Martyn Brown co-founder of Team 17, is set to run the currently nameless studio. The goal for this new studio is to duplicate the success that Activision had with its recently released Skylanders: Cloud Patrol iOS app and bring more Activision properties to the mobile market.

Richard Wilson the CEO of TIGA a UK gaming trade association released the following statement after the announcement:

“This is a massive vote of confidence in the UK games industry and demonstrates that TIGA’s successful campaign for Games Tax Relief is already bearing fruit. We have the talent, we have the tax breaks and now we are winning the investment..This is a terrific day for the UK games industry, for people looking to work in our high technology, high skilled industry, and for the UK economy. We are back in the game.”

This is not the only good news that the UK games industry has had as of late, as the serving government finally delivered on the much promised tax break for games developers.  While the news may not seem that relevant for readers across the pond in the good old US of A, remember that Rockstar North (about an hour or so away from where I sit right now) is here. While it is probably one of the safest developers in the country, should the UK become uncompetitive then you may never see Grand Theft Auto V, VI, VII etc.

Source: DigitalSpy

We’re in the thick of what is generally considered the competitive StarCraft (and gaming in general) season, a notion mostly determined by the fact that the MLG’s Spring season is currently ongoing, and the e-sports scene has probably never been bigger. With thousands turning out for MLG tour events and thousands more tuning in to the likes of the IGN Pro League, it’s not hard to see the potential for mad cash.

Hence Red Bull’s latest foray into the competitive gaming scene with Red Bull Battlegrounds. The transmedia company once known for its energy drinks has turned its rutilant bovine eye towards e-sports and is bringing an elite invitational to Austin, TX, this weekend from May 25 to May 27 at Austin City Limit’s Moody Theater.

There will be 16 professional SC2 players in attendance including Team Liquid’s TaeJa, Team EG’s HuK, and more. Saturday will be round-robin play from 1pm to 10pm and Sunday will be the playoffs also from 1pm to 10pm. You can catch all the action at either Day[9]‘s live page or the Red Bull LAN page.

Friday will be an open house event from 8pm to 10pm with the opportunity for fans to meet with players and casters with panels and Q&A events.

Oh yeah, and I’ll be there.

For more information, you can check out Day[9]‘s post at Team Liquid, Austin City Limits, or Red Bull LAN.

Game Review: Awesomenauts
Release: May 1, 2012
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Developer: Ronimo
Available Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Players: 1-6
MSRP: 800 MS Points, $9.99
ESRB Rating: T
Website: http://www.awesomenauts.com/

The Awesomenauts are interstellar warriors in conflict! With six heroes, they must face off and destroy their opposite-colored duplicates while mining for Solara, the currency of the 36th century. With Solara, they can upgrade their abilities, and save the day. This massive online battle game brings modern team combat to traditional 2D planes; does it succeed in this goal?

Awesomenauts is, at its essence, Team Fortress 2 by way of Worms Armageddon. Decidedly multiplayer, the game is a 2D sidescroller in visuals, but a multiplayer capture the flag-style game. Presented akin to a ’80s cartoon (complete with theme song and humanoid animal aliens), it looks like a traditional old-school battle game, like Worms. Players have to destroy bits of the opponents base, and a certain segment, once destroyed, will signal the end of the game.

A variety of characters are available, each effectively reflecting a class of player. Some are better at range, some are great at close combat. They all have a variety of skills, each upgradable during the match. Sure, you’ll run into your counter-color opponent on the other side, but each character has their own personality.

The game definitely gets the vibe of old school US cartoons down, as the concept of the Awesomenauts seems to fit in perfectly with such titles as Bucky O’Hare and Cowboys of Moo Mesa. It’s a defined visual style capped off with an intro song that encapsulates the era. Beyond the visual presentation, the characters all play appropriately differently, and every player will find someone they take preference to. Given the unlockable scheme of the game, not all characters will be unlocked at the beginning, forcing you to take a try at the variety of characters before sticking to one only revealed later in the game.

Part of the bad from the game stems from its concept: it’s multiplayer at its heart, and there’s very little for the single-player to do. While the game is great at getting multiplayer action set up, it’s all there is at the heart. A single-player adventure would be a great addition to the title. Additionally, while the concept of purchasing items in the middle of a match is fun, it somewhat makes players juggle unnaturally; do I teleport back to base now that I have enough Solara to buy a better gun, or do I stick it out at the moment? In many cases, you’ll just wait to die to end up near the vending machine to upgrade, but it’s definitely an action that takes you out of the action for a bit.

Awesomenauts is a definitely fun game with a nice bit of variety in the game landscape: a sprite-based team action title will definitely stand out. While it has its faults, if you’re looking for a such a game, you’d be hard pressed to find better than this.

• Good combination of old and new elements
• Can’t permanently save ability upgrades
• Good amount of unlockables encourage replayability

Final Score
8 out of 10

The app will offer live streaming HD feeds of sporting events such as the tennis at Wimbledon, Formula One and the Olympics, as well as on-demand content.

In a statement  Sony said:

“Throughout the London 2012 Olympics Games, the BBC Sport app will give audiences access to 2,500 hours of content and up to 24 simultaneous live events, all in HD..The application has been designed specifically for the ‘big-screen’ to deliver an ultimate home entertainment experience. The principal purpose is to deliver live sporting events where there are simultaneous activities or multiple camera angles.”

It is worth noting that in order to legally watch live content – even if it is streamed requires a TV licence whereas if it is not live content or is on a delay then a TV licence may not be required.

Source:  CVG

Over the weekend, id Software, hallmark developers of game franchises Doom and Quake, celebrated the 20^th anniversary of the release of Wolfenstein 3D, the game widely considered to be the original first-person shooter. May 5, 1992, Wolfenstein 3D descended from the mad combination of Muse Software’s Wolfenstein series and John Carmack’s brain juices to pretty much every DOS-rockin’ computer in the land.

It might also be considered a pioneer in the episodic gaming format, but we’ll figure that out later.

Anyways, as promised through the id Software Twitter, this week has yielded some nice treats for fans of the game. For instance, you can play the game for free two ways: 1) through a brand new port for your browser using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (no <canvas> as far as I can tell), and 2) through the App Store with a sale price ongoing for Wolfenstein 3D Classic Platinum. Steam also has some Wolfensales for nostalgic gamers; you can pick up the Wolf Pack for 75% off ($3.75) and the Super id Software Pack for 50% off ($49.99).

Finally, you can watch John Carmack, lead (and possibly sole) programmer of Wolfenstein 3D and co-founder of id Software, play and commentate the game. If you’ve ever heard Carmack talk before, though, you’ll know he tends to get carried away and go off on technical tangents about paging schemes and figuring out ray casting on his NeXT machine, so be prepared to be blown away by knowledge.

Source: id Software Twitter

The final votes have been tallied, and you all have spoken.  After 3 grueling rounds that saw impressive titles fall by the wayside, we have a champion to crown in the 2012 Fall Game Release Showdown.  Anyone that was following the voting might have seen this coming, because it wasn’t close at any point, but here you go:

The winner of the 2012 Fall Game Release Showdown is: Assassin’s Creed 3

Assassin’s Creed 3 beat out Halo 4, taking an impressive 82.1% of the vote (the most lopsided victory of any of the matchups).  Whoever said “never bring a knife to a gunfight” was clearly a Templar. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote through the last 3 weeks, and feel free to flip back to the previous weeks to see how all the other votes shook out.

As I mentioned last week, this Showdown was the last ASQ for Platform Nation.  Sad to put an end to such a fun weekly, but that’s the way of life.  On a more personal note, today is also the last day for me as a writer and editor for Platform Nation.  With my second kid on the way, and an increasingly diminishing free-time pool, I needed to make a cut somewhere.  I won’t draw out the goodbyes, but I want to thank everyone behind the scenes at Platform Nation for being such a supportive gaming family. In particular, thanks to Scott diMonda and Steve Artlip, who put up with me, took me under their wing, gave me a shot, and gave me a voice for over 2 years to talk about the stuff I love.  I would like to think I made the most out of what I was given, and I hope I provided interesting opinions, quality reviews, and fun question for everyone to read and respond to. Which brings me to my most important thanks: thanks to you, the readers.  Without your comments, emails, tweets and votes, all of this is just words in cyberspace.  Thanks for engaging with me and keeping this fun.

I do have some results to give you from all of the outstanding polls, so read on for some interesting numbers on how everyone has voted over the last few months of ASQs.

Release Day Bugs [14 votes] (Should high profile games be delayed if there are known issues that would be left unresolved at launch?): 100% of you said Yes.

Skyrim [22 votes] (Do you plan on playing Skyrim straight through before going to another game?): 68.2% of you said Yes.

Xbox 360 Dashboard Update [25 votes] (What do you think of the proposed changes coming to your Xbox 360 Dashboard?): 72.0% of you said Love them!, 20% said Eh.. indifferent.., and 8% said Hate Them!

The Best Current Gen Console [24 votes] (If you had to do it again, knowing what you know now, what one console would you choose as your gaming platform of choice?): 50% said Xbox 360, 41.7% said PS3, and 8.3% said Wii.

The Next Next-Generation Console [169 votes] (Are you satisfied with the current generation of consoles (to the point that you’re not itching for the next generation just yet)?): 50.9% of you said No.

Holiday Console Sales [14 votes] (Which company will have the best sales numbers (units sold) for their consoles in December?): 57.1% said Microsoft, 28.6% said Nintendo, and 14.3% said Sony.

Entertainment Consoles [30 votes] (Do you prefer having your gaming console and media entertainment delivery separate?): 63.3% of you said Yes, I prefer them to be separate.

Physical Or Digital Game Copies [34 votes] (What do you think will be the method of delivery for games 10 years from now (physical copy vs. digital copy)?): 41.2% said All Digital, 29.4% said Mostly Digital, Some Physical, 20.6% said Mostly Physical, Some Digital, and 8.8% said Evenly Split.

Game Instruction Manuals [36 votes] (Do you care that games are moving their instruction manuals online?): 66.7% of you said Yes, I consider it part of the game experience.

Difficulty Settings [15 votes] (What difficulty setting do you usually play a game on for your first playthrough?): 73.3% said Normal, 20% said Hard, and 6.7% said Easy.

Staying Alive [12 votes] (If the developers of a game you were looking forward to buying had to cut features, would you rather have a more robust single player experience, or more multiplayer options?): 91.7% said Better Single Player.

Sequel Before Prequel [34 votes] (If previous games of a series that you haven’t had an interest in (until the latest version) are available on your current console, what do you play first?): 70.6% said The earliest game in the series – I don’t want to miss out on the backstory.

Mass Effect 3 – Creating Your Shephard

What is your Shepard’s pre-service history? [93 votes]: Spacer 44.1%, Earthborn 34.4%, Colonist 21.5%
What is your Shepard’s Psychological profile? [92 votes]: War Hero 60.9%, Sole Survivor 32.6%, Ruthless 6.5%
How has your Shepard handled loss? [94 votes]: Saved Ashley Williams, lost Kaidan Alenko 59.6%, Saved Kaidan Alenko, lost Ashley Williams 34%, Numerous: Many losses suffered that are impacting Shepard 6.4%
What class will your Shepard be? [93 votes]: Soldier 37.6%, Vanguard 28%, Infiltrator 11.8%, Adept 10.8%, Sentinel 7.5%, Engineer 4.3%

PlayStation Vita [20 votes] (Will you be buying a PlayStation Vita this year?): 60% said No.

Review Scores [9 votes] (If a publication does not explicitly state their review score policy, what do you assume a final review score means?): 44.4% said Quality of the game relative to all other games, 33.3% said A purchase indicator, and 22.2% said Quality of the game relative to other games in the genre.

 Multiplayer Invades Single Player [71 votes] (Should games use multiplayer progress to influence the single player experience?): 85.9% said No.

Psychonauts 2 [41 votes] (Did you ever play Psychonauts, and would you want to play a sequel?): 80.5% said Yes, I played Psychonauts, and yes I would want to play a sequel., 12.2% said No, I never played Psychonauts, and have no interest in a sequel., 7.3% said No, I never played Psychonauts, but yes I would want to play a sequel., and 0% said Yes, I played Psychonauts, but no, I wouldn’t want to play a sequel.

Hamonix’s New Game [23 votes] (What do you think the new Harmonix game is going to be?): 52.2% said A new Rock Band offering, 30.4% said Something else completely, 8.7% said A new Dance Central offering, and 8.7% said A new mobile/tablet (app) offering.

PAX East 2012 [8 votes] (What are (or would be) your 2 favorite things about PAX?): 87.5% picked The expo floor – playing new or not yet released games, 37.5% said both The atmosphere and The swag!!, and 12.5% said both The panels and The freeplay areas (console, tabletop, etc).

Rock Band Blitz [20 votes] (Will you be buying Rock Band Blitz?): 75% of you said Yes.

Portable Gaming [17 votes] (What mobile device are you giving most of your portable gaming time to?): 47.1% said Phone (iPhone, Android, WP7, etc), 35.3% said Dedicated Game System (3DS, Vita, etc), 17.6% said Other portable device (iPod Touch, etc), and 0% said Tablet.

And that wraps it up for Platform Nation’s ASQ.  Thanks again for everyone’s participation over the years! Of course, you know I can’t end it without at least one or two questions for you to comment on, so…. what was your favorite ASQ that you answered?  What question would you have liked to ask everyone? Drop a comment below – I’ll be reading them.

Farewell, everyone.

View previous ASQ: Fall 2012 Game Release Showdown – Finals

EA have confirmed that there has been a substantial drop in subscriptions for their MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. The EA/Bioware title has dropped to 1,3 million subscriptions from 1.7 million.

During an earnings call, EA chief financial officer Ken Barker offered the following as an explanation for the 23.5% drop in subscriptions:

“The substantial portion of the decrease [for The Old Republic] was due to lower numbers of trial players, upping the percentage of paying subscribers.”

EA Labels president Frank Gibeau added:

“Some of those casual customers have gone through a billing cycle and have decided not to subscribe to the game,”

Some online pundits are suggestion that the drop is partly caused due to a fan boycott after the Mass Effect 3 controversy. EA tried to ease concerns by saying the drop was consistent with projections however that did not stop their shares dropping 10% in out of hours trading.

It’s not all doom and gloom though as before the game launched EA stated that they only needed 500000 active subscribers in order for the game to be profitable and despite the drop EA/Bioware are still sitting well above this magic number.

Source: BBC News, DigitalSpy, CVG

Presentation

Monday, EA Sports released a pretty hefty amount of detail on some of their dynasty improvements.  Every year it seems they only rehash old features that were dead or put things in that should have been in this generation.  We’ll have to judge for ourselves, but hopefully this year the improvements are much needed.

As an avid sports fan, those of us that spend our Saturdays following collegiate football closer than Thor follows Loki (Heck yes I just made an Avengers joke) we understand football is a living, breathing entity.  While watching your favorite team play, you can’t help but watch the ticker because you’re simply too afraid to switch channels in fear of missing something but have to know what’s going on around you. Well, this year that problem in the virtual world will hopefully be fixed.

ESPN Bottom Line ticker

This year that logic has been injected inside of NCAA College Football’s dynasty mode.  In past iterations, non-user games weren’t fully simulated until the user finished their game.  The week was then simulated and advanced, making the user go back and navigate to find whom won/lost.

This year NCAA ’13 improved the simulation logic to better reflect what’s going on in real-time.  It now takes into account games played before and during the user’s games, exposing the scores through the new ESPN Bottom Line ticker.

This means if you’re playing at 4:00, all scores of games played beforehand will show up on the ticker, letting you know what happened earlier in the day. Games that start around the time you kick-off will show updated scores, even if they start a bit later.  The ticker will also show upcoming games, filled with team logos and the games kick-off time.  The ticker will also play just as it’s real life counterpart on Saturday.  It will include Priority Score Alerts with the score changing dynamically on-screen, as well as Final Score and Upset Alerts.   The ticker will also remain visible even when you pause the game or choose to look at replays.

Studio Updates

The next update to presentation comes in form of Studio Updates. For those not familiar with Studio Updates, they are live cut-ins to the studio for updates on certain games going on around the country.  With the announcement of this, you have to wonder, “Rece Davis?”  Well rest assured; Rece Davis will be announcing the studio updates in this year’s NCAA College Football.

Studio updates will occur dynamically throughout a given game showing single scores, multiple scores, or a combination whenever big events play out throughout the collegiate landscape.  The development team reportedly but in a tremendous amount of time working on the tech and logic needed to make this work properly, giving you the emersion needed.  The new commentary engine supposedly has given NCAA ’13 the ability to create branching story paths for each Studio Update, allowing Rece to not become repetitive during the course of a game.

Now, these new features can be argued whether or not they should have been implemented in previous games. With the way our world has become via Internet and endless connectivity to updates, the ESPN ticker should have been in this generation’s games.  Same with last year’s “3-D grass”, it was long overdue even if it is a nice addition.  Presentation is shaping up to be on par with Madden ’13 this year though, so hopefully the trend of both games seamlessly keeping things familiar will pay off finally.  What are your thoughts on the presentation for this year guys?

Source: EA Sports

Video Courtesy of Operation Sports

I’ll be writing up information on some of the things EA Sports has released detailing presentation and scouting/recruiting improvements so be sure to keep an eye out for those write-ups!

It’s obvious to speculate that this new title will be Dead Space 3, but there have been several small stories lately to suggest this. In April, South African retailer BT Games started taking preorders for Dead Space 3. While this may sound like misinformation or a desperate plea for preorders, BT Games has taken preorders for games prior to their announcement before (which were revealed shortly after). E3 is right around the corner…

Suppose this new Dead Space game is NOT the third installment, but instead a spin-off like Dead Space: Extraction. Between animated films, novels, and comics, Dead Space has been constantly trying to expand as a ‘franchise’, so a deviation from the main series would fit in nicely. But what could it be? A team based survival game? A sequel to Extraction? Dead Space: Party?

All questions about this new Dead Space game should be answered at E3 2012; in particular, “What is it?”

Source: Joystiq