marvel-universe-online posts

Today was a tad slow on the news front thanks to the "Easter Monday" holiday celebrated in Europe and even parts of the US (unofficially). Things should be back to normal tomorrow.

• Steam has new automatic updates for Dinner Date, Atom Zombie Smasher and the Steam client itself.
• Film director James Cameron says games will lead the 3D charge into the home.
• Is Valve done with making single player only games after Portal 2's release?
• Marvel Comics will be revealing the first concrete info on its Marvel Universe MMO on Thursday, including the name of the game's writer.

Just a couple of days after Cryptic Studios CEO John Needham announced he would be leaving the MMO game developer, Gazillion Entertainment announced today that Needham is joining the company as its new CEO. Needham will be working with David Brevik who was named as Gazillion's president just a couple of months ago.

Needham takes over Gazillion at a time where the company has announced that it will be concentrating its efforts on developing free-to-play browser-based MMOs. It sold off its development team for its October 2010 game Lego Universe to the Lego Group just a few weeks ago. It still operates several game development studios including one that's making a Marvel Universe Online MMO title.

[Via email press release]

One of the more interesting reveals in the game business this year was Gazillion Entertainment. The MMO developer had been in existence but in stealth mode, under another name, for a few years before revealing itself publically last March. Now the company has announced that it has hired a former Microsoft Games Studios executive to be its new VP of Studios.

Stuart Moulder worked at Microsoft for eight years and managed a number of their internal studios including the now defunct Ensemble Studios and FASA Interactive. Moulder will handle the game development management of Gazillion's multiple studios. They include Netdevil (working on Jumpgate Evolution), Gargantuan (working on the recently revealed Marvel Universe MMO) and Slipgate Ironworks (working on an MMO led by former id Software designer John Romero).

The month of March may be the start of spring but its also the time that the game industry also seems to come out of its shell. Believe it or not game publishers are already prepping their marketing and PR efforts for the holiday season and March is usually when they begin to announce new game titles that will be released this fall.

This past March has turned out to be no exception to that rule. Thanks in part to the annual Game Developers Conference there were plenty of new games and projects revealed in the past 31 days. However the biggest announcement wasn't a game at all. Big Download decided to look back at March as we go over our picks for the top 10 biggest news events of the past month.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Top PC Game News Stories of March 2009

If you though that you might have to wait a long time fore the recently announced Marvel Universe MMO to be released, you are absolutely right. In a post over at MTV's comic book themed blog Splash Page Marvel's president of worldwide consumer products, Simon Philips, stated that the game won't be coming out until 2012.

According to the article Marvel settled on that year because of its scheduling of the massive slate of upcoming movies based on its characters. The group-themed Avengers movie is also set for a 2012 release date. Philips is quoted as saying, "It sounds like a long way away, but it's not. We've got to create, together with [game publisher] Gazillion, that environment that is going to be a totally immersive experience and a perpetual storytelling experience as well."

By John Gaudiosi

According to Rob Hutter, CEO and president of Gazillion Entertainment, the best way to combat Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, the Goliath of the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game business, is to think bigger. The new privately-held MMO game publisher, based in San Mateo, CA, is focusing on the large untapped mainstream audience that Nintendo has captured with its now-ubiquitous Wii console. Although Gazillion is developing a trio of original mass market MMOs, none of which have been revealed yet, its first two big licensing deals are with Marvel Entertainment and LEGO.

And the carnage continues: Last week we presented a feature gallery that looked at a lot of PC titles from the past that were first announced (sometimes to massive hype) and then for one reason or another failed to show up on your favorite store shelves. But we aren't done yet...not by a long shot.

In part two of our look at the games that never will be, we have got not one, not two but three Star Trek games that won't see the light of day. However this article concentrates on the many, many MMO titles that were announced but didn't make it to going live. Some of them were in beta testing before the decision was made to pull the plug. Which ones are they?

Click on the image above to continue reading "Neverware: Cancelled PC Games Part 2"

Many people wondered exactly why Microsoft decided to cancel plans to make a MMO based on the Marvel Universe staple of super hero characters. The game was supposed to be developed by Cryptic Studios (they moved on to their own super hero MMO Champions Online. Now a new interview with Marvel Comic scriptwriter Brian Michael Bendis on on Comicmix reveals there is a (sort of) copy of the Marvel MMO somewhere out there.

Bendis is one of Marvel Comics' most prolific writers and has been responsible for titles like Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, New Avengers and crossover mini-series like House of M and the new Secret Invasion (Bendis is also the writer of the Halo: Uprising mini-series which has only had two of its four issues published due to issues with Bungie with the storyline). As it turned out Bendis was also working on the Marvel Universe MMO before it's cancellation: