legendary posts

While other game publishers (*cough* Midway *cough* THQ *cough* EA) are in various states of financial decline at the moment, smaller game publisher Southpeak Games actually had a solid quarter of revenues and profits, at least according to their latest financial results.

The company revealed that its last financial quarter, which ended Dec. 31, 2008, had revenues of $17.3 million for the time period, over four times the amount it got for the same time period a year ago ($4.2 million). Southpeak pulled in a profit of $1.2 million for the last quarter. Last fall the company bought out Gamecock's game line-up, including Legendary. and this year the company has plans to publish a number of PC game titles including Section 8, Velvet Assassin and the upcoming fantasy RPG sequel Two Worlds: The Temptation.

This is the demo for Legendary, a first-person shooter where players combat mythological creatures set free from Pandora's Box.
Download Legendary Demo (1.92 GB)
Check out all Legendary downloads

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).

These new trailers for Legendary showcase the different monsters players will encounter during the course of the game. Many, like the Minotaur in the video featured above, are from mythology and brought to life when Pandora's Box was opened. The game is currently out for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A PC version is expected to release on November 17.

Download HD Legendary - Griffon Trailer (108 MB)
Download HD Legendary - Werewolf Trailer (135 MB)
Download HD Legendary - Fire Drake Trailer (131 MB)
Download HD Legendary - Minotaur Trailer (139 MB)
Download HD Legendary - Nari Trailer (106 MB)
Download HD Legendary - Blood Ticks Trailer (110 MB)
Download HD Legendary - Golem and Kraken Trailer (106 MB)

There's been a little confusion over the release date for Legendary, the upcoming modern day mythological themed FPS from developer Spark Unlimited. The problems began when the game's original publisher Gamecock was purchased a couple of weeks ago by Southpeak Games.

Now the final release date has been announced for the game. Legendary will now head to stores for the PC on the week of Nov. 18 (the console versions are due in stores next week). Legendary's PC version will now be competing head-to-head with the launch of the highly anticipated shooter Left 4 Dead from Valve; it's also scheduled to ship to stores the same week.

This trailer gets players pysched to battle mythological beasts in Legend. Pandora's Box will be opened, unleashing hordes of creatures onto an unsuspecting world, next week when the game releases on October 28.

Download HD Legendary: Man vs Myth Trailer (236 MB)
Check out all Legendary Downloads

Gallery: Legendary

The folks at Phillips have been promoting their game-oriented multi-media hardware amBX for some time and now the company is cutting the division's cords and letting it loose. Today Phillips announced that the amBX team (based in the UK) is now spinning off into their own stand alone business, amBX UK Limited.

In case you are not familiar with amBX it's basically a series of speakers, lights and fans that react with amBX enabled games like Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, Far Cry 2 and the upcoming Legendary and Velvet Assassin. This new business move will enable amBX to continue to expand to support more games as well as support films, TV shows and other media outlets

After founding the almost legendary Gathering of Developers and then seeing that publishing company sold off to Take Two Interactive, Mike Wilson and a number of other members of that original team reformed in early 2007 (with help from some still unnamed investors) to form Gamecock Media Group. As with the original Gathering, Gamecock was a publisher that concentrated mostly on original and sometimes innovative game titles and also staged some weird marketing moves, including holding a "funeral" for E3 and Wilson running a mock campaign president of the video game trade group the Entertainment Software Association.

However their first games got mixed results in sales and in reviews which is perhaps the reason why it was announced this week that another publisher, Southpeak Games, would be buying out Gamecock and ending the Austin, Texas based team's second major bid to be an alternative publisher.

Big Download managed to get Southpeak Games' CEO Melanie Mroz to answer a few questions about the new Southpeak-Gamecock deal and but as you can see there's still some unknowns that have yet to be addressed, including whether or not the Gamecock brand you see above will survive.

One of the game industry's more interesting publishers (both in games and in their marketing) has decided to give up at least part of their independence. The Austin-based Gamecock Media Group, formed largely by the founders of the original Gathering of Developers, has now been acquired by Southpeak Interactive. Specific financial terms were not disclosed.

Officially announced in early 2007, Gamecock generated a lot of attention thanks in part to its over-the-top marketing and promotion, including parties and press events that were different than the norm (including a "funeral" for the old E3 format). The games, however, have so far met with mixed responses from both critics and sales (and one game, the PC MMO title Fury, was an unmitigated disaster as it shut down only a few months after its release). Two upcoming Gamecock titles, Mushroom Men and Legendary, are still due out this fall with Velvet Assassin due out in early 2009. The press release did not mention what will happen to Gamecock's other announced titles (Dungeon Hero, Section 8 and the unnamed action game from Croteam)

We are only a few weeks from the release of Legendary, the big Gamecock Media title for the fall/holiday season and today their PR folks sent over some new screenshots of the upcoming first person shooter from developer Spark Unlimited.

The new screenshots show off lots of the monster attacks that are at the heart of Legendary which shows what happens if Pandora's Box was not only a real thing but if someone unwittingly opens up its contents. The new shots show off what looks like a massive tentacled creature that is destroying London. So far there's no word on if a PC demo for Legendary is in the works.