If games need an extra visibility boost within the media, I hope they make more commercials like this gripping paragon of theater.
News Blips:
BioShock: Infinite Creative Director Ken Levine asserts the importance of marketing games within the mainstream media. "That isn't just about buying ads," he said in a Gamers With Jobs podcast interview. "It's the places you can reach [new people]. We need to be on mainstream shows, we need to be on NPR, we need to be on The Daily Show, we need to be in those places talking about what we do." Levine believed the "ghettoized" perception of game developers can disappear if more companies strategize "how to reach out and talk to people so you don't have a room full of college kids saying, 'I've never heard of that damn thing.'"
id Software (Rage) co-founder John Carmack thinks mobile phones will surpass consoles in gaming power. "It's unquestionable that within a very short time, we're going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles," he told IndustryGamers. "People have exaggerated the relative powers — the iPad 2 isn't more powerful than the Xbox 360. It's still a factor of a couple weaker. But the fact that it's gotten close that fast — it means that almost certainly, two years from now, there will be mobile devices more powerful than what we're doing all these fabulous games on right now." TV's so yesterday. It's all about cramming high-definition visuals into a screen the size of a baseball card.
Namco Bandai sues Optimus SA, parent company of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings developer CD Projekt Red, over European distribution rights. Giant Bomb reports that THQ's acquirement of the game's European Xbox 360 publishing rights rubbed Namco the wrong way, as it thought it had first dibs due to its deal with CD Projekt Red to publish the PC version of the game in Europe. To add an additional spin to this cornucopia of corporate confusion, Atari will publish the Xbox 360 version of the game here in the U.S. — but its European division waves its banners underneath the Namco flag after an acquisition in 2009. Namco also complained that CD Projekt Red broke its contract by yanking the digital-rights management system from The Witcher 2's PC version without the publisher's permission.
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