An unannounced air combat game titled "Stormbirds," in development by Juice Games, was recently cancelled by THQ, according to former Juice artist Greg Calvert.
Stormbirds was set for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC before THQ apparently got cold feet. As a result, the team of over 30 developers was laid off by Juiced owner THQ.
"The game was in the same genre as Ace Combat and HAWX," wrote Calvert in a recent blog post. "THQ deemed the project too high risk, [and] as a result the entire team were made redundant on the 1st of December 2008."
Juice Games was acquired by THQ in 2006. The developer is best known for the "Juiced" series of racing titles.
Rather than see the fruits of their labors go to waste, some renders (below) from the Stormbirds project have been released by both Calvert and Steven Kerswell of CG studio RealtimeUK, along with an intro cinematic which is available from the link at the top of... More »
A gamer believes Sony is discriminating as they have banned words such as gay, lesbian, and bisexual from names of clubs or in postings in club forums as part of PlayStation Home.
To quote: Michael Marsh, an 18-year-old gamer from Norwalk, Conn., wanted to set up a gay/straight alliance club in PlayStation Home, Sony's new free 3-D virtual world component for the PlayStation 3.
The problem was that the words he was using - "gay," "lesbian" and "bisexual" - were being filtered from text chats and were not being allowed in the naming of clubs or in postings in club forums.
Marsh, who is straight but supports gay rights, said he raised the issue with Home community managers during the private beta test, but the problems persisted after the public beta introduction of Home on Dec. 11.
"I can understand if they're filtering out profanity, but if feel like it's discrimination," Marsh said. "By blocking a word like 'gay,' which is a... More »
It was inevitable that gamers would compare PlayStation 3 trophies to the Xbox 360's achievements. While it's true that both reward systems add a considerable amount of replayability to games, it's still unclear which is superior.
The main thing that Xbox 360 fans can boast is that achievements are mandatory for every game available on the Xbox 360 and it has been that way since the launch of the system. It is a shame that the trophy system Sony implemented in many of its games were not available at launch and was not mandatory throughout most of 2008.
Hopefully, trophy support becomes mandatory in 2009, so that gamers aren't torn between buying games based on whether or not they support trophies. Regardless of which was around longer, trophies and achievements are very similar, and are in direct competition for gamers attention.
Here are the reasons why trophies should motivate more gamers to collect them all rather than collecting achievement... More »
Recently, I showed my Sony PlayStation Portable to my friend, Jeff, who's 38. He never had seen the hand-held game system up close.
He gazed in wonder as this 6.7-ounce "toy" played the movie "National Treasure 2" vibrantly on a 4.3-inch screen, then we toured a video game that looks and moves as impressively as any PS 2 game.
I showed him photos of Charisma Carpenter stored on the PSP. We surfed the Web (albeit slowly) using its internal WiFi. But he didn't get a chance to listen to music on it, iPod-style, though it has that capability.
All this, I told him, costs $200. And this new version, the PSP 3000 (released in October), comes with a built-in microphone so you can make Skype phone calls on it. Plus, the 3000's new LCD screen features less glare and much more screen detail than before.
Jeff experienced mild consumer surprise, or what I call PSP Envy. He asked if he could buy my PSP from me. No, of course not.
Research from MarketShare finds that PlayStation 3 users are far more likely to use their console for Internet browsing than those with a Nintendo Wii.
The gap between the PS3 and Wii is pretty big, as the Wii has 0.01% of the Internet browser market share, while the PS3 has 0.04%.
To quote: With more than 30 million Wiis sold into homes in its life to date compared to 16 million PS3s and both with Internet browsers, you might expect that Nintendo's family-friendly box to have a larger 'market share' on the Net than the former.
You'd be wrong. A new report from Marketshare indicates that PlayStation 3 owners like to use their console (sorry, Interactive Entertainment System) for Web use than those people playing with their Wiis in December 2008.
With Microsoft's Xbox 360 not having a browser, it doesn't figure in the stats.
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