Paradox Interactive has released a new trailer for their upcoming strategy-RPG, Crusader Kings II, which is due out next month on Windows PCs.
Author - Jerry Paxton
While not an official announcement by SEGA, this image of the Aliens: Colonial Marines collector’s edition from Gamekyo seems pretty legitimate. According to the image, the collector’s edition will give gamers three weapons for online matches (M240 Flamethrower, M577 A2 Smart Gun, M41A Pulse Rifle upgrade), a new game mode dubbed USCM (United States Colonial Marine Corps) Academy Firing Range, and a “highly detailed” resin figurine of a marine strapped into a power loader suit battling an alien.
Aliens: Colonial Marines is due out this Spring for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC platforms.
Electronic Arts has released a new trailer for their upcoming Kindoms of Amalur: Reckoning, showing off the game’s crafting system. Enjoy!
Trailer
Demiurge Studios has released a new trailer for their upcoming Shoot Many Robots, showcasing the development process the dev team goes through. The game is due out “very soon” for the XBLA and PSN platforms.
Trailer
The long battle between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay (well, what the The Thing-like mutation Interplay has become) is now over, resulting in a settlement. Zenimax Media (owner of Bethesda) now owns all rights and intellectual property of Fallout. Furthermore, this opens up the possibility of Bethesda Softworks developing a Fallout MMO. So… Exciting times ahead, vault-dwellers, stay-tuned!
The Full Press Release
January 9, 2012 (Rockville, MD) –ZeniMax® Media Inc. today announced that a settlement had been reached in the lawsuit filed by its subsidiary, Bethesda Softworks®, against Interplay Entertainment Corporation in 2009, Bethesda Softworks LLC v Interplay Entertainment Corp., seeking cancellation of the license granted to Interplay to develop a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) based on the Fallout brand. Bethesda maintained in its complaint that Interplay had failed to meet the conditions for the license and the license was therefore of no continuing validity.
Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay to develop the Fallout MMO is null and void, and all rights granted to Interplay to develop a Fallout MMO revert back to Bethesda, effective immediately. Interplay has no ongoing right to use the Fallout brand or any Fallout intellectual property for any game development. ZeniMax will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement, each party will bear its own costs of the litigation, and Bethesda will continue to own all Fallout intellectual property rights. Interplay will be permitted to continue to sell the original Fallout ®Tactics, Fallout® and Fallout® 2 PC games through December 2013, after which time all rights to market those games revert to and become the sole property of Bethesda. Under the original agreement pursuant to which Bethesda had acquired the Fallout property, Interplay was granted certain merchandising rights to sell those original Fallout games, but those merchandising rights will now expire on December 31, 2013.
The lawsuit against Interplay arose after Bethesda Softworks acquired all Fallout intellectual property rights from Interplay in April 2007, and conditionally licensed back to Interplay certain trademark rights to make a Fallout MMO, provided Interplay secured $30 million in financing for the MMO and commenced full scale development of the game by April 2009. Bethesda alleged in its complaint that Interplay failed to meet either condition of the license back agreement but refused to relinquish its license and insisted it would develop a Fallout MMO. Bethesda filed suit to declare the license void.
In a separate but related matter, Bethesda commenced a second action against a purported developer of the Fallout MMO, Masthead Studios, Bethesda Softworks LLC v Masthead Studios Ltd. In the course of the original lawsuit against Interplay, Interplay had claimed that it had engaged Masthead Studios to develop the Fallout MMO under its license, and contended that Masthead was engaged in full scale development of that game. Bethesda filed its separate lawsuit against Masthead to assert copyright infringement and other violations of Bethesda’s intellectual property rights. Under the MMO license granted to Interplay, Interplay was not permitted to sublicense any rights granted without the prior approval of Bethesda, approval which had never been requested or granted. In responding to Bethesda’s lawsuit, Masthead denied that it had been using any of Bethesda’s intellectual property in developing an MMO. Masthead and Bethesda settled that second lawsuit on December 29, 2011. In the settlement, Masthead acknowledges it has no legal right to use any Fallout intellectual property, and agrees it will not use any such intellectual property of Bethesda in the future. No payments were made by either party as part of this settlement. The two settlements resolve all pending litigation over the Fallout intellectual property owned by Bethesda.
Robert Altman, Chairman and CEO of ZeniMax, expressed satisfaction on behalf of the Company with the resolution of the two lawsuits saying, “While we strongly believe in the merits of our suits, we are pleased to avoid the distraction and expense of litigation while completely resolving all claims to the Fallout IP. Fallout is an important property of ZeniMax and we are now able to develop future Fallout titles for our fans without third party involvement or the overhang of others’ legal claims.”
Following the purchase of the property, Bethesda Game Studios, the 2011 ‘Studio of the Year’ and the development team behind the 2011 ‘Game of the Year’, The Elder Scrolls® V: Skyrim™, developed Fallout® 3. ZeniMax Media’s publishing subsidiary, Bethesda Softworks, published Fallout® 3, a highly acclaimed sequel which won ‘Game of the Year’ honors in 2008, for Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows. Bethesda also published the popular title, Fallout: New Vegas®, in 2010 for the same platforms. Fallout: New Vegas® Ultimate Edition, which will include the original game and the award-winning downloadable content in one special package, is planned for release by Bethesda in early 2012.
*logo by Banesbox
Wizards of the Coast has put out an open letter for help in designing the next rule-set of their venerable tabletop RPG (you youngsters who only know RPGs from video games should look these up), Dungeons & Dragons. To sign-up to help, or, just to get info when it is released, click here.
The Official Letter
Charting the Course for D&D
Your Voice, Your Game
Mike Mearls
As you may have read in the New York Times, it’s an exciting time for Dungeons & Dragons. We are happy to announce today that we are developing the next iteration of D&D, and will be looking to the legions of D&D fans to help shape the future of the game along with us.
Our mission is to ensure that D&D enters its next 40 years as a vibrant, growing, and exciting game. By listening to the needs of the D&D community, we can meet this goal. As part of our increased efforts to engage with the player-base, we launched a series of weekly articles in early 2011, including Rule of Three and Legends & Lore, to give you a voice in our work. We’ve listened to both praise and criticism from all D&D fans, regardless of their edition of choice, and we’ll continue to do so.
That is why we are excited to share with you that starting in Spring 2012, we will be taking this process one step further and conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it. With your feedback and involvement, we can make D&D better than ever. We seek to build a foundation for the long-term health and growth of D&D, one rooted in the vital traits that make D&D unique and special. We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game. In short, we want a game that is as simple or complex as you please, its action focused on combat, intrigue, and exploration as you desire. We want a game that is unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game that you want to run and play.
D&D is more than just a set of rules for fantasy gaming. It launched an entire gaming genre and played a pivotal role in creating the entirety of the gaming industry, both analog and digital. The game has lived and thrived because it has awoken a spark of creation, visions of daring adventure, wondrous vistas, and untold horrors that pull us all together as a community of RPG fans. It is the countless players and DMs who have brought it to life over the years. The game is at its best when it is yours.
For that reason, we want your participation. The goals we have set for ourselves are by no means trivial or easy. By involving you in this process, we can build a set of D&D rules that incorporate the wants and desires of D&D gamers around the world. We want to create a flexible game, rich with options for players and DMs to embrace or reject as they see fit, a game that brings D&D fans together rather than serves as one more category to splinter us apart.
We have begun obtaining feedback from a limited Friends & Family playtest consisting of internal employees and their gaming groups and soon we will be expanding that group to consist of members from our existing body of playtesters. Then at the D&D Experience convention in late January, Wizards of the Coast will conduct a special playtest of ideas currently in development. The D&D Experience will be moving to Gen Con in 2013, so as a convention special this year, we will be offering show attendees a first-look at a draft of the new set of rules. Then beginning sometime in the spring, we will begin open playtesting. Through our web site, we will release a growing set of rules, classes, monsters and other materials for your study and feedback. We seek to reach as many people as possible, from the gamer who just started with D&D last week to the gaming group that has been together since the early-1970s. For this process to work, we want to give a voice to all D&D fans and players of all previous editions of the game.
The next year is going to be an exciting one. There is a lot of work to be done, and I’m hoping you have the time, energy, and inclination to pitch in. We sure hope you do, as we seek to make gaming history by shaping the future of D&D, together. If you would like to sign up today to be notified when the playtest is beginning and how you can participate, click here:
Square Enix has released a new trailer for their upcoming Wakfu, showing off the character of “Cra”. Wakfu is due out in February of 2012 for the Windows PC platform.
Trailer
Capcom has released a new trailer for their upcoming Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which is due out on March 20, 2012 in North America.
Trailer
ROCCAT, a long-time European designer of video gaming peripherals, has revealed their official plans of US expansion today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company’s initial US lineup consists of a gaming keybourd, mouse, and headset – all of which will be available in mid-February at assorted price points. Checkout the lineup below for more information!
Isku Illuminated Gaming Keyboard – Combining the world’s smartest gaming engineering with jaw-dropping design, the ROCCAT™ Isku Illuminated Gaming Keyboard hands you the power to own any game. Exclusive ROCCAT™ Talk© protocol allows the Isku Illuminated Gaming Keyboard and the ROCCAT™ Kone[+] high-performance gaming mouse to talk to each other – giving you a powerful set bonus that lets you execute mouse macros quickly and easily right from your keyboard. Easy-Aim technology is perfect for when your game demands precise marksmanship in sniper mode. Simply press and hold a single keyboard key and Easy-Aim will instantly optimize the DPI setting on your Kone[+]. This two-handed custom marksmanship is the simplest and most convenient way ever to achieve pinpoint sniping accuracy. Available in mid-February for $89.99 www.roccat.org/isku/
Kone[+] Max Customization Gaming Mouse – The revolutionary 6000dpi Pro-Aim Laser Sensor, in conjunction with its 10.5 megapixel resolution and 1000Hz polling rate, offers maximum precision, even transmitting lightning fast mouse movements with up to 30Gs of acceleration and with speeds of up to 200ips (5.08m/s) without loss or lag. Building off of the original Kone’s highly touted ambidextrious hybrid shell, the mouse wheel features new, distinctive notch positions that are perfect for gaming, and the wider design makes it easier to control. Thanks to the Easy-Shift[+]™ button, all the buttons – including the mouse wheel – can be assigned two functions doubling the effective amount of macros or functions. Four multicolor LEDs, together with the enhanced lightpipes and configurable effects, can illuminate, alternate or pulsate in more than four different colors at the same time. You can configure your button assignments, including macros, DPI settings, the sensor sensitivity level and your lighting settings too, and save them to any one of 5 profiles on the 576kB of onboard memory. This allows you to customize your mouse to suit individual games. Predefined macro presets for the top 20 PC games as well as several office apps make it even easier to customize the mouse – plus the new Loop Function now makes it possible to loop macros indefinitely. Lastly, a weight system comprising 4 x 5g weights is included, allowing you to customize the weight in four stages to suit your preferences. Available in mid-February for $79.99. www.roccat.org/koneplus
Kave 5.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset – Realistic 3D sound is crucial to knowing the position of your enemies and winning the battle. Kave 5.1 accomplishes unparalleled immersive sound with 40 mm speakers plus an additional vibration unit, arranged at a 12 degree angle, embedded within each earcup. With the accompanying Tip’n’Control Desktop Remote, gamers have easy access to volume control and can precisely customize their desired sound profile based on center, front, and rear channels as well as the bass. A blue LED at the end of the boom mic indicates when the mute function is enabled ensuring that the days of accidentally giving away crucial information are long gone. Long term comfort is maximized with a headband containing 3 separately bedded pads, which guarantee an equal weight distribution. Available in mid-February for $119.99. www.roccat.org/Products/Gaming-Sound/ROCCAT-Kave-5-1/
Harmonix has announced that tracks from Ne-Yo’s Closer will be hitting the Dance Central music store tomorrow – January 10th.
Official Info
Off of 2008’s Grammy-nominated Year of the Gentleman, this poppy dance track was a departure from Ne-Yo’s typical style, and has a thumping beat that’s a hit at the club. “Closer” will be available for 240 Microsoft Points in Dance Central 2’s in-game Music Store, or from Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
- Artist – Ne-Yo
- Song – “Closer”
- Difficulty – Moderate
- DC Choreographer – Kunle Oladehin
- Price – 240 MS Points
- Release date – January 10th