Valve Fully Behind PS3

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Valve members have made disparaging comments about the PS3 in the past, and the less than quality support of the Orange Box on the system left some feeling burned. However, project manager Erik Johnson says they’re onboard with the PS3 now and want to do right by the users.

“PS3 is incredibly important to us,” said Johnson to CVG. “We don’t feel that the PS3 users had the Valve experience that we like to deliver. So it that case it’s incredibly important to us; we kind of fix everything wrong in the products that we delivered before for the PS3, which we thought were good but weren’t quite the Valve experience.”

“We’re looking forward to solving that and having Steam on that platform also is incredibly valuable to us,” he said. “In a lot of ways that is the way we define a customer having a good experience because it’s the way that we keep talking to that customer over time.”

Source: CVG

Foursquare Lifted In Face Of Places

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When Facebook launched the Places application yesterday, many thought it spelled the doom of location based social network Foursquare. The name dropping and media coverage, however, may have had a positive effect on the site.

“Just heard from The @HarryH that today was @foursquare’s biggest day ever in terms of new user signups,” tweeted Facebook co-founder Dennis Crowley.

While Foursquare is apparently close to having three million users, one has to wonder what their long term prospects will be in the face of 500 million Facebook users having similar features.

Source: PCMag.com

Sony Calls PSP, ‘A Very Attractive Proposition’

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Reports recently stated that Sony has been showing off a new touch screen PSP at Gamescom to developers. For its part, Sony is neither confirming nor denying this new PSP’s existence and focusing on the PSP platform that is out there.

“For now, we re still concentrating on the PSP as a very attractive proposition,” said a SCE rep. “It’s natural that in the lifecycle of a platform as the cost comes down they do skew younger and we re having a lot of success with the more child-friendly products on the PSP and it s certainly a great proposition to buy in on, and the PSP has life left in it yet.”

Source: GI.biz

Former Infinity Ward Heads Still Deciding On Next Project

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Jason West and Vince Zampella’s next project has been heavily anticipated since the pair was ousted from Infinity Ward. However, EA indicates that Respawn’s first game is much further from completion than Insomniac’s unnanounced multiplatform game for EA.

The thing everybody needs to remember is they were starting at absolute zero,” said EA Partners head David DeMartini. “This is two guys who really know what they’re doing having to go find a place for the team, buy chairs and desks and furniture, find new technology from the ground up, and pull a team together. I need to get HR people and contracts. There are all kinds of things and administration that need to take place. Amongst all that administration they’ve pulled together the core of a fantastic team and they’re starting to work on a whole bunch of ideas to try and find what is going to be the one right idea for us.”

“It’s like the Pope coming from the group of cardinals,” DeMartini added. “You just wait for the smoke to come up and they share with you. We’re sitting there waiting for the smoke to come up and when it does we’ll call you.”

While some saw the signing of the Call of Duty creators as a way of sticking it to rival Activision, DeMartini sees things differently. “The Activision part, we win some, they win some. It goes back and forth. I don’t see it as some big competition,” said DeMartini. “Sure, I want EA to be the most successful, but I don’t want Activision to fail. It’s like going to a bad movie. Sometimes movies are so bad you don’t got to any movies for a while because you’re burned by whoever made that last movie. I don’t want consumers spending money and playing bad games. I want them to play good games.”

“I want EA to be the most successful and that’s my singular mission in life. But whether it’s THQ or Activision, I don’t want them putting out bad product either because it’s just bad for the industry,” he added.

Source: Eurogamer

PlaySpan Receives $18 Million Investment

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Playspan announced today that it has received an $18 million take in Series C investment. Led by Vodafone Ventures and Softbank Bodhi Fund, this new funding round will help the company expand its online monetization options to Europe and Asia.

“Over the last few years, PlaySpan has emerged as the undisputed global market leader in the monetization platform category, and we continue to drive new innovations in the payments and ecommerce space that has spurred new high-growth business models,” said Karl Mehta, PlaySpan CEO. “It is a testament to our market-leading position, demonstrated growth, and the fast-growing digital goods micro-transactions space, that we have raised another significant round from top investors.”

PlaySpan has emerged as the clear industry leader in this fast-growing space and has built a full stack platform that is proven with millions of consumers and thousands of merchants worldwide,” said Matthew Fix, Principal, Vodafone Ventures. “We’re thrilled to be able to support their ongoing success with both partners and end-users as they realize their full vision of a universal micro-payments solution.”

To find out more about PlaySpan, please read this recent [a]list interview.

Kids Gaming More Online, Says M2

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M2 Research released a new report today titled Kids and Games: What Boys and Girls are Playing Today. In geneal, the study finds that kids are playing games wherever they can, be it on consoles, computers, portables and online, and more than ever before.

“We have found kids tend to play a wide variety of games, and their favorite games and gaming sites change often.” explains Louise Curcio, M2 Research Analyst. “There are opportunities for companies, and we believe the kids market has been overlooked.”

Among the findings were that social networking is important to children, and Facebook is the favorite site for tween (8-11) boys and teen (12-15) girls. Also, the target age for online games are boys and girls ages 8-11, with 91 percent of tween boys and 93 percent of tween girls playing games online.

Nintendo continues to dominate the portable space, but Apple is making headway with their iOS offerings, especially with girls. Nearly twice as many teen girls play PSP than boys, the most preferred series (20 percent) for girls is Mario, while boys prefer Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (36 percent).

NBA 2K11: Must Be The Shoes

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Michael Jordan is, by most accounts, the greatest basketball player of all time, but his legacy in a brand is perhaps even more enduring. Appropriately, for the inclusion of Jordan in NBA 2K11, there will be more Air Jordan shoes than ever before.

“There are two legacies of Michael Jordan, his playing and his brand,” explains NBA 2K11producer Erick Boenisch. “And for this game, the Jordan brand guys at Nike were finally asking for us to incorporate all of their shoes into our game. This is something we wanted for years, so we were really excited that this year with Michael, they really got on board with us.”

“We have so many shoe heads into our game that when we put out our first trailer for NBA 2K11, people were doing freeze frames and capturing screen grabs of the Space Jam shoes he has on in the video, Boenisch added. They cut out Michael entirely and put a little box around the shoes to show off that the Space Jams are in the game. All I have to say is people like this are going to be so happy this year.”

There are over 40 pairs of shoes in the game, and the more time people put in, the more shoes they get. “The way they unlock is every couple of hours you get a new pair. The shoes also have attributes on them, so this becomes really beneficial both in My Player and MJ Creating a Legend mode. And shoes can be unlocked anywhere in the game, whether you’re playing online or franchise or practice mode. Your timer is always running and shoes are always unlocking, explains Boenisch. “And the order you get them in is random. It’s strategically random where the rarest shoes in real life are the hardest to get and are unlocked toward the end while the common ones are unlocked upfront. But if you and I are playing next to each other at the same time, we’re going to unlock shoes in a different order. So you can show your friend that you got the Jordan 12s, but maybe he got the 1s and 23s.”

The game will also provide bits of history for the different pairs of Air Jordans. “Back when the Jordan 1s were introduced, everyone in the league only wore white shoes, and these were red with the black swoosh. Michael saw them and said something like, ‘I can’t wear that shoe. Those are devil colors.’ But he wore them and the NBA fined him every single game he wore them that season and the Bulls paid the fine. History was made right there. Shoes became culture in the NBA and it was all started with Michael. That’s why we’re so proud to have him in the game this year, not only as a character, but as a brand.”

Source: ESPN