Tagged News: ces

The big party in Las Vegas is over, with the CES event breaking all previous show records utilizing a 1.85 million sq. feet of exhibit space, thousands of exhibitors, products and new technologies unveiled. Here's what CES's president Gary Shapiro had to say:

"The 2008 International CES succeeded spectacularly, and will help fuel the growth of the consumer technology industry throughout 2008 and into the future," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CEA. "This year's International CES was a show of firsts: the first leaders from the automotive and cable industries to deliver CES keynote addresses, the first time the president of a country has spoken at CES, and the first year a television station broadcast its entire nightly newscast - NBC Nightly News -live from the show floor."

Click after the jump for the full press release and future CES events schedule!

While the stage demo of The Agency at CES may have been slightly underwhelming, a three part developer walkthrough is now available at GameTrailers, and it's looking pretty good. Hal Milton, Lead Designer on The Agency claims the footage shown is pre-alpha, but the game is looking quite polished for such an early stage of development!

Don't believe me? Click here to see for yourself!

Coming out of CES 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada, is news reported by the NY Times that CNET Networks, parent company of GameSpot, may be subject to a takeover.

A consortium of investment funds has taken a 21% share of CNET and is looking to boot the company's directors and replace members of its board with their own. The plan will face some hurdles, although. CNET Networks maintains defensive provisions that stipulate that no shareholder can amend the bylaws unless they have had $1000 in shares of the company for at least one year. No one in the consortium has held shares in that amount for a year or more.

It's unclear how this situation will pan out, but what is clear is that CNET has no plans to give in easily.

For the full story, click here.

In Las Vegas, CES has kicked off and the usual panels are underway. Gamasutra chimes in with an especially interesting summary of one that features a wide cross section of development personalities, including people from Turbine and SOE.

Rowe asked the panelists about how to build an online game's global relevance. Said Christensen, "WoW has done a great job of localization, but in some ways they're almost thought of as an Asian company because of their long history of success in Korea. We're working Asian and Indian companies and developers to help us localize our development."

"We've had to learn that too," Ferrari agreed. "They're completely different business models, retail models, governmental regulations. Now you have to put technology in our games for the Asian markets to time players out after a certain amount of time."

Read more here.

As we wrap up Carolyn Koh's string of reports from the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas, we take a look at Funcom's insanely anticipated Age of Conan. This MMO promises a brutal experience on the PC, Windows Vista and Xbox 360.

Players can interact with the environment in different ways - one of them is to poison the water so NPCs become weakened when they drink. Another is distraction. NPC guards can be drawn off by firing an arrow or throwing a rock to create noise. Funcom is still working on their AI to change the range of NPC sight and hearing in different conditions such as day and night.

Jorgen tells me, "What we are trying to do though is to use our AI and dynamic scripting so that i.e. an area will change "behavior" at night, like it would in real-life. For instance the streets of a city will see a different kind of life at night than compared to day."

Click below to read the full report.

Our writer on the ground at the Consumer Electronics Show, Carolyn Koh, filed this report on Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. It is based on an interview with PR man Adam Mersky.

I asked about the state of the game and was told that they were at a pre-launch "squashing bugs and polishing" stage. Adam also spoke about the challenges the Dev team encounters developing Tolkien's world.

"There's the Dwarven women issue where players want to be able to play female dwarves. If there are any questions, we always go back to the books. Gimli says that outsiders wouldn't be able to discern any differences and that the females are also bearded," said Adam. Currently, the characters are called "Dwarves - Male" but a visitor had given Adam a work around if Turbine chooses to use it. "She told us to just name them Dwarves and not use a gender significator."

The full article is here.

Carolyn Koh's CES reports took her into the Perpetual Entertainment booth as she got an exclusive look at Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. Richard Zinser, Perpetual's VP of Game Services, gave her the run through in this article-format interview that looks primarily at squad combat.

Minions may be obtained through quests or hired (for a one time fee). Either way, they remain with you. Your first will be the reward of a quest and your myth creature minions will be too.

"Free minions will be far and few between. Most of your minions would be hired. They will be the same level or close to that of your character, and will gain experience and level up with you."

At other levels, you will be able to hire and equip your minions in towns or main camps. Unless things change during beta, care and feeding of your minions is in upgrading their equipment and bringing them out to play.

You can read more here.

Disney told people at CES, in an article by Reuters, that they hope to launch more MMOs tied into their movies, such as the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean from Disney's VR Studios.

Disney, whose Mickey Mouse brand is a household name around the world, aims to reach a new generation of kids and young adults who are as likely to be clutching digital music players and watching online videos as sitting in front of the television.

"We plan to build more virtual worlds like "Pirates" based on a broad range of our properties," Iger told attendees of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, referring to a Web game based on its "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.

The full Reuters article is here.

Carolyn Koh, our intrepid reporter on the ground in Las Vegas, met with the big cheese Brad McQuaid and Paul "GM Vladimir" Luna from Sigil to discuss the upcoming Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. This article takes a look at what's coming through conversations with the two men.

Vanguard is essentially a game of choices. It is designed as a social game much like EverQuest was and provides incentives to players to do things together, but also allows a player to solo if they choose to. Some adventure and quest content will require a group or groups of players to defeat, likewise players working together to gather resources, for example, open up opportunities with the combination of their skills to obtain better raw materials that they as a solo harvester may not be able to do.

The death mechanic also provides a player with choices.

"There's a misconception out there that Vanguard is a hardcore game, but you make it as hardcore as you want. Vanguard isn't about walking uphill in the snow, both ways. We recognize that we will have Casual, Core and Raid players," Paul took the death mechanic as an example; there are three ways to deal with it. One can choose to pay a little money, wait a little while or fight your way back.

You can read the full article at Vanguard WarCry.

The official Gods and Heroes website has thrown down some new screenshots and a video - tiny resolution - they did recently for CES, which is ongoing in Las Vegas.

You can see the screenshots here. The video is here.