EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: epic
The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), a non-profit PC gaming promotion group comprising companies such as Intel, nVidia, AMD, Microsoft, Capcom and Epic Games, has released a report revealing that worldwide software sales for PC gaming reached $13.1 billion in revenues in 2009, which represents a 3 percent increase over 2008.
This performance was due in large part to the continued propagation of digital distribution and sales through this avenue and growth in the Asia Pacific region, while increases in free-to-play and online social gaming and declines in subscription-based online games made growth a tough prospect in established markets.
Epic has announced that it will be hosting a special Gears of War 2 online event in the run-up to Valentine’s Day on February 14th, featuring double-XP for all participants for a variety of game types and activities.
Cliff Bleszinski has been working in game development for quite some time, starting out with the release of his first game in 1991, an adventure game by the name of ‘The Palace of Deceit: Dragon’s Plight,’ before moving onto designing games that are arguably more well known, such as Jazz Jackrabbit, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and then Gears of War 1 and 2.
Throughout this time, Bleszinski has played a ton of videogames made by other developers, some of which have even had an affect on the games he’s worked on, as well as found a special place in his heart.
Speaking to Industry Gamers, Bleszinski has listed his top ten (well, twelve) favourite games, which are as follows:
Gears of War 2 recently received its fifth (!) title update, bringing with it a number of improvements, exploit fixes and general fixes to further smoothen out any issues you currently have with the game. You can read through a list of those fixes a little further below.
Additionally, Epic announced that they’ll be hosting another double XP event weekend, beginning on the morning of October 30th (this Friday), giving you the chance to earn double the normal amount of experience points in competitive multiplayer and Horde modes.
Epic hasn’t forgotten about Halloween, either, and will be making changes to Horde mode to make it “appropriately ‘scary’ for Halloween.” Their plans sound insane. From the post:
After a bit of a rumour flair-up, Epic have confirmed that a ‘Game of the Year Edition’ of Gears of War 2 will be heading out to stores on September 1st (next week), which comprises Gears of War 2 (the game), as well as all of the downloadable content (DLC) currently available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace (i.e. a lot).
From a post on the official Gears of War website:
In an interview with Develop, creative director behind the development of Epic’s Gears of War series, Cliff Bleszinski, has revealed his thoughts on where the future of shooters may lie, and it may or may not surprise you what those thoughts are. Bleszinski said:
“I had a conversation with Harvey Smith – one of the lead designers on Deus Ex – and said to him the future of shooters is RPGs. He said he completely agreed.”
Bleszinski has long been a fan of the critical and commercial smash hit, Bioshock, (“There was a time when the industry warmed down, and then Bioshock came along,” says Bleszinski) which incorporated both first-person shooting action with an RPG-lite system to mix up the gameplay.
Posting in Epic forums, Senior Producer Rod Fergusson has announced that, this July 4th (or Independence Day to the United States citizens in the room), you’ll be rewarded for playing Gears of War 2 multiplayer by receiving double XP. From the post:
“It’s time to celebrate Independence Day!” Starting Friday morning you’ll be receiving double XP as well as a 500 XP bonus awarded to the winning team. And to give a little extra bang to Horde we’re bringing the Ticker squad (a group of Tickers that all spawn at the same time) into full effect.
“They’ll be showing up a lot more throughout all the waves of Horde and they’ve completely infested every 10th wave with nothing but Tickers.”
Over the course of the Game Developers Conference last week, Epic were showcasing the additions and improvements they’ve been working on for the latest iteration of their Unreal Engine 3 technology.
The new features of the technology (which has powered heavy hitters such as Gears of War 1 and 2, Bioshock, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and many, many others) can now be seen in the video below, unveiling version 3 of Unreal Engine 3:
On the Gears of War 2 official forum, Epic’s Vice President, Mark Rein has put up a lengthy post revealing some changes and additions Epic will be introducing to Gears 2 in the near future.
The title update will see bugs and exploits being addressed, as well as additional achievements being added related to downloadable content. As for the exploits, Rein mentions where they’re placing their attention:
“For example we’ve fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more.”
Rein then goes on to mention improvements to the online gameplay experience, including “increased penalties for quitting matches early, adding additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks, and adding the ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination by using Tac/Com.”
Rein also talks about fixes for issues related to the use of the shotgun and online latency, saying; “We fixed the client side hit detection on the shotgun so that in a high-latency (i.e. “laggy”) match, the shotgun will be more reliable. We’ve also fixed another bug whereby shotgun and boomshot rounds could strike the ground when firing from the hip.” Finally, Rein talks about additional achievements and achievement handling:
“…on the achievement side we’re adding achievement progress numbers to the War Journal, increasing the frequency of in-game Achievement progression notifications and adding some new Achievements for DLC.”
Epic hope to get the update out within the month, but that may change.
After reports started surfacing last week regarding a possible Epic acquisition by movie financiers, Legendary Pictures, the talk has been dulled by Mark Rein, vice president of Epic, while commenting that the acquisition was “just another rumour”:
“We’re not going to comment on the rumor. We have already publicly announced that we’re working with Legendary pictures on the Gears of War movie and that we have the utmost respect for Thomas Tull and his organisation.”
While that’s not a firm denial of the rumour, it does quell the speculation… for now. Previous rumours that have circulated around an acquisition of Epic include buyouts from EA and Microsoft, both of which never came to pass.
While there’s not much information to go on, Variety’s Ben Fritz is convinced, according to his reporting, that Legendary Pictures is in talks with Epic concerning a possible acquisition of the latter by the former.
Fritz notes Epic’s highly successful franchise, Gears of War, as well as their engine-licensing capabilities (with Unreal Engine 3 becoming an almost industry standard) as the main reasons Legendary would wish to buy them out.
Neither company has commented to the positive or the negative (or, in Legendary’s case, at all) regarding the news.
If there was ever any doubt, it can now be confirmed that Gears of War 2’s release date of November 7th is safe.
It’s been announced that Gears of War 2 has officially gone gold, meaning it’s off to the disc presses and, eventually, videogame stores around the world. Epic Games design director, Cliff Bleszinski, glowed:
“After two years of pouring our heart and passion into Gears of War 2, the team is immensely happy with what we’ve created. This is Epic’s best work yet, and we can’t wait to see the response from fans and newcomers to the series alike.”
Roll on November 7th! While you wait, why don’t you watch some ‘Making Of’ videos to enrich yourself with Gears of War 2 information?
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
xbox360 (1917)
ps3 (1802)
trailer (973)
wii (664)
psn (386)
dlc (373)
screenshots (365)
southafrica (343)
xbla (335)
nintendo (298)
review (290)
pc (283)
sony (276)
xboxlive (270)
dated (261)
psp (251)
ea (238)
japanesesalesdata (212)
capcom (211)
