Silicon Knights lays off 75 per cent of staff – report
Too Human developer Silicon Knights has cut its workforce from 97 to 25 employees, according to sources reportedly close to the Ontario-based studio. More >
Too Human developer Silicon Knights has cut its workforce from 97 to 25 employees, according to sources reportedly close to the Ontario-based studio. More >
Unity Technologies' 3D development platform Unity is to power a new virtual world to help soldiers to keep in touch with friends and family. Billed as a "community hub," the Army OneSource Virtual World is set in a virtual army campus split into several areas in which soldiers and their loved ones can interact not only with each other, but with those in similar situations and develop emotional and physical resilience, dubbed Virtual Resiliency. More >
Electronic Arts sustained a loss of $340 million (£212.2 million) in the three months to September 30, a rise of 69 per cent year on year. The loss comes despite an increase in the publisher's net sales revenue of 13 per cent, to $715 million (£446.3 million). Among factors contributing to that discrepancy are sales and marketing costs, as well as R&D.; More >
Mike Morhaime, president of World Of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, has apologised for homophobic comments made in a video shown on the closing night of last weekend's Blizzcon festival. The comments came from Cannibal Corpse frontman George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, who was performing vocals for Blizzard's staff band Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain. While the video was censored, Fisher was clearly heard using homophobic slurs against members of the Alliance faction. More >
Bethesda has suffered a further setback in the Fallout MMOG dispute with Interplay after its US court after its appeal against an earlier decision was denied. Last month the publisher's motion for a temporary restraining order against Interplay and Masthead, the developer to whom it had subcontracted work on the MMOG, dubbed Fallout Online, was denied. More >
2Yesterday's announcement of Grand Theft Auto had a predictable effect on Take-Two's share price, with its US stock rising six per cent. The publisher's shares rose as high as $15.71 during the day, settling at $15.22 at the close of trading and rising again to $15.36 in afterhours trading. More >
2Servers have been up and down all night on the Xbox 360 version of Battlefield 3. The game launched in North America yesterday, but despite a beta test which publisher EA says was downloaded 9.5 million times on all platforms, it appears players have been struggling to get into multiplayer games. More >
6A US appeals court has upheld last year's verdict which awarded Ultima creator Richard Garriott $28 million following his acrimonious departure from MMOG developer NCSoft. The decision, reported by Gamasutra, was reached by a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit Court Of Appeals, and adds interest and legal fees to take Garriott's total award to $32 million (£20 million). More >
A total of 568 games have been submitted for consideration in the Independent Games Festival (IGF) Main Competition, setting a new record with a 45 per cent increase on last year's figure. As Gamasutra notes, mobile game submissions - which have their own category for the first time this year - have almost doubled year on year. More >
Nvidia has released the full keynote from its recent GeForce LAN 6 event in San Francisco. Johan Andersson, visual architect at Swedish developer DICE, explains how the graphics in the Battlefield series have evolved from the release of Battlefield 1942 in 2002 to Battlefield 3, which has launched in North America today and makes its European debut on Friday. More >
Trion Worlds, the Californian developer of MMOG Rift, is planning on joining the rush of technology firms to the US stock market with an initial public offering (IPO). Speaking to Bloomberg, chief executive Lars Buttler said that an IPO was a likely prospect given the pace at which Trion Worlds has grown: it has raised $100 million in venture capital since 2007, and has doubled its headcount to 500 in the last 12 months alone. A million copies of Rift were sold in just four months. More >
The number of people playing Team Fortress 2 has increased by a factor of five since it switched to the free-to-play model, according to Gabe Newell, co-founder of developer Valve. Newell revealed the news at a recent conference in Seattle, Geek Wire reports. Valve is also seeing a far higher percentage of players purchasing virtual items through microtransactions than is typical across the industry. More >
Blizzard Entertainment is to allow modders to charge for their creations through Blizzard Arcade, a revised version of the Blizzard Marketplace to launch alongside StarCraft II expansion Heart Of The Swarm. The publisher revealed Arcade, a hub for free and premium user-made mods and games created using the StarCraft II mod tools, during a panel at this weekend's Blizzcon event in California. More >
"I feel very accountable for the situation and it's really hard to go through these steps in this way." More >
A demo of FIFA 12 is now available to play through YouTube with no download, powered by Gaikai. Only available in the US at the moment, the news was tweeted by Gaikai CEO David Perry earlier today. More >
Simultaneous two image display and full-HD 3D made affordable. More >
2Cuts necessary in order to refocus resources that have been spread too thin, says the EVE Online developer. More >
1The first speakers at next year's Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences summit revealed. More >
Simultaneous launch and pricing for each territory detailed.
7Nintendo's decision to cut the price of 3DS appears to have paid off with a ten per cent sales jump in the US, according to data from NPD. The sales increase reflects a month-on-month jump from August (when the price cut was announced) to September, and comes amid an overall six per cent downturn for physical sales in the US. More >