I guess EA's old moniker of "challenge everything" extends to its newfound kung-fu grip of its games.
News Blips:
Crysis 2 engaged its nano-cloak yesterday and quietly vanished from the store of Valve's digital distribution platform Steam. The game's disappearance coincides with publisher EA's bid for invigorating its recently rebranded online shop, Origin, with exclusive big-hitter titles from the company's stable of franchises including Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA told IGN today that it had no involvement with yanking Crysis 2 from Steam, saying in a statement, "Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service — many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, [developer] Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2."
Jim Redner of The Redner Group, the public relations company promoting the ill-received Duke Nukem Forever, apologizes to journalists and industry members for a "juvenile" outburst over the game's review scores. Following a now-deleted Twitter post denouncing reviewers that went "too far" with their negative verdicts, Redner sent a letter of apology claiming full responsibility for his actions. "We are all entitled to our opinions regardless of score, tone, or meaning," he wrote. "My response was a juvenile act on my part. I know better and my emotion got the best of me. I have worked very hard on this project. I want it to succeed. I just got upset and acted out. I believe we are all allowed to voice our opinions and that opinions by their very nature are correct. Many of you quickly pointed out my error in judgment. For that I thank you and apologize." A "sorry" wasn't enough for DNF publisher 2K, as it confirmed today that "The Redner Group no longer represents our products." That's definitely a much more diplomatic way of saying, "Blow it out your ass."
Kinect creator Kudo Tsunoda opposes the notion that the motion-control peripheral met disapproval from core gamers. "I mean, I never really thought that core gamers were in any way hostile to Kinect," Tsunoda told CVG. "People saying, 'Wow, we'd really love to have Kinect in the games that we love to play and the genres and types of games we like to enjoy,'… to me, that's saying, like, 'We really love Kinect, and we'd like Kinect to be in the experiences that we play regularly.' I never really looked on it as something that we needed to address." Tsunoda exemplified himself as a core gamer enthusiastic for the Kinect, saying, "Let's face it, I've been playing games since I was five years old. If there's anybody who is a core gamer, it's me, and I'm just happy that Kinect and developers are excited enough about Kinect — and that core gamers are excited enough about Kinect — to have the technology showing up in all different types of games." In other words, if Kinect didn't exist, I would never have the opportunity to endorse Citadel storefronts with my manly baritone in Mass Effect 3.
The Wii U thumbs its nose at industry standards by discarding DVD and Blu-ray playback functionality. At a Q&A session with investors during the final moments of E3, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata felt consumers were already loaded down with DVD and Blu-ray devices — but more importantly, he just won't spend the dough for it. "The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray," Iwata said. "It didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies." I think I faintly hear the girlish squeal of delight from Netflix executives somewhere. [Siliconera]
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