( ; ) , . , ( , ), (; ; ) , ....... ...... ( )....... "" .... ...... "", "" . .
(Orth), ( ) " , @@ , . , . , , . , , . , ".
, , "": , . , . , , , . , , . , , : . , , "" , - , - , , , ."
real ;
, ) , ) , ) ( - "")
"Were any of these threats credible? Unlikely, but I wasn't going to put myself and my family at risk," he concluded. "Ultimately we had to leave town to feel safe. We had to completely rebuild our life and fortify our digital life as well as all of our financial accounts in order to protect ourselves and our assets."
, , NSA
He dealt with it
Reply +125
!!
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
Bloomberg has spoken to three anonymous sources who claim to have knowledge of Stephen Elop's current mindset, and who say he'd consider making some radical moves if he become Microsoft's CEO. Now, bearing in mind there could be some seriously heavy axes being ground here, the details of what Elop might "consider" doing at Microsoft look almost designed to stir a fuss among investors and customers alike. For a start, the former Nokia CEO (and cost-slasher) would apparently contemplate selling off Microsoft's high-profile Xbox division, if he deemed the department to be less than critical to the company's overall strategy. Instead, the story goes, he'd focus the software giant's efforts on products and services related to its Office applications. Somewhat less scandalously, he'd allegedly also contemplate cancelling Bing. Some analysts have previously put forward the idea of dropping Xbox and Bing in order to raise Microsoft's profits in the short term, so these ideas haven't come out of nowhere, but they still seem slightly premature for a man who's only just got himself on the CEO shortlist.
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
ps4 dammit!
Deathtrick (11-11-2013),DJTaurus (11-11-2013),Leon_DiZ (12-11-2013),muku (12-11-2013),psx3 (11-11-2013)
!Originally Posted by Lefteris_X
Forest hakoo. oculus rift . survival horror oculus ...
Sony's Yoshida talks software and tough decisions in the run-up to PlayStation 4
With the PlayStation 4 around the corner, Gamasutra sat down with Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida to get a bead on what his strategy for Sony's software development organization is as the next gen begins to unfold.
Convincing Gamers to Go PS4
The future of the dedicated game console is up in the air. We know that they'll continue to sell -- for now. But we don't know what the demand is like overall. Will it outstrip the current gen, or sell to a diehard core only? With so many other options, will players stay interested in what Sony is offering?
"Analysts and media people tend to say that with all these mobile devices there's no future for consoles; people don't need these game-dedicated devices," Yoshida acknowledges, though he doesn't sound too perturbed. Why? "The great thing is we have all the millions of people we can ask that question, who have preordered the PlayStation 4, and are getting it on day one."
"The fact that we are getting the largest amount of preorders for PS4 for any past launch of a PlayStation platform, it's amazing how there's so many people who choose to spend hundreds of dollars to get a game-dedicated console."
But in the face of huge competition from every corner, Yoshida knows there has to justify that faith, and lure in more reluctant buyers: "There has to be something very special in playing games on PS4 or any PlayStation platform, that people have to spend hundreds of dollars before they can play any game at all. Our approach is always, 'Let's make a game experience very special.'"
As you'll see as you keep reading, this philosophy extends to how he runs his whole organization: which studios get cut, which get expanded, and what games get signed.
But for the PS4, says Yoshida, this strategy extends beyond first party games -- even to multiplatform games, by the quality of experience that the system inherently offers, differentiating it from the competition: "Let's make the experience of finding games, or purchasing games, or talking about games, or sharing games -- even the same games -- the best to do on PS4, so that people see the value of investing their money."
Yoshida, in fact, has deeply embedded himself in the hardware teams since he moved to Sony Japan, after taking on the role of Worldwide Studios head: "The primary reason was to work with the hardware team. I inserted myself into the process of designing, making the hardware and system software. I've spent lots of time, maybe half [of my] personal time working with the hardware teams," he notes.The Death of the Mid-Sized Studio
The desire to entice gamers with something special has forced Yoshida to acknowledge some hard realities. The mid-sized console studio has faced major challenges across the industry, and Worldwide Studios is no exception.
"Shutting some of the studios" and then "investing in our top teams" became his strategy. Worldwide Studios thus has put its bets for full-priced titles on bigger games, and the expansion of successful studios over startups.
"So we have supported some studios -- Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, and Guerilla -- to become able to produce multiple projects at the same time, while we shut down mid-sized studios who were struggling to compete... that's in reaction to the changes of the time," Yoshida says.
When it comes to running a mid-sized team, "that's a really tough position," says Yoshida. "It's been a bloodbath of medium-sized games for the last two years... the market is extremely hard for smaller, mid-sized games these days."
The "something very special" that compels consumers to buy PlayStation platforms is harder for Yoshida to identify in mid-tier boxed games. $60 is a lot of money to spend, he says, when free-to-play games exist.
"I think that's the reason the bigger titles are getting even bigger, because people supported them, and the publishers can afford it, and the level of quality of these games is way beyond these mid-sized games," says Yoshida. "On the other hand, the smaller digital games are amazing, great -- because they try to do something that big teams won't do. Because they are smart, they won't try to compete with Call of Duty."
Trapped between these successful (if scrappy) indies and the mega-studios, mid-sized studios, says Yoshida, are caught in a difficult spot: "if you are making a studio, like 40 or 50 people studio, it's a really tough age -- whether they try to grow and compete to become triple-A, or if they try to do indie-style small development. It's really a good, critical question for many of the mid-sized studios."
For Sony's part, says Yoshida, "we encourage mid-sized studios to come up with some digital concept titles, new titles. If they can do multiple projects, that's even better."Getting The Best Developers
But don't mistake this for a total reliance only on triple-A games. Worldwide Studios is the organization that oversaw the development of Journey, and the company at large has been very aggressive about getting indies onto PlayStation.
"Indie developers tend to choose, by necessity, mobile or PC as platforms of choice, because these platforms offer the lowest barrier of entry, and also the digital distribution for these small guys," Yoshida recognizes.
"What our third party relationships guys have been working on his talking to these developers, and trying to find the best developers on these platforms, and trying to help them to bring over their work, their games, onto PlayStation."
"The ideal scenario is, of course, the best games out of all these platforms and developers will come out on PlayStation," Yoshida says, with a laugh -- and then follows it up with a clarification. "I'm half joking, but half serious," he says.
As "many, many indie games" are "best played with controllers," and "with the very stable, uniform platform of console, they can really focus on creating the best experience," says Yoshida, it makes sense for developers to move their games to the PlayStation systems.
It isn't just third party deals that Sony is signing with indies. At Gamescom, Sony announced it's publishing Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, the latest game from The Chinese Room (Dear Esther) as a PlayStation 4 exclusive. It's a Worldwide Studios title, unlike indie ports such as Hotline Miami that fall under the third party banner.
"The difference is who is funding," says Yoshida. "When we fund 100 percent, we publish. That doesn't mean that we're going to dictate the creative development of the Chinese Room team. We don't think that's good for the project. We just support the team and probably help them. We have lots of resources, in terms of tech, or services, or testing -- whatever it fits with the needs of the team, a small team like The Chinese Room, we want to provide support so they can realize their ambitions or vision. They might become even more ambitious with our support."
But when Worldwide Studios is selling millions of copies of The Last of Us, why go after a small game like Rapture? "Just for fun. Because we love working with these teams," says Yoshida. "We get lots of inspiration from these guys. It's just healthy for us to work with some of those who are very aggressive creatively, who try to do something not conventional."
"We have to provide big titles to support the platform," he adds. "But if we are just doing that, maybe we lose some touch with the bleeding edge of thinking."
"It's not like we have to fund these games. Without us, these teams would create some great indie games on their own," Yoshida acknowledges. "Luckily, these teams who have chosen to work with us have seen some value that we can bring to their project."
The Resurgence of Japan Studio
Yoshida was visibly excited when I brought up Japan studio -- gratified that it's got some attention. "I'm extremely excited that the Japan Studio is getting on the map again," says Yoshida. Recently, it shipped Puppeteer for PS3, and contributes Knack to the PS4's launch lineup.
While he acknowledges it's a small part of the WWS pie -- approximately 80 percent of the organization's money is spent outside of Japan -- it's close to Yoshida's heart. But with the shifts in the Japanese console market, the company has realized it's more crucial to have homegrown talent making games, too.
"The market in Japan has been changing for the past couple years. Many Japanese publishers have found the new mobile/social platforms very profitable for them -- I don't know for how long. They have been doing very good business releasing social games... they started to shift resources. That kind of reemphasized the importance of the studios we have in Japan," Yoshida explains.
"We were very fortunate that lots of great Japanese third party games were coming out on PlayStation, from Konami, Namco, Square Enix, Capcom... [but] because they are shifting their resources away from consoles, we have to make sure we have very strong games coming out from our Japan Studio. And it takes years, many years, to turn around a studio," he explains.
Allan Becker, founder of Sony Santa Monica, moved to Japan to take it over in 2011, and he's instituted changes to bring Japan Studio back to fighting fit. Becker "has done an amazing job to get the studio's focus on a smaller number of projects, and focus on quality of titles, and the results started to show," Yoshida says. "I'm extremely proud of the games they have released for this year, and the last year: Gravity Rush, Puppeteer, Rain, Soul Sacrifice, Knack."
He offers another good reason to keep the studio around: "they tend to try new things, it's their nature," he says, with a smile. "You never know what will come out from that studio in Japan."
Why the PS4 Allocates Resources the Way it Does
To turn now to hardware, Yoshida emphasized the importance of making developers understand why the PS4 reserves a big chunk of its resources for the system, when the PS3 gave most of them over to developers.
That is extremely deliberate, says Yoshida. "During the design process we had lots of discussion about what went right and wrong on PS3," he says. "One of the learnings was, because we most of the resources of PS3 were assigned to games, that's great for game developers... but when we wanted to add some system features after the launch, it has become an extremely difficult challenge for the system engineering team. Because once you allocate the resources to games, you can never get that back -- because if we do that, we lose the compatibility."
When it comes to the PS4, he says, "memory is our most precious resource." The hardware team decided to use speedy GDDR5 "because we believe that's necessary to achieve the level of performance that the next-gen games need," says Yoshida. "But because of this competition for resources, we really want to put lots of great features in the system software side. So we decided to make it 8GB -- so that system guys also enjoyed the larger space."
This will give the system "lots of room to grow" -- something crucial for a platform meant to last for 10 years, as has been Sony's mantra for its PlayStation platforms.
"Ten years is a long time when you look at the pace of technical advancement on the computing industry," says Yoshida. "We really want to be able to take advantage of future technology development, whether it's sensors or devices, network features that we will be able to add."
"People get upset when they talk about we have allocated lots of memory, for example, for system software," says Yoshida. Developers tell him that they want it back, but Yoshida wants them to see the big picture: "We are not talking about games versus non-games," he says. "This is to make all the playing and using PS4 around games -- whether it's background recording, or background download, or remote play -- to make all these things great. It's not necessarily the best choice to give everything to game developers. We learned from PS3 experience."
In fact, Yoshida wants to see the system's capabilities continue to evolve. At launch, you can post videos and screenshots to Facebook, and screenshots to Twitter, as well as streaming on Ustream or Twitch. "We designed the system so that we can add any services after the fact," says Yoshida. "Some countries have some very popular sites, for example, that we'll be able to add."
"We hope that we continue to add more feature and social media options at the system level, so that developers find it easier to support," says Yoshida. And if that is not enough for you, says Yoshida, you can still go your own way: "some features that are not available when the game launches, it's the developer's choice to do their own integration."
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
video recording RAM, ...
...
Oculus Rift + .
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
SCE Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida has always been a real sport when talking about Sonys most direct competitors at Microsoft, and today he went a step further, openly praising the team behind Xbox One while interviewed by Giant Bomb.
When the interviewer asked Yoshida-san about Microsofts recent move of offering indie developers a free Unity license, he responded:
Its always refreshing to hear Yoshida-san (or his counterpart on the other side Phil Spencer, for instance) expressing this kind of sentiment about his most direct competitors, especially considering how venomous the gaming community can be when talking about the console wars.
Thats a great example on how competition is great and important. If there was only one company, that company could decide the pace and priority of things.
But if there are two similar projects and two companies competing, thats, I think, the best situation for both consumer getting really the best out of these two groups, but also, it creates stories.
You know, exactly like you asked, “Microsoft did this!” and then theres a reaction. So that creates a new story and that competition makes whats happening in the game industry more interesting to the general public and I think thats really helpful.
So Im really happy that we have strong and great competition with Microsoft and I appreciate them. Theyre really smart speople and very resourceful, so that always keeps us on our toes and looking at ourselves, if were doing enough.
Maybe many should learn from him, and yes, Im looking at you, my dear commenters. Ultimately pitched competition is good for the industry, but even more importantly, its good for us.
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
Numbers, tons of numbers... Vgchartz:
2013 year-on-year sales and market share - update to November 2nd
: Contact VGChartz at wdangelo@vgchartz.comHere we see data representing the global sales through to consumers and change in sales performance of the four home consoles and four handhelds over comparable periods for 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Also shown is the market share for each of the consoles over the same periods.
Year to Date Sales Comparison (Same Periods Covered)
Market Share – 7th Generation (Same Periods Covered)
Market Share – 8th Generation (Same Periods Covered)
2010 – (Week beginning January 3 to November 6)
2011 – (Week beginning January 2 to November 5)
2012 – (Week beginning January 1 to November 3)
2013 – (Week beginning December 30 to November 2)
Total Sales and Market Share for Each Year – 7th Generation
Total Sales and Market Share for Each Year – 8th Generation
"Year to date" sales for 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 sales are shown in series at the top of the table and then just below a comparison of 2013 versus 2011 and 2013 versus 2012 is displayed. This provides an easy-to-view summary of all the data.
Microsoft
Xbox 360 - Down Year-on-Year 105,102, Year to Date -33.7%
Sony
PlayStation 3 – Down Year-on-Year 155,663, Year to Date -19.2%
PSP - Down Year-on-Year 27,238, Year to Date -14.1%
PlayStation Vita – Up Year-on-year 13,185, Year to Date -23.4%
Nintendo
Nintendo Wii - Down Year-on-Year 32,886, Year to Date -53.1%
Nintendo DS - Down Year-on-Year 35,611, Year to Date -64.0%
Nintendo 3DS - Up Year-on-Year 121,882, Year to Date 2.3%
Nintendo Wii U – n/a
Earlier this summer, word leaked out about Microsoft using a “reputation management” company to astrotuf Reddit. In the months since that, people have claimed that the person who unveiled the astroturfing was just a troll, but thats exactly the sort of response these reputation management companies make when theyre exposed for doing what they do.Now, on the eve of the PlayStation 4 launch with social media exploding over FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) concerns about the consoles reliability; Ive learned from a few industry sources a bit of news that causes me to not trust anything. At all. Its really hard to trust many things I hear about either console that I read on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, a forum, or even certain blogs/websites due to this news…
According to multiple industry sources, Micrsoft has over 1,000 viral marketers in the field right now “managing the reputation” for the Xbox One versus the Playstation 4. These “reputation managers” are operating over all forms of media, so this just isnt limited to a few Tweets or message board postings. This includes YouTube videos and Twitch streamers as well. They want all bases covered. And its not just to pump up the Xbox One, they want to spread FUD about the PS4 to hopefully convince people on the fence to not buy the system.
To be clear, these arent Microsoft employees doing this so if Major Nelson denies it, hes right from a certain point of view. These are people who work for marketing or reputation management companies, who have been contracted by Microsoft. Plausible deniability.
Microsoft isnt the only one to do this, EA is also really active with these “reputation management” companies now (especially after being voted the worst company two years in a row).
Also, Sony has done this in the past. Back in 2006, Sony hired a marketing company known as Zipatoni to create a really stupid “All I want for Christmas is a PSP” viral marketing campaign. It was exposed as being fake, and the whole thing blew up in their faces. So Ive heard theyre not resulting to those sort of tactics this time around, as if a viral marketer is exposed it just makes your company look deceptive. Nintendo doesnt do it either, as their fans do it for them for free.
Now Im not coming out and accusing anyone specific for being a viral marketer, Im just saying to take everything you see or hear thats vehemently negative or super positive over the next couple weeks with a grain of salt.
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
AgentPrinny007 (16-11-2013),Deathtrick (18-11-2013)
Fallout 4?????!!!!!!
http://thesurvivor2299.com/
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/...-trademark.jpg
!
AgentPrinny007 (18-11-2013)
^^ .
new Vegas Bethesda.
Saw this on reddit. User cocobandicoot posted a huge history of the recent developments with the franchise:
http://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments...ite_owned_and/
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
Deathtrick (21-11-2013),psx3 (21-11-2013)
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Spoiler!
IGN has learned from multiple sources that Telltale Games is developing a game based on George R.R. Martins Game of Thrones.
Its worth noting that, while “Game of Thrones” is the title of HBOs series based on Martins books, the series itself is actually known as A Song of Ice and Fire, and the first book is titled Game of Thrones. Its currently unclear what title Telltale will be using for its game, and whether the storyline will be based on the show, books, or something entirely new.
We reached out to Telltale and received the following statement from Steve Allison, SVP of Publishing:
“We get these sorts of rumors about what we could be working on next cropping up all the time. Officially we have no comment.”
Telltale has a long history of licensed properties, ranging from Jurassic Park to Back to the Future and, more recently, The Walking Dead and Fables. In October, Telltale CEO Dan Connors said that Telltale “cant wait” to announce its upcoming projects, and noted that its working on licenses that “definitely fall into our dream IP scenario.” Interestingly, Martins Game of Thrones books famously tell the story from a different characters point of view in each chapter, a strategy Telltale recently tried out in The Walking Deads 400 Days DLC.
Telltales Game of Thrones game joins other recent Game of Thrones projects including browser-based MMO Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms from Bigpoint, the Game of Thrones RPG from Atlus, and strategy title Game of Thrones: Genesis from Focus Home Interactive.
Beyond Game of Thrones, Telltale is currently working on the second episode of The Wolf Among Us as well as a follow-up season to The Walking Dead. For much more on Game of Thrones, be sure to check out our coverage of the show, plus find out everything we know about the series in our Game of Thrones wiki.
Spoiler (//) - 100 - = -rep
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks