Latest Articles (Page 3547)

Fair enough, we got it wrong. When we heard that city investors had been building the Eidos share price up early this week, we made the only connection we could, that the company had massive profits to announce, but due to delays in key releases such as Commandos 2, Gangsters 2, Startopia and Eden, the company actually suffered, with turnover and profits down on last year. Net losses for the nine months to December 31st also increased from £11.5m in the same period of 1999 to £68m. The cause of the excitement over Eidos stock is now unknown, but CEO Mike McGarvey told MCV that "Based on current market conditions the board believes these results to be satisfactory, particularly since turnover and profits for the three month period were ahead of expectations." Perhaps city traders put two and two together and made eight? Sales projections for this year have been revised significantly downwards as a result of "changes to the timing of certain key releases scheduled for the fourth quarter." McGarvey said. But what of million-selling smash-hit "Who Wants to be a Millionaire"? Suffice to say a million copies sold in the UK alone should lift even the most reckless out of the red. The key may lie with poor results overseas in the States, where even mega-hit Deus Ex sold poorly to a market saturated with mindless shooters and sports titles. Related Feature - WWTBAM to net Eidos record gains?

Never before have so many column inches been devoted to one game. Over the last year in particular, the hype surrounding Peter Molyneux's new god game "Black & White" has grown to gargantuan proportions, dwarfing even the hundred foot tall kung fu fighting cows and head-scratching apes that have featured prominently in the horde of screenshots which have been plastered across the net in recent months.

If you've been keeping up on the ADSL front, you may be aware that several companies, including Redstone and Easynet are trialling something called "local loop unbundling", and that there has been a lot of drama surrounding the subject, with Oftel forcing BT to pay as much as £400 million in compensation per year until adequate provision for the service is in place. Just what is local loop unbundling, or LLU, though? At the present time, BT controls the exchange lines that connect consumer to service, giving them substantial control of access to the individual customer. Operators like BT therefore enjoy freedom to offer far more services to residential and business customers than network startups. People like Freeserve or AOL require BT to link their networks to those under their control via what is called a "switched interconnection", such that the customer can access the ISP's service. This hasn't been so much of an issue in the past because straightforward dialups can be routed across BT's lines without issue. However, in recent times, companies (like Freeserve again) have suffered extraordinary pains to present unmetered Internet connections to customers because BT control the exchanges. Since there was no way to bypass the exchange system, the ISP was forced to pay whatever fees BT demanded for its use. Nowadays of course, ADSL is a reality, and consumers are eager to take up the various offers available. This is where BT's control of the exchanges favours them again. After all, BT control all access to their exchanges, and ADSL being a new service, competitors have to route all their enquiries and business through them. Currently, there is speculation that BT is using this dominance to favour its own ADSL supplier, BT Openworld, instead of spreading the load across rival providers who have equally needy pre-orders and sign-ups. There may even be a lawsuit as a result. The answer is known as local loop unbundling, hence LLU. It's similar to the way cable companies offer Internet access. After all, companies like ntl can do so without ever needing to go near BT, because they do it all via a cable embedded deep below your feet in the road. LLU is also a method of bypassing the exchange system, although equipment will be based in BT exchanges under ISP control - it gives direct access from customer to service provider, and as a result is a very attractive option to startups. Or at least it would be. The problem facing ISPs eager to strike out with their own LLU scheme once again comes from BT. In order for them to take advantage, BT must first allow them to unbundle the copper wire that consumers communicate over. By doing so, they can then provide an unbundled solution from the BT exchange without BT having any control over it. Which is of course something they will be happy to delay as long as they possibly can. Under terms dictated by watchdog Oftel, however, companies like Redstone and Easynet, operators that have signed up to LLU, must be paid £20 million for every year their progress with LLU is inhibited. BT will also have to pay immediate compensation to operators if service levels are not met once installation is complete. A month ago, Easynet became the first operator to successfully unbundle a copper wire from a BT exchange in Battersea. They are now conducting tests in the area. Similarly, Redstone Telecom said today that they will be trialling an LLU service near Portsmouth in the near future, and that by supporting LLU they had boxed clever. With any luck, ADSL services based on LLU will become available in the near future, and consumers will be in a position to subscribe to services controlled by their ISP and not manipulated by British Telecom. Related Feature - BT faces legal action over ADSL

Gaming Service Provider BarrysWorld entered into voluntary liquidation earlier this year after failing to secure a second round of funding from venture capitalists 3i, and after three weeks of talks, Electronics Boutique has risen from the crowd and plucked up the company's assets for a figure reportedly around £400,000. EB will apparently use the assets to operate an online gaming service which will be promoted by its 300-strong chain of stores, to loyalty card holders and also on the company's website. The new service will operate under the EB Media umbrella according to a release issued by MCV this morning, and a number of the Barry's former staff will be rehired to operate the service. EB's John Steinbrecher, Chief Executive commented that "On-line gaming compliments our existing business and we are delighted to be able to bring this additional service to our customers" "The problem that online gaming companies have is generating traffic. We have the ability to drive our customer base through to the BarrysWorld service ­ that¹s a million customers gong through our stores every week that we can promote the online gaming service to. We have 2.5 million loyalty card holders who we can educate about online gaming. It is a very exciting move." BarrysWorld co-founder Ben "TedTheDog" Lawton, confirmed the changes in an emotional address to the BarrysWorld readers this morning, but even he is unsure of his own future. "Right now I'm writing as the co-founder of BarrysWorld pleased to see it carry on, rather than as an employee of Electronics Boutique", he said at the end of his update. It's clear that the service will be unlike its former self. "Our biggest cost was staff closely followed by the cost of providing the gaming service itself. We used to have 35 full time staff and there's no way in hell EB could afford to employ everyone again, it's simply uneconomical", Ted admitted. EB Media's CJ Ravey, also commenting in a BarrysWorld release, was noticeably more upbeat about the turn of events. "BW is alive again, and I for one couldn't be happier", he opened. "With the goodwill, good service and just damn good gaming going on with BW, it would have been criminal to let it die." Ravey was honest enough to admit that "Somethings (sic) will change", but just what is still being debated by the powers that be at EB Media. Ted has pledged to keep the BarrysWorld readership up to date on news about status of individual services such as hosting, leagues and bookable servers. At the moment though, there is still plenty to be decided upon before Barrysworld can move on once again. In a rather embarrassing start to the EB Media / BarrysWorld working relationship though, EB issued a release to MCV without telling anyone else, leaving hordes of the service's fans waiting patiently on Internet Relay Chat servers to hear the news from a fellow gamer whilst officials milled about all over the place in panic mode. Hopefully not a sign of things to come... Related Feature - Barrysworld liquidated

Take 2, the company that brought us early PlayStation 2 hits "Midnight Club" and "Smuggler's Run", as well as the almost-great "Oni" on PC and PS2, has announced its financial results for the first quarter today. THQ announced lively financial results last week, and rival Eidos is expected to post record-breaking profits tomorrow based on the success of its million-selling TV cash-in, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". Elsewhere, 3DO's profits were down thanks largely to failures on the GameBoy Color platform, and the company is said to have laid off 20% of its staff as a result. According to MCV, who brought us news of the Take 2 announcement, the company is showing turnover at $131m compared with $123m in the same quarter a year ago, whilst net profits are $7.8m compared with $4.8m a year ago. Although the company highlights its PS2 titles as key to its results, many have suggested that because of the PlayStation 2's droopy launch last year, Take 2's titles have suffered along with the rest. Back-catalogue sales and Oni's popularity may account for more of the sales than the PS2 titles, despite what the company says. With forays into WAP technology, a partnership with Gameplay and great new titles on the way including Gangsters 2 though, Take 2's second quarter results will likely be just as impressive, if not more. Related Feature - 3DO Announces Results

NEC has announced that their new manufacturing facility in Southern Japan, which cost $761 million to put together, has been producing Graphics Processing Units for Nintendo's GameCube with an output capacity of roughly 10,000 eight-inch wafers per month since January. Industry observers reckon that means 5-700,000 GPUs have been successfully produced, and quote a figure of $2.8 billion paid to NEC by Nintendo for their semiconductor needs. Unlike Sony, who complained that due to a shortage of its Emotion Engine chips and horrific yield percentages it would be forced to cut the allocation of PS2s in all territories late last year, Nintendo looks to have things in order. With the GameCube and GameBoy Advance both set for release this year, it's looks as though Nintendo are firmly on schedule. Related Feature - GameCube : The Science Bit

Microsoft and Tetratel have today announced a strategic partnership which will bring the technology developed by EyeFX, a wholly own subsidiary of Tetratel to Xbox. The joint venture is currently codenamed TINProject, but NDAs preclude either side from detailing specifics to the press. Tetratel is a Canadian company, but we have heard little from them in the past. Their EyeFX product website can be found here but is fairly loose on details. According to the EyeFX description on their main website however, the system uses an "external hardware HeadSpace3D Vision System", in conjunction with technology built-in to the computer making use of EyeFX. "This technology does not take any processor time and therefore will not slow down your computer system." It seems that EyeFX is a cunning way of showing images in three dimensions, similar to the 3D Revelator glasses used by ELSA in their Gladiac series of GeForce-based graphics cards. In order to simulate 3D, EyeFX displays two very similar images on your monitor, one for each eye, and the brain interprets this as one single image, giving the illusion of depth. Tetratel's website also cites a few games which we've not heard of as compatible with the system, and blurts something about movies over the Internet using EyeFX, something which we are publically sceptical about. The applications for the system range from movie entertainment to professional graphics design according to Tetratel, but as far as we can see, this is the first major games coup the company has had to its name. Whatever their pitch was like, it must have been pretty competitive to get Microsoft into such a state.

Late last week we heard reports that all was not well at the Electronic Arts offices just outside sunny San Francisco, with rumours emerging that their James Bond game "The World Is Not Enough" had undergone a major change of direction, and that (in an apparently unrelated move) a large number of development staff had been laid off. Today we received confirmation of the sackings, although Jeff Brown (EA's Vice President, Corporate Communications) assured us that "the reorganisation at EA's Redwood City, CA studio is a routine adjustment that reflects movement of projects and game franchises between studios". Apparently this means that "staffing reductions in Redwood City are balanced by increases at Tiburon and other EA studios", although sadly this is likely to be cold comfort for many of the sacked staff, who are now looking for new jobs in an increasingly depressed industry.

After much speculation, Turbine and publisher Microsoft today confirmed that they are working on a sequel to the massively multiplayer role-playing game "Asheron's Call". Indeed, according to the short press release Turbine have actually been hard at work on the sequel "since the original Asheron's Call shipped over a year ago". So far all we have to show for it is this one piece of pre-rendered concept art, but no doubt more details will begin to slip out later in the year as the game starts to take shape. Expect more pointy-eared monsters, more detailed landscapes, more earth-shattering special events, and of course more hapless bunny rabbits.

Although the weather might not be Spring-like just yet, the resurgeance of interest in football titles most certainly is. EON Digital, for example, have just announced their first PlayStation 2 title, released as "Greatest Striker" in Japan but likely to see a rebadging before being unleashed onto European territories. The game, developed by Taito, features two distinctive control sets, making it accessible to gamers of all skill levels. At first, beginners may want to assign pass, shoot and tackle to one single key to make control as simplistic as possible, leaving the game's artificial intelligence to decide which action to take. Once players progress to more advanced levels, they can access the advanced setting, which allows a greater range of actions such as chip passes and through balls. Through the game's World Ranking Mode players can see just how good they and their team really are, and this is not just based on the amount of goals they can score either - each team is awarded a score dependant on the actions of players during the match. The basis for this score will be how many goals were scored, how well timed the tackles were and how many passes were completed successfully. EON promise a dedicated website to allow gamers to post their World Ranking Mode scores, comparing them to those of gamers all over the world. The game will also feature over 40 international teams, real-time weather effects, extremely detailed players who will react realistically to each and every situation, all sorts of cup and league modes and support for up to four players.

When we were sent beta code for the English language version of Nival Interactive's latest role-playing game "Evil Islands" recently, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the Russian company behind the previously disappointing Rage of Mages series had turned out a rather impressive looking 3D role-playing game. With gorgeous graphics, an interesting storyline, amusing characters and enjoyable quest-based gameplay with a healthy sideline in stealth, things were certainly looking highly promising.

One of the hottest games to come out of Eastern Europe in recent years is the Croatian first person shooter "Serious Sam", which made waves in the hardcore gaming community when the test version was released last year, meeting with critical acclaim from the online media and rapturous applause from developers on the other side of the pond. Featuring a rather fetching new graphics engine, hordes of bizarre sci-fi monsters to waste, and a refreshing focus on high octane leave-your-brain-at-the-door action rather than plot, stealth and character development, it could prove to be a surprise hit when it is released this spring.

Rumour has it that city traders are buying Eidos shares by the truckload ahead of the company's financial report, which will be issued on Wednesday. The figures in the report will include sales not only for the latest incarnations in the popular "Tomb Raider" and "Championship Manager" series, but also sales of "Deus Ex" and the million-selling TV show cash-in, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", which is now available on every format under the sun and in more or less every major language globally. The Eidos share price rose on Friday, and the market's reaction this morning has led to it rising again. Related Feature - Eidos Wants To Be A Millionaire

Last year saw EuroGamer introduce the first Gaming Globe awards, recognising excellence in a range of different fields within game development, from sound and visual effects to storyline and overall game design. Think of it as the gaming industry's answer to the Oscars.

Console giant and now third-party developer Sega Corp., have today announced the redundancies of some 300 of its employees, whose jobs will be cut over the next two weeks as we approach the end of the Dreamcast's life. 300 employees will submit voluntary retirement within the next two weeks according to the plan, leaving Sega's payroll 11.5% lighter. According to Reuters, "the company will post 1.3 billion yen ($11.22 million) special loss for retirement allowances, adding that the plan will result in a 1.9 billion yen annual cost cut".

- nVidiaPrice - TBA, estimated $699 Why on earth call it the GeForce 3? That's the question I've been pondering for the last few days since details emerged of nVidia's next GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), codename NV20, and its capabilities. As Steve Jobs of Apple so elegantly put it, "this thing is amazing".

, the BritSoft developer behind best-selling "Championship Manager" series of football management games, announced the opening of their own online store earlier this week. So far there are only two items on offer - a Championship Manager 2001 calendar featuring pictures of different managers for each month, and a Sports Interactive football - but no doubt if they prove successful there will be more products on offer soon. Football manager action figures anyone? Or maybe voodoo dolls (complete with complimentary ten pack of pins) would be more suitable?

One of the least appreciated aspects of game development is audio. Although it can be just as important as graphics and storyline when it comes to establishing atmosphere, sound effects and music are generally overlooked. In fact, you're most likely to notice sound in a game when it's done badly. Enter Music4Games, a new website dedicated to computer game music and audio design.

It looks like the wait might finally be over. After numerous false starts, missed release dates and slipping schedules, Peter Molyneux's magnus opus "Black & White" appears to be on the home straight. The photo gallery on Lionhead's website has been updated with a webcam shot of Peter and the boys looking rather drunk and holding up a big sign saying "Done". Confirmation comes from Lionhead PR bod Cathy Campos, who told VoodooExtreme that "Lionhead made their final submission to EA last night".

Sega announced a lawsuit against Kmart yesterday evening, because Kmart allegedly failed to pay some $2.2 million on Dreamcasts they received and sold through their retail outlets. The retailer took $25.9m worth of stock, and according to Sega, has skipped payment on $2.2m of it. According to Sega, the suit comes after repeated requests for payment. Sega claim to have stopped shipping Dreamcasts to Kmart for alleged nonpayment in August last year. Charles Bellfield, acting as a spokesperson for Sega in San Francisco, described Kmart's actions as an "ongoing, malicious lack of payment". Sega's worldwide sales of the Dreamcast number approximately 6.5 million so far, and Kmart accounted for less than 5% of the American sales last year. Kmart has made no comment on the suit, so we have no idea of what their stance is on the situation, but it was seem that as long as Sega can prove that the retailer agreed to pay then failed to, they will be in trouble. Obviously all of the information so far comes from Sega, which is an important point to take into consideration. There is a rumour afoot, for instance, that it was not Sega's decision to stop shipping Dreamcasts to Kmart in August, but a conscious choice by Kmart to stop accepting them. Related Feature - Sega to become platform-neutral, Team up with Palm

- ELSAPrice - £399.99

Over the last few years the graphics card industry has changed almost beyond recognition. Traditional market leaders like S3 and Matrox have fallen by the wayside, and 3D graphics pioneer 3dfx is closing up shop and selling their patents, technologies and brand names to arch-rival NVIDIA.

Dreamcast veterans and recent PlayStation 2 backers Capcom will launch Onimusha Warlords in the United States on March 14th, according to a press release issued this evening. Onimusha was recently honoured with the distinction of being named "Best of show" at the SIGGRAPH 2000 Computer Animation Festival, and portrays an epic saga set in 16th century feudal Japan. The game has shipped an astonishing 900,000 units in Japan since its release just under a month ago, and what with the TV advertising push the North American arm of Capcom has planned, the release should go with a bang. Onimusha Warlords takes place in a world of darkness and magic, and focuses on a brave Samurai, Samanosuke, who boldy volunteers to rescue the princess Yuki (stop laughing at the back). As usual, an entire legion of demons and evil forces face him on his quest, in a country plagued by the constant bickering of power-hungry warlords. Scenes from the game include a five minute opener that has already won awards thanks to its depiction of six motion-captured Samurai fighting simultaneously. The plot was penned by Resident Evil writers Flagship, and the original musical score was recorded by a 200-piece orchestra. Even the game's characters themselves have a touch of motion picture quality to them - Samanosuke himself is none other than famous Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro, whose filmography can be seen here. It's thought that after a slow start, the PlayStation 2 may finally have a killer-app worthy of its success in Japan, where it has been available for nearly a year. The West will no doubt welcome the game also, and many suspect it will reach Shenmue levels of popularity, thanks to its jaw-dropping character models (each made up of no less than 10,000 polygons) and involving storyline.

A couple of months ago Interplay revealed that they would be releasing a new "Collector's Edition" of their award-winning role-playing game Baldur's Gate II : Shadows of Amn, which will be exclusively available right here in Europe. Originally it was intended to tie in with the UK theatrical release of the cheesy FX-laden Dungeons & Dragons movie, but that has come and (thankfully) gone, and the pack is now expected to be available alongside the long-awaited DVD edition of Baldur's Gate II on Friday March 16th.

It's another quiet week for the UK as Friday comes and goes with just two new releases for the PC - the gory third person fantasy action game "Severance : Blade of Darkness" from Codemasters and Spanish developer Rebel Act Studios, and Microids' real-time strategy offering "Time of Conflict", which we haven't seen or heard from since ECTS five months ago.

British publisher Empire Interactive have announced that they have signed a deal with Sega to publish PC versions of the surprisingly popular fishing sim "Get Bass" and motor racing game "Sega GT" in Europe. Both titles are being converted from the Dreamcast originals by Sega, and will be available on this side of the pond some time in July. In the case of Get Bass the game will be released both as a stand-alone and bundled with a force feedback fishing rod controller.

It seems that Sony's ambitions to dazzle the world (or at least Japan) with a usable fibre optic network for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 users is getting closer to realisation. Yesterday, Ken Kutaragi, president of SCE, joined the general session at the SGI Solution Forum 2001 and gave a keynotes address on the subject of "Broadband Revolution and the World of Evolving Computer Entertainment". During the speech, Mr. Kutaragi said that he expected "fiber-optic broadband Internet connections" to take off in Japan this year. "Once this environment, which enables 100-Megabit transmissions, is set, two-way broadband communications are sure to explode among PlayStation and PlayStation 2 users". He then continued to evangelise broadband connections to his audience. Maddeningly, Mr. Kutaragi neglected to elaborate on whether the 100Mbit figure was the total bandwidth to be shared between users, or whether the connection would be 100Mbit per individual, so it's a little hard to speculate on the system's success or failure at this stage. However, it was reported late last month that tests of the fibre-optic network which offered approximately 3Mbit of bandwidth per user were underway. Either way, as we said in our article on the subject, some of Sony's ambitions for the system won't be possible unless they address the issue of individual bandwidth, supply and of course contention. Mr. Kutaragi feels that "this broadband capability that will allow the world to come together as one," although no trials of the fibre-optic system have been scheduled for any territory outside of Japan.

It seems that several websites have gotten their hands on advanced copies of "Zone of Enders", Konami's latest release in Japan, which comes with a fully-featured Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. The demo features a short section of the beginning of the game, which we glimpsed first during the promotion movie at E3 and ECTS last year. The opening FMV sequence is apparently remarkable, and reveals Snake's cosy, figure-hugging camouflage outfit remains as he smokes a cigarette, but it becomes rather redundant as the entire first section of the game is set on a cargo ship, which he boards via the George Washington Bridge and a Goldeneye-style bungee cord. New character details have also emerged, including news that Colonel Sergei Gurlukovich, whose name will ring a faint bell with fans of the original, is a major player this time around. The demo doesn't make it clear whether or not Revolver Ocelot and Gurlukovich are gunning for the same side, but their relationship will no doubt be as bubbly as ever. According to The GIA, the knife-throwing girl seen in the movies is Olga Gurlukovich, the Colonel's pregnant daughter. We hope to have our own copy of Z.O.E. which includes the demo disc very soon. Stay tuned for more.

Lucasarts' latest Star Wars cash-in, the surprisingly good-looking "Star Wars Starfighter" uses Macromedia Flash Player technology to enhance its user interface, both companies happily announced recently. The game shipped yesterday to territories in the United States, and already sites like Daily Radar are saying that the game will "satisfy your inner space jockey quite nicely," which sounds like an offer. In a rather amusing statement, Macromedia pres' Kevin Lynch pointed out that the "Macromedia Flash community has long been rebelling against the dark side of boring, static user experiences. The great experience in Star Wars Starfighter shows the incredible flexibility in delivering Macromedia Flash content across a wide variety of devices." The actual application of Flash sits on top of the proprietary 3D engine developed by Lucasarts and handles tasks like menu selection, and general administrative stuff. Using the Macromedia development kits to develop Flash-based UIs is actually quite a good idea. God only knows how many times we've had to slag off games for their interface ineptitude - Flash offers a pleasant mix of visual jazz and functionality.

Sega yesterday announced a first for them, a console-based first person shooter tournament. The event, "Un-Civil War" (clever!) is to be the first in a series of online console tournaments, and is being touted as the first ever of its kind, rather like the ChuChu Rocket tournament they ran last year. Short memories at Sega? The Quake III event will actually take place over a number of days, from yesterday, the 22nd of February, through till the 2nd of April. Players can register using their Dreamcast (and judging by our luck not their PCs) at http://www.sega.net/tournaments. The main catch being you have to be in the United States. The tournament apparently consists of two competitions; what's described as a time flexible Open Ladder, and a fixed-schedule knock-out phase. During the four weeks of the Open Ladder stage, players will be ranked on the basis of points (hopefully not just kills) to determine the top weekly finalists who will be allowed to advance to the main tournament. SegaNet servers will host the Open Ladder, with all SegaNet subscribers, trial members and, er, Sega.com Society members proving eligible. The structure from there is pretty rigid. Players will be sorted into several regional 32-man knock-out tournaments, with one week of preliminaries, national finals and three eventual winners. Unlike the ChuChu Rocket tournament Sega held over here last year, the competitors can take part in the events from the comfort of their own home, as all the action will be hosted on SegaNet servers. Winners will take home a customized blue and orange Sega Dreamcast engraved with their name and championship title, which is pretty swish. Usual goodies like T-shirts are on offer to runners-up, or as the yanks would have it, just plain losers. The rules and whatnot can be pulled up on your Dreamcast at http://www.sega.net/tournaments.