Dan Rosensweig, current former CEO of Activision's Guitar Hero franchise, has left the building. Having stepped into the role's shoes in March 2009, Rosensweig has been confirmed to be exiting his post after a year of disappointing sales of music-rhythm titles -- a genre that wasn't helped by the seven or so entries in the Hero franchise over the last twelve months.
Where's he headed? Surely you couldn't rake in the money anywhere else like you could working with the Hero series. Rosensweig will be taking on the position of chief executive at online textbook-rental company Chegg.com.
In his place will not be a new CEO; instead, Activision will keep Chief Operating Officer David Haddad as the highest-level executive heading up the franchise, who will assume operational duties of the CEO position for the time being.
"As we enter 2010, David Haddad with broad consumer product and digital/online experience is the right leader at the time to drive our agenda to improve profitability," an Activision spokeswoman said.
The Dark Forest will add a prequel level to Dante's Inferno next month, and thanks to a short video in the game disc, now we know of a second, currently downloadable add-on soon that will not only send us back to Hell, but also retrofit some gameplay features in.
The Trials of St. Lucia is a new expansion that will be adding multiplayer co-op, player-created content, and a new character in St. Lucia of Syracuse to Dante's Inferno, and it'll be available on April 29th, confirms the trailer.
Senior producer Hans ten Cate says, "At the heart of it, there's an easy-to-use full-featured game editor that you can custom create trials, adding waves of enemies, including enemies from the full game, as well as some enemies like the Summoner which are exclusive to Trials of St. Lucia. ... Because the trials exist on our online server, players can [upload and] download them, rate the trials as well as the creators who then individually score on the leaderboards."
"We also have this feature, an co-op online mode, that allows two players to team up as either Dante, or St. Lucia."
An interesting road to venture down for this type of game. This will be something to look out for. It's not known if the Trials were a feature cut from the main game, or if this was crafted specifically for post-release. Sadly, no price has been set yet.
The Game Developer's Conference is normally where we either see upcoming, but-not-yet-publicly-shown games demonstrated or discussed for the first time, or where new titles are announced to the masses. Gears of War 2,Mass Effect 2 and more have all stopped by for brief appearances in the past to make news, and 2010's show is no different.
While it will be shown off (and hopefully playable) at Microsoft's X10 event next week, Lionhead are bringing Fable III to GDC this year to hype up how they'll be "[challenging] the validity of one long established game mechanic which Lionhead intends to replace with a more user friendly and modern iteration," according to a summary of the session to be hosted by Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux and Josh Atkins of Microsoft Game Studios.
"Lionhead Studios...wants as many people as possible to enjoy playing their games. This means broadening the appeal of video games to encompass the casual gamer while, of course, not alienating the core gamer. Most developers are in agreement that the key to achieving this goal is to make games more accessible, while avoiding the dreaded 'dumbing down'.
Peter Molyneux will be demonstrating the approach that Lionhead are taking to this conundrum with an intuitive design approach that ensures that gamers of all abilities can quickly and easily immerse themselves in the game world."
"This talk will be backed up with examples showing the progress of work (and the thought processes behind it) which Lionhead are undertaking in this area for Fable III."
Of the many new additions to Dragon Age: Origins with the release of the Awakening expansion in March, the new companion character has to be right at the top of the list in terms of importance. Because really, how are you supposed to defeat evil with a lackluster squad backing you up? Exactly.
Meet Anders, a Mage with a mispent youth, and your new party member for Awakening.
It took long enough, but the the long arm of the law is finally falling upon those players out there intent on cheating the Modern Warfare 2 system. Though, it'll be a while until the game is perfectly playable, it seems. Patches are something we can get used to for this game. The Xbox forums yesterday saw an update from a member of the LIVE team, aimed directly at those who continue to exploit MW2's Prestige system, obtaining rank anyway other than through hard work and long hours. In short: suspensions have been and are being handed out. If you've obtained the sought-after online position fairly, though, you have nothing to worry about.
"Attention MW2 cheaters:
(and you know who you are)
People who have obtained prestige illegitimately, will be given suspensions. People soliciting other people to gain prestige (whether for free, or for points) will be permanently suspended.
To all those users who are attempting to play MW2 without cheating, please have faith. Hang in there, because the cheaters are being caught and the game will be patched."
Victory. That's one small step on the road to better experiences on the near-future battlefield. Until Battlefield: Bad Company 2, anyway. Nice work, Microsoft and Infinity Ward. Now get on that netcode, please.
Japan's first attempt to infiltrate the 'roided out, soldier-packing third-person shooter market won't be happening as soon as originally thought.
Tecmo's Gears of War clone Quantum Theory has suffered a delay this week, pushing the cover-based shooter past itsrecently announced March release date, and into a new to be determined time frame. Oops.
Reason for the move? Tecmo said they felt the current state of the game was not up the quality they wished to achieve. More polish always helps.
BioShock 2 and Red Dead Redemption, while arguably the two biggest titles from 2K to hit in the first half of this year, aren't all that's on the way. 2K Czech are quietly finishing up their epic, story-driven crime masterpiece, Mafia II, readying it for a late spring/early summer release.
According to the game's senior producer, Denby Grace, though it'll be coming out after we've experience the likes of GTA IV, Assassin's Creed II, and even Fallout 3, Mafia II's sandbox of a fictional 1940's/50's Empire City surpasses anything we've seen to date, in terms of texture quality, details and more.
“As well as the story, the level of detail and realization of the world really is an amazing technical achievement for the team here at 2K Czech. No other open world city comes close with the texture quality, attention to detail and destructibility of our environments.”
Bold, bold claims. And from the little we've seen in person of the game over the last year, they have some proof to back it up (see: the above screenshot), but the real test will be in the overall immersion. Can it really topple the density of Liberty City, or the authenticity of 1400's Italy? We'll find out soon.
