Slashdot Mirror

• The buyer is not known at this point. An Atari/Inforgrames rep. has stated that it's up to the buyer to disclose. No rumors yet, either.
  
• Atari/Infogrames has sold the right to publish any new Civ games. They retain the right to sell the old Civ games until october 2005.
  
• The sale is part of Atari/Infogrames' plan to raise the capital needed in order to repay a 117 million bond due in 2005.
  

Atari refuses to reveal the buyer, stating "That's up to that party to disclose that", according to HomeLAN Fed.

No, actually they're going to have a plot that is nice and untrue to the game (which, admittedly, doesn't have much of one).

Callaham said that in his meetings with the id Software team they were very supportive and open with his ideas on changing the Doom mythology and allowing for real characters to be put into the script.

See interview here.

I certainly wouldnt expect it to. And I dont know where the official page is or anything.. here is an interview. Of course somebody will hopefully make a mod to another game which out-does this thing in every way :)

The solution for the gaming industry: go open source. Work with each other, instead of reinventing the wheel with every little detail. Provide game networks at low cost. It will eliminate piracy (nothing to pirate when the source is available), and you will make money on subscription.
So the business model is
1. Go open source
2. ???
3. Profit!
Game developers already work together, thats why games license other game engines, the reason we have halflife is because they had access to the quake engine.
The problem if you go open source is that everybody will be able to setup their own networks and refuse to pay. Also, having a flexible pay system for subscriptions doesn't make much sense. Its not like the server goes down if you don't play. Whether you play 500 hours or 5 hours, the cost to run the server isn't going to change much.
The last game I bought was Age of Kings in what, 2000?
You do know game prices go down over time? You don't have to pay $60 when its released. Game companies release at $40-60 price range to maximize profits, they know there is a certain percentage of people that will buy at that price, then they cut the price later to get the money from another percentage of people, and so on.
Another piece of advice: make games that are cinematographically spectacular, yes, but more than that, make games with good gameplay.
[sarcasm]On another note, Hollywood should make more movies that are as visually spectacular, yet have very deep and thought provoking themes.[/sarcasm]

One thing Atari does do well, which obviously does not include making great epic games, is teasing the press. Quite frankly, the press has no balls, and Atari's Enter the Matrix proved it once. EGM, for example, dedicated half of its magazine and cover to the game the month before it came out, with cautious but glowing language. Driver 3 proves the balllessness of the press once again. Driv3r isn't nearly the comedown that ETM was, but for a massively marketed game that's getting 5/10s and 60%s, it's as if these people had played an entirely different game before it came out.

EGM's, for example, doesn't say specifically, "this is a great game," but it comes as close as it can. Driver 3, EGM claims, is "high-revving hardly-a-GTA-clone that's peeling rubber to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox." The language used is as excited as it woul be in a 8 or 9/10 review. Yet, they're not even looking at the full game. I wouldn't doubt if a majority of the preview came from a designer just talking about great the game is, and the previewer transcribing it.

1up, the online media conglomerate for several print magazines, goes further. "Judging by the time we've spent so far with the near-final . . . it avoids the pitfalls that all the other GTA wannabes fell into. From a technical standpoint, DRIV3R is already something special."

CVG is as generous and used as many exclamation points as the editor probably allowed. "We haven't even had a chance to talk about how the top-notch storyline is shaping up, the amazing Hollywood voice cast, how cool the first-person viewpoint is and the way you can complete missions by going in with your guns blazin' or your wheels squealin'."

Gamepro, in a hands on preview, said the game "was looking very nice," "collision detection is already solid," and the "variety is sure to please anyone." Likewise, Gampro promises that "Driv3r is already shaping up into what looks like an incredibly fun title."

Of the quick survey I did of DRIV3R's previews, IGN's was sadly the most realistic. They list a few of its problems, but then reassure, "We know it'll be fixed." The rest of the preview sounds like a giddy school girl. Likewise, Gamespot admits that the graphics are rough, but "Driver 3 definitely looks promising." Then, like IGN, they seem to apologize for that nugget of truth with an entire paragraph on how great Driver 3 will be. It's as if they just insulted the game designers' mothers.

What's happening here is a symbiotic relationship between the press and the publishers. Like movies, music, or comic books, in most cases a game makes a majority of its sales during the first 2-4 weeks of its shelflife. There are exceptions, including GTA3, but the largest portion of games aren't GTA3s, but DRIV3Rs. With regards to print magazines, that renders the reviews almost useless. The people that buy after the first month probably don't read game magazines and sites nearly as much as those who do buy in the first month. Secondly, first day buyers often don't even have online reviews, let alone the print reviews which come out a full month or two after the game's release. That means that buyers are relying on previews almost exclusively.

And I think the publishers know it. What's going on here is simple, as demonstrated by the extremely apologetic and defensive Gamespot and IGN reviewers, is that if the previewers were honest, they'd lose their "exclusives" and

Tumwater, far as I knew, was only to have a x16 and a x8 PCIe slot off the MCH. Apparently, this is incorrect and it has twin x16 PCIe slot support. While Tumwater is targetted for Xeon workstations, there's nothting that I'm aware of which would block its usage in a P4 system. The P4 and Xeon CPU bus protocols are the same.

The extra that Alienware is adding is their software layer which allows processing of video data by two separate video cards. Metabyte (I think they were formerly Wicked3D), which Erwos mentioned elsehwere in this discussion, had this sort of technology up and running, but far as I know it never shipped.

This isn't just multiple display card support, this is also a software layer allowing load-balancing such that the two work together to render a whole screen. It's entirely possible this could end up being multiple-display-capable if the underlying drivers for each card allow combining of displays, similar to the way Matrox allows their multi-monitor cards (G4xx, G550, P-series, Parhelia) to be presented to the OS as "one" display.

Hopefully other companies will provide something similar. I'd rather have an ATI-only setup that is compatible with any dual x16 PCIe-supporting Tumwater board than be forced to buy Alienware's ugly case. :-)

There's also an in depth interview up at HomeLAN, which talks more about the specs of the X2 systems, along with how Alienware's going to handle powering and cooling the beast.

This interview with homelan goes into alot more info.
http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=23264

Check this out.

Read this - a press release from the US army STRICOM dated Nov. 19th. 2003 - there was probably some other US coverage at that time. The article's a bit more informative than the beeb one actually, as it shows the size of the There contract ($3.5m - which I guess puts it as something between 6mo. and a year, depending on the team size - its interesting that There haven't even put a press release about it), and that the Army are funding this speculatively - there is no group that actually wants this for training yet.

The beeb is reporting it because they read the article on Homelan Fed last week. There's more coverage here

A short interview with one of the developers is available here.

This is only a technology demo, but it looks like it could turn out pretty cool.

Stalker seems to be overlooked quite a lot. Still it has Nvidia's attention. Tom Ohle from Bioware is looking forward to Stalker as well as Andrew Edelsten from Auran. And I know I am keeping both my eyes on this gem :)

Stalker seems to be overlooked quite a lot. Still it has Nvidia's attention. Tom Ohle from Bioware is looking forward to Stalker as well as Andrew Edelsten from Auran. And I know I am keeping both my eyes on this gem :)

That was spun off some time ago(2000 or so) as HomeLAN.

I didn't hear anything about that, and I'm not sure when anyone would want the patch cancelled. Still, I suppose it could be true.

My theory was that these four were waiting until patch 1.10 was ready so that the rest of the folks at Blizz wouldn't be shorthanded at a bad time. Which would mean it's done. Bill Roper did say that they were going to wait a bit after the WC3 patch is released (today) to update everyone's Diablo to version 1.10 and that seems like the line that higher-ups would take.

Ravi

Everyone on slashdot seems to think that 32K games is far too many - where are they getting them, quantity over quality, etc. From the interview:

"HomeLAN - From statements on your web site, it appears as if the Phantom will be based on PC tech and that regular PC games will be able to be played on the console..."
"Steve Chilton - Infinium Labs will be announcing hardware configurations within the coming weeks."

So it seems there may be a possibility that this system is running on PC hardware. If so, maybe it will be emulating other systems and consoles. If such is the case, they've got a huge pool of games to draw from, all the way back to the Atari or whatever came before that.

If you look here you'll see this:

"We will be working with developers to develop a licensing model to distribute all of these titles electronically to our customer's.[sic]"

If they are emulating other systems, they obviously have to work out a licensing model with developers to ensure what they're doing is legitimate.

Also on the same page, they mention this:

"There are currently 32,679 retail game titles available and 418 shareware game titles..."

That would imply that they've got 32K commercial games, most likely ones released for computers (not just PC) and consoles. It would also imply that they're not just talking about all the crappy shareware games you can find on tucows.

As far as multiplayer is concerned, most games are already that - just not "online" multiplayer. Mario Brothers is multiplayer for example. If the Phantom is actually going to be emulating games, maybe what they're planning to do is make these types of games (i.e. multiplayer games where all players/controllers are physically at the same console) work over the internet. Back to Mario Bros. - I could be playing Mario on my Phantom, while somone else across the planet is playing Luigi on theirs, and the systems are linked online.

FlyingLabs software is developing Delta Green, which may or may not be very good. But, after seeing Doom3 at E3, the dev team has created some stunning visuals; particularly with the normal mapping technique. Check out vids here. There's also a HomeLAN interview here.

Well I wouldnt be surprised if a group like HomeLAN [which I'm part of] might get a planet of their own someday hehehehe.

FileFront
Nvidia
3D Gamers
Beyond Unreal
The Shack
HomeLan Fed
Aus Gamers
File Planet
Faster Files
Blue's News
Gigex
FragLand
GameSpot.

And the fastest mirror that I've tried yet was Nvidia's, though you have to download six split files and run a script to recombine them.

Ok, here's some more booth babe links here they are! and here! more and more here too here's a documentary on the species and here's an interesting article including interviews with the babes

Ok, here's some more booth babe links here they are! and here! more and more here too here's a documentary on the species and here's an interesting article including interviews with the babes

Happy Reading.