Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Author: John Scalzo
Netflix says “Game Over” to game rentals
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has had a hard year. So let’s all be nice to him as he puts a stake through the heart of the company’s game rental plans and retreats completely from the scuttled Qwikster plan.
During the company’s quarterly financial report yesterday, he was asked, “Will you be adding video games […] to your product offering?” Hastings killed the idea by bluntly replying back, “[W]e have no plans to enter video games.”
So there you have it. GameFly executives can breathe easier and gamers can continue to wonder if Blockbuster or Redbox will ever rise up to challenge them.
THQ drops kid’s licensed games after Saints Row 3 ships 3.8 million
After struggling financially in 2011, THQ has announced a new focus for their game development divisions. From this point forward, the company will focus solely on “core games” by moving away from kid’s licensed games. THQ has published dozens of Nickelodeon-branded games over the years and, until 2010, published and developed games based on Pixar’s films.
This decision was likely spurred on by the huge sales of Saints Row: The Third, which has shipped 3.8 million copies since its release in November.
“THQ will be a more streamlined organization focused only on our strongest franchises. The success of Saints Row: The Third is an example of what our revised strategy and focus can achieve,” said Brian Farrell, THQ’s President and CEO.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Saints Row: The Third
XBLA Today: Puddle, Quarrel
This week’s two new additions to the Xbox Live Arcade may sound familiar, but they also provide a unique take on their subject matter.
Puddle, which is available to download for 800 Microsoft Points ($10), won the Student Showcase prize at the 2010 Independent Gaming Festival and mixes the liquidity of Mercury with your average platformer:
What began as a student project that won a Student Showcase prize at Independent Gaming Festival at GDC 2010 is now a full-fledged downloadable game experience like nothing you’ve ever played before. Guide puddles of fluid through a variety of novel, themed environments (the human body, a garden, a foundry, and more). But to do so, you must tilt the environment, balancing each fluid’s unique properties with the environmental factors of gravity, friction, and each course’s obstacles.
Meanwhile, Quarrel, which carries a pricetag of 400 Microsoft Points ($5), crosses the word creation of Scrabble with the virtual warfare of Risk:
Quarrel is the most novel word game ever made. But don’t just take our word for it – grab it now and enter a universe where WORDS (11 points) literally speak louder than ACTIONS (8 points). Use a cool combination of word power and strategic cunning to crush your opponents and reign supreme. Come settle your differences with wordplay rather than swordplay; make verbal not chemical weapons; load up with letters not bullets and use chatter to batter your enemies into submission and rule the world. Compete to use your troops to make the highest-scoring word from the letters given then capture territories and conquer islands in this wholly original virtual board game.
Complete CoD Modern Warfare 3 DLC schedule detailed
Activision has unleashed the complete schedule for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3‘s DLC Content Season. Over the next nine months, Modern Warfare 3 players will receive over 20 pieces of downloadable content. And of course, Xbox 360-owning Elite users will have access to the content first.
So without further adieu, here’s what CoD soldiers can expect and when they can expect to play it:
- January: “Liberation” map, “Piazza” map
- February: one map
- March: one map, two missions
- April: two maps
- May: one map, one mission
- June: one map, one mission, one mode
- July: two maps
- August: one map, one mission, one mode
- September: one map, one mission
As always, non-Elite subscribers will find out when they can download this DLC… soon.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem Forever, Scarygirl added to PS Store
A little girl with an eyepatch, ninja warriors battling it out for the fate of the world, and a steroid-riddled ladies man highlight this week’s PlayStation Store update.
Square Enix’s Scarygirl features the little girl with an eyepatch. Using her tentacle arm as a whip, Scarygirl platforms her way into our hearts as she tries to figure out who’s haunting her dreams.
The ninja warriors (who looks so dapper in their bright colors) belong to the Mortal Kombat universe, which is available to download from the PlayStation Store for the first time. But with its $49.99 pricetag, you’d be better off sticking with the disc version or waiting for the feature-rich Komplete Edition instead.
Finally, Duke Nukem Forever (and his steroid-enhanced muscles) makes his way to the PlayStation Store at a much more wallet-friendly $19.99.
For more on these games (and a full list of this week’s new game add-ons), head on over to the PlayStation Blog.
Posted in News
Tagged Duke Nukem Forever, Mortal Kombat, PS3, Scarygirl
Rumor: Next Xbox to use Radeon 6670 GPU; 2013 release targeted
Sources close to the Next Xbox project have told IGN that the system will use a GPU similar to the Radeon HD 6670, which includes support for “DirectX11, multidisplay output, 3D and 1080p HD output.”
Additional sources, this time talking to tech site Fudzilla, have said that mass production of the GPU chip, which is believed to be codenamed Oban, will begin in late 2012 for a launch date sometime in late 2013.
Returning to the IGN report, we also got our first estimate at how much more powerful the Xbox 720 is compared to the Xbox 360: “[T]he Xbox 720’s raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360 and will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo’s forthcoming console, the Wii U.”
But of course, all of this information (especially the release date) is straight from the rumor mill and should be taken with a grain of… blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
Is it E3 yet?
Tetris, Black Ops DLC lead all PlayStation Store purchases in 2011
For over 20 years, Tetris has captivated the world. And in 2011, it sank its tetrahedronal teeth into PS3 gamers all over again as the vintage puzzler managed to outsell every other PSN game on the PlayStation Store. Sing it with me!
Doo, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do, dododo.
The data comes from a Game Informer report listing the ten best-selling PSN games for 2011. Other top ten contenders include the Resident Evil 4 HD remake, the InFamous 2 standalone expansion InFamous: Festival of Blood, and Telltale’s Back to the Future adaptation.
You can find the full list, as well as a look at the bestselling DLC add-ons, after the break. (more…)
QuakeCon 2012 rumbles into Dallas August 2-5
Are you ready to throw down in the world’s biggest BYOC (Bring-Your-Own-Computer) LAN party? If so, listen up, as id Software, and parent company Bethesda Softworks, have announced the dates for this year’s QuakeCon.
QuakeCon 2012 will be held at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas from August 2-5. As always, admission will be free, so be nice to all the volunteers at the event.
In addition to the BYOC LAN party, Bethesda Softworks will offer the first chance anywhere for gamers to get their hands on upcoming titles, and leading technology companies will be on hand to demonstrate their latest hardware and software. All three days of QuakeCon will also include a ton of contests, live entertainment, announcements, panel discussions, and parties.
Sounds like fun! And maybe id will re-announce the supposedly unannounced (but actually already announced) Doom 4.