Spectacular, Star-Filled Display Will Be Visible From Earth at Select Locations
WHAT: Authorities at Nintendo are forecasting an extraordinary celestial event this season. Expected to be visible on Sept. 18, this eye-popping occurrence will be best viewed from a handful of specific U.S. locations (see below). Experts are still deliberating over the scientific significance of this rare phenomenon, but evidence points clearly to the reemergence of a luminous entity that citizens from all walks of life will appreciate.

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Games Convention Asia (GCA)
GC Asia Conference (GCAC)
September 18-20, 2008

BRIGHTON, England and SINGAPORE – August 27, 2008 - GamesIndustry.biz has been confirmed as the international media partner for this year’s Games Convention Asia (GCA), and Games Convention Asia Conference (GCAC). GCA and the Games Convention Asia Conference (GCAC) take place September 18-20, 2008, at the Suntec International Convention & Exhibition Centre Singapore.

As the official international media partner GamesIndustry.biz, the world’s leading online trade news publication for interactive entertainment, will provide 360 degree coverage of GC Asia 2008. The GamesIndustry.biz team will provide its readers with interviews with the speakers and exhibitors, and provide the latest news on the show. Additionally, the GamesIndustry.biz Network will partner with the event to welcome GC Asia Conference attendees into its games industry, business-only networking community.

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August 2008, Stourbridge, England. Data Design Interactive - a successful video games publisher and games developer, are pleased to announce they have signed Connie Talbot the singing sensation who came to fame from the massively popular UK based talent show ‘Britain’s got Talent.’

Now she is to appear in her very own console game, which will feature 15 fantastic tracks from her best selling debut album Over the Rainbow, including stunning renditions of John Lennon’s “Imagine”, “Any Dream Will Do”, “What a Wonderful World” and Bob Marley’s reggae classic “Three Little Birds”. In the game, the player will be able to sing along with Connie in the fantastic karaoke mode, or with other friends or family members in multiplayer fun.

2007 The public first met Connie, when she came 2nd in the show, since then Connie’s popularity grow - and not only in the UK…with the new version of her debut album ‘Over The Rainbow’ going gold in four countries and straight into the top spot in a number of Asian charts, European tours underway, and a US deal under her belt, Connie is taking the world by storm! Connie takes everything in her stride. She has already claimed 2 UK records, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for the youngest artist ever in the charts, and the youngest to receive a Gold disc.

Data Design Interactive is part of Green Solutions Ltd (GSL) which manages the production of interactive products for the entertainment industry. From game design, development and publishing on PC and Console. GSL owns the popular MYTH MAKERS and KIDZ SPORTS brands and the publishing rights to the GODS development system. We control a number of studios which specialize in key areas. Data Design Interactive develops and publishes, and is a licensed publisher for Sony Playstation, Nintendo and Microsoft, Artworld Studios for computer animation and Advergaming is the market leader for in game advertising and custom games. Popcorn Arcade www.popcorn-arcade.com is the brand name for our family friendly, value

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IGN: Why didn’t Nintendo show off more hardcore titles like MadWorld, Fatal Frame and The Conduit?

Cammie Dunaway: Well, we have to pick and choose what we’re going to do at E3 and a couple of the games that we didn’t show which we’ve already announced I think will be appealing to hardcore gamers. Wario is going to be a ton of fun and we just announced that a few weeks ago. And then Kirby, which has nostalgia to it. And as Mr. Iwata indicated, we’re always working on Mario and Zelda titles, but E3 2008 wasn’t the show to show them.

IGN: Yeah, we didn’t think so, but we had to ask. What about a DS redesign?

Cammie Dunaway: What we’re focused on right now for DS is just getting it into the hands of more people. Again, when a piece of hardware that’s been out as long as DS has been out is able to still grow in the double digits, it just suggests that there’s still a lot of untapped market demand, particularly among new audiences, be it different ages or women taking up DS more readily.

It’s the usual marketing talk that doesn’t lead to any real answers unfortunately.  I wish Nintendo would just announce some of these new features so people wouldn’t criticize them as much.

Full Interview here

A little Q&A on the Capcom Forums:

I was wondering if perhaps Capcom was planning on a game to make full use of Wii’s power. The Wii has had terrible 3rd party support and often don’t put effort in maximizing the graphics, physics and dynamics possible on Wii. Some interviews as well as looks at some games in development for it look to push it in ways nobody could imagine (factor 5’s project for example)

Of course, Capcom-Unity super-poster/employee Christian Svensson dropped this tiny response…

Spyborgs will be that product. Wait and see.

Mr. Svensson also went on to discuss the lack of Spyborgs at E3…

Captivate was the announcement with very little detail shared… it’ll lie low for a bit until we’re ready for a bigger reveal (similar to what we did with the Dark Void announcement last October with the bigger reveal at Captivate), so no E3 showing.

Link

Joystiq: You mentioned that it’s a different team on the Wii, is that an internal team? What else have they worked on?

ML: Yes. Some of them have worked on the other current-gen Call of Duty titles, but some of these also worked on the Wii version of Call of Duty. We also work with a company called Exact that we worked with on Call of Duty 3 for the Wii, but they’re a company that works with us. They’re in this area here. But, we have our own team associated with it, with content people. So I think we’re probably the first shooter team to create two Wii titles. We’ve got the benefit on that platform … because when you’re making a launch title it’s pretty challenging, so we have the benefit of already having launched and released and kind of learning about the platform. It’s our second time around.

Joystiq: Will there be online with the Wii?

ML: Yes, there will be.

Full interview here

“We have had a very successful year to date and so has the industry overall. But we have outperformed the market and expect further significant growth this year. Not so long ago IDG were predicting a market decline, but they have been wrong. Clearly sales have been driven recently by GTA IV and Wii Fit, whilst Call of Duty 4 and Guitar Hero have remained in the Top 10. We don’t see the trend for growth reversing over the rest of the year. Year to date, end of May, the UK market is up 46 per cent by value, but Activision is up 60 per cent. Our target is to keep outperforming the market.

The music genre is absolutely huge and will get much bigger in Europe. Singstar pioneered it and Guitar Hero has built on it, as have others such as Rock Band. Europe is still a long way behind the US, so has enormous potential. How can we make it nearly as big as our entire business last year? More SKUs and fantastic experiences for the consumer. The DS, for example, has the same installed base in Europe as in the US, but software sales are stronger. There will also be more Euro-centric tracks added to the new Guitar Hero products. We are growing the European Guitar Hero team with 20 additional heads. We want the best talent.” - Joerg Trouvain Senior Vice President of Publishing, Europe Activision

Interview here

Wii Fanboy interview with Matt Corso, Creative Director at High Voltage.

Can you give us a breakdown on what The Conduit is all about? What does the story center around? Does it take place on Earth? What time period is the game set in?

Rob: The Conduit is a first person adventure game that takes place on Earth in a fictional near future. The main character, “Mr. Ford,” works for an undisclosed government agency that has assigned him to investigate a possible extra-terrestrial encounter. The whole situation ends up going terribly wrong when the player discovers that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than anybody could have realized. Players are going to be very surprised when they discover the real truth that surrounds us all.

Continue HERE

Crispy Gamer: Obviously, given the name, Snowboarding is a snowboarding game. But is it more of a snowboard racing game, a snowboard tricks game, a snowboard sim, a snowboard arcade game, or what?

Louis Lamarche: We’re calling it a snowboarding lifestyle game, in that it’s about snowboarding as a whole. So it’s not just about competition, racing, or tricking, but also the idea of using and exploring the mountain as your playground.

Crispy Gamer: If someone just wants to play it as a racing game, or as a trick contest, can they?

Lamarche: Yes, totally. We’ll have about 90 specific competitions and activities set up within the levels, but the mountains are open, so you can, for example, set two points on a mountain, and you and I can race from one to the other, with both of us deciding how we want to get there. And you can do that with racing or tricking, it’s what we call “custom activities.” We also have seamless multiplayer, so it’s easy to set something like this up.

Continue HERE

Q: The first game will be released next year. Talk us briefly through the development process that will be taking place over the coming months? 

RC: It depends partly on format - portables are a lot easier as they don’t have such a rich graphical experience - but on dedicated consoles and PCs the way we write stems from what we call an ‘engine’, which for us is Codemasters’ EGO Engine. This is what drives DiRT™ and GRID™, so its pedigree on next-generation systems such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is already proven. The Formula One games will have the benefit of this. It typically takes us two years to develop such a game, but a lot of the assets have already been created - we have a number of the tracks because they already exist in GRID™, and we have the basics of the car dynamics and handling. 

Then there’s the issue of which format when - clearly we’ll be targeting formats where there’s been no Formula One experience for a number of years, and the Nintendo Wii, the fastest-selling hardware console in the world today, where the plan is to use the controller like a steering wheel. We’ll go through a parallel development process on that, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The artwork involved will be intense and a lot of that will be done overseas to make sure we’re up to speed.

Full interview here