Slashdot Mirror

Thanks to Polygon for their article discussing the recent problems faced by European videogame developers. The piece explains: "According to a recent study conducted by London's Financial Times, 23 European game developers folded in 2003, which is up from 14 in 2002 and 8 in 2001." It also notes that "one of the biggest European companies to close its doors this year was Rage Software, perhaps best known for their David Beckham Soccer series", and a recently-linked editorial mentions a number of other notable independent developers who are no more, including Mucky Foot, Lost Toys, Computer Artworks, and Silicon Dreams. The news piece ends by quoting Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey as suggesting: "A studio of about 150 people, split into three teams, is about the ideal size and it's hard to see how it makes sense for the cottage industry types. They may have more of a future in post-production as a service-based business."

Thanks to Kikizo for their in-depth look at Sega's OutRun 2 arcade machine, as the all-time classic racing game gets a now-playable Xbox hardware-based arcade sequel. Thanks to Yu Suzuki's obsession with a particular car manufacturer, you get to drive "one of at least eight different Ferraris, ranging from the Dino 246 GTS to the F50, including the 360 Spider and the awesome Enzo", and the game even shows track-side advertising from Ferrari sponsors like AMD, particularly piquant since the game is running on the Chihiro/Xbox's Intel chipset. However, Polygon reports that an Xbox conversion of the game is still in doubt, with an AM2 producer citing "disadvantages in terms of translation potential" and mentioning "problems with players renting most racing games as opposed to purchasing them."

cdneng2 writes "The Inquirer has an article about a TaiPei company that is selling a modified Xbox running a 1.4GHz Celeron, versus the console's 733MHz Pentium III. The firm, Friendtech is also offering an Xbox Mod that provides S-Video, 5.1 Surround, and a hard disk upgrade in one package." There are some pictures of the prototype on the official site, although it's unclear if the legally uncertain mod will make much practical difference to native Xbox games (Polygonmag claims "the prototype loaded data at nearly twice the speed of a retail Xbox.")

Thanks to Polygon for posting the Japanese games industry's half-year console hardware and software stats on their site. They summarize: "Sales of Sony's PlayStation 2 console significantly outpaced all competitors... surprisingly, Square-Enix topped all software publishers by a large margin." As far as Japanese hardware sales go, the GameCube (8.3 percent) and especially Xbox (1.6 percent) are falling ever-further behind the Playstation 2 (58.5 percent.) Regarding software, Square Enix may not have expected Final Fantasy X-2 to sell almost 2 million copies, but it only boosted their already top-selling Japanese output. Nintendo's second place in software may be more due to their handheld output, not including (?) the separately-listed and top-selling Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire for GBA, rather than their GameCube titles (though some GC titles like Animal Crossing have been surprise hits.)

Thanks to Polygon for posting a follow-up to the article we ran about Australian Xbox modchip designers releasing their schematics to the public. They have a story quoting AussieChip creator Grant Sparks as subsequently saying "It would be a little disappointing if [Microsoft] couldn't sue me. You see, I'm quite happy for them to take us to court, I just want to see it happen under conditions where we win. In order for them to argue they have not agreed to the download conditions, they would have to acknowledge that click-through legal agreements are not valid - which is something that I think would be very funny to see Microsoft doing. There are many other reasons why people want to use a modchip, and only one of them is directly illegal. I'd be happy to stand up and explain that in court."