The Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Ultimate Bundle has been revealed. A $99 package includes an Ezio action figure with retractable blades, and a detailed replica model of da Vinci’s Flying Machine.
It also includes the bonus single-player mission, multiplayer character, upgrades are in the Signature Edition. The Bonus contents also include an animated short film and the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Original Game Score Soundtrack.
AT&T has revealed that they will do a special sponsorship with Doctor Who on BBC America. They will appear on a special motion comic that will appear during a commercial break for the show.
The season premiere has a chase sequence starring lead characters Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) that the show didn’t have the budget for. Producer and showrunner Steven Moffat who, along with the episode’s director Richard Senior, wanted something to bridge between commercials.
AT&T ponied up the money for what amounts to a 60 section motion comic. The vignette is the latest in so-called hybrid commercials, similar to ABC’s Desperate Housewives or NBC’s Heroes or AMC’s Mad Men that all of ran commercials that promoted the sponsor in addition to the show being supported by the commercial.
“The shots were either too impossible to capture or too expensive to create live, so doing it in a motion comic theme from different viewing angles made perfect sense,” said Mark Gall, BBC America’s exec VP-media sales. “It hits all those key things AT&T needs. You’ll even hear the Doctor say things like ‘Anything is possible’ on the series because it’s part of his character, part of how people talk about him during the episodes.”
Source: AdAge
OpenFeint announced that it is launching a single sign-on system for social developers on iOS. It is similar to the UDID that Apple intends to phase out, and will convey similar benefits from accessing a user’s history, tracking their behavior, and offering cross promotions.
“With the deprecation of UDID, social game developers need access to a universal method for identifying and delivering services to their users,” said OpenFeint founder and CEO Jason Citron. “Available to 115 million gamers at launch, OFUID will offer that reach and improve on it by giving users a way to share information with game developers, if they so choose.”
“Sign-on with OFUID is incredibly flexible and has been designed to reduce sign up friction for games,” said added senior vice president of product Ethan Fassett. “Developers will be able to make sign-on optional at first launch and can display it later if they choose. Game developers will also be able to incentivize the sign-on process, offering users rewards for signing in or setting up accounts.”
Reports are that Zynga has revamped their stock structure to grant far more voting power to CEO Mark Pincus. The new structure grants each one of Pincus’s shares 70 votes, up from 10, pre-IPO investors and other current holders will get seven votes a share, up from one, while public investors will get one vote for each share.
This is drastically more power than executives have been granted at other technology companies, with LinkedIn and Google granting only ten times the normal voting rights per share. “Zynga has invented something new,” said Lise Buyer, a principal at IPO advisory firm Class V Group, noting that three tiers of stock is “unprecedented” for technology companies. “Maybe there are so many early employees that even 10-to-1 would put the ultimate decision power in the hands of too large a group of employees or investors.”
“In other industries, we see the collapse of these structures,” said Greg Taxin, the former CEO of proxy advisory service Glass Lewis, now a principal at Spotlight Capital Management in New York. “It’s only because the founders of these new Internet companies believe they can do no wrong and everybody else is desperate to invest alongside them that they can get away with this.”
Source: Bloomberg
Dragon Age II was not received in a way that BioWare would have entirely liked. However, BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka wants fans to rest assured that the developer is taking criticism to heart when it comes to future offerings in the franchise.
“I think the team has actually got a great plan,” said Muzyka, adding, “we’ve not announced Dragon Age 3 formally or anything. I think the team are going to have some things that will surprise and delight both set of fans – our core fans and our new fans – with a marriage, best of breed from both games, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. We’ll look forward to talking more about that.”
“One of our core values at BioWare is humility and that means we take feedback really seriously,” he said. “We know that the core fans who were expecting more Dragon Age: Origins [from the sequel] – we have to listen to them. We have to respond to that. We’re not going to ignore it. We’re going to take that head-on. But we also have an obligation to our new fans, the ones who we surprised and delighted with some new approaches, accessibility and intense action combat. What we need to do as a developer is take the feedback from both sets of fans to heart and see about marrying that in the future games in the Dragon Age franchise.”
Source: CVG {link no longer active}
It has been confirmed that Google will shut down the social apps company Slide. Purchased last year for $184 million, it will be disbanded and Slide’s founder Max Levchin will leave Google.
“Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best,” said a Google spokesperson. “Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities.”
Slide has operated out of Google’s San Francisco office as an independent unit since being bought out in 2010. They’ve maintained apps like the SuperPoke Pets the messaging app Disco and photo-sharing app Photovine, none of which managed anything other than niche appeal and will see their official support abandoned soon.
After the company was acquired, internal shifts at Google meant that social efforts went towards the Google+ platform and Slide was left out of the social division. While Slide head of product Jared Fliesler is also planning to leave, much of the Slide team is expected to land at YouTube, which is also operated independently within Google.
Source: All Things D
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will feature 3D stereoscopic visuals. It joins a small but important list of Xbox 360 titles featuring 3D, including Call of Duty: Black Ops, Crysis 2 and just-announced addition Gears of War 3.
“If you’ve got the technology you definitely want to take advantage of it,” said 343’s Dennis Reis. “Guilty Spark is a fun level to show 3D because you’re in the jungle, you’ve got foliage going by, plasma bolts flying over your head… it’s a fun way to increase the immersion of the game and again if you’ve got the technology, you definitely want to take advantage of it.”
Source: CVG {link no longer active}
Future Shop is offering one of the most unusual pre-order bonuses ever in the “Curb Stomp First Aid Kit.” Exclusive to the Canadian retailer, the box contains 24 Gears of War inspired bandages.
All someone has to do to to get the “Curb Stomp First Aid Kit” is pre-order any version of Gears of War 3 from Future Shop. The Regular, Limited and Epic editions of the game will release September 20, 2011.
Source: futureshop.ca
Secret World has every player fighting against evil, but players also fight against each other as part of one of three factions: the Illuminati, the Templars and the Dragon. This Ayzenberg Group produced video asks: will you fight for justice or fight for power?
NBA 2K12 will have 15 legendary players and multiple teams from different eras. The star players are almost immediately recognizable in this trailer, accented by Project Lionheart’s They Come Back.
