x31.gifhttp://www.gamedev.net/Maximum Game Development!http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553849It's a Daily! Drew wanted me to apologize to you for his lack of a Daily yesterday. I am apologizing for me for a quick Daily today because I just got home (it's late) and I have God of War Collection and Assassin's Creed 2 in my bag and those games need playing. The most important news of the week is that No More Heroes is coming to Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. This is the best news of the week and if you disagree you are wrong. Speaking of things which are awesome: 3D Dot Game Heroes is also getting a US release in May 11, 2011. This is also brilliant news. 3D Dot Game Heroes is being brought to us by From Software (developer of Demon's Souls!) and Atlus (US publisher of Demon's Souls!) is aimed at making an awesome game that appeals to the inner video gaming child in all of us by emulating Zelda except awesomer. And speaking of more things which are absolutely rad, the Playstation 3 beta of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 started today. Bad Company was pretty much one of the best multiplayer games of all time (as fellow Daily writer, Mike, and I can attest to) and it looks like DICE is just improving on it in every way possible for the sequel. In case you were unaware or missed the Daily earlier this week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold a whole lot of copies. In the game's first five days of sales Activision claims that a "'new worldwide estimated five-day sell-through record' of $550 million" was reached. That's just an absurd number. Source Shacknews relays the information that Activision included in the press release at the aforementioned link. In tangentially related news, game blogger Matthew Kaplan wrote up a no doubt spoiler-laden summary of Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" mission with contributions from around the Internet. As I indicated last week I think this is an interesting topic of discussion. Game developer, publisher, and desktop enhancement developer Stardock released its yearly consumer report this week which has all sorts of stats on the company's consumer demographic information and digital distribution and other such numbers. This is the kind of plan a lot of publicly-held companies make for their share-holders every year but Stardock is a privately-held company and, as such, releases this information for the sake of its customers. Check it out. The statistic which saddened me is that, apparently, 96% of Stardock's customer base is male. That's just... Ugh. Marvelous Entertainment reports better luck with games on the PSP than the Wii. The company cites poor sales for its huge critical hit Little King's Story on the Wii, which is sad, because while I haven't played the game I've heard nothing but praise (and keep meaning to pick it up). Presumably Muramasa: The Demon Blade saw similarly poor sales given the point of the article, but only the Japanese sales data was given. The company has, however, had good luck with its PSP releases due to sales and lower development costs. This is particularly fantastic because Marvelous made Half-Minute Hero which is, actually, one of my favorite games of the year. Not to keep linking my site in Dailies, but I want you to share in the glory of this super clever game. It's brilliant. Now. Friday. Let's have some fun this weekend, shall we? I know I said this was a quick Daily (and it was, for the most part), but it ended up being long. This is because I pretty much just talked about video games. I like video games. OH I HAVE ASSASSIN'S CREED TO PLAY, HAVE A NICE WEE--http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553846irrKlang, a high level audio library for game developers has just been released in version 1.2.0, adding FLAC file support and performance improvments. irrKlang is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and able to play back various file formats such as WAV, MP3, OGG, MOD etc, both in 2D and 3D. irrKlang is free for non-commercial use and can be used by C++ developers as well as with .NET languages like C#, VisualBasic.NET and similar.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553810Named "the happiest place on Earth" by Oprah, Denmark is about to get a tad geekier :) The first Game Education Summit Europe will take place at the Danish Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment (DADIU) on June 22-23, 2010 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Call for Papers: http://www.geseurope.com/ges-europe-2010-call-papershttp://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553697Modern Wealth: Modern Warfare 2 has been good for Activision, Grossing over $550million in 5 days. It's also been good for Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who's been exercising his stock options to rake in $20million on launch day and a further $17million recently. Go on, treat yourself to that new speedboat. Modern Morefare: Hardly suprising, but after Modern Warfare 2's success, Activision are reported to have charged a third studio, working alongside Infinity Ward and Treyarch to work on another Call of Duty game. There's also rumors of a Call of Duty MMO. Hmm, ok. Australia Game Dev Layoffs: Australia's Game Development industry has had a rough time as of late and I'm saddened to hear that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed developer Krome Studios has announced an undisclosed number of layoffs. Europe PS3 Movie Rental: From tomorrow (Thursday) PS3 owners in Europe can access PSN's Video Store, allowing them to rent movies from e1.99 and buy from e7.99 per title. The service, which works in a similar way to XBox LIVE's video service, allows you to watch the video for 48 hours after you press play. A nice feature lets you transfer your films to your PSP for watching on the move. The services launches with around 2000 titles available UK Temp Worker Ruling: Game studios in the UK may no longer enjoy the benefits of hiring temporary workers as the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 bill aims to grant similar rights as permanent staff to temp workers. Tiga are warning that this move could adversely affect game developers as it would reduce flexibility and ultimately competitiveness of UK studios overseas. Un-Fun-Q3-Com: Norweigian MMO developers FunCom have announced a $9.59million loss for Q3 of 2009, blaming market conditions and releases from competitors such as Aion and Champions Online stealing people away from Age Of Conan. The company are looking to the future with the Q2 2010 release of their next MMO, The Secret World. Square Enix announce Supreme Commander 2: Square Enix have announced Supreme Commander 2 for a spring release on the XBox 360 and PC. The game is being developed by Chris Taylor's Gas Powered Games. I'm looking forward to waging large scale war with giant robots and nuclear weapons again. iPhone Piracy: Seems to be a regular feature in my posts, but Gamasutra have posted a feature detailing the findings of Pinch Media's Greg Yardley. In his report, he details that over 60% of iPhone applications have been pirated and fears that the figures could be even higher. I find it disturbing that even the low-cost games of the app store are subject to such systemic theft by unscrupulous pirates. Zynga VC Funding: Social Networking games studio Zynga have seen a $15million cash injection from an unnamed venture capital source. The company has courted controvesy over the past few weeks over its in-game advertising models and allegations of hidden scams and confusing offers.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553612I have some errands to run, and it turns out this is one of them. However, I will first need to see your ID in order to grant access to this Age Restricted GameDev.Net Daily. Analysts have an uncanny habit of demonstrating that they really don't know jack about the industry they're analyzing and that they really don't deserve their jobs at all. Point is, Reggie Fils-Aime says Wii HD is not the next step, regardless of what Pachter and other analystards think. I've been relatively vocal that I think the Wii is a worthless piece of junk, but quite a few million people disagree with me, to the tune of colossal revenues for Nintendo. That's why I'm not an analyst, you see. Anyway, there's no denying that Nintendo broke out of the mold with the Wii, and it looks like they're gearing up to do it again -- once the Wii stops generating mind boggling profits, I mean. Facebook and Twitter are now available on Xbox Live. If this is something that excites you, you may wish to consider occasionally meeting some friends face to face. On the flip side, if you're of the Playstation persuasion, you won't have to wait too long. I've played an awful lot of games over the past two years, all things considered. The best one, without a doubt, was LittleBigPlanet on the PS3. The game is sheer brilliance, on many different levels. And it's now out for PSP! So if you bought one of those little things -- which hurt my hands quite a bit to use, I have to admit -- then check out this review of LittleBigPlanet PSP. It sounds like, although it doesn't live up to its incredible PS3 predecessor, it's still a damned good game. Face it, Daxter is old now. You need a new platformer. You might have gotten the impression that developer Pandemic was shut down as part of EA's cost cutting measures. Well, that is not the case because they got better. It turns out they're only mostly dead. It's like I always say -- my name is Inigo Montoya. You fired my father, prepare to die. It turns out that Super Mario Bros Wii is amazing, and I can't really say that's a surprise. I still don't like the Wii, but some of its games are awfully tempting. Well okay, just this and Smash Bros, but that's two damned good games. Today's closing video? LittleBigPlanet PSP obviously. Delicious, delicious LBP gameplay.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553478At a young age, the GDNet Daily was abandoned by its real parents and raised by wolves. This has damaged its social acumen somewhat, considering all of the butt sniffing and hairballs that are involved with such an origin. You'll need a beefier machine for Dirt 2's DirectX 11 mode, featuring awesome stuff like flapping flags, thermos-toting rally fans, and fording groundwater. Denis Dyack thinks there will be fewer publishers in the future, and Modern Warfare 2 has outsold everything ever made at launch. You may also want to check out this freshly discovered new secret level from one of the World War II Call of Duty games. It's hard to tell, since they all blend together. Interplay's rumoured Fallout MMO might actually be bearing fruit. Do you have a laser engraver? I wish I did - so I could make it play the Mario theme. And also engrave stuff, I guess. What would you say if I told you right now you could be playing a videogame featuring Nazi dinosaurs? Well, you can. I genuinely can't think up anything witty to say about that. It's World War II freakin' dinosaurs, man. On the indie circuit, check out the droolworthy tools that are getting used in the creation of Overgrowth, the sequel to rabbit-punching classic Lugaru. I want and or need those tools in my life. Finally, before we go, I understand it that some Starcraft fans will enjoy looking at this image which appears to be of a giant thing beating up other things.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553282Entries from 11/6 - 11/12 Journal Land Pick of the Week nerd_boy's Journal - Everyone wave good bye to nerd_boy, at least for the time being as he ships off to the Air Force Academy in a few months and is suspending all game dev activity both in general and here on the forums. Say hi to Sir Sapo while you're out there! While I'm saddened at the loss (even temporary) of another GDNet member, I'm also happy to know someone else who maybe someday could give me a ride in a jet. Right? Pleez? [smile] Good luck and be safe!http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553203It's Friday the Thirteenth! AAA games are a huge endeavor spanning millions upon millions of dollars in marketing and development costs. Last month I played the hell out of Slightly Mad Studios' Need for Speed: Shift, a superb injection of quality game design and sim racing in Electronic Arts' long-running racing series. You can imagine my surprise, then, when Gamasutra ran a piece on Slightly Mad Studios' remote development process. Other than a small percentage of the team working in an office in the UK, Slightly Mad's team members all work remotely from locations around the world. To think that a game of that size is made by a team across the world absolutely blows my mind and that it yields a fantastic AAA game is even more mind-blowing. The article is well worth the read (much as the game is well worth a purchase). The free Unreal Development Kit which was released last week has already had over 50,000 downloads, which is totally rad. My brief time with the editor has shown it to be a very impressive improvement over the series of tools that Epic released with Unreal Tournament 3. Give it a shot if you haven't already. October NPD data is out in the wild and it should be no surprise that the excellent Playstation 3-exclusive Uncharted 2 took the month's top honors with over 500,000 sales. The Xbox 360-exclusive, and also excellent, Forza Motorsport 3 sold 175,000 copies in its four days at retail before the end of October. The real surprise on the list is that the Xbox 360 release of the multiplatform Borderlands' sold 418,000 copies; an impressive number for just one release of the game. All of these games are incredibly deserving of both their spots on the NPD list and your future attention. The real news of this week is all about Infinity Ward's release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is already setting records as the most successful single-day launch of any entertainment product ever with over 4.7 million copies sold across North America and the UK (estimated around six-seven million day-one sales worldwide). Modern Warfare 2 is so big that the Playstation Network had to accommodate the sheer mass of simultaneous connections and Xbox Live set a simultaneous user record with over two million people connected at once. And Infinity Ward is truly deserving of this acclaim; Modern Warfare was a hugely successful and fantastic game and the sequel is a brilliant iterative improvement in almost every way. One of the most interesting discussions regarding the game's actual content, though, is the whole "No Russian" mission, the infamous mission early on in the game (of which I just wrote a lengthy, spoiler-laden piece about). Regardless, it seems almost pointless to suggest that anything will top Modern Warfare 2 in the foreseeable future (and it's a pretty great game). Also of note is the spree of indie game developers mocking Tim Langdell's "Edge" nonsense. Check 'em out. It's a been pretty good year for gaming but, as tends to happen in November, the releases will start to slow down after the next couple of weeks. Enjoy the mass of gaming while you can. I know this weekend will be filled with Forza 3 and Modern Warfare 2 for me!http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553119Do not be alarmed at the appearance of this On Time GDNet Daily. It comes in peace. Always. Also do not be alarmed that all the links in this daily point to a tr.im address - that was me. The full address will also appear as you hover over the links. iPhone developer accused of harvesting customer phone numbers. A report broke late last week of developer Storm8 allegedly using their iPhone games to collect phone numbers with neither the knowledge or consent of players. Allegedly. No hard proof has yet been revealed, although the company has in the past admitted to such behavior due to a bug in their code which has since been fixed. Okay, there's already been some discussion on the Gama news article but even before I read that it seemed pretty impossible that a bug in code could access and transmit a number. Furthermore, what about Apple? Do they carry any blame for letting an obvious exploit like this through to the App Store? Even worse, according to Gizmodo this isn't the first occurrence of numbers being stolen. So far Storm8 has still not released any comment. RedLynx pirates its own game. Piracy is a problem, and people are coming up with all sorts of ways to combat it. One unorthodox method is to pirate your own game, which is what developer RedLynx did with its first game Trials last year, uploading their own "limited" version of the game to torrent sites the day it launched, which lacked the online leaderboard component. While they don't know for sure how it's affected sales, so far at least their leaderboards remain uncracked. It's also rather genius in exploiting the way torrents work - by being the first torrent up, it will become the most heavily-seeded version so that even when the actual pirated version appears, it will be drowned out by the original fake version - at least staving off the inevitable for a bit longer still. Venezuela violent game law in effect. Back in the beginning of September I touched upon the fact that Venezuela was poised to ban the sale of violent games. Well, without the support of organizations like the ESA here in the states, the bill passed into law last week, penalizing merchants who are caught selling violent games with up to 5 years in prison. Understandably, many Venezuelans are not happy. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. At GDC last year I was treated to a demonstration of Emotiv's brainwave headset reader that let you control games and applications via the power of your mind. Supposedly it was supposes to ship last holiday season, but was then delayed. Then I ran into Alex Reed, head of Demiurge Studios, at both GDC and GDC Austin, who had been working closely with the Emotiv people, but kept getting the "no comment". Then at IGC East a PR rep from Demiurge said she had some "exciting things" to talk to me about - but I never heard more. Well, seeing as the headset is all of the sudden back on track for a holiday release, I suppose I should check into things. More next week, hopefully. So hey if you're playing Torchlight or are just interested in modding in general, Runic has released the game's editor TorchED. I see that GDNet member MustEatYemen is already getting set to play around with it. If you don't know, modding is a great way to get started with games dev, and companies love seeing it on resumes. And finally, pats on the back to our own Andrew Russell, who did the responsible thing by sending a letter to his Attorney General supporting the 18+ rating in Australia. Read this post in Chinesehttp://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553046Modern What?: The big news today is that the release of Modern Warfare 2 has seen the game sell over 1.23 million units in a single day in the UK. This doubles the previous record set by GTA IV in 2008. 1.23 million units is coming up to half the 3 million units shipped to the UK in the first place.... With success like this, it's hardly suprising that there's a rumour that the next Medal Of Honor game may be set in the present day. EA Layoffs: Promit covered the huge EA number of layoffs yesterday - today it's come out that the layoffs will hit some of the major studios within EA. The Command and Conquer team to to have taken a huge hit as well as Pandemic, Mythic and Maxis. This is coming at a time where EA's early and heavy betting on the Wii has fallen short of their expectations. Natal Leak: MCV are reporting that Natal will be with us in November 2010, will release with 14 games and cost between 30-50 GBP. No wonder that Microsoft have listed several Natal-related jobs on its site. XBox Pirates Walk the plank: As I reported last week, Microsoft were threatening to ban the XBox Live accounts of those that have modded their console to play pirated games. Today Microsoft have confirmed the move and banned those accounts affected. Although Microsoft have declined to give an actual figure, gamesindustry.biz estimate it to be around 600,000 users - a small percentage of the actual Live users out there. 40% UK Studios unaffected by Piracy: Develop are reporting that a recent survey by TIGA shows that 40% of UK studios don't feel that piracy is an issue that affects their business. The vast majority (90%) do, however see it as being an increasing threat in the future. This comes on the back of the large iPhone piracy figures that have been dripping out over the past couple of weeks. Odds and Sods Penny Arcade launch 2009 "Childs Play" Charity DriveWii Fit unlikely to make you thinhttp://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=553007Mo'Minis Launches New Contest for Mobile Game Creators Contest Offers Lucrative Prizes and Worldwide Exposure for Coolest Games Developed Using Mo'Minis Studio.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=552941InstantAction, a leading online gaming platform that brings AAA-quality games to the web and social networks, today announced plans to hire positions in product management, marketing, account management, web development, quality assurance, and operations in its Portland office. As one of the fastest-growing new gaming development platforms on the web, InstantAction is expanding and looking to increase its current workforce by 25 percent. InstantAction is an operating business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), the 8th largest online network in the world. Having recently relocated its web operations from Eugene, Oregon to Portland, Oregon, InstantAction is looking to hire the best and brightest talent into a next generation gaming company working to bring the gaming industry to the largest digital distribution platform in the world, the web.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=552932What time is it? Time to get a watch! Although I'm not sure what kind of watch would tell you that the GameDev.Net Daily is up, unless it's a watch that also gets RSS feeds or can browse the net. What I'm trying to say is that we should get along with a Very Timely GameDev.Net Daily. There's a lot to talk about. First, and I meant to say this last week and forgot, pricing for GDC 2010 is now up. I'm actually planning on attending this year, and I would love to meet lots of GameDev people in person. I have to warn you, I am shorter in person than you might think. The good news is prices are down this year; the bad news is that pricing is still really high. Make sure to register early! Getting back to news, there's some big announcements out of EA recently. They just had their Q2 earnings report, and things are not great. Net loss of $391 million, and 1,500 job cuts on the way. OUCH. Supposedly they're cutting more than a dozen unannounced titles. Economy looking up? I think not. And I don't think it will be much solace to the people getting fired that EA has just acquired casual developer Playfish for about $300 million up front, and with potential for another cool hundred million in there as well. Funny how that neatly adds up to the Q2 operating loss, isn't it? It's almost as if EA could have let you keep your jobs. (It is purely coincidence, though. Don't read too much into that.) LATE BREAKING: First round of layoffs has happened. Konami's not looking great, either: income declined 81% year-over-year. At least they haven't announced they're cutting jobs and buying up a new studio, I guess? All the same, that's one hell of a year-to-year income hit. Oddly enough, the indie/small developer world seems pretty healthy. In case you missed it last week, Unity Game Engine is now free, and it is working out well for them. They now have 33,500 registered developers, up 158 percent from before the announcement. By the way, Unity is a pretty sweet tool. Go check it out! Speaking of free engines, Trent mentioned this last week but it bears mentioning again. A free-ish version of Unreal Engine/Editor has been released! Yeah, they'll take royalties etc, but I see jobs fairly often that request Unreal Engine experience. This is your chance to get it. On the Microsoft side of the fence, 3D support for Zune HD is coming. I've spoken to at least three people who have Zune HDs, and only one is a Microsoft employee, so I'm sure this will be thrilling for all seventeen or so proud owners of the device. Sorry, what? I got distracted playing Real Racing GTI on my iPod Touch in between checking my mail and calendar and listening to Eric Clapton while browsing the web. Keep on truckin', Zune HD! One point of anger last week was the decision not to support dedicated servers in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Well, it looks like all the whiners will have to get used to it, because dedicated servers are unlikely in id's upcoming title Rage, as well. On the other hand, it's not set in stone at this point, so if you're the kind of loser who starts online petitions to protest things that slightly inconvenience you, now might be the perfect time. Lastly, there are rumors that NVIDIA's Fermi GT300 GPU has been delayed. It's not entirely clear how LONG it's been delayed, as the report says FY 11 and I'm not sure how NVIDIA's fiscal years are mapped out. All the same, it looks like DirectX 11 support is going to be an ATI exclusive privilege for some time to come. The only thing I have to say is: ATI, for god's sake make CCC suck less. Pleeeeease. The driver rewrite was good. Now do the control center. I was going to link to a GameTrailers video, but their recent is covered in Modern Warfare 2, Naruto, and MAG. I refuse to link to any of those. In fact I can't find any interesting recent videos at all that would be considered on topic, so I'm instead going to link to a slightly old but crazy awesome Lego animation video, 8-bit Trip. If you haven't seen it, you've really missed out.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=552927At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel announced a new opportunity for developers to earn money by writing netbook applications via the Intel Atom Developer Program community, and selling their applications through future application stores. Developers were told to look for a software development kit (SDK) to help them develop applications and components for netbooks. Starting today, developers can get a jump start to their application development using an alpha version of the Intel Atom Developer Program Software Development Kit for both Microsoft* Windows (C and C++) and Moblin (C). Additional runtimes and development languages will be supported in future releases of the SDK. The features of the alpha SDK include authorization, crash reporting, and a consumer store client emulator for testing. A developer can test and debug today and then when the beta SDK is available later this year they can submit their applications or components and take full advantage of the program's revenue-generating opportunities, when the app stores start opening in early 2010.http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=552898Game Connection provides you with the preview of its reference report for the 2010-2011 project time line in the video game industry. While surveying professionals in the market, for the most part developers, publishers and service providers, it became obvious that 2010 is about drastic changes! Changes sweeping through media used in the game industry; changes in the shape of business models all changes for the better!