MechWarrior Online
Platform: PC
Developer: Piranha Games
Genre: Free-to-play sim
Release date: TBA 2012
Retro inspiration: MechWarrior's two through four

]]>Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:00:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/notch-tim-schaefer-psychonauts-2Ryan Winterhalter "Let's make Psychonauts 2 happen," tweeted Minecraft creator Markus Persson (AKA Notch) yesterday to Double Fine CEO, and designer of the original game, Tim Schafer.

Notch's Tweet alone would pique the interest of Double Fine fans. Pychonauts' retail performance was so poor that mentioning it at this point, after Double Fine has produced so many other excellent titles, seems kind of cliché, meaning that all hope for a Psychonauts sequel died years ago. However, Notch didn't just tweet, Tim Schafer responded, "Oh wait. Hm. This is interesting."

Just because a game isn't a super-hot property right now doesn't mean it can't be optioned for a movie. Both Missile Command and Asteroids prove that, even if we don't know what degree of success (if any) they'll be met with upon being released in theaters. New Line Cinema is now looking to another classic game in Rampage as the source material for a new movie.

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting Midway's arcade game will be adapted for a new monster movie. It'll be produced by John Rickard, a co-producer on several other New Line projects like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Final Destination 5, Horrible Bosses, and the upcoming Jack the Giant Killer. A story has yet to be written, as Rickard still needs to begin meeting with potential writers. ]]>Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:04:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/features/gamecube-xbox-defined-current-genJeremy Parish

Feature

10 Years Later: How GameCube and Xbox Defined The Current Gen

PlayStation 2 may have dominated last generation, but its competitors set the stage for this one.

By: Jeremy Parish November 16, 2011

No one would challenge the claim that Sony's PlayStation 2 was the decisive victor of the sixth generation of consoles, that nebulous post-32/64-bit era that never lent itself to an easily applied label. Not only was the PS2 the best-selling contender last generation, it remains the best-selling console ever, having moved more than 150 million systems worldwide and an unbelievable 1.5 billion pieces of software. Combined, its competitors -- Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube, both of which debuted within days of one another back in November 2001 -- didn't even manage half of that.

The PS2 achieved a near-NES-level rout, dominating the market and forcing the competition to scramble to find other strategies. Yet where the NES had a clear successor in the Super NES, in many ways the PlayStation 3 feels like a follow-up in name only. Few of the series that defined last generation's most popular console have much traction these days, or else they've gone multiplatform. PS2 overwhelmed its rivals through a combination of perfect timing, a diverse but focused feature set, and a competitive price; PS3 blew what should have been a strong launch with a soft lineup and an excessively high price made necessary by Sony's desire to make it an all-in-one media center -- and in its quest to "only do everything," the PS3 has never really defined what it does best. Five years later, the system is hardly a failure; rather, it's essentially splitting the market with Microsoft's Xbox 360, which is a far cry from the total domination both of its predecessors enjoyed. Meanwhile, neither can hope to match the lifetime sales of Nintendo's Wii, the little white box that became a dark horse juggernaut.

It was 10 years ago today that Microsoft entered the videogame console business with the release of the Xbox in North America. The system debuted at $299.99 and its release came more than a year after the PlayStation 2 had already debuted in western markets and three days before the GameCube, which will celebrate its tenth anniversary in North America on Friday. Xbox was the most powerful of the three consoles during that generation (four if you wish to include the Dreamcast), though that didn't translate into sales -- PS2 ended up dominating the console market for much of the decade, but Xbox did prove to be influential in the long run.

The Xbox name came from the original idea of creating a DirectX Box, DirectX being the name for a set of APIs used on computers. ('DirectX Box' ended up being shortened to 'Xbox.') The system was, like the PS2 and unlike the Dreamcast and GameCube, capable of playing DVDs in addition to games. Dolby 5.1 support and an integrated Ethernet port were both standard, as was an 8GB hard drive, a new concept for videogame consoles at the time. The obvious benefits of a hard drive included the ability to save games without a memory card and rip music from CDs that could then be listened to as a soundtrack in certain games. Its presence later opened the door for downloadable content in games like Halo 2. (A standard hard drive was abandoned for certain models of the Xbox 360, resulting in developers avoiding mandatory installs no matter the cost.) ]]>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:28:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/features/lara-croft-reinvention-video-gameJeremy Parish

Feature

Lara Croft and the Reinvention of Game Heroes

How Tomb Raider changed games, and why its leading lady still matters 15 years later.

By: Jeremy Parish October 22, 2011

A woman sits on a boxy sofa in a hotel. It's meant to be a classy Calcutta hotel from colonial days, but the decor is very Silicon Valley circa the mid-'90s: Simple polygonal shapes make up the columns and furniture, and harsh lighting breaks the room into clearly demarcated spaces of shadow and light. The camera rotates around the the center of the room as it zooms in and descends, bringing the checkered floor -- the hallmark cliché of early 3D modeling -- into clearer view.

A robotic man glides toward the divan and its occupant as the point of view comes around. He lobs something onto the coffee table before her: A magazine, which glides to its resting point with no sense of inertia. On the cover is a photo of the woman to whom the magazine has been presented, captured in the act of riddling a massive yeti with bullets.

Double Fine has owned the IP all along, and this new development has no effect on that. Psychonauts was originally released in 2005 on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC. It has since been released on both Steam and the Xbox Live Marketplace's Xbox Originals service, both of which are two ways you can now buy the game and see Double Fine directly benefit from your purchase.

The game wasn't a huge seller at launch but was well received by critics and has grown to develop a cult following. Despite that, it looked for a long time as if a sequel would never happen because designer Tim Schafer has so many ideas for new games. "I would love to go back and spend time with the characters from any game I've worked on, and I would love to make a sequel to any of them. But I also want to make something new," he said in a 2007 interview with Playboy. "If there were five of me I might make sequels, but there's always some new idea I want to explore." He did say last year that he's ready to do a sequel, provided he can find the right publisher. ]]>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:55:00 PDTNEWS