Gaming News
Violent Games Blamed for Child Murder
Another day, another shooting, and once again violent computer games have been cited as a reason for the murder.
The Austrian Times reports that 14-year-old boy, Dan Banciu, shot his six-year-old neighbour after hours of playing violent games.
When police arrived on the scene they were shocked to hear the murderer had shot his victim so that he could “watch him die”.
Using his dad’s hunting rifle, Bachiu loaded it and shot the child, who has not been named by police, at point blank range as they played together in the garden at Tatulesti, southern Romania.
Police spokesman Claudia Radu said: “The 14-year-old knew where his father kept the keys to the gun cabinet. He is now undergoing psychiatric tests.”
No news on what game they were allegedly playing, but expect a serious backlash against it over the next few days.
Rock Band 2 on PS3, PS2 and Wii
MTV and Harmonix have announced the release dates for the sequel to Rock Band 2 on the PS3, PS2 and Nintendo Wii.
The title was released on the Xbox 360 console back in November, with the title landing on the PS3 and PS2 on March 27, with the Wii version arriving on April 24.
Good news for those who don’t have the necessary peripherals too, as Harmonix has announced lower RRP’s for the guitar (£39.99), drums (£49.99) and instrument packs with a microphone included (£89.99).
The game and peripherals packages come in at £119 for the PS3 version and £109 for the Wii and PS2.
Microsoft Ban Lesbian Gamer
In a move that some would describe as controversial, Microsoft has banned a woman from Xbox Live after she stated on her gamer profile that she was a lesbian.
The woman, called Teresa, made a complaint about the suspension of the account and the daily harassment from other Xbox Live users. The woman claims to have been hounded by people who gave her abuse and told other players to avoid her. One user also said that they don’t want to see “that crap or their kids to see that crap”.
Microsoft has upheld its decision to ban her account saying that in the Xbox Live T&C no gamer is allowed to use text or comments that indicate the sexual orientation of the gamer.
The company says that those in breech of the T&C will have to make the changes to their profile, otherwise they will continue to be suspended until they do.
World of Warcraft gets 10th Site on October 9th
The9 Limited, a leading online game operator in China, today announced that the 10th site of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), will be launched on October 9, 2008 (you’d think they could have waited one more day) to provide more servers and high-quality services for game plays in China.
The upcoming World Of Warcraft 10th site marks a major advance after the 9th site opened in April, 2008. There will be 8 servers opened at the 10th site as the first batch of new site launching.
Game account registration and activation have started at the same time. To attract more players, a Free-Trial Program will be available online at the 10th Site so that any player under Level 15 can play the game for free up to 30 hours within a 7 day-period.
“World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade” has many players in China, and once set a record of over 1 million peak concurrent users (PCCU). Existing and new gamers are more than welcome to this exciting Crusade and enjoy the epic game experience in the World of Warcraft.
Unreal Engine 3 to be Used for New Action Horror Game
Iconic Japanese developer Grasshopper Manufacture has licensed Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 for a new multiplatform action horror game to be published by Electronic Arts Inc. The new game is directed by innovative game designer Suda51 and produced by legendary Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami.
“Unreal Engine 3 is a powerful, easy-to-implement game engine that is helping the creative team at Grasshopper quickly bring our vision to life,” said Goichi Suda, CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture. “The innovative tools and technology in Unreal Engine 3 help developers create games faster, easier and with less risk.”
“It’s an honor to work with Suda-san and Mikami-san on their next project,” said Jay Wilbur, Vice president, Epic Games. “Grasshopper Manufacture is one of the most daring and innovative studios in the world, and we can’t wait to see what they’re able to do with Unreal Engine 3.
Capcom Team Fighting over Resident Evil 5 Development
The development team involved in the designing of Capcom’s Resident Evil 5 have been at logger-heads all through the production this past year.
Masachika Kawata, the main man of the RE5 team says that the development has been like “wartime”.
“The team has been having quite a lot of arguments, but at the end of the day the team is working towards one goal – to make a great game,” he said.
“[Director Takeuchi] is very hard working and he makes the team work very hard as well. He gets into big arguments with everyone; Resident Evil 5’s development is like wartime, but he’s got incredible leadership.
“A designer comes up with sketches but they don’t always work on the screen; we have to modify it, make changes and we go through this process all the time. The artists and programmers are doing their best, so when their work is rejected by the director it can be quite heartbreaking.”
Kawata said that the team misses RE creator Shinja Mikami, “but he’s left and such is life”.
“We have a lot of people among our team who worked on Resident Evil 4 with Mr. Mikami, and Mr. Takeuchi worked on Resident Evil (GameCube remake) and he’s a truly incredibly individual as well.
“We’re under a lot of pressure to live up to expectations, but we’ve done what we wanted to do.”
Command and Conquer FPS Bites the Dust
Ever vigilant blog Kotaku has found out that EA LA has suspended work on the Command and Conquer first-person shooter, that reports said was due out in 2010.
Here’s the vital bits from the memo from C&C boss Mike Verdu:
“I’ve consulted with Nick Earl and Frank Gibeau at the EA Games Label and together we have reached the conclusion that given the time and resources remaining, we will not be able to deliver this product to an appropriate level of quality.”
“The game had fundamental design challenges from the start. We fought to correct the issues, but we were not successful; the game just isn’t coming together well enough to meet our own quality expectations as well as those of our consumers.
“Unfortunately, this action will result in several individuals on the team being released. We will make every effort to place affected individuals on projects within the studio – and where that isn’t possible, to connect them with opportunities in other teams at EA.”
When early screen shots appeared, I have to admit to getting pretty excited, it looked pretty nice, but I guess when you compare it to the upcoming graphics orgy that Gears of War 2 will be, developers must be feeling the pressure to perform.
The memo continued:
“Moving forward, we need to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I believe we are already doing a better job of engineering success in from the start…The quality bar has been raised. Now we need to step up our focus on great design and execution, catching any problems early and correcting them quickly.”
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