trackmania-2 posts

While the team at developer Nadeo and publisher Ubisoft has been pretty quiet about the progress of the long awaited Trackmania 2, it looks like the door to more info about the racing game sequel is slowly opening up. Today a teaser site for the game, now apparently titled Trackmania 2 Canyon for some reason, has launched.

Along with the site comes the first teaser trailer for Trackmania 2, shown above, that's ...well, it doesn't show a lot at all. However the site does state that more info on the game will be revealed in the next issues of PC Gamer and Edge print magazine which should be coming in mid-May.

It's been nearly a year since Ubisoft announced plans for ManiaPlanet, an umbrella title for developer Nadeo's three planned PC games. The first was supposed to be Trackmania 2, the full sequel to their popular racing game with a beta test planned by the end of 2010.

Obviously Nadeo missed that timetable but today on the official ManiaPlanet forums the development team finally released the first real screenshot from Trackmania 2. While there's still no clear word on when the beta for the game will begin the fact that the team is releasing screenshots means that there is finally progress.

[Via Blue's News]

Last June at E3, Ubisoft's press conference announced its plans for Maniaplanet, its PC exclusive platform from developer Nadeo that included the upcoming racing-puzzle sequel Trackmania 2. A beta test for Trackmania 2 was supposed to start in the fourth quarter of 2010 but as you can see that date has come and gone.

Now in a post on Maniaplanet's official forums a Nadeo rep gives a tiny news update, stating, "At the moment, the news can start in March and the latest it can start is April. I am trying to make everybody ready for the new adventure of maniaplanet, and it takes a lot of time." Apparently some of the delay can be attributed to the development team moving to new offices." Ubisoft's next financial report is due to be announced next week and perhaps the publisher will give more info on Maniaplanet's status.

For the past few days we have been going over our most anticipated PC games in the next 12 months in the first person shooter, action, RPG-MMO and strategy genres. But there are a lot of games that just don't fit comfortably in those categories. But that doesn't make them any less notable in our eyes. Also there are some games that we missed out on writing about in our previous parts of the series.

Today is the conclusion of our most anticipated PC games feature of 2011. Today's list includes a number of racing games along with some sim titles, adventure games and indie titles. As with our previous articles these games are listed in order of their planned release dates but those dates can, and usually do, change with little notice.

Every year we are surprised by the number of games that manage to be released. But there are always PC game titles that are announced and then pretty much disappear from view. These are the games that Big Download puts the label "Vaporware" On. Unlike other such web sites, we consider vaporware to be any PC game that was announced, lots of time with much hype, only to go into a cave with little to no info revealed about the game at all.

That's why you won't see games like Diablo III or even Duke Nukem Forever on this list. Yes, they are taking a long time to be completed but at least the development teams behind them have shown the game off in playable form in the past year and it looks like they may actually be released. But that's not the case with most of the games on our new 2010 PC game vaporware list. While they may all finally come out of their shell, we have no idea when that will be at this point.

So which games made our top 10 list this year? Check after the jump to find out for yourself. Just be careful: It's dark in there.

While all of us are waiting to play Trackmania 2, developer Nadeo is still supporting the earlier titles in the racing game series. This week the developer announced some changes that it is making for people who play the free Trackmania Nations Forever in online multiplayer.

Simply put, Nadeo is now restricting direct access for online play of the game to the servers that the developer itself hosts. This is due to the previously announced shut down of Nadeo's in-game ad agency for the game Massive. However, folks who want to sign on to user-run third party multiplayer servers can still do so by adding those servers to the player's favorites list but that list is limited to just three servers per account. According to Nadeo's statement, "The goal of this operation is to better welcome the free players in a place that encourage them more to buy the paying game (TrackMania United Forever) while preserving the capacity for the most enthusiastic players to access to all servers."

[Via Blue's News]

Download the Trackmania Nations Forever game from Big Download

Ubisoft's latest financial report is the definition of the term "mixed". The France-based game publisher reported that revenues for the first six months of its current fiscal year (which ended on September 30) came in at 260 million euros, up 57 percent from the same period a year ago. However the company still recorded a net loss of 89.8 million euros for the time period compared to a loss of 52 million euros from the same period a year ago. Ubisoft stated it had lower than expected sales for its RTS game R.U.S.E. as well as the console version of H.A.W.X 2 (the PC version was released just a few days ago).

Ubisoft also said it took a one time 62.1 million euro charge for a reorganization of its studios which it said "resulted in the termination of certain projects". The report didn't name any specific games as being cancelled. In another part of the financial report it said there have been "team reductions" at some studios while others have seen team increases. Overall Ubisoft said it currently has 6,200 employees compared to a year ago when it had 6,400 team members

Last June at Ubisoft's E3 press conference, the publisher made an out-of-left-field announcement as it revealed plans for ManiaPlanet, a PC-specific platform that would allow gamers to make and share content for three genres. ManiaPlanet is an outgrowth of Ubisoft's 2009 purchase of Trackmania developer Nadeo.

The E3 press conference said that ManiaPlanet would begin in the fourth quarter of 2010 with beta testing of Trackmania 2, the first full sequel to Nadeo's popular racing game. Since the announcement there's been little word on the status of the game or of ManiaPlanet as a whole. In a recent forum post on the ManiaPlanet message board a Nadeo rep wrote, "the only news I can give is that we are moving forward and that maniaplanet is shaping well." The rep also seemed to hint that the Trackmania 2 beta will likely be pushed back, stating, "from the E3 video, the target is Q42010, and I think it would still be feasible in term of code but to be as efficient as possible on many topics, we will probably take more time before the betas."

A while back Ubisoft announced that it had purchased the French game developer Nadeo, the creators of the Trackmania racing game franchise. Today at their Ubisoft E3 2010 press conference it was announced that Nadeo is working on not just a game but a whole platform that will let people make their own games.

The concept is called Maniaplanet and Ubisoft says it will let people not only use development tools to make content for Trackmania titles but also first person shooters (Shootmania) and RPGs (Questmania). Maniaplanet will be the online social link for these games with players sharing their user-generated content. It will begin late this year with the beta test of Trackmania 2. Shootmania's beta starts in the first quarter of 2011. No date was revealed for Questmania's launch.