Slashdot Mirror

Ophion writes "Renowned digital artist Jeff Minter of Llamasoft has created a new lightsynth that will be built into the Xbox 360. More information on the console's music player is available from Microsoft." From the post: "I believe it finally begins to achieve the potential that I saw all those years ago when I first made Psychedelia... and I am happier with it than I have ever been with anything I've created in my entire career. And we got it into the firmware again... Microsoft firmware. Of the Xbox360 for goat's sake. At last... after more than 20 years' work, one of my lightsynths is going to reach a decent sized audience. Millions and millions..."

An anonymous reader writes "This morning, Jeff Minter officially announced the end of development on his game "Unity", which was to be published by Lionhead Studios. The post included a press release which claimed that Minter "would not be able to finish Unity in an acceptable time frame". Minter is well known as the mad genius behind Llamasoft and creator of such games as Attack of the Mutant Camels, Llamatron, and Tempest 2000. Unity was to be an "abstract shooter" based on Minter's research into lightsynths and interactive graphic musical accompaniment. Did the fact that the GameCube is nearing the end of its lifecycle contribute to the cancellation of the game, or are trippy music/shooters (ala REZ) just too weird to attain mainstream success?"

Tmuk writes "The second part of Jeff Minter's Complete History of Llamasoft has just gone up over at The Way of the Rodent. Straight from the man himself, it's a fantastic read after the previously Slashdot-covered first part. Enjoy!"

Oxygen99 writes "There's a story on the BBC News website regarding the financial impact on game developers of the next generation of consoles. The article states that while the cost of producing games increases exponentially as new technology comes online, consumer prices stay approximately the same, leading to an unsustainable financial environment for many small developers. With many small development teams already hurting from the crippling costs of development for the X-Box, GameCube and PlayStation 2, what happens when the X-Box2 or Playstation 3 arrives? Are the days of small scale game development over? Will we ever see a new Jeff Minter? Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?"

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a new preview of the abstract Gamecube shoot-em-up, Unity, over at TotalVideoGames.Com. Unity is being created by the infamous Jeff Minter at his one-man ungulate-loving Welsh development house, Llamasoft - Minter is especially well-known for his psychedelic shooter remakes like Tempest 2000 and his interactive VLM ('virtual light machine') programs for the Atari Jaguar and the ill-fated Nuon. Fortunately, Unity is being made for a non-dead platform, and has help and backing from Peter 'Populous/Black+White' Molyneux's company Lionhead. On a related note, iainsimons points to a rare public appearance by Minter to talk about Unity - at an Indian restaurant in Nottingham, UK, no less. We hope there's no llama curry on the menu.