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Nvidia To Showcase Phantom At CES 11:36 am
- Andrew Burnes
- games: vaporware
(4 comments)
Infinium Labs and Nvidia are teaming up to show the Phantom 'console' at CES in January:
Infinium Labs' selection of NVIDIA to supply graphics processing chips for the company's Phantom Game Service signals the emerging importance of graphics processing in the home entertainment stack.
Infinium will incorporate NVIDIA's state-of-the-art GeForce line of graphics processing units (GPUs) and nForce platform processors in its Phantom Game Service to deliver top quality graphics, cinematic gaming, and media and communication processing performance to players of the on-demand game service, set for launch in 2005.
"Gamers want crisp, vivid images," said Kevin Bachus, president, Infinium Labs. "NVIDIA's GeForce and nForce processors will help us deliver the best possible on-demand performance to our customers, direct to the living room."
Thanks Hard OCP/WildSweet&Cool.;
Tax Breaks For L.A. Developers 11:04 am
- Andrew Burnes
- games: general news
(2 comments)
The AP reports that Louisiana is offering tax credits to development studios and developers who move to the state from Hollywood in an attempt to create a new entertainment industry hub to benefit their local economy:
"One thing this program has taught us is that the transferable tax credit is a powerfully effective economic development tool," said Will French, president of Louisiana Production Capital, which buys tax credits from studios and sells them at a discounted rate to taxpayers.
"It works best if an industry is highly mobile, like video-game production," he said. "When I first heard 'video-game production' I sneered, then I realized it was a bigger industry than film."
But game companies will only come if Louisiana can produce skilled programmers and designers for them to employ to capture the tax credits. And such training must come from the universities, said Stephen Beck, director of the LSU Laboratory for Creative Technologies.
F.E.A.R. Movie 10:49 am
- Andrew Burnes
- games: action
(1 comment)
VUG has released the E3 F.E.A.R. movie, sans GameSpot watermarks. Running at 13 minutes long, the video shows off gameplay from Monolith's snazzy looking first-person shooter that's due to hit shop shelves sometime in 2005.
Download from one of the following locations:
French Government To Protect Ubisoft From EA? 02:58 am
- Andrew Burnes
- games: general news
(25 comments)
An AFX Financial report suggests that the French government may take steps to protect Ubisoft from acquisition by EA, should they decide to expand their 19.9% ownership:
The heads of the studios fear that a purchase of Ubisoft by EA would lead to the disappearance of the last decision making centre in France for the video games industry, La Tribune added.
Ubisoft said last night it is not in talks 'at present' with EA about the US company's recent purchase of a stake.
'In light of recent news spread by the press, Ubisofts board of directors reiterates that, in the absence of information from Electronic Arts regarding its intentions, the latter's acquisition of 19.9 pct of the groups capital is unsolicited and currently considered as hostile,' the company said.
Les Echos newspaper reported yesterday that Ubisoft will gather together some of its largest shareholders next week in a bid to convince them not to throw their weight behind EA.
Age of Empires 3 Announcement Closer... 01:35 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- games: real-time strategy
(1 comment)
The teaser image on the Ensemble Studios website is up to circa 1999, so the next update should in theory be circa 2004. Since tomorrow is the last day of 2004, hopefully the official Age of Empires 3 announcement should come on Friday. That, or I suck at math.
Ubisoft CEO Speaks out Against EA 12:31 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- games: general news
(2 comments)
In a rare holiday update, Gamespot interviewed Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot who speaks his mind about the deal which recently gave EA 20% of Ubisoft stock:
GS: Your company's mission statement is supported by six core values, one is to "play fair." Do you feel that EA has played fair in this stock acquisition?
YG: Considering the industry practice of communicating informally about such decisions, we were disappointed, to say the very least, that EA chose not to inform us of their specific plans beforehand.
Star Wars Republic Commando Video 12:21 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- games: action
(1 comment)
The chaps at Gamesdomain kicked up some new video footage of Star Wars Republic Commando: It's Star Wars Tom Clancy-style in LucasArts' first foray into tactical squad-based first-person shooters. Our seven-part series of videos offers a walkthrough from the developers on many game elements, including squad interaction and tactics, tips and tricks, and enemy AI. Republic Commando hits stores in March 2005.
Parts one and two of their coverage is online now, with more to follow.
Deus Ex: Invisible War Walkthrough 12:15 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- games: action / roleplaying
(7 comments)
Better late than never, right? Gamebanshee slapped up a guide for Ion Storm's Deus Ex: Invisible War, "which includes an extensive walkthrough for the game." Interested parties can check that out here.
Empire Earth II Update 12:08 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- games: real-time strategy
(1 comment)
Mad Doc sent over an update for Empire Earth II as well as a newsletter which you may of already seen a couple days ago. Here's a clip of the update; the rest can be found in the comments since it's a tad long:
In developing Empire Earth II, the first thing we did was our homework. We went straight to the source: fans. We took a good hard look at what fans loved about Empire Earth, as well as what they didn't like as much, and we listened. So while it pays homage to all the things that made Empire Earth a great game, Empire Earth II is different from its predecessor in a lot of ways. First, we have a brand new engine, created entirely from scratch to take advantage of the latest DirectX 9 features and to push the newest video cards to their max. We've implemented new, non-cheating AI, and we started over with every aspect of the code. In a nutshell, we basically took everything fans loved about Empire Earth and made it bigger and better, and we took everything they didn't love out, or fixed it.
Holiday WPG 12:03 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- games: general news
(0 comments)
Not enough news to do a daily lube, so here's a round-up from the past week:
In Other News... 12:01 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- in-house: in other news...
(8 comments)
Just two more days of 2004; where did the time go? Ah well, it was a pretty good year, so I can't complain much. Today's question is:
Which do you think had a better showing in 2004, PC or consoles? Which plaform had the better titles?
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