Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books Gets 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
- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
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
Dead Rising 3: Operation Broken Eagle available today
Dead Rising 3‘s first expansion, “Operation Broken Eagle,” will be available to download through the Xbox Live Store sometime today. To get players excited about the adventures of Commander Kane, a Spec Ops soldier in search of the US President, Capcom and Microsoft have released a brand new trailer for “Operation Broken Eagle,” which you can view above.
Operation Broken Eagle is the first of four “Untold Stories of Los Perdidos” that will be available for Dead Rising 3. They will be available as part of the Dead Rising 3 Season (priced at $29.99) or you can get them singly for $9.99.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Dead Rising 3
Former Infinity Ward devs launch Kickstarter campaign for side-scroller To the Death
Scary Mostro is a new development team that’s lead by Todd Alderman and Franceso Gigliotti, both formerly of Infinity Ward and Respawn Entertainment. They’ve teamed up with Cecil Kim and Justin Yun of Section Studios (who previously worked with Sony Santa Monica on God of War) to bring you To the Death, a side-scrolling brawler/shooter for PC platforms. The developers have just launched a Kickstarter campaign for To the Death and they are seeking $400,000 to make the game a reality.
To the Death will follow a pair of warriors who have fought… wait for it… to the death. In the afterlife known as “The Crawl” they continue their battle by blowing through wave after wave of enemies until they can meet in the middle for a futuristic duel featuring an arsenal of guns and swords.
In addition to a traditional two-player co-op mode, To the Death will feature a unique splitscreen head-to-head mode where each warrior will play through the single-player game separately before meeting at the final boss (and then a final duel… to the death). The developers believe that this head-to-head mode will allow each player to track what powerups the other is using and tailor their strategy accordingly.
If all goes well, Scary Mostro and Section expect to release To the Death for the PC, Mac, and Linux in May 2015. And if they receive over $750,000 in pledges, they plan to produce a PS4 and Vita version as well. Good luck gentlemen.
Candy Crush Saga maker has trademarked the word “candy”
Are you secretly Brucer Banner (AKA The Incredible Hulk)? If so, you may want to skip this article as it will make you angry, very angry. And I don’t want any reason not to like you.
King, the publisher behind the massively popular Candy Crush Saga, has trademarked the word “candy.” They don’t own all rights to the word “candy.” You can still go to your local grocery store and ask the shopkeep for a big bag of candy. And you can still joke about how something is easier than taking candy from a baby. A huge proportion of this country’s strippers will also not have to change their stage names.
Sadly, King’s trademark covers practically everything else.
According to US Patent and Trademark Office, King’s trademark covers hundreds of items including “video game software,” “spectacles cases,” clothing of all kinds, “amusement parks,” all educational services or workshops, and “downloadable music files.” They actually believe that anyone that uses the word “candy” in a music file should have to pay them a royalty fee. And just in case you thought you were safe across the Atlantic, the publisher has also been granted a trademark on the word “candy” by the European Union’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) as well.
Surprisingly, few games actually use the word “candy” in their title, but according to Gamezebo, King has already sent cease and desist orders to those that do on the iOS App Store.
However, King’s victory (if you can call it that) is likely to be short-lived. According to the USPTO, their trademark has been approved, but not yet been published for opposition. And when it is, I imagine that the makers of Candy Land (which was first published in 1945) will have a problem with it. As they, and we all, should.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged candy crush saga
Weekly Warp-Up: 2013 Money, Money, Money Edition
No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…
The NPD Group has released their findings on the state of retail video game sales for December 2013 as well as the 2013 Full-Year Report. Call of Duty: Ghosts was the big moneymaker in December while Grand Theft Auto V was the best-selling game of 2013 as a whole.
Meanwhile, Nintendo delivered some bad financial news to their shareholders as they revealed that the 2013 sales forecast for the Wii U has been cut from nine million consoles to 2.8 million consoles. But that’s OK. They’re Nintendo… they’ll be fine.
More news from the previous seven days can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
Star Wars 1313 trademark abandoned by Disney
Even though we all hoped that Star Wars 1313 might be released someday, it looks like LucasArts/Disney has instead fed the unfinished game to the Sarlacc. According to the Star Wars 1313 filing at the US Patent and Trademark Office, LucasArts/Disney abandoned the game’s trademark on December 23, 2013 by failing to apply for an extension.
Star Wars 1313 made its worldwide debut during E3 2012 and wowed critics and fans alike with its gritty new take on Coruscant’s underworld. After Disney purchased LucasArts, we learned that the game would have ultimately starred a young Boba Fett.
With 1313’s official cancellation, Star Wars fans will instead have to look forward to EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront and an untitled game in development at Visceral Games, both of which aren’t expected to be released until 2015 at the earliest.
Posted in News
Tagged Star Wars 1313
Nintendo cuts 2013/2014 sales forecast for Wii U by 70%
It’s no secret that we here at Warp Zoned love the Wii U and want to see it succeed (just look here or here or here). However, it looks like that success will have to happen sometime in the future as Nintendo has announced that they’re cutting their Wii U sales forecast for the April 2013-March 2014 period by almost 70%.
Nintendo originally predicted that they would sell nine million Wii U consoles across the globe during the 12-month period. But now, they have revised that number down to 2.8 million. The company also expects to post their third consecutive annual operating loss. Sales expectations for the 3DS were also revised down. Previously pegged at 18 million, Nintendo now believes they’ll sell only 13.5 million during their fiscal year.
According to Reuters, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata apologized to shareholders and confirmed that he has no plans to resign: “There will be no major management shake-up in the short term,” Iwata said.
While 2013 was a rough year for Nintendo, their 2014 could be looking up as they plan to release at least a dozen games for the Wii U and 3DS including Super Smash Bros. 4, Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2, X, Bravely Default, and several others.
Grand Theft Auto V is the best-selling (and most wanted) game of 2013
The NPD Group previously declared Call of Duty: Ghosts the best-selling game of December 2013, but Activision’s military shooter fell a bit short in the full-year competition. With Ghosts in second place, you might have guessed that Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V was the best-selling retail game of 2013… and you’d be right.
Sequels and sports games dominate the list, but the universal appeal of Disney allowed Disney Infinity to crack the top ten at #10. At #9, the retail version of the mighty Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition also made the list.
Here’s the complete top ten of 2013’s best-selling retail games:
Best-Selling Retail Games of 2013
1. Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360, PS3)
2. Call Of Duty: Ghosts (Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, PC, Wii U)
3. Madden NFL 25 (Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One)
4. Battlefield 4 (Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, PC)
5. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC)
6. NBA 2K14 (Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, PC)
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, PC)
8. Just Dance 2014 (Wii, Xbox 360, Wii U, Xbox One, PS3, PS4)
9. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition (Xbox 360)
10. Disney Infinity (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, Wii U, 3DS)
[Source: Joystiq]
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Disney Infinity, Grand Theft Auto V, Just Dance 2014, Madden NFL 25, Minecraft, NBA 2K14, NPD
CoD Ghosts and Xbox One are December 2013’s best-selling game and console
The NPD Group has delivered their monthly report on the state of the retail game market and December 2013 was another blockbuster month. According to Joystiq, consumers spent $3.28 billion on video game products last month, an increase of two percent over December 2012. And thanks to new consoles, hardware sales were way up, totalling $1.37 billion (versus $1.07 billion last year).
And speaking of next-generation consoles, NPD is reporting that the Xbox One can lay claim to the US sales crown for December. Though Sony still holds a slight edge in total worldwide sales.
As for the games, Call of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 pulled off a repeat atop the retail sales chart. They were followed by the usual assortment of holiday season bestsellers and you can find last month’s complete top ten after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, FIFA 14, Grand Theft Auto V, Just Dance 2014, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Madden NFL 25, NBA 2K14, NPD, Skylanders Swap Force