Terraria has been a successful experiment, selling over a million copies since its launch last year. That’s pretty good. So good, in fact, that its publisher, Merge Games, has announced that the $ 10 game will be getting a retail release on March 16. Really.
That seems… odd for a game so cheap. Obviously, a retail release means the price is going up; it’ll be £19.95 over there, and no price was given in USD. Expect, based on that UK price, it’ll be about $ 30 if it actually is released here.
This is really so weird. Terraria is probably worth the increased price, but it’s hard to imagine this actually being worthwhile for Merge in the age of digital downloads and PC gamers who would like to pay as little as possible for their games. Why buy Terraria at retail when you can get it for a third of the price online? Whatevs.
Source: Gaming Today
Maybe you have a great machine already, or you’re looking to build one. Chances are you’ll have an AMD graphics card on it. Relevantly, AMD has released the latest update for Catalyst, AMD Catalyst 2.1. This new software suite updates Catalyst control center and Vision Engine Control Center, and the AMD display driver, and promises to improve performance, reliability and power. In case you’re curious, AMD Catalyst is compatible with AMD’s desktop, FireStream and chipset product families. Among the improvements in this update:
* Random corruption in Call of Duty IV when the Edge Detect filter is enabled is fixed.
* The occasional black screen error in Portal 2 3D mode fixed.
* Random Civilization V crashes when run in DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 mode fixed.
* Random crashes in Resident Evil 5 and Just Cause 2 after enabling the ‘Edge Detect’ filter fixed.
* Battlefield 3 no longer hangs when MSAA is enabled; random hangs in Saints Row: The Third also fixed.
* Dragon Age 2 texture flickering problem in DirectX 9 mode fixed.
There’s more, and you can read a whole breakdown over on steam.
Source: Gaming Today
THQ has announced a round of lay-off today, affecting its administrative and publishing departments. The firm didn’t provide information pertaining to how many employees were let go, but said the job losses occurred outside of its five internal studios: THQ San Diego, THQ Montreal, Relic, Volition, and Vigil. THQ announced earlier this week it was exiting the kids’ licensed games category, to focus on its core game franchises and digital initiatives. Thanks, Joystiq.
Source: VG247
Bluehole studio and its U.S. branch En Masse are readying the MMORPG Tera for a U.S. release, but South Korea-headquartered MMO publisher NCsoft is hoping to put the kibosh on those plans. In a January 9 complaint filed in New York federal court, NCsoft alleged that Bluehole, founded by ex-NCsoft employees, stole “copious amounts of confidential and proprietary NCsoft information, computer software, hardware and artwork relating to [major NCsoft MMO] Lineage 3,” according to a …
Source: Gamasutra News
Notch posted a Tumblr yesterday pondering the possibility of collecting some totally harmless and anonymous Minecraft data from you. We’re talking about data like: “current game mode (single player, multiplayer), operating system (windows? mac?), how long you’ve been playing for (so we know how long a game session is), and whether or not you’re playing the downloaded game, or the applet on the webpage.”
Not really that invasive, eh? Notch has put it to a vote, and right now readers are overwhelmingly in favor of it. They want their data harvested.
This really would be pretty harmless, and it wouldn’t be as intrusive as what Steam and Origin do. Those guys pull all kinds of stuff on you that you’ll probably never even realize. At least here you would know exactly what you’re getting.
Head over to the blog to vote.
Source: Gaming Today
Nintendo has once again revised its expected loss for the fiscal year ending in March, widening its forecasted financial misfortune from ¥20 billion ($ 258M) to ¥65 billion ($ 839M). The increased loss comes a quarter after Nintendo switched its forecast from a ¥20 billion profit to loss.
For the first nine months of the fiscal year ending December 31, Nintendo had sales of ¥556 billion ($ 7.2B), a 31 percent decrease from the same period last year. Overall, it posted a loss of ¥48.4 billion ($ 620M).
“Nintendo 3DS hardware during the nine months ended December 31, 2011, were 11.43 million units, and the total worldwide sales since its launch exceeded 15 million units,” the company stated. Both Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 have gone on to become million-selling titles.
The company also mentioned that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii recorded “strong sales, especially in the United States.” Worldwide Wii sales over the nine-month period hit 8.96 million units, with software selling 89 million units.
Nintendo’s financial woes, coupled with mobile gaming’s increased portion of the handheld market, is not sitting well with investors. The House of Mario continues to see its stock sitting at a five-year low.
Nintendo enhances expected loss; 15 million 3DS units sold since launch originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: Joystiq
Last year, Netflix thought it would be funny to spin off their DVD and blu-ray rental business into a separate entity called Qwikster, and this new thing would also rent you video games.
Netflix has since cancelled that whole Qwikster thing, because it was dumb, and Reed Hastings told investors today, according to The Verge, that the also don’t plan to ever rent video games. Awwwww.
That leaves GameFly as the reigning video game online rental thingie. There are a few others out there, but none really come close to matching what GameFly does. Netflix would have, though. It would have been a real competition.
Source: Gaming Today
