Assassin's Creed III making of video
See E245's cover star in motion, plus interviews with the technical director and associate producer, in our exclusive video.
See E245's cover star in motion, plus interviews with the technical director and associate producer, in our exclusive video.
Ubisoft on why iteration isn't enough for its biggest-ever videogame, and being the last of the triple-A "dinosaurs".
Ground Zeroes, starring Big Boss, shown at Tokyo event running on Kojima's Fox Engine.
1We speak to The Creative Assembly about why it's bringing an updated version of the iOS strategy game to PC.
Producer admits frequent clashes of heads between two fiercely independent studios, but insists: "It helps us make something better."
Cory Davis says publisher 2K insisted on multiplayer component for Yager's subversive thirdperson shooter.
3Help create the Angry Birds developer's next games, or teach the next generation of programmers.
1Bethesda has announced Hearthfire, a second DLC pack for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that lets players build their own homes from the ground up. In addition to building the house, players can expand it to what Bethesda's announcement describes as "a sprawling compound". You'll have to defend it from unwanted guests and can even adopt children. More >
Sleeping Dogs is number one in the UK all-formats software chart for a second week, providing further vindication for Square Enix's decision to pick up the publishing rights to a game Activision had cancelled. More >
1Vita's barren release schedule is to receive a significant boost this week, with a new firmware update adding compatibility with games from Sony's first console, PSOne. This week's PlayStation Store update will herald the arrival of over 100 PSOne games that can be played on Sony's handheld - if you live in Europe, anyway. The North American PlayStation Blog lists a paltry nine games, with more promised over time. More >
Unity Technologies held its annual awards ceremony last night at Unite 12 in Amsterdam, offering up eight awards that went to seven studios, including The Creative Assembly. More >
Voting has opened for the Golden Joystick Awards 2012, sponsored this year by retailer HMV. This year, the awards are celebrating 30 years of rewarding the greatest videogaming achievements, and organisers are hoping to smash last year's record of over two million votes from the gaming public. More >
1Revolution turned down genuine publisher interest in favour of crowd funding through Kickstarter, Charles Cecil tells us.
We speak to Charles Cecil about using the crowd funding site to finance the beloved adventure series’ return to its 2D roots.
What Claptrap calls "the 1989 16bit original" playable in any web browser; link inside.
Rockstar has released another three screenshots from Grand Theft Auto V. Following Monday's transport-themed shots, these three are headed 'Leisure', showing dirt bikes, tennis, and paragliding. More >
Organisers of the ExPlay festival have announced plans for a two-day game jam in Bristol and London, in association with the Wellcome Trust. The game jam, during which teams and individuals alike will have 24 hours to develop a game to a theme set by biomedical scientists from the Wellcome Trust. More >
222Cans founder warns that many established developers are like “old, decrepit athletes that need to retrain ourselves”.
Watch the making of our animated cover, starring Beyond's Ellen Page.
UPDATE: Sony statement confirms closure of Wipeout studio after almost 30 years in the business.
4"A lot of the gameplay was based on my total incompetence as a programmer," 22Cans founder says at Unite 2012.
4At Unite 2012 in Amsterdam today Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason has announced that its game creation platform Unity will soon support Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. More >
Parent company EA played no part in decision, co-founder John Vechey insists.
1Sony admits dismal sales of new handheld, which show PSP outselling its successor by two and a half units to one.
6Rockstar has released three new screenshots for the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V. The images, below, were posted on Rockstar's website headed, unsurprisingly given the content, with "Transport". More is promised later this week. More >
8A sequel to Plants Vs Zombies will be released next spring, PopCap has confirmed. Announced in a brief press release, the untitled sequel will "include a bevy of new features, settings and situations designed to delight the franchise's tens of millions of fans around the world." More >
Tokyo Jungle will be released in the UK and Europe on September 26, Sony's YouTube channel has revealed. More >
Sleeping Dogs is the new number one in the UK all-formats software chart, with sales of United Front Games' Hong Kong crime caper providing vindication for Square Enix's decision to publish a game Activision had cancelled. More >
Struggling cloud gaming service fires all its staff and sells assets to new, unnamed company; "large percentage" to be re-hired.
Alex Hutchinson accuses western critics of "subtle racism" by pulling punches in reviews of Japanese games.
13Brandon Beck confident the likes of League Of Legends will feature on the biggest sporting stage in the next few decades.
12Publisher approached by two private equity firms, though it's "still early days," New York Post claims.
Company removes branded tomahawk from sale and pulls blog posts touting deals with weapons manufacturers.
3Giant Sparrow's creative director on how using a minimalist aesthetic can benefit small teams.
David Brevik says Blizzard did "some stuff I thought was great" but that emphasis on grinding "loses a lot of what the game is about".
3"It's nothing we can actually say yet but there's some people who you'd think, 'Oh my god'."
2Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will launch on February 19 in North America and Europe, and two days later in Japan, publisher Konami has confirmed. More >
3Killzone, Call Of Duty, Assassin's Creed and Media Molecule's Tearaway lead the charge to revitalise Sony's ailing handheld.
4At its pre-Gamescom press conference, Capcom unveiled Remember Me, a thirdperson action adventure from Parisian studio Dontnod. Supporting the announcement is the below trailer, which includes some gameplay footage and introduces the 2084AD Paris in which the game is set. You play Nilin, a memory hunter who, on top of her brawling skills, can break into people's minds and steal or alter their memories. More >
3Publishing giant Electronic Arts has revealed that is is working closely with Microsoft to bring its games to Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 7, the currently available OS, hasn't enjoyed the same level of developer and publisher support that the more widely installed iOS and Android have, but EA clearly sees its successor as a viable platform. More >
1The PC version of Minecraft has reached seven million sales, according to Mojang, meaning it shifted one million copies since May. “More than 7 million Minecraft (PC) copies sold,” Mojang’s Daniel Kaplan revealed on Twitter, before adding: “Thank you all Minecrafters around the world showing such dedication and support.” More >
Valve has announced a major Steam update that will highlight the best user generated content for games on the service. Every game will have a associated Game Hub that will showcase the most popular screenshots, videos and Steam Workshop items, as well aggregating related news, discussions and comments. The move underline's Valve's current drive to place Steam users very much at the forefront of its service, and echoes the recently revealed Greenlight initiative which allows players to vote for which games are published on the service. More >
In January, we reported on the rebirth of the Neo Geo Pocket in a new device that would ship with 20 pre-installed games. The Neo Geo X Gold now has a release date and an eye-watering pricepoint: Dec 6 and $200. At least it's in the traditional spirit of Neo Geo, as anyone who paid upwards of £200 for an AES cart will know all too well. But, quite frankly, we're tempted. More >
2Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly has been acquired by Epic Games as three key staff members leave the studio. The deal led to the departure from the Polish studio of founder and creative director Adrian Chmielarz, and artists Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki. But Chmielarz moved to reassure fans on Twitter that Gears Of War: Judgment wouldn't be affected and that it was in safe hands. More >
Abertay University has announced the winners of its Dare to be Digital competition. Kind Of A Big Deal's Starcrossed, Loan Wolf Games' Pixel Story and Raptor Games' Project Thanatos all scooped prizes, and will now compete for the BAFTA Ones To Watch award. More >
London 2012: The Official Video Game maintains its lead this week's UK all-formats chart. In fact, the top four games remain unchanged, with Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Mario & Sonic London 2012 Olympic Games and Batman: Arkham City occupying the next three positions. More >
Fez creator Phil Fish has revealed that beleaguered social gaming giant Zynga offered to port the indie platformer to mobile. "Zynga approached us to port Fez to mobile," a tweet on Polytron's Twitter page reads. "We politely refused. So, look forward to Zynga's Fex any day now, I guess!" More >
Signs suggest Greg Zeschuk is out, and Major League Gaming CEO may be in More >
Battle.net, the Blizzard community and matchmaking platform that powers the likes of World Of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Diablo III, has been hacked. In a post on Blizzard's official website, company president Mike Morhaime advises North American members to change their passwords as a precaution, but says there is no evidence of financial information being compromised and that the details taken in the attack are not enough to give the hackers access to member accounts. More >
The ‘father of Xbox’ tells attendees to forget business models and focus on gaming's greatest selling point.
Zynga COO John Schappert has resigned from his position at the company, Fortune reports. "We can confirm that John Schappert has left Zynga and its board of directors effective immediately," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus revealed. Schappert's responsibilities appeared to be undermined in a company reshuffle last month, in which head of mobile David Ko and head of game development Steve Chiang both stopped reporting to the EA and Xbox veteran and instead began reporting directly to Pincus. More >
Steam, Valve's digital distribution service, will host a range of creativity and productivity applications along with the existing range of games from September 5. No details on exactly what software we can expect have been revealed, but in a news post on the Steam website Valve says that many of the launch titles will make use of Steamworks features like simplified installation, automatic updates and cloud saving. More >
Codemasters has announced Grid 2, a sequel to 2008 racer Race Driver: Grid due next summer for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Powered by the latest version of Codemasters' in-house Ego engine, Grid 2 is now in full development after two years in pre-production. The debut trailer, below, shows two new locations, Paris and Chicago, though the game's career mode spans three continents, with Abu Dhabi, Miami and the California coast also set to feature. More >
Blackberry maker Research In Motion has launched a cross-platform, open-source 3D engine aimed at indie developers. Dubbed Gameplay, the tool supports Blackberry 10 and Playbook 2.0, iOS 5.1, Android 2.3+, Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Among other features, Gameplay offers built-in physics, particle and animation systems, a shader-based material library and a UI construction kit. For the full feature list, click the source link at the bottom of this story. More >
1DayZ, the zombie survival mod for Arma II, will now be developed as a standalone game by Bohemia Interactive. The mod, which has been available for a number of months now, has already amassed over 600,000 players and will continue to be developed in parallel with the game. More >
The first videos of the long-awaited Black Mesa, a Source-powered Half-Life update, have surfaced online. Both are taken from old builds of the game and show portions of the On A Rail and Surface Tension chapters from the game. While the latter video is near unwatchable, the former - while dark - offers a tantalising glimpse of the refreshed Valve classic. More >
1Publisher ends two-year run of losses, but cancels pre-production of Hollywood director's horror trilogy.
Media Molecule's community-driven platforming series LittleBigPlanet saw the seven millionth level published to its servers last night. To celebrate, the studio has publishing an infographic on the history of LBP. Despite the series being four years old, there are still over 5000 player-created levels being published every day. Of course, a large proportion of those will be yet more side-on racing levels with badly placed checkpoints, but it's an eyebrow-raising stat nonetheless. More >
Valve's movie-making tool Source Filmmaker contains references to Source 2, seemingly a next-gen engine in development at the company. Over 60 references to Source 2 were uncovered by Valvetime in the Source Filmmaker script files. One reads: "Return an str with the current engine version. If key doesn't exist, assume 'Source', otherwise invalid - assume next-gen 'Source 2'." More >
Sega's Olympic Games tie-in London 2012: The Official Videogame is number one in the UK all-formats software chart for a second successive week. More >
Our friends at Access TV are looking for a community presenter to join them on an all-expenses-paid trip to Gamescom. Europe's biggest videogame show kicks off in Cologne later this month, and to be in with a chance of getting your hands on the year's biggest upcoming games, you'll need to make a video of no more than 90 seconds in length explaining why you should be the face of Access during the show. More >
President of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley has apologised for decisions made on the direction of Star Wars Galaxies, describing then as "stupid" and a "complete and utter fail". In an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, Smedley offered a candid apology for the controversial Combat Upgrade (CU) and New Game Enhancement (NGE) updates, which between them removed the ability of players with combat professions to stack defensive abilities, significantly reduced and simplified gameplay mechanics and professions and made Jedi a starting profession. More >
1World Of Warcraft ended Activision Blizzard's fiscal quarter with 9.1 million subscribers, a drop of over a million in three months: at the end of March, 10.2 million people were paying players of the Blizzard MMOG. More >
1UPDATE: Carmack confirms support, but not backing; Gabe Newell, Cliff Bleszinski throw support behind newly named device.
5"This is awesome, why isn't this Castlevania?" MercurySteam's game was simply called Lords Of Shadow until Kojima intervened.
Take-Two pinned its poor financial performance in the three months ending June 30 on poor sales of Max Payne 3 and Spec Ops: The Line. In a press release to announce the publisher's latest financial results, CEO Strauss Zelnick admitted that sales of the two games were "lower than anticipated", and were the driving factor in Take-Two's results failing to meet expectations. More >
4Feature-limited F2P option to run alongside monthly subscription model from autumn; is this the death of the subs model?
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