dead-space posts

Electronic Arts's Redwood Shores, CA studio has been cracking out titles for quite some time, ranging from The Godfather games to the recent Simpsons title. The studio recently launched the Dead Space survival horror series and that may have been part of the reason why EA decided to give the Redwood Shores studio its own unique name.

In a new press release, EA has announced that it will now refer to the Redwood Shores studio as Visceral Games. The studio's web site has already launched and in a message its general manager Glen Schofield states, "We are not abandoning our past but embracing the future. With an obsessive focus on excellence and a relentless commitment to intense action, Visceral Games is set to execute all future games at the quality, innovation and polish of Dead Space." The studio will also have a branch in Melbourne, Australia. It's currently developing the third person action game Dante's Inferno and two more unannounced titles are in the works.

The annual Toy Fair is underway in New York City and alongside the typical new and upcoming action figures shown at the show for things like Marvel and DC super heroes, Star Wars, G.I.Joe and the like, there are quite a few new action figures based on games.

Figures.com has images from the show floor on many of these toys, including new entries in the Halo series from McFarlane Toys and Gears of War from NECA. The latter company is also showing off a number of other upcoming figures from games like Dead Space and the upcoming Prototype (show above) and Dante's Infermo. We are still waiting to see some Team Fortress 2 action figures; we might actually buy them.

Last week the Writers Guild of America nominated several games, mostly PC titles, for the game writing category in their annual awards. This week its the members of the Visual Effects Society who are handing out nominations for two game related categories in their annual awards.

The categories are for best real time effects and also for best pre-rendered effects. Five out of the six spots in the categories went to games published by Electronic Arts although we have to think Blizzard is the front runner for the pre-rendered cinematic award for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. The awards ceremony will be held on Feb. 21.

Outstanding Real Time Visuals in a Video Game
Crysis Warhead
Zoltan Pocza, Gabor Mogyorosi, Tamas Schlagl
Dead Space
Ian Milham, Ben Wanat, Christopher Stone
Need For Speed Undercover
Henry LaBounta, Steve Barcia, Dave Taylor, Carl Jarrett

Outstanding Pre-Rendered Visuals in a Video Game
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Chrono-Lab, Empire and Allied Scenes
Richard Taylor, Benjamin Hopkins, KaTai Tang, Mical Pedriana
Need For Speed Undercover - Cinematics
Henry LaBounta, Steve Barcia, Dave Taylor, Mark Raham
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Intro Cinematic
Jeff Chamberlain, Phillip Hillenbrand

Valve has brought back their regular weekend sale to their Steam service this week with something of an old school flavor. They have the entire X-Com franchise (five games in all) on sale this weekend only for just $4.99. That's a 66 percent savings from the pack's normal $14.99 price tag.

Also during the past week Steam has added number of games that were released in retail stores in the fall of 2008. These include EA's Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 and Dead Space along with Codemasters' Rise of the Argonauts and Activision's Quantum of Solace. They are all full price but hey, at least you won't have to deal with EA's DRM issues.

We named Electronic Arts sci-fi survival horror title Dead Space the best PC action game of 2008. If you also enjoyed the game you might be interested to know that the comic book web site Newsarama has posted up the entire first issue of the Dead Space comic book mini-series for free.

Published last year before the game was released the six-issue mini-series from Image Comics serves as a prequel to the game's storyline so if you have yet to play the game you might want to hold off until you do so before you read the comic. The entire mini-series has now been collected in a hardcover collection and is now on sale.

In perhaps their biggest game publisher deal yet, Valve has announced secured the rights to distribute a number of PC game titles from Electronic Arts via their Steam service. EA has previously handled downloadable PC game titles via their own EA Downloader service but now Spore, Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect, FIFA Manager 09, and Need For Speed Undercover are now all available to purchase and download via Steam (sorry, rest of the world, this is for North America only).

In addition to those games, EA will also offer Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Dead Space and the upcoming PC port of Mirror's Edge via Steam in the near future. When contacted by Big Download, an EA spokesperson would not comment if any of EA's older PC games might find their way onto Steam as well. If you have been wanting to buy EA games but have been avoiding purchasing them because of EA's use of DRM in their recent titles, a message of Valve's Steam forums states that the EA games on Steam do not use third party DRM or SecuROM set-up, saying, " the only DRM it uses is Steam itself."

A financial analyst predicted it Monday and today Electronic Arts confirmed it. The game publisher is suffering through lower-than-expected sales of its many games this fall and as a result EA said that "...it expects net revenue and earnings per share for fiscal year 2009 to be below the financial guidance previously provided on October 30, 2008."

While we will have to wait until EA's next official financial update in February 2009 to get specific numbers, the publisher confirmed that they plan to "...pursue cost saving initiatives including a reduction of its product portfolio for fiscal year 2010 with additional associated headcount reductions and facility consolidations." EA is holding a conference call for investors at the time of this news post and we will report in if there is any significant news from the call.

Update: EA execs have finished their conference call but company execs had little new info to share with analysts. They repeated that they plan to cut both games and team members for their future plans but would not go into specifics. They did say that some games have performed well sales-wise like Spore, Dead Space and Warhammer Online but strongly hinted that Mirror's Edge did not perform up to their expectations. However a sequel to the game is still planned.

The National Institute on Media and the Family has attacked the game industry for years and has also issued their annual "report card" on both the industry and specific games. In the past they have generated a lot of publicity for their report card by holding press conferences in Washington DC with various national lawmakers also taking part.

However, the game industry has taken huge steps in the last few years to police itself through both its ESRB ratings system and enforcement of those ratings in retail stores. So this year's report card by the NIMF is very low key with just a media announcement and no press conference or senators around. Indeed, the actual report card on the industry has the industry getting almost straight "A"s (they got a B+ for ratings enforcement). So the organization is now focusing on getting parents involved in making sure they know what games their kids are playing.

The NIMF has also issued a list of games children should avoid playing. All of these games are rated "M" for Mature so the industry has already done its job in labeling them as not appropriate for kids. They include games released for the PC platform like Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Silent Hill Homecoming and Legendary (another game, Saints Row 2, is due for release on the PC this January).

You may notice that this week the BigCast has gone missing in action. Don't fear, next week's planned show is going to be an extra special episode where bloggers throughout the Joystiq Network give their two cents on the recent crop of big name PC releases. Left 4 Dead, Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Fallout 3 are all going to be planned segments in a hefty show that includes eight servings of your weekly podcast requirement.

Add to that a standard episode format which will showcase the best from around Big Download, Would You Rather of epic proportions and maybe a few non-Joystiq guest hosts.

It's an episode so big we couldn't even contain it to bring it to you this week ... that and we needed more time to get a feel for Left 4 Dead. Okay, we're lying. We're just really busy playing Left 4 Dead. Can you blame us?

Have a comment or question you want us to discuss on next week's show? Email us at podcast [at] bigdownload [dot] com

The last truly frightening movie I ever saw was The Blair Witch Project. Regardless of your particular feelings about that film, it scared the living hell out of me far out of proportion to what I'd been expecting when I went in to see it. Bear in mind that I hadn't seen any trailers promoting it, hadn't been exposed to any of the viral Internet marketing associated with its release, and none of my friends had seen it yet. I was going into it completely cold, the week it opened, expecting nothing more than a Friday the 13th Part 4-level jump-at-you scarefest.

I walked out of the theater numb, and was unable to go near a dark wooded area for weeks afterward. Certain sounds from the movie kept replaying themselves in my head, and even watching television shows or commercials that featured shaky hand-held video evoked that perfect dread. Needless to say, it was one of the most effective horror experiences I've ever had.

I have yet to see a video game affect me the same way.