Game Daily News

Backbone Entertainment’s long, long-awaited Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will arrive as an Xbox Live Arcade download come Wednesday, November 26, according to a newly released screenshot from publisher Capcom.

The image, left, details the SSF2THDR “branded destination experience” that debuts as part of the New Xbox Experience tomorrow. According to Capcom, it’s “a central place for Xbox Live Arcade gamers to learn about new content, view the latest trailers, and access downloadable content [for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix].”

Capcom had previously promised that the downloadable fighter would arrive within November, implying that the PlayStation 3 release should arrive when the PlayStation Store updates on the following Thursday, November 27.

A price point for SSF2THDR has yet to be announced.

New Track for Formula D: Florida/Chicago

Asmodee has announced a new track for the recently released Formula D, one that marries a racing track in Florida and a neighborhood in Chicago to emphasize the dual nature of the new game. The Chicago half of the expansion is all about street racing through East Park:

This track offers an urban terrain which alternates between curves and straight lines. This mad race in the heart of city traffic will give pilots a chance to drive along the impressive Aon Center, one of the tallest skyscrapers of the city, to cross the Lake Shore East Park and its three tightly woven lanes (be careful about collisions!), and then rush along the inner port before finally crossing two vertigo-inducing bridges.

The other half of the expansion takes you on the nearly 6 km long Sebring track in Florida. (The image above shows a track still under development; believe it or not, you don’t have just one giant space following the pit.) The real Sebring race taks 12 hours as drivers wend their way through the tricky curves, then blast down the straightaways. Ideally, your games won’t take this long.

Formula D: Florida/Chicago is due in late January or early February. This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

Namco Bandai just wrapped up its fiscal Q2 2009, and the results were nothing short of bad: the games division lost 4.4 billion yen ($45.5 million) from last year dropped to 337 million yen ($3.4 million), making for a 92% year-over-year drop.

The publisher saw the bulk of its sales on the PlayStation 2, according to numbers appearing on GamesIndustry. The platform was responsible for 2.4 million Namco game sales while the new Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit (360, PS3) managed to break 700,000 copies sold. Nintendo DS games also accounted for 1.5 million units in sales.

Namco Bandai joins Sony in reeling from the economic climate’s heavy toll on Japan. The credit crunch has made the yen soar relative to other currencies, making Japanese exports too expensive for customers in the rest of the world.

A number of ex-Midway employees, when asked about the publisher’s downward spiral, had a variety of answers, but almost all of them mentioned Unreal Engine 3, the technology licensed from Epic Games that powers Gears of War.

“One issue popped up again and again: Midway’s decision to license Unreal Engine and use it for ALL its games,” wrote Variety’s Ben Fritz of his interviews with former Midway staffers.

Epic’s Gears of War 2, built on Unreal Engine 3

The technology had been licensed to give Midway a common technical base for its projects, but individual teams lacked the know-how to tweak the engine for their own purposes. “It was a ton of new technology which they just weren’t capable of doing. It put all the games way behind schedule,” said an anonymous ex-employee.

When those delayed games finally were released, they suffered at the hands of critics and sold poorly, forcing Midway to push bad games out the door in a desperate grab for revenue.

This isn’t the first time Epic’s technology has been implicated in another studio’s misfortunes. Too Human developer Silicon Knights sued Epic for breach of contract over its Unreal Engine 3 license after the developer encountered a number of issues while working on the game.

Gamasutra reports on a talk by Far Cry 2 developer Dominic Guay in which he discussed why procedural content generation is becoming more and more important as games get bigger and more complex. He also talks about some of the related difficulties, such as the amount of work required for the tools and the times when it’s hard to retain control of the art direction. Quoting: “Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approach based on algorithms — which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. ‘We considered it to be a total failure,’ he said. He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt.” procedural games games games story The Importance of Procedural Content Generation In Games More | Login | Reply The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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Media Watch: 10 Great Family Table Games

MSN has posted the requisite pre-holiday game buying guide on the Lifestyle section of its website, and nestled amongst expected titles like Clue, Boggle and Rummikub are both The Settlers of Catan and Apples to Apples, which by now is pretty much a mainstream game.

The article also includes the requisite number of howlers such as Catan being “a bit like Risk“ and ”Rummikub‘s cool white number tiles form[ing] infinite yet simple combinations.” Sorry, Jill – the number of tile combinations is finite!

Valve has announced that the PC version of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War is now available on the Steam digital distribution service.

The World War II shooter, which is selling like hotcakes, can now be purchased online and downloaded through Steam for the price of $49.95, the same as buying the disc-based game from a brick-and-mortar retailer.

World at War released last week for a whole bevy of platforms. Treyarch handled the PC, 360 and PS3 editions, while the PS2 version came from Rebellion and n-Space handled the Nintendo DS port.

Crysis Warhead (PC) developer Crytek is now open for business in Seoul, South Korea, as the European developer is making a move into the lucrative Asian gaming market.

Industry veteran Young Mok Park will lead the office and will focus on Crytek’s engine licensing business for Korean clients, reports Gamasutra.

“Establishing an office in Seoul was the logical step to expand our business in Korea as well as giving our engine licensees in this region the best possible support, through direct access to a dedicated local team,” said Crytek CEO Faruk Yerli.

“Crytek’s Korean office will take a key role in increasing the quality of service to CryENGINE clients. By establishing the Korean office, Crytek has shown its commitment and strong interest in Korean game companies as well as the Korean gaming industry,” Park added.

Asian markets including Korea, China and Taiwan are known for abundant online games–many of them free-to-play–as a counter to abundant piracy. But Crytek’s move into Asia symbolizes the moneymaking potential in the region.

PC Gaming Alliance head Randy Stude recently commented that Asian markets, despite their high piracy rates, “are also the top markets for revenue.”

A new trailer for the Backbone-developed, UDON-drawn HD Remix of Super Street Fighter II Turbo has arrived from publisher Capcom, showing off more of the game.

SSF2THDR is slated to hit PS3 and Xbox 360 as a digital download within the month.

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The long-promised DirectX 10 support for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures will arrive in the “next major game update” for the PC MMO, developer Funcom has revealed.
Left, DirectX 9. Right, DirectX 10. “We have been determined that the new DirectX 10 functionality would not just be a ‘gimmick’ addition to the game and would add visual quality to the game,” newly appointed game director Craig Morrison wrote in his November Letter.

“We feel that the version we are preparing now for testing does achieve this and in a way that will find the right balance between visuals and performance,” he added.

While Morrison did not specify when the “major” update will arrive, he revealed that the next update will pack two new dungeons “aimed at maximum level players” in an attempt to begin filling “content gaps [at] the highest level.”