Category: Gaming

Trymedia Expands Presence in Europe

Krone and Aon.at have joined Trymedia’s distibution network of downloadable games, with 4,200 affiliates offering over 650 titles.

The two companies join AOL UK, which is providing its members with instant access to hundreds of major game titles for purchase and download from a co-branded site on the AOL UK service. AOL UK is the first major UK ISP to offer Trymedia’s complete catalogue of downloads to users.

Trymedia’s partners include Atari, Activision Value and Team 17, along with many others. Titles available from the Trygames site include bestsellers like Prince of Persia, Driver and Temple of Elemental Evil.

Broadband adoption now means that a 550 mb download for a game is no longer unthinakble – just ask all the gamers who have eagerly downloaded Half-Life 2 from Steam in the past week or so. Industry analysts are predicting that the market for downloadable games will pass US$270 million (€220 million) in 2009.

“You don’t need to be a games-focused website to generate revenue from downloadable games,” said Gabe Zichermann, Trymedia’s VP of Strategy and Communications. “As clearly demonstrated by the strong growth of Trymedia’s distribution channel and its revenues, we believe that all Internet destinations can benefit from adding an outsourced games channel that delivers increased visitors, retention, stickiness and direct revenues.”

Games distributed via Trymedia’s technologies are protected by the ActiveMARK content protection system. The DRM system allows consumers to make back up copies of games and even play them on multiple computers. They are even allowed to give copies to others – though the copy then reverts to free trial mode, giving an incentive for the recipient to register and pay for the copy.

Trymedia’s products and services

Trymedia games

Half-Life 2 Preloading Via Steam

Valve have released Half-Life 2 to their distribution technology, Steam. Gamers can download the title now, but it will remain encrypted on their hard drives until the release date. No date has been given yet, but it can’t be too long. Poor, Half-Life starved gamers have had to endure a delay of a year due to a hacking incident last year when source code was stolen.

Steam’s distribution method is simple – games can be downloaded to PCs for pre-installation without charge. Gamers only pay for the game when it is unlocked via a variety of payment options – then the title is available immediately.

Distribution in this way means that publishers have complete control over the way that the game is installed, ensuring version control, simplifying updates, and reducing piracy and cheating. Steam customers can also enjoy their Steam applications on any PC.

Steam

Gizmondo News

Tiger Telematics, the manufacturers of the Gizmondo, a handheld games console not unlike a super-powerful N-Gage with GPS, has announced that the unit will feature a new type of Flash chip.

The new chip, the snappy mDiskOnChip G3 from M-Systems is the smallest Flash memory chip on the market – it must be very small indeed as neither M-Systems or Tiger Telematics seem to have published the physical dimensions of it anywhere.

The Gizmondo is shaping up to be a potentially exciting console – it will feature a 400MHz ARM9 processor, 2.8 inch colour screen and a 64 bit graphics accelerator, a camera, MP3 player and GPRS phone. Location-based gaming will be enabled through the device’s GPS unit, and Bluetooth will let you fight with your friends. Oh, and in there somewhere is the new 64mb Flash memory chip.

“I am sure that customers will appreciate the overall user experience achieved through the impressive combination of the latest technologies that is found within Gizmondo,” said Francois Kaplan, general manager of M-Systems Europe. “I am pleased to see our new mDiskOnChip G3 product contribute to the high-performance, small size and long battery life of this exciting multi-entertainer.”

The Gizmondo will be based on Windows CE.NET and cost between US$300 and US$400 (UK£166 to UK£222) when it launches later this year – and it will appear in the UK first, no less.

Can the PSP, Nintendo DS, Gizmondo, Series 60 games phones and the N-Gage QD all survive in this market? We’ll have to wait until Christmas 2005 to find out.

Gizmondo

Paul Oakenfold and EA Games sign exclusive deal

EA Games have signed Paul Oakenfold, the hyper DJ/remixer/producer/music untouchable, to an exclusive deal to provide games for some of their forthcoming titles.

Steve Schnur, Worldwide Executive of Music and Audio at Electronic Arts is very excited about it, “We see this as a landmark agreement that will set the standard for partnerships between artists and games developers”

The initial fruits of this first-of-its-kind deal have already emerged. Oakenfold will act as music supervisor for GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, composing an original score for it; has written the EA SPORTS Football theme, due to debut in FIFA Football 2005; and will contribute towards Total Club Manager. Beyond these details, the terms of the deal are not yet known.

Paul Oakenfold

EA Games

First Destructive Phone Virus in the Wild

Cracked copies of Mosquito, a game for Series 60 phones, have a little extra – a dialler that sends SMS texts to premium rate numbers. Pirated software has always been a popular vector for virus and Trojan infections, but this is the first time it’s been observed in mobile phones. Risk of infection is yet another reason why consumers should stay away from copied games and applications – you don’t know where they’ve been.

In this case, the dialler was actually included and written by the company, Ojom, who produced the game as a form of revenge for pirating it. The dialler was removed as it didn’t work as required – and you guessed it, old copies with the dialler appeared on the internet.

The dialler is not strictly a virus – it doesn’t reproduce and finds its way onto your system by hiding in something else, so it’s properly identified as a Trojan horse. In this case, the infection can be removed by un-installing the game.

Ojom Games

PlayStation3 Will Use Blu-ray

Sony has a announced that its forthcoming PlayStation3 console will include a Blue-ray drive DVD drive. Blue-ray is a higher density DVD technology, and will be able to store around 50gb of data by the console’s release at the end of 2005.

The inclusion of the Blue-ray drive is sure to guarantee mass market acceptance for the format, in the face of competition from other high density DVD technologies. Sony are particularly keen to see the format flourish as it is one of the founders of the Blu-ray group and has invested heavily in the technology. The main competitor, HD-DVD, has recently received a boost from Microsoft when they announced that their next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, would support it.

Blue light optical disks can store more data on them because the wavelength of blue coherent light is shorter, and therefore can read smaller pits, which are also packed closer together.

As Blu-ray is not currently compatible with standard DVD technology, this means that the drive will not be able to play standard red laser DVDs, or run Playstation2 software. It remains to be seen if Sony will be using a special dual-format drive, of taking the expensive step of including two drives in the console.

Blu-ray Home

Nintendo’s Response to Microsoft Sale Rumour: No.

Nintendo have replied to rumours floating around since yesterday that Microsoft wants to buy the Japanese games company with a big flat No.

Nintendo’s chief of public relations Yasuhiro Minagawa said “Nintendo is not on sale, and there is no such talk at all.” In fact, Microsoft have not even contacted Nintendo about a possible deal.

So where did the rumours come from? German finance magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported Bill Gate’s comments from the sidelines of a press conference: “If Hiroshi Yamauchi phones me, I will pick up at once,” he said.

Nintendo are a very Japanese company – America is a reasonably large market for them, Europe have historically not been a priority, but they are unstoppable in Japan. Microsoft, on the other hand, are a very American company – they have no understanding of the Japanese market. The size of the XBox, the games they’ve released in Japan, even the games they’ve cancelled in Japan, demonstrate this. Even if they had a hands-off approach in their home territory, the brand would be irrevocably damaged. Western gamers, all too aware of the rubbish that gets released under the Atari brand these days, would also know the difference.

Larry Hyrb from XBox Live’s blog

Doom 3 Leaked to P2P Networks

Doom 3 has been cracked and up loaded to the world’s various P2P networks – even the most casual search will uncover dozens of download sources.

This is terrible news for id Software, the game’s producers, after more than four years’ of work on the title. The game was due to go on sale on Tuesday in the US, and next week in the UK – so it is likely that this is final code version of the game, possibly taken from an advance or review copy, rather than stolen code in the case of Half Life 2.

First person shooter enthusiasts and Doom fans will undoubtedly buy legitimate copies of the new game, but it is likely that id will lose a lot of sales from P2P downloads. Because of review copies it is virtually impossible to stop PC games appearing on file sharing networks before titles appear on shelves.

id ran into problems earlier on this year when, predictably, attempts to stop a demo of Doom 3 from proliferating on the very same P2P networks failed.

Valve’s own Half Life 2 shooter was delayed for months after source code was stolen by hackers and then found its way onto the internet – it will finally be seeing release in the autumn, after a substantial rewrite of key sections of code.

Doom 3

Acclaim Faces Nasdaq Delisting

Acclaim are facing Nasdaq delisting as the market value of the company no longer meets the minimum criteria for inclusion on the technology stock market.

The company has until August 18 to remedy this or will no longer feature on Nasdaq. Shares fell 25% last week when the company reported their Q4 results for the financial year ending March 31 2004. Indeed, the debts that the company are facing mean that they could well be filing for bankruptcy before the end of the year.

Acclaim’s recent titles have not sold particularly well this year, and the outlook for Christmas is looking even bleaker – their forthcoming racing game juiced will be up against Sony’s Gran Tourismo 2 and EA’s Need for Speed Underground 2.

Acclaim

Manhunt Pulled from Stores After Murder

Dixons has pulled Rockstar’s Manhunt game from shelves after parents claimed that it inspired the murder of their 14 year old boy.

Rockstar are no strangers to controversy, and have had previous titles, mainly from the Grand Theft Auto series, banned or pulled from shops before.

Warren LeBlanc, 17 years old, pleaded guilty to the murder of 14 year old Stefan Pakeerah after luring him into a park in the Midlands and murdering him with a claw hammer and a knife.

An unpaid drug debt was given as the reason for the murder.

Manhunt is clearly marked as an 18 certificate game, and should not be sold or played by minors like LeBlanc. Those ratings are on the box for a reason, you know.

Giselle Pakeerah, Stefan’s mother said “I think that I heard some of Warren’s friends say that he was obsessed by this game. If he was obsessed by it, it could well be that boundaries for him became quite hazy. I can’t believe that this sort of material is allowed in a society where anarchy is not that far removed. It should not be available and it should not be available to young people.”

“I think that I heard”? Curiously, no-one has blamed the drugs involved for the murder as yet.

The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers’ Association, who provide age ratings on video games, issues a statement: “We reject any suggestion or association between the tragic events in the Midlands and the sale of the video game Manhunt.”

The continued: “The game in question is classified 18 by the British Board of Film Classification and therefore it should not be in the possession of a juvenile. We would also add that simply being in someone’s possession does not and should not lead to the conclusion that a game is responsible for these tragic events.”

In response to the claims, and to avoid possible copycat actions, Dixons will be removing the game from all 1,000 stores throughout their group.

ELSPA

Rockstar Games