Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
| The video game industry has gone from a mole hill to a mountain in no time flat, Chris DiMarco is your Sherpa as you endeavor to scale Mount “Everquest”

Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency

Some of the biggest challenges slowing down the adoption of IoT are security, efficient battery usage and optimized wireless communications.One company has...

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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction

In an effort to boost margins, companies often push more users to automated solutions such as FAQs, chatbots, voice bots and anything...

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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call

Huawei recently completed the world's first voice over NR (VoNR) call. The voice and video call service was made using two Huawei...

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IGEL Advances Future of Work

IGEL is a provider of a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company’s software products include IGEL OS, IGEL UD Pocket (UDP) and Universal...

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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN

Tata Communications and Cisco have extended their partnership to enable enterprises to transform their legacy network to a customized and secure multi-cloud...

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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War

Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...

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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise

Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...

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Is The Game Publisher Dying...Or Just Changing?

August 7, 2013

We've heard before about not needing a publisher any more when Kixeye's Will Harbin took the stage at Casual Connect and started decrying his own position, suggesting that the status of the industry was shifting in such a direction that a publisher really wasn't necessary any more. But now, Harbin is joined by a rather unexpected source in Xbox co-creator Ed Fries, who offered up an interview with “The Daily A-List” about the future of big-time publishers.

Fries examines the issues of digital distribution, of physical distribution and beyond in framing his response, suggesting that the age of big publishers may be on the outs as games can be had more readily via download than ever. “Walmart didn't want to deal with a hundred companies,” said Fries, “they wanted to deal with four or five.”


Given that Fries is currently an advisor for the Ouya gaming platform, it might require his words to be taken with an appropriate grain of salt, though considering that he's scarcely alone in saying this, there may well be a movement after all. Though Fries does somewhat gloss over other issues, like connectivity in rural settings that will preclude a purely digital delivery system, the fact of the matter is that a lot more downloading of games is going on, and some games will never be found in a brick-and-mortar store.

The recent moves seen in the console gaming space are also pointing to a future with more indie developers.


Asda and Bethesda May Make Two Much Trouble For Wii U

August 6, 2013

Sometimes, the strangest news comes from the confluence of two separate news items. That may be the case with a double shot of news about the Wii U, one slightly old, the other comparatively new, and both adding up to make what looks like a potentially unpleasant situation for the beleaguered console.

We've noted here on more than one occasion that the Wii U's biggest problem is its comparative dearth of games. While the 3DS doesn't have such a problem, nor does the Wii, the Wii U is simply lacking on the game front, bad news for a console in the neighborhood of its first anniversary. This puts Nintendo into something of a Catch-22 situation; third party developers aren't in too big a rush to make Wii U games when Wii U consoles aren't selling, but where's the motive to buy Wii U consoles if there aren't games for it?

Can The Xbox One Keep Its Cool?

August 5, 2013

When the Xbox 360 first made its appearance, it looked like a clear winner was in the offing. Not only were there more games on hand, but the system actually cost significantly less than its competitor, the PlayStation 3. But the triumph didn't last long as the greatest horror Xbox gaming had ever seen arrived on the scene in the red ring of death phenomenon.

The good news here, however, is that Microsoft seems to have learned its lesson from the Xbox 360's disastrous past.

Does Microsoft Plan A Bounty On Gaming Trolls?

August 1, 2013

There aren't many people out there who enjoy gaming trolls. Sure, sometimes the antics of same can be amusing, but all too often it's a slew of racist jokes, sexist comments, and all-around unpleasantness that just puts more than a few people off gaming. Microsoft is out to counteract this by offering up what may be one of the first such things of its kind, a kind of bounty system to find trolls in two new initiatives.

The initiatives in question are called Enforcement United and Xbox Community Level, in which Microsoft turns over issues of the community to the community. Enforcement United allows gamers to take a more active role in deciding whether certain content issues violate Microsoft's terms of service.

Nintendo Recovers To Net Profit, But For How Long?

July 31, 2013

Some great news landed for Nintendo recently, but at the same time, the news was underscored by a bit of a hit for the company, and one that may have some considering Nintendo's long-term viability as it relates to being in on the console wars. Nintendo brought out its quarterly numbers and showed a net profit, but some downright dismal sales on the Wii U.

The good news is as mentioned, a net profit for the quarter, and Nintendo further left untouched recent guidance from the company that suggest a 100 billion yen operating profit for the current fiscal year. But bad news quickly followed as not only did Nintendo reveal an operating loss of 4.92 billion yen—right around $50 million, as exchange rates go—but that was on net sales of 81.5 billion yen, around $830 million, rounded off. Potentially even worse was what made up those numbers, particularly sales of just 160,000 Wii U consoles in the quarter.

Who Needs A Game Publisher, Anyway?

July 30, 2013

Recently, while at the Casual Connect game conference, Kixeye's chief executive Will Harbin took the stage to talk about game publishing, which made sense given that he was a game publisher. Though what Harbin had to say about game publishing was something of a surprise, and remember here that Will Harbin is a game publisher. What Harbin had to say was that younger developers needed to forget about publishers and instead publish games on their own in the various app stores.

“Why have an overlord like me? What's the point?” said Harbin, who throughout the course of the conversation painted a massive target on his chest and demanded to be shown to the nearest guillotine.

The Only Thing To Fear In Gaming Is Fear Itself

July 29, 2013

There is a growing concern these days over exclusionary behavior in the gaming market. Given the state of the last several years, it's really not surprising that such factioning behavior would take place, but in some ways, it's actually hurting the industry. In others, however, it's actually something of a help.

While the names of the factions have changed over the years, the essential message remains the same. When the conflict was casual versus hardcore, the hardcore players were concerned that valuable resources would be diverted from the hardcore market to produce games for the casual players.

MMOs Set To Make A Huge Mark In Consoles

July 25, 2013

Recently, we took a look at the concept of open world gaming, and showed that there was quite a bit in the field poised to make its way toward the market. At the time, we noted that this was an exciting development, and indeed, referred to the open world concept as being quite a bit like the massively multiplayer online experience. Well, as it turns out, MMOs are set to make the jump to consoles too, and in almost distressingly large numbers.

There are several titles set to make the jump to consoles, including “DC Universe Online,” “Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade,” “War Thunder,” “The Elder Scrolls Online,” “Destiny,” “World of Tanks,” “Planetside 2,” “Final Fantasy XIV,” “The Division,” “The Crew,” “Diablo 3,” “Dragon Quest X,” “Everquest Next,” “Phantasy Star Online 2, “ “Free Realms,” “Warframe,” and, eventually, “Titan.”

Now, that's a lot of names, and serves as a great jumping off point. See, this lot is looking to make its way to mainly next-generation consoles over the next two years or so, and joins at least one major console MMO in “Defiance.” A large number of these—the bulk of them, in fact—is set to hit the PlayStation 4 first, though more than a few will get Xbox One support, and a few will show up on both of the two major new systems.



Xbox One Shakes Up Next-Gen Again With Self-Publishing Reports

July 24, 2013

In a way, you've really got to hand it to Microsoft. It's not every day you see a company so willing to take what it said previously, turn it on its ear, and say something totally different later because it's clear the customers want it or don't want it or the like. Another of Microsoft's standards appears to have fallen, meanwhile, and it's likely to be good news for the indie crowd.

The Xbox One, according to reports, will now allow the self-publishing model that's not only a huge part of Steam, but also recently announced for the PlayStation 4. What's more, the reports go on to indicate that the overall certification process for games to reach Microsoft's online stores is to be further streamlined, and—though this particular report is somewhat unconfirmed at last report—Xbox One systems will be able to work as developer kit units.

Basically, this means that indie developers will be able to act as their own publishers, where before, developers needed a partner to get in on the full range of Microsoft capability.



Oculus Rift and IndieCade Plotting Game Jam

July 23, 2013

One of the greatest principles in gaming is that the hardware is important, but it's not so important that it can succeed in isolation without games. Oculus and IndieCade are looking to get together and start a game jam to help take care of that one particular issue with Oculus' own hardware.

IndieCade had made quite a splash at E3 with its booth showing off a variety of independent games, and Oculus had made a likewise splash with the Oculus Rift peripheral, perhaps one of the best efforts in the field of virtual reality for the last several years. But as impressive as the Oculus Rift is, perhaps the biggest issue facing it is the lack of games that will work with it. This is where IndieCade comes in, working with Oculus to get a whole lot of developers together to create a string of games all geared toward virtual reality.

But this game jam isn't just a shot to get a lot of developers together in one place to crank out some code, oh no...this particular game jam comes with prizes.



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