General Gaming News II: Steam Helpdesk Site Leak

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/tales_ch/status/352221113574637568

Anime Expo (Los Angeles) / Japan Expo (Paris)

That's the Tales producer for those that didn't already know.

NA Reveal

https://twitter.com/KingdomofTales/s...50558886641664

[Ratatapa]

The dual audio is really nice, I wish more companies, employ it

for me Japaneese audio + English subs is the way to go!

[6souls]

Persona 5 is coming
http://whois.domaintools.com/persona5.jp

Sony has submitted a trademark for PlayStation TV (think Apple TV)







(PC/360)

Kalypso Media is thrilled to announce the release of Dark, its vampire-themed take on the stealth-action genre. Dark is available now across UK and Export retail stores for Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC. The PC version is also available for purchase and download via Steam and other digital distribution channels. To celebrate the launch, Kalypso Media is taking fans deeper into the world of Dark with an action-filled new launch trailer.

Dark is a stealth action game with RPG elements that lets you slip into the role of the ultimate killer… a vampire. Stalk your enemies from the shadows then use powerful vampire abilities to attack and silently dispose of them! The exciting story of Dark immerses you in a world full of blood and darkness in which the hunter can become the hunted at any time. As you unravel the mystery behind the omnipresent and powerful global conglomerate, Geoforge, you must continually improve your character by developing powerful skills to aid you in remaining unobserved, or silence those unfortunate enough to take too keen an interest in you.

Earthworm Jim 4, maybe

The official Earthworm Jim facebook page recently updated with a few lines speculating as to what they would call a fourth instalment in the franchise.

Writing on the official Facebook page, Earthworm Jim creator Doug TenNapel wrote:

'Everyone loves Earthworm Jim 1 and 2, and I don't generally acknowledge EWJ 3 as a real part of the Jim universe. So if I was making another Jim game, would it be too confusing to call it Jim 3? Or would it have to be Jim 4? How about "Earthworm Jim 4 the Fans"?'

Way back in 2009 ONM declared the Earthworm Jim 2 'The funniest game ever', so the possibility of a fourth game (especially when the third isn't considered 'canon' by TenNapel himself) certainly has us excited!

http://www.officialnintendomagazine....worm-jim-game/

Epic Games hiring designer for unannounced competitive online game featuring dynamic economy




Steins;Gate Visual Novel coming to NA for PC

North American video game publisher JAST USA announced at Anime Expo on Friday that it will release the Steins;Gate PC game.

5pb. and Nitroplus' Steins;Gate game is the second "scientific adventure game" from the two companies, who also created Chaos;HEAd and Robotics;Notes. The artist huke designed the characters. The story of the original game revolves around the eccentric college student Rintarou "Okarin" Okabe and his "Future Gadget Laboratory" circle of friends in a realistic version of Tokyo's Akihabara district. The friends turn a microwave oven into a machine that sends email messages to the past, and that attracts the attention of a mysterious organization called SERN.

The game originally shipped for the Xbox 360 console in October 2009, and a Windows port shipped in August 2010. The game has also been ported to the PSP, PS3, PS Vita and iOS.

JAST USA confirmed that Steins;Gate will have the original voices.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/inte...l-in-n-america

Dark Souls demake

http://retrobytesproductions.blogspo...o-alxinho.html

[6souls]

Marvelous AQL now to focus on MMORPG & FPS genre's

Marvelous AQL, the Japanese publisher behind games like Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Rune Factory, recently acquired Atlus Online from Index Corporation, and they plan to use their added resources in order to make further headway into the online games market.

Siliconera asked Tatsuya Nishioka, Senior Director at Marvelous Online, just what segment of online games the publisher is interested in pursuing. At the moment, Marvelous operate browser games like Battle Space and Knight of the Sky, as well as client-based MMORPGs like Pandora Saga and Shin Megami Tensei Imagine, which they inherited from Atlus Online.

Going forward, Nishioka says, don’t expect to see Marvelous Online pursuing too many more browser games.

“As you know, the browser game market is shrinking very rapidly; we are focusing on client-based games,” Nishioka said. “But with HTML5 technology on the rise, we are keeping options open based on market feasibility.”

Instead of browser titles, says Nishioka, Marvelous Online are going to be focusing on making headway in the MMORPG and first-person shooter space. There are a fair few online, free-to-play games out in the market already, but there exist a number of these kinds of games from Asia that haven’t really been explored thus far.

“We will go where demand takes us, and right now that means MMORPGs and FPS games,” Nishioka revealed. “And as I said before, we will be focusing more on client-based games. Japanese developers are not focused on these kinds of games, and the Japanese market itself is more geared towards browser-based games, so we are looking to diversify beyond Japanese developers.”

In this regard, games from Taiwan, Korea and China will be potential targets for localization, Nishioka said.

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/07/05...n-mmorpgs-fps/

[Exoduso]

Persona 5 is coming based on the fact it was registered?

[6souls]

Persona 5 is coming based on the fact it was registered?

It's been in production since 2010. The site domain means they are nearing ready to make a reveal.

[Exoduso]

It's been in production since 2010. The site domain means they are nearing ready to make a reveal.

I hope so... they skipped an entire console generation just like KH. >.<

[6souls]

Vivendi seeking a loan from Activision Blizzard, which it holds the majority stake in

Unable to sell off Activision Blizzard, majority owner Vivendi is said to be considering a raid on the twin publisher’s capital.

According to a Financial Times report [paywall], Vivendi is looking at ways to make some ready money from Activision Blizzard after a failed attempt to sell off its 61% majority stake.

Citing anonymous sources, the publication claims Vivendi and Activision Blizzard have discussed having the latter company extend a tender offer partially covering Vivendi’s stake, funded by its available cash or a debt offering.

An agreement is in Activision Blizzard’s best interests because Vivendi will gain the power to forcibly extract cash dividends from its property as of Tuesday, apparently; in the past, Vivendi has had to gather support from Activision Blizzard’s directors for any cash grab which would bring the company to a net debt of over $400 million.

Vivendi is an international company headquartered in France which has finger in a wide variety of pies, including the oil industry. It always seems to be selling off Activision, but nobody seems to be in a position to buy one of the largest publishers in the world.

Vivendi pushed a new board member on Activision Blizzard last year, but still doesn’t seem happy with the US company’s performance.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/08/acti...h-grab-report/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e93f9df4-e...44feabdc0.html

Nintendo won't cut staff to improve financial performance

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has staunchly refused to let staff go in order to shore up the Japanese company’s teetering financial performance.

During a Q&A with investors, Iwata was challenged to justify why Nintendo hadn’t undergone “corporate restructuring” – usually a euphemism for lay-offs – in response to operating losses during its two most recent fiscal periods.

Iwata said the losses Nintendo made could be ascribed to multiple causes including fluctuating foreign currency exchange rates, resulting in less return from the same sales figures, but also acknowledged that the company is paying more employees than in previous financial years.

“The manpower required for increasingly complex and advanced product development has totally changed from that of the past. Hence, the number of employees has increased and higher costs have been incurred,” he said.

“Regarding why we have not reduced the number of the personnel, it is true that our business has its ups and downs every few years, and of course, our ideal situation is to make a profit even in the low periods, return these profits to investors and maintain a high share price. I believe we should continue working toward this ideal.

“If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, however, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.”

Iwata said he believes Nintendo can be profitable with its current business structure, although he said it will indeed enact appropriate certain cost-saving measures.

“I know that some employers publicize their restructuring plan to improve their financial performance by letting a number of their employees go, but at Nintendo, employees make valuable contributions in their respective fields, so I believe that laying off a group of employees will not help to strengthen Nintendo’s business in the long run,” he said.

“Our current policy is to achieve favorable results by continuously cutting unnecessary expenses and increasing business efficiency.”

http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/08/nint...he-short-term/
http://www.vooks.net/nintendo-wont-c...up-short-term/
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stoc...0627qa/03.html

Valve has ‘high school clique’ management structure

Valve’s famously flat management structure is being controlled by a group of hidden ‘high school cliques’, according to former head of the company’s hardware division Jeri Ellsworth. The hacker was let go from Valve in February as part of 25 redundancies at the company.

At the time the round of lay-offs triggered speculation as to what was happening at Valve, and prompted Ellsworth to confirm her firing on Twitter.

In the Grey Area Podcast above, Ellsworth said that the ‘clique’ minority led a witch hunt across the company to remove ‘undesirables’ from the company, which resulted in redundancies. Part one of six is above. Hit the link to see all six parts of the discussion.

On her experience in the hardware team, Ellsworth said, “Now we’ve all seen the Valve handbook, which offers a very idealised view. A lot of that is true. It is a pseudo-flat structure, where in small groups at least in small groups you are all peers and make decisions together. But the one thing I found out the hard way is that there is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company. And it felt a lot like High School.

“There are popular kids that have acquired power, then there’s the trouble makers, and then everyone in between. Everyone in between is ok, but the trouble makers are the ones trying to make a difference. I was struggling trying to build this hardware team and move the company forward. We were having a difficult time recruiting folks – because we would be interviewing a lot of talented folks but the old timers would reject them for not fitting into the culture.

“I shouldn’t say the numbers, but there were very few of us in the hardware department. We were understaffed by about a factor of 100.”

The witch hunt was said to be sparked by what Ellsworth called a ‘weird paranoia’ that came from the cliques fearing that their culture would become contaminated by certain employees.

Ellsworth added that her experience is not reflective of all departments in Valve and stressed that this was purely in her own experience.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/08/ex-v...ent-structure/

Project Cars
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/...oject-cars.jpg


Alien Rage

(PC/PS3/360)

CI Games has announced that Alien Rage, the sci-fi first-person-shooter putting the challenge back in genre, will invade Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC worldwide Autumn 2013. A new cinematic trailer has also been released today which sets up the ominous backstory and the hunt for the ultimate power source: promethium. Capable of powering an entire planet or completely destroying it, it’s up to players to prevent the universe’s prize of promethium from falling into the wrong hands and taking down everything that comes in their way.

NHL 14

[Insanecyclone]

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/ry...013/1100-4685/

Ryan Davis passed away on July 3rd. He was 34.

Obviously we’re all stunned over here. Ryan was a good friend to all of us. It’s odd to remember that, for someone who could be so acerbic at times, and despite knowing him for almost a decade, I honestly don’t recall ever actually being mad at him. He had an unconventional type of kindness that expressed itself more strongly the longer one knew him, and despite his teasing nature, he always managed to make his close friends feel loved when his attention turned towards you.

Many of you know that Ryan was recently married. In the face of this awfulness, many of us will at least always remember him as we last saw him: outrageously, uproariously happy, looking forward to his next adventure with the biggest grin his face could hold.

The consolation we can feel from that is miniscule compared to the hole that Ryan’s absence will leave in our lives. That’s not a hole that is possible to fill; it’s just something that we’ll just have to get used to walking around with, and that will not happen for a long, long time.

[Doombear]

Just saw that. I am floored. This is insanely sad. He was on his honeymoon possibly? Jesus...

[Insanecyclone]

Just saw that. I am floored. This is insanely sad. He was on his honeymoon possibly? Jesus...

Yeah and about that too..

[Doombear]

Fuck... just goddamn. I can't even imagine how the team is taking this. I don't know that the site will ever be the same. I was just listening to last week's podcast on my way in this morning and they were still talking about the wedding.

[Insanecyclone]

And his wife's twitter

[Doombear]

An article from Stephen Totillo.

[TacoTaru]

This is just. Ugh, man this is terrible.

[Insanecyclone]

http://www.thanksryan.com/

[Doombear]

Trying to explain this to a few people here at work, and it is hard. At first I was a bit surprised how affected I seem to be by it, then I realized how long I have been listening to Ryan. It has been a long time... and I don't know that the Bombcast will ever be remotely the same.

[Kaisha]

The fuck......he just got married too........

Bombcast isn't going to be the same without his intro.

[Kirin]

I hope so... they skipped an entire console generation just like KH. >.<

I would actually hope it comes out on the PS3. With Index's "situation" I think financially it would be a much better idea too considering the install base for the PS3 vs buying a new console for a title.

[Salodin]

link removed