Following in the footsteps of Nintendo's popular "Wii Fit," the video game publisher known for the "Madden" football games is jumping into fitness software targeted mostly at women.
Electronic Arts Inc. was set to announce Thursday a new line, EA Sports Active, that runs on the Nintendo Wii console and aims to complement, not compete with, Nintendo's "Wii Fit" exercise title.
Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, called the Active brand, whose first title, "Kickstart Fitness," launches next March, a "somewhat radical departure from the normal game experiences we provide customers."
EA's sports audience has been mostly young men, who have flocked to football, soccer, basketball and hockey titles to make the company the world's dominant player in sports video games.
But to stay competitive with rivals such as Activision Blizzard Inc., whose success with games like "World of Warcraft" and "Rock Band" seems to be weathering the recession, EA needs to continue to expand its audience.
The company's new brand seeks to take advantage of the popularity of the Nintendo console and of exercise games. While the "Wii Fit" is already enormously popular, Moore, a former physical-education teacher, said EA's sports software will run people through an exercise routine with a more Western approach than the Japanese company's product.
"Wii Fit" includes activities like running, skiing as well as yoga, and it emphasizes balance as well as fitness. EA's products will include exercises like running and lunges, as well as simulations of sports such as tennis.
The games use straps to attach the Wii's controller and "nunchuk" attachment to a player's body, so the fitness routines can be performed without holding the controls. EA also plans to include peripherals such as resistance bands. Titles in the line will cost about $60, the same as a regular video game.
A sequel to the great strategy game "Darwinia," "Multiwinia" has players once again in charge of the stick-figure Darwinians, little digital people who have fragmented into warring tribes since the end of the original game.
Players control one faction of these avatars against one to three opponents, either online or off, in a number of strategy game types, from such standard multiplayer fare as domination, capture the flag and king of the hill to such unusual games as one that has each side trying to refuel a rocket.
The game play is streamlined, with intuitive controls and simple mechanics. The graphics have the same stylish, angular look as the original. This is a digital world, after all.
The least-expensive way to get the game appears to be Valve Software's Steam service (Steampowered.com); it costs more to get it directly from the developer's Web site.
The cinematic "Brothers in Arms" series wants to tell a World War II tale, and "Hell's Highway" keeps the story moving right along as players control Staff Sgt. Matt Baker through the doomed operation Market Garden. The game keeps the suppression system of the previous titles — to advance, players must force Nazi foes behind cover and flank them, and duck behind obstacles themselves; rushing head-on is generally suicide.
A choppy frame rate drags down the graphics, which look good but often don't move smoothly. The sound, voice acting and music are good, however, and the multiplayer modes allow for up to 20 players.
Sony PlayStation 3, also for Microsoft Xbox 360, PC; $59.99 ($49.99 for PC) Age rating: Mature
"Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia" mixes up the series formula a bit and is an improvement over the last game, "Portrait of Ruin." Players control Shanoa, a woman with the ability to absorb and manifest glyphs as weapons and spells. She can use up to three at a time, and in combination they produce powerful special attacks.
The game is structured differently from most recent "Castlevania" titles. Instead of a single large castle to explore, Shanoa can visit different locations at will by selecting available places on a map of the game's world. Each area is self-contained.
The graphics are in gorgeous 2-D, with exceptional animation and effects. Players may also notice that "Ecclesia" is tougher than the series has been in years — a welcome return to form in a series known for its challenge.
Street Fighter IV is a 2008 competitive fighting game produced by Capcom. It is the first brand new Street Fighter game released by Capcom since the arcade release of Street Fighter III 3rd Strike in 1999.
The coin-operated arcade game was released in Japan on July 18, 2008 and was given a limited release in North American arcades in August. Home versions are currently scheduled to be released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on February 17 and February 20, 2009, in the US and Europe respectively. A Windows PC version will follow shortly after.
With Grand Theft Auto selling millions, despite being blamed for countless acts of violence worldwide, what next for video game blame?
Two new games in progress may answer that question.
SEGA are getting stick for their new Nintendo Wii game MadWorld. The game has already gained media attention with it violence, blood and brutality.
The Nintendo Wii is a 'family' console - say some but Nintendo look like breaking that mold if this game gets released.
Another flash point has to be 'Fat Princess' a game under development for Sony's PlayStation 3. Feminists don't like the objective of the game, to rescue the a fore mentioned 'Fat Princess'.
Look forward to a new year of headlines blasting these game - a least it may leave the million to play happily on Grand Theft Auto for a while.
Video game cheats and pirates got a surprise this week, as Microsoft and Blizzard banned and suspended hundreds of thousands of gamers for infractions.
Microsoft got things started by banning from Xbox Live an unspecified number of gamers who had modified their consoles to play pirated – backup – copies of their games.
There were no official numbers, but the forums where such gamers cruise were full of bizarre outrage. "How dare they ban me for playing pirated games!" some said.
Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft, was more forthright, stating that it had banned 350,000 online players from its older StarCraft and Diablo II titles for using software cheats and hacks during online games against other players.
What's annoying is that these video game companies are having to divert what seems a growing pool of resources to chasing and defeating these players.
That's time and money and manpower that doesn't go into making new games or improving existing titles.
Pandora's Mighty Soldiers (PMS Clan) announced today the creation of All-Star North American Female Counter Strike 1.6 team working with SK Gaming and Team EG for the South Africa's PLuGG Girls vs. Guys Game Off… where South African CS teams are getting a chance to battle online for a chance to win an trip to Johannesburg and play this illustrious team compliments of PLuGG, South Africa's newest broadband provider.
The All-Star Lineup for the event includes champion SK player Christine "potter" Chi, PMS newcomer and former SK and Emulate champion Stephanie "missharvey" Harvey, PMS member Dimitra "D1m" Deliopoulos, and Team EG players Catherine "CaTh" Leroux-Racette and Isabelle "Izza" Joanisse with event manager Amber "Athena Twin PMS" Dalton. The team will arrive in South Africa on November 24th for 2 days of media touring and a photoshoot, then compete at the main feature event against the winners of the PLuGG Girls vs. Guys Game Off at a huge event party and tournament on November 29th at Turbine Hall in Johannesburg.
"We are very excited for the girls to play at the Plugg Game Off and show that women can compete against the guys," states the team organizer and PMS Clan leader Amber Dalton. "Win or Lose, we are looking forward to bringing a new era of women in CS so there is no confusion that women have talent in gaming…and era where women will compete regularly in male bracket events as a norm, not a one-off occurrence."
What started off in South African forums and blogs as a "guys are better than girls" statement, there is no doubt this team was created specifically to finish the smack talk. Each player on the team has been chosen carefully to bring valuable skills and experience to the team…and show to show male gamers that female players are a force to be reckoned.
About the PMS Clan Pandora's Mighty Soldiers (PMS Clan) is the world's largest competitive multi-platform online female gaming organization. Formed in 2002, their mission is to provide a fun, competitive and positive environment for female gamers. With over 600 females and thousands of male gamers across five continents, the PMS Clan and its male counterpart clan, H2O Clan, work hard to promote the idea of a more diversified competitive gaming landscape. Team sponsors include Alienware, ATI, Sapphire, Platronics, Patriot Memory and Pro Gamer.
About PLuGG PLuGG is the broadband and internet services division of InternetSolutions specifically for home users. PLuGG is all about broadband as a starting point and gets you connected to your universe. Once there, Explore, then Share, and with your connection and services, you may even Create and make this universe a busier place!
SEGA are aware that there have been some problems with the activation of Football Manager 2009 today. This has been due to a combination of issues relating to the printing of keycodes and the huge demand for the game
A solution is in place and is starting to clear the problem, we are confident that the issue will be solved today. The chances of successful authentication are increasing hourly. At this point consumers still experiencing difficulties are advised to leave a 10 minute gap between authentication attempts.
SEGA apologises for the disappointment caused by the problems with activating the game and asks for Football Manager fans to remain patient.
Speaking at the BMO Interactive Entertainment conference, Nintendo talked of the end of "passive entertainment" and explained how videogames were ideally positioned to take advantage of this.
"If you're in the entertainment business, any kind of entertainment, this is the game changer because no longer is entertainment a one way street of content created for audiences that just sit back and absorb it," Nintendo said. "The era of passive entertainment is waning, active entertainment is where the action is."
"Entertainment consumers are moving from react to interact," he added. "Now fortunately form the start this shift has worked to the advantage of everyone at videogames. It is who we are… Videogames have always been at the front lines of active entertainment and its revolution."
He went on to underline Nintendo's past and future focus on user-generated content, going as far to quote, Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, saying: "We believe that building a foundations where players' creativity is harnessed and the results are shared is becoming increasingly important."
1. Nintendo Wii: 803,000 2. Nintendo DS: 491,000 3. Xbox 360: 370,000 4. PlayStation Portable: 193,000 5. PlayStation 3: 190,000 6. PlayStation 2: 136,000
Despite the Xbox price cut Nintendo hammered the opposition to sell almost 1.3 million units.
Some players give themselves the ability to magically see and shoot through walls. Others find a way to fly, making them nearly impossible to defeat.
Cheating like this in video games has a long and even respected tradition. Games have often slyly included ways — intentionally or not — for sophisticated players to hack into the software and then skip levels or take on supernatural powers.
But these days, the subject is getting a more serious look. Unlike older games, today's are networked to be played with strangers over the Internet. And now, real money is at stake. Fantasy games like World of Warcraft and computer environs like Second Life, to name a few, have their own currency or other virtual valuables that can be traded for hard U.S. dollars.
In other words, hacking into a video game to cheat can be a business strategy. And so clamping down on it could be key to maintaining virtual worlds' economies and reputations. Even chip-maker Intel Corp. is suggesting a technology for doing it.
But one huge question is: Can cheating really be stifled?
"What I've always said is: It'll go away the same time crime goes away," said Tony Ray, founder of Even Balance Inc., which makes cheating-detection software called Punkbuster. "There's always somebody trying to get around the rules."
Perhaps, but Gary McGraw and Greg Hoglund, authors of the new book Exploiting Online Games, argue that video game makers could do much more to stop it. McGraw and Hoglund contend that poor software design enables the vast majority of cheats.
Complex games operate partly on central servers run by the game companies and partly on a player's own computer. Essentially, the individual computer reports back to the game on the mouse clicks or trigger pulls performed by the player, and the game registers the appropriate response. That's where cheating hacks often occur: Tell your computer to report 100 trigger pulls for every one actually made, and you've turned a pistol into a machine gun that racks up points much faster.
McGraw and Hoglund offer ideas for how game makers could seal up such holes. And they argue that the entire software industry needs to be watching, since these "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" are at the leading edge of computing.
"The kinds of problems that they are facing right now are direct indications of the kinds of software security problems we can all face in the coming years," McGraw said.
Cheating tools flourish online, catering to insiders conversant in the games' arcane language.
"Take advantage of this programming breakthrough — why waste time grinding with the grunts.... play WoW in GOD MODE!" reads one ad for a $25 downloadable cheat package for World of Warcraft that purports to be "undetectable."
Most online game companies appear resigned to the fact that cheating will occur, so they try to block it by observing game play and looking for suspicious things, like avatars unexpectedly teleporting.
In one incident that could serve as a test case, Linden Lab, creator of the virtual universe Second Life, ejected a Pennsylvania lawyer and confiscated his virtual property after accusing him of cheating its land-auction process. The lawyer is suing Linden Lab in federal court for $8,000 in restitution.
Nexon America Inc. employs a team of workers who actively look for cheating in its games, including KartRider and MapleStory. They apply patches to fix problems as they arise.
"It's a daily battle that ultimately we have to win," said Nexon's director of operations, Min Kim. "It's just the cost of doing business at this point."
"World of Warcraft" creator Blizzard Entertainment deploys a software program called the Warden to detect cheating and ban perpetrators, but wouldn't agree to an interview to talk about it. The Punkbuster software works on many first-person shooters and is still being used in new games, like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, in which players shoot their way through combat missions.
One problem is that these observer programs are invasive, since they must access the underlying operating system in a player's PC in order to sniff nefarious code. McGraw believes the Warden might even violate California's anti-spyware law.
Sometimes, there appears to be financial incentive for the game makers to be good — but not terrific — at stopping cheating. Consider this: Cheaters who get banned from games often immediately sign back up under a different user name, paying money for a new account in hopes of trying again. If cheating protections were significantly stronger, fewer perpetrators would continue to buy accounts.
Game companies might have better luck relying on reports of suspicious activity from legitimate players. One issue that irks aficionados is "gold farming," whereby people pay real money to companies like IGE.com in order to buy in-game currency. A recent check showed a World of Warcraft player could pay $420 to get 6,000 pieces of gold — enough to buy one of the game's pricey flying mounts. Other players have to laboriously work their way up to such achievements.
Buying gold breaks the game's terms of service — and it degrades the overall experience for everyone, said Hubert Thieblot, who leads Curse, one of the largest teams in World of Warcraft. A cheating player who takes all the targets in a certain area, for example, leaves too few for everyone else.
"You change your experience with how you play and how you behave," Thieblot said. "If you just buy gold you aren't going to do extra quests, you're not exploring areas as they want you to."
Although Intel's anti-cheating idea is still in the research phase, it could aid people like Thieblot.
Intel's technology would embed a module in a PC's circuitry that would analyze data coming off the keyboard and the mouse and compare it to what a game actually processes. If there are conflicts — the player clicked the mouse just once but the game read that as "fire 100 shots" — the Intel system would be able to signal the game makers or other players. The system could also put a "trusted" stamp on seemingly legitimate players.
Intel says its system would not degrade PC performance or be noticeable in game play, but the concept still needs work. Notably, it would require the support of PC makers as well as the game companies that would have to build in ties to the Intel system.
Meanwhile, Starr Long, who with industry veteran Richard Garriott is wrapping up the online sci-fi game Tabula Rasa for NCSoft Inc., worries that cheating can now ruin entire game worlds.
Like other game makers, Long won't get into specifics but says his programmers have done all they can to thwart cheating in Tabula Rasa.
"In the old days we didn't really think through what would happen once we started letting people play together," Long said. Now, Long says, "every single piece of content we put in the game, the first thing we say is 'Here's what we want this thing to do.' And the second thing we say is, 'OK, how are players going to try to exploit this?'"
Following in the footsteps of Nintendo's popular "Wii Fit," the video game publisher known for the "Madden" football games is jumping into fitness software targeted mostly at women.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vzaP6bPL5pDbYOUB6dup_JjaJbyFFcpcITmyfwhYr5cocOfpoAFeMRZI504AzqDFv_1s4Kx5smdbX3sg_vBtbHKoyW6HPxYYpW7w4ckVDX9M8g0E6Sf_yBqG8tDqiHlMJvMbWLgcLY9wt6Xw0kz4E5=s0-d)
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