Headline RePLAY – 3.30.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: BioWare receives and re-donates 400 cupcakes, Microsoft responds to a study that claims credit card information can be retrieved from pre-owned Xbox 360s and analysts believe that neither Sony nor Microsoft will block pre-owned titles on their next-gen hardware.

Yesterday, 400 cupcakes donated by Mass Effect 3 fans as a form of friendly protest to the game’s controversial endings arrived on BioWare’s doorstep at Edmonton, Canada. BioWare went to the forums to thank fans for their “creative” and “thoughtful” attempts but ultimately donated them to a local youth shelter.

“The gesture certainly gained our attention both with its creativity and deliciousness,” said BioWare’s Chris Priestly. “However, while we do appreciate that fans were creative in how they expressed their views, after a lot of discussion, we decided ultimately the reason that they were sent was not done in the context of celebrating the work or accomplishment of the Mass Effect 3 team. This is a subtle, but important aspect in determining how to pass the feedback to the team.”

In that context, rather than handing out the cupcakes to staff or “wasting good food,” BioWare instead donated them on behalf of the fans to a local Edmonton youth shelter.

“We know that for the kids that have to use this facility, something as simple as a cupcake is a rare treat and would definitely brighten up their day,” said Priestly. “Thank you for the fine folks at the local youth shelter for accepting the donation and to the fans who donated the cupcakes.”

*Source: BioWare Forums

After it was reported that hackers can obtain credit card information from pre-owned and refurbished Xbox 360s, Microsoft responded swiftly to assure owners that the company is investigating Drexel University’s research.

“We are conducting a thorough investigation into the researchers’ claims,” said Jim Alkove, Microsoft’s General Manager of Security of Interactive Entertainment Business, in a statement to Kotaku. “We have requested information that will allow us to investigate the console in question and have still not received the information needed to replicate the researchers’ claims.

“Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console,” Alkove explained, “and as such seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described. Additionally, when Microsoft refurbishes used consoles we have processes in place to wipe the local hard drives of any other user data. We can assure Xbox owners we take privacy and security of their personal data very seriously.”

*Source: Kotaku

While it’s no secret that many in the videogame industry would love to see the pre-owned market disappear, analysts all agree that it would be suicidal for Sony or Microsoft to implement such technology on next-gen consoles despite rumors suggesting the contrary.

“It isn’t really in Sony’s or Microsoft’s best interests to blocked used games,” said Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst. “It would benefit Activision and EA slightly, and would hurt GameStop a great deal. If Sony unilaterally did this, I could see GameStop refusing to carry their console, and sales of the PS4 would therefore suffer.”

Pachter is confident none of the big three console manufacturers (i.e. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony) “are stupid enough to do this unilaterally” nor “evil enough to do it together.” The analyst argues “if one does it and the others don’t, the one who does it will see a loss of market share.”

DFC Intelligence’s David Cole concurs, and adds that a console with anti-used technology would deter hardcore gamers. “A system that tried to stop used game sales would probably turn off the core consumers that rush to trade in their old product to buy a new product. In other words, I don’t think it would do so well in the core market.”  

“Customers would rebel,” agreed Lewis Ward, IDC’s research manager. “Until there’s the equivalent of a great ‘used’ digital console game trade-in program up and running, gamers will continue to like the ability to trade in discs and basically get discounts on other games.”

*Source: GamesIndustry International

Headline RePLAY – 3.29.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The producer of the Street Fighter series steps down, hackers can steal credit card information from pre-owned Xbox 360’s and Dragon’s Crown is not cancelled.

Yoshinori Ono, the man responsible for Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter x Tekken, is stepping down as producer of the franchise in the wake of being hospitalized last week.

Ono apologized to fans on Twitter for causing concern about his welfare and wanted to thank them for all the get-well messages. The Street Fighter producer then announced that he’s stepping down “for a while,” and that an unannounced individual has taken up the reins of the franchise.

In the meantime, Ono is going to still provide support but will stay out of the “limelight” while he contemplates about the “new future of fighting games” and assured fans that he’ll try his best to “be back.”

*Source: @Yoshi_OnoChin

If you’re thinking about selling or giving away your Xbox 360, you might want to reconsider: researchers at Drexel University discovered that with just common tools, hackers and modders can access the console’s hard drive to steal credit card or personal information.  

“Microsoft does a great job of protecting their proprietary information,” Ashley Podhradsky, a researcher at Drexel University, told Kotaku in a phone interview. “But they don’t do a great job of protecting the user’s data.”

Podhradsky noted that even restoring the 360 to factory settings won’t completely remove all the data it contains. She said Microsoft was doing a “disservice” to customers by not protecting their personal data better.

Alongside Drexel University colleagues Rob D’Ovidio and Cindy Casey and Pat Engebretson from Dakota State University, Podhradsky bought a refurbished Xbox 360 from Microsoft last year to experiment on. The team downloaded a basic modding tool to use to crack the console, which gave them access to its files and folders and resultantly was able to identify and extract the original owner’s credit card information.

“A lot of them already know how to do all this,” said Podhradsky. “Anyone can freely download a lot of this software, essentially pick up a discarded game console, and have someone’s identity.”

To combat the danger of getting your personal information compromised, Podhradsky recommends detaching your 360’s hard drive, connecting it to your computer, and using a program like Darik’s Boot & Nuke to wipe everything. She cautions that reformatting won’t be enough.

“I think Microsoft has a longstanding pattern of this,” said Podhradsky. “When you go and reformat your computer, like a Windows system, it tells you that all of your data will be erased. In actuality that’s not accurate— the data is still available… so when Microsoft tells you that you’re resetting something, it’s not accurate.

“There’s a lot more that needs to be done.”

*Source: Kotaku

After Dragon’s Crown mysteriously disappeared from Amazon.com and GameInformer happened to receive reports that customers had their pre-orders cancelled, it’s no wonder why cancellation rumors began to run amuck.

In response to all the speculation, Vanillaware illustrator Shigatake leapt into the fray on Twitter to assure fans that the game is most definitely not cancelled. “I personally can’t say much, but I’ll just say, regarding Dragon’s Crown, although there lots of rumors and conjecture, it’s still in development. Please wait patiently for an official update.”

Dragon’s Crown was initially revealed at E3 2011 as a spring 2012 title, but news of the game has been scarce recently despite its rapidly approaching release date.

*Source: Andriasang

Headline RePLAY – 3.28.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Details on the next PlayStation are revealed, Silicon Knights founder slams the used games market and Capcom opens its own store.

With all the attention on what the next Xbox will (or won’t) be, what about the next PlayStation? A reliable, but anonymous source recently revealed details to Kotaku on Sony’s next home console: codename “Orbis.”

According to the source, the Orbis will have an AMD x64 CPU or AMD Southern Islands GPU. The Orbis’ GPU is capable of displaying games at a 4096x2160 resolution, which Kotaku notes is “far in excess of the needs of most current HDTV sets.”

Most likely due to Sony’s push on 3D games and 3D television sets it’s unsurprising that the Orbis will be able to play 3D games in 1080p in contrast to the PlayStation 3’s 720p.

Unfortunately, the source tells Kotaku that the Orbis is not backwards compatible with any title from the PlayStation 3. Furthermore, the new console will have “anti-used games measures” built-in that prevents consumers from accessing the full content of a pre-owned game.

The source explains that new games for the console will be available either on Blu-Ray disc or as a PSN download. Assuming the game is bought on disc, it must be locked to a single PSN account before it can even be played. If the owner decides to trade the game in, the pre-owned customer that buys it will either be limited to a demo/trial mode or some other restriction and will have to pay a fee to unlock/register the full title.  

Sony hopes to launch the Orbis in time for the 2013 holiday season, which coincided with the PS3 release in 2006.

*Source: Kotaku

Recently, Frontier Development’s David Braben blasted the used games market by saying that it’s “killing single player games,” and now Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack is joining the fray to say that used games are “cannibalizing the industry.”

“There used to be something in games for 20 years called a tail,” Dyack explained to GamesIndustry International, “where say you have a game called Warcraft that would sell for 10 years. Because there are no used games, you could actually sell a game for a long time, and get recurring revenue for quite a while. Recurring revenue is very key.

“Now there is no tail. Literally you will get most of your sales within three months of launch, which has created this really unhealthy extreme where you have to sell it really fast and then you have to do anything else to get money.”

With the “tail” cut off, Dyack claims the existence of the industry is threatened by the used games business.

“I would argue, and I’ve said this before, that used games are cannibalizing the industry,” continued Dyack. “If developers and publishers don’t see revenue from that, it’s not a matter of hey ‘we’re trying to increase the price of games to consumers, and we want more,’ we’re just trying to survive as an industry. If used games continue the way that they are, it’s going to cannibalize, there’s not going to be an industry.”

*Source: GamesIndustry International

Apparently, an e-store and international retailers carrying their products is not enough for Capcom, so the company is opening its own store at Odaiba, Japan on April 14th. In-store events, sculptures and on site Wi-Fi to promote Monster Hunter are all in the works for the store.

The Capcom Store is expected to carry, of course, Capcom products, specifically goods that were previously exclusively found in its e-store.  

*Source: Destructoid

Headline RePLAY – 3.27.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The makers of Draw Something gets picked up by Zynga, a Mass Effect 3 cupcake campaign and the Navy wants to obtain user information from videogame consoles.   

Before Draw Something came along, Omgpop wasn’t doing so well: the company only had $17 million from investors and 35 games made—all of which brought little revenue. Omgpop was on the fast track of running financially dry by May if it wasn’t for Draw Something’s wild success. That very success led the company to be bought out by Zynga for $180 million.

“I had $1,700 in my bank account yesterday,” said Charles Forman, the founder of the New York-based studio, “and now I have a whole lot more.”

Initially, Draw Something only drew 30,000 downloads on release, but 10 days later, the downloads quickly approached and surpassed one million. When players posted their sketches on Twitter and Facebook and topped the Apple App Store charts the game started to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.

“It never slowed down,” said Dan Porter, Omgpop’s chief executive. “The bigger it got, the bigger it got.”

Once Zynga caught wind of Omgpop’s success, the San Francisco-based company wasted no time cooking up propositions. A deal was announced Wednesday, and by Thursday all of Omgpop’s employees started working for Zynga.

*Source: New York Times

What better way to protest Mass Effect 3’s ending than sending hundreds of cupcakes to BioWare’s front door at Edmonton, Canada?

Enter the “RetakeME3 – Cupcake Campaign,” the latest movement to get BioWare to change the endings for Mass Effect 3 but to also “let BioWare know, that we trust them, and have faith in them.”

LoganKey, the campaign’s organizer, explains:

We are currently trying to organize the delivery of a mass of cupcakes to Bioware's studio in Edmonton. All the cupcakes will be divided into equal parts Red, Blue and Green colors... but they will all taste exactly the same. If you'd like to participate, please check out the thread below and let us know.   

This coming week, we should send Bioware boxes upon boxes of a dozen cupcakes. We are taking ideas as to what sort of notes we should have attached on each box. Some possibilities include:

- “No matter what color you choose, they all taste the same”;

- “No matter what color you choose, it’s all vanilla ;-D”

- “We rage because we love”

The campaign already exceeded its modest $1,005 goal at $1,131 and is ready to green light Fuss Cupcakes to start baking; the bakery will deliver the 400 cupcakes to BioWare.

*Source: BioWare Forums: RetakeME3 – Cupcake Campaign

Hide your files, hide your videogame consoles, ‘cause the Department of the Navy has contracted a company aptly called Obscure Technologies to obtain information from overseas, pre-owned consoles.

The almost $200,000 project aims to collect “sensitive and significant information from previous owners” by developing hardware and software tools that can be used for “extracting data from videogame systems.”

Obscure Technologies was chosen for the project because of their “substantial experience” working with videogame consoles’ “hardware of embedded systems” that contain “anti-tampering technology.” Notably, their lead scientist even reverse engineered a Xbox.

The project is prohibited from targeting any “U.S. persons.”

*Source: FedBizOpps.Gov via Kotaku

Headline RePLAY – 3.26.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Yet another new Xbox rumor, Mojang’s Minecraft makes bank and Namco-Bandai releases a baffling teaser site.

Another week, another Xbox rumor from yet another anonymous source: this time from Reddit user “MSnerd” who claims that the next Xbox is not a next-gen console but rather a basic system that plays Arcade-style games and media apps with the Kinect.

According to MSnerd, the new Xbox will be an “ARM-based platform” that is “price competitive” with Apple TV. Like other sources, MSnerd predicts the system will be released in late 2013.

MSnerd notes that there is a successor to the 360 in the works, but details are “very hazy” beyond the fact that it will cater towards “core-audiences” and be able to play the same Kinect media apps.

*Source: reddit via Joystiq

Rovio’s Angry Birds may have a 700 million download head start, but Mojang’s Minecraft is catching up financially with $80 million in earnings since October 2010; in contrast to Rovio’s $100 million in revenues last year.

Minecraft is still nowhere close to Angry Birds’ massive downloads, but the financial reports prove that Mojang’s flagship title has a bright future ahead.

*Source: Financial Times 

Namco-Bandai has opened up yet another teaser site that leaves much to the imagination: it’s a giant, pulsing black X behind a black background.

…wait, what? 

It’s currently unknown if this site has any relation to the Sega and Capcom collaboration or if it’s a new title entirely.

Namco-Bandai continues to troll the internet with these sites that only tells us that they’re working on… something.

*Source: Bandai Games

Headline RePLAY – 3.23.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Survival-horror is a hard sell, Square-Enix teases a mystery title and Blizzard has mapped out multiple World of Warcraft expansions post-Mists of Pandaria.

Survival-horror Resident Evil just doesn’t sell as it used to, says Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata.

“Especially for the North American market, I think the series needs to head in that [action-oriented] direction,” Kawata told Gamasutra in an interview. “[Resident Evil’s primary games] need to be an extension of the changes made in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5.”

“Looking at the marketing data [for survival horror games]… the market is small, compared to the number of units Call of Duty and all those action games sell,” Kawata elaborated. “‘A ‘survival horror’ Resident Evil doesn’t seem like it’d be able to sell those kind of numbers.”

Despite that, Kawata points out that there are opportunities for Capcom to explore survival-horror gameplay outside the series. “So we have our numbered series, and we can say we have a more adventure-oriented version, like a Revelations-style game. And we also have Operation Raccoon City, which is a third-person shooter.

“So I think that by extending the market in this sense, we can still have the numbered titles keep their identity about what Resident Evil is supposed to be, but still expand and hit other markets as well.”

*Source: Gamasutra

A “secret” Square-Enix title that is slated for release this summer has been revealed in the form of a trailer.

The trailer features illustrations by Castlevania veteran Masaki Hirooka and Square-Enix artist Yusuke Naora. The art on the trailer includes fantastical creatures, fantasy-themed characters and what looks like a battle.

According to Andriasang, a number of Final Fantasy-themed keywords are scattered across the trailer like crystal and summons (i.e. Odin and Diablos).

*Source: Andriasang

World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is not even released yet and Blizzard is already working on its next expansion and has plans for multiple ones after that!

“I got the pitch from Chris Metzen of what they plan for 6.0 and I’m pretty geeked up about it. They already know what they're going to be doing for multiple expansions ahead,” Blizzard COO Paul Sams told CVG, confirming the MMO’s fifth entry.

“They have an idea - a general framework,” said Sams. “They’re these lore creators. They’re the ones who drive what the world looks like today and what it’ll be like tomorrow and beyond.”

*Source: CVG

Headline RePLAY – 3.22.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Angry Birds Space blastoffs into release, a survey on where mobile games are mostly played and Tetsuya Nomura reveals more Kingdom Hearts 3D details.  

Angry Birds Space is now out on Android, iOS, PC and Mac to wreak havoc on your free time everywhere with planetary bird bombardment!

To celebrate its release, Rovio and T-Mobile has teamed up to construct a 300-foot slingshot, Angry Bird included, atop the Seattle Space Needle— and hosting a party serving Angry Bird cupcakes!

Rovio certainly knows how to throw a launch party!   

*Source: Joystiq

Are mobile games only played outside the home, sans the bathroom? Social game site MocoSpace went out to answer that question in a February survey that collected the responses of 15,000 players and the answer may surprise you: most mobile gaming is done at home.

• 96% play games at home.
• 64% play at work.
• 46% play during class.
• 25% play while at the gym.

Interestingly, when participants were asked where at home they played, 53% played in bed while only 5% played in the bathroom.

“This report should make every console gaming company nervous,” said MocoSpace CEO Justin Siegel, “Mobile gaming is not a companion to consoles, but rather it's attacking them on their home turf: the couch, the La-Z-Boy and even the bedroom.”

*Source: Kotaku

Kingdom Hearts 3D director, Tetsuya Nomura, returns in part 2 of Famitsu magazine’s interview to discuss the upcoming title’s themes and new features.

There were two parts to creating Kingdom Hearts 3D, Nomura explains: colors and keywords.

“For Kingdom Hearts 3D, I started off with an image of colors. I thought to myself, ‘Black and pink,’” said Nomura, “We always chose a thematic image color, but this time, interestingly enough, that was where we started.”

“In Birth by Sleep, ‘sleep’ was one of the keywords we focused on, and we talked about what the main character Sora must do,” continued Nomura. “We took the word ‘sleep’ and moved beyond it to the realm of ‘dreams.’”

Nomura then moved onto new features unseen in other Square-Enix titles, like the ability to skip cutscenes and view them later. This feature particularly helps in the mobile department where players might not have the time to watch a cutscene for a number of reasons.

“This was due both to a change we made with the non-interactive cutscenes in Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and because we wanted to maintain a tempo of the game where the player could limit the amount of time where they weren't in direct control,” explained Nomura.

Additionally, a memoir feature was added, which allows players to view the overall plot of the entire Kingdom Hearts series in order to lower the level of entry for new players.

“With so many games in the series, a lot of unfamiliar players can get confused. This way, newer players who might be nervous about starting from the latest game can jump right in.”

*Source: Kotaku