After the customary summer lull, comes autumn in full force:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC / 360 / PS3 - November 5th)
Crysis (PC) - November 15th
Haze (PS3) - November 19th
Unreal Tournament 3 (PC - November 2007 / PS3 - Early 2008 / 360 - Late 2008)
Timeshift (PC / 360 - October 30th. PS3 - December 2007)
BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios have ten franchises under development, including six wholly owned games. BioWare Corp. is currently developing the highly anticipated Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft in November, and is in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Pandemic Studios is redefining open-world games with its upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™ and Saboteur™, in addition to several unannounced projects. Pandemic Studios and BioWare Corp. employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin; and Brisbane, Australia. “These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I’m glad to be working with them again. They’ll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties,” said John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive Officer. “We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders.” Pandemic Studios is led by Andrew Goldman, Josh Resnick and Greg Borrud. BioWare Corp. is jointly led by Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka. These teams will join the EA™ Games Label run by Frank Gibeau, President of EA Games. “Pandemic Studios remains focused on attracting the best talent and creating blockbuster action games,” said Josh Resnick, President and Co-founder of Pandemic Studios. “As a worldwide publishing leader, EA represents the ideal partner to bring our titles to market as global entertainment events.” “We are truly excited by John Riccitiello’s new vision for EA,” said Ray Muzyka, Co-founder and CEO of BioWare Corp. “This vision is consistent with BioWare’s focus on crafting the highest quality story-driven games in the world. It will enable us to further the careers of the passionate, creative and hard working teams at BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Austin.” EA will pay up to $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional $155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., which will be subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria. EA will also assume outstanding VG Holding Corp. stock options. In addition, EA has agreed to lend VG Holding Corp. up to $35 million through the closing of the acquisition.
Great, just great. I know only time will tell if EA can fuck this one up just like they've managed to absorb (and fuck up) every other talented independent game studio they've bought over the years, but I can't help but hear Queen's 'Another One Bites The Dust' playing on repeat inside my head.
(Thanks to Destructoid for the image)
Follow the jump for the full report...
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp. -- the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios. This acquisition gives EA a strong competitive position in key genres in interactive entertainment: action, adventure and role-playing games. The two studios have been recognized for creating some of the highest-quality games in the industry.
Well that didn't take very long now, did it?
Apparently the pay-as-you-hack iPhoneSimFree team have managed to unlock Apple's latest attempts to lock the iPhone from the prying fingers of non-AT&T-wishing users everywhere. After Apple's latest firmware upgrade "bricked" owners of unlocked iPhones (who in reply, have tried to sue Apple), hackers from the fee-charging iPhoneSimFree team have reportedly discovered a way around this latest firmware - and one that allows previously "bricked" iPhones to become, er, "unbricked" (see: working) again.
EDIT: Thats one way to spend $100 to fix your "bricked" iPhone - another way is to wait a week or two for the hack-for-free guys over at AnySim or iUnlock to come up with their own solution. Your decision...
More over at Dailytech
I know this is quite old, but I could only find photos of this before - now at least we've got some info regarding this Chinese-brand Wii rip-off. More after the jump.
And just remember this is all translated from the Chinese Engadget via Google Translate:
Let us close this feeling under VII products: power rods vii, of the 2.4 g shock wireless controller. 360°感应玩家动作。 360 ° induction player moves. 定位是5岁+的儿童及其家庭，目前售价为1,280元（奇怪，好像之前是说不到1000RMB），虽然游戏扩展性不佳，但显然是为了蚕食WII没进入中国留下的市场空白，这款产品大约在10月底11月初上市。 Positioning is the age of 5 + children and their families, currently sells for 1,280 yuan (strange, as if that is less than before 1000 RMB), although the poor scalability of the game, but apparently not to erode WII entered the Chinese market left blank, this product around the end of October early November listing.
我们只能说，任天堂可能得重新考虑是否进入中国了，XBOX是不是也要紧张下，哪天跑出个中国版，别怪我们没提醒哦。 We can only say, Nintendo may have to reconsider whether to enter China, Xbox is also tense, which day outside the Chinese version, we do not blame remind oh. 瘾科技想听听大家对这款产品的更多观点。 Addiction Technology want to listen to your more of this product perspective.
Engadget China has more here (source)
Setting the BD/DVD upscaler set off, HDMI 24fps off, HDMI audio set on bitstream, PS2 upscaler/smoother set off.
Disable system display notify/ mediaserver off / all other automatic setting set to off / internet disable if not multiplaying and other setting etc will all help improve framerates...
Source
And here is the rest of it
McDonald’s Restaurants chief executive Steve Easterbrook said: “The launch of free Wi-Fi in our restaurants in the UK is an exciting move that we believe will further enhance our customers’ experience when they visit us.”
Yay, now we have even more reason to justify that extra Big Mac or two (and plus, we get to order fries now instead of all those damned 'Grande' Lattes when we want free Wi-Fi access. Suck on that Starbucks!)
Source
I don't think I even need to write captions for these as they speak for themselves. More here if you're still interested.
And here is the rest of it
The latest from the Prank Wars series, from the guys over at College Humor:
How bad was that? But you know you want to watch the rest of them, so here they are.
And here is the rest of it
Having tried my studious best to avoid the marketing behemoth that has become Halo 3 meant I totally missed out on this one nearly a week ago; apparently the Halo 3 version as released in Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc) came missing one crucial element: an English language audio track, meaning if you were one of the several hundred thousand foreigners living anywhere in Asia and wanting to play Halo 3, you'd have been expected to do by reading the English subtitles.
Not only that, but the snafu extended itself by way of proclaiming on the Halo 3 box that the languages supported were either Chinese / English or Japanese / English, which usually means the spoken language in-game, but in this case - only referred to the English subtitles.
Word is that Microsoft is reportedly telling Halo 3 buyers they "should have read the small print" on the back of the box. Way to go, Bill.
UPDATE: Stores across Hong Kong are now selling the Singapore version - which comes with both the English & Mandarin language audio tracks. Just make sure the copy you get says English Version in the bottom left on the front cover, and Made in Singapore on the bottom right of the back cover...
Hollywoodreporter / Digg / Geoxpat / Gamespot
