Massively posts

While PC gamers are still waiting for our port of the recent console action game Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (it's due out in the first quarter of 2011) publisher Ubisoft is looking to make even more games in the best selling game franchise. This week the publisher confirmed via its Twitter page that one of its internal developers, Massive Entertainment, is now working on an Assassin's Creed game.

That revelation is interesting since Massive is known as a maker of PC exclusive RTS games. It started out under Vivendi Games' with the two sci-fi Ground Control games and then created the terrific alternate timeline "Soviet Union invades the US" RTS game World in Conflict. Ubisoft bought the developer in 2008 and released the expansion pack World in Conflict Soviet Assault in March 2009. Until this week there's been no word on what the developer has been working on for Ubisoft.

[via Kotaku]

The in-game advertising division of Microsoft might be closing its doors. According to a report on the Media Week web site, which cites unnamed sources, the Massive division is to be closed at the end of October. According to the story Microsoft has been shopping Massive around to other companies to no avail.

Microsoft purchased Massive back in 2006. At the time in-game advertising was considered a huge growth industry which is maybe why Microsoft reportedly paid as much as $400 million for Massive. Even with the effects of the Great Recession, the division's general manager JJ Richards said in October 2009 that Massive had achieved "double-digit year-on-year revenue growth." However Media Week claims that Massive lost a major revenue source earlier this year when publisher Electronic Arts decided to take its in-game ad business in-house. According to the story Richard is currently looking for another job while other Massive team members will be assigned to other Microsoft projects.

Joystiq isn't the only site on our network giving out awards today. Our sister site Massively has also posted up its own set of awards in the massively multiplayer game category. They have a separate reader's choice awards but when you read the article you can see those awards were pretty much high jacked by a particular group of players for one specific game.

The staff picks for the Massively 2009 awards picked quite a few smaller MMOs to honor this year including their choice for Best Overall New MMO of the year. You can also check out the staff's predictions for 2010. They also look back at their top features for 2009 and their top news stories for 2009.

Our family of gaming web sites always seems to be in a state of flux. Earlier this year our sister site Joystiq got a major design revamp and consolidated all of their console sites into the Joystiq mothership. Today another of our sister sites, Massively, got a design refresh of its own.

If you head on over to the site right now you can see that Massively's new design reflects the new Joystiq revamp with wider posts, bigger images and more. Of course there's been no change at all to Massively's extensive coverage of the MMO game genre with previews, interviews, regular features and more every day.

The 2009 edition of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco may be over but articles from the event are still coming in. While we had our own correspondent there out sister sites Joystiq and Massively were also at the annual event that brings game creators together to talk shop.

Naturally Massively's GDC 2009 coverage was all about the MMO genre. They have posted up hands-on coverage for games like Aion, an interview with the Fallen Earth team and more. Joystiq's GDC 2009 coverage did include a lot of console specific news and previews but they did catch up with some PC games including some time with our new favorite game title Stalin Vs Martians. Look for even more GDC coverage from us and from our sisters sites in the days ahead.

All week long, Massively.com has been offering up feature after feature on EA Mythic's in-development MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The Massively goes to WAR feature series takes you front to back through almost every moment of our time at Mythic's Virginia headquarters. To wrap it all up, we've got a handy-dandy clickable guide to the series. Whether you're into hardcore PvP, dungeon delving, crafting, or are a total MMO newb, we've got you covered. Click on through, and explore the world of Warhammer.

Our sister-site Massively recently got to chat with the president of Trion World, Jon Van Caneghem. If the company and the name don't ring a bell, let us give you a quick overview. Jon Van Caneghem is the original creator of the Might and Magic seres and co-founder of Trion World. The company recently announced a partnership with the Sci-Fi channel that will see them developing and publishing an MMO that will live alongside an upcoming show on the network. Which is a concept that we think is incredibly cool, if they can pull it off.

If you happen to think similarly to us, then it's well worth your time to check out the interview with Caneghem about all things past, present and future for him and his company.