In order to properly align its resources with its current and future goals, and to continue to develop games as efficiently as possible, 2K Sports has eliminated approximately 30 positions at its Visual Concepts studio.

These reductions will not affect 2K Sports’ ability to create and deliver AAA titles, including its upcoming release of NBA 2K11"

- Alan Lewis, VP of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Take-Two

While I’m happy to see NBA 2K11 unaffected by this recent downturn, it’s never good to see those laid off due to the poor economy.  The best of luck to those seeking new employment.

[via Joystiq]

Recently a spokesperson for Codemasters reveiled some rather big news from the studio. The spokesperson begun to speak about recent announcements such as Bodycount and F1 2010, however went on to inform us that the studios are also working on the new installments for DiRT, Grid and Operation Flashpoint.

All three games are said to be using the recent EG0 2.0 engine, while F1 2010 will be using the original engine form. Another title was announced, quoted as their “Massive Title” but Codemasters didn’t go into too much depth about it.

It appears as if the new Xbox 360 Slim has helped surge Xbox 360 sales in unexpected ways.  The recent boost was initially assumed to be because of the redesigned Xbox 360.  However, the numbers show that these are mostly attributed to the discounted first generation 360’s.  Retail outlets have been marking down units in order to make room for the new hardware that is flooding the market and they have been flying off the shelves.

[The] Xbox 360 Slim introduction [was] underappreciated – could accelerate 360 sales more than Kinect. With all the talk and buzz around Kinect, Move and 3DS, we believe the announcement of the new Xbox 360 Slim may have gotten a bit lost in the shuffle. With a $50 price cut on existing 360 systems (Arcade at $150, Elite at $250), and the new Slim on store shelves next week, we believe 360 sales could accelerate meaningfully, much like the PS3 did last fall following its Slim introduction. Since the launch of the PS3 Slim, unit sales are up 71% YoY in the U.S.”

- Todd Greenwald, Signal Hill Analyst

Europe and Japan, in particular, have shown an affinity to the newly designed Xbox 360.  GAME and Gamestation stores across the U.K. have “seen amazing demand for the new version of this ever-popular console.”

The Xbox 360 Slim has made something of an impact in the Japanese market; last week sales of the console hit 17,370 units, with 15K of those being the new slim model. The redesign has helped boost sales of the Xbox 360 by over 800%.”

Granted that Nintendo and Sony still rule the gaming market in Japan, it is still a success for Microsoft.  It could also be a precursor to a shifting of power in the Asian console market.  Only time will tell as the new Xbox 360 moves out of its infancy period.

Some even predict that the new Xbox 360 will have a larger impact for Microsoft than the highly touted Kinect.  The reasoning may lie in the very high price point for the new Microsoft peripheral.

Keep in mind, all these new peripherals will take time to catch on.  Even if they are successful, the initial installed bases will be relatively small for quite some time (<5 million), making it hard for publishers to generate any real revenue off them, especially as software prices will be lower than they are for core titles.”

[via Industry Gamers]

Ever do those Magic Eye pictures, where staring makes the 3-dimensional image appear? Basically you’re temporarily forcing your eye into strabismus, or “lazy eye”. Modern 3D glasses produce their effect by guiding, rather than forcing, your eyes into this condition and keeping them there. Which means as long as you have on the glasses, you are training your eyes into a serious vision impairment – for hours at a time.

In the mid-90′s Sega was set to release its Sega VR when the Stanford Research report came out detailing the effects of the technology. Fearing lawsuits, Sega buried the report and the VR. The kernel of the Sega technology, significantly streamlined, is the essence of polarized 3D today (for more on how 3D works, see How Stuff Works).

What are your thoughts? Worth the risk, or will you wait and see how this plays out?

[from Audioholics, via GamePolitics]

Industry analyst Eric Wold claims that to be successful, Redbox would need to make more revenue off the games than it would have off the replaced DVD’s. Here’s where I disagree. If the game rentals are successful, Redbox could easily install a second (or, in some cases, a third or fourth) vending machine, so the video game rentals become an addition to, not a competition with, DVD rentals. Furthermore, the DVD business is yielding rapidly to on-demand services, which will force Redbox to a new business model whether it wants one or not; and video games are a natural extension since they can be distributed with the company’s existing kiosk hardware.

As to how the market will pan out, I can only expect it will do well in the short-run. I, and probably most other gamers, would happily pay $4 to play a game for a couple solid days to decide if it’s worth the $60 retail price tag. The real question will be whether Redbox can get the hottest titles at release, or whether it will be forced into a 4-week delay.

In the long-run, video games will continue their migration to DLC and on-demand. Video game publishers can undermine much of Redbox’s appeal by offering longer demos before relase, and that without resorting to EA-style game gimping. I doubt Redbox will find a viable long-term future in overnight video game rentals, but I believe they can make a ton of money in the short-term with it. Now if only Netflix would get into the fray so I never had to leave my home…

The law passed last week required internet providers to connect every home in Finland with at least 1MPS (megabit per second) access by July 1, and Finnish authorities are pushing to make 100MPS access available to all by 2015. It further deems high-speed access a “legal right” for citizens, putting in place civil and criminal penalties for disruption of service.

In a BBC interview, Finland’s Communication Minister, Suvi Linden, explained the thinking behind the legislation, “We considered the role of the internet in Finns everyday life….Finland has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not everyone had access.”

Linden also addressed the question of piracy on government-mandated access. “We will have a policy where operators will send letters to illegal file-sharers but we are not planning on cutting off access,” she said, in stark contrast to England and France where violators are disconnected quickly and permanently.

England had also planned to roll out a national broadband requisited by 2012, but recent budget cuts have almost certainly postponed, if not doomed, the prospect.

[via BBC News]

It almost seems as if Microsoft is attempting to justify the high price tag by assuring gamers that the company isn’t out for a higher markup but rather taking a hit to provide a new experience to its gamers.

Compte continued, “Games just have one model, the sale of the product either as a box or a digital download. So we need to think about how we can develop a secondary business model.” On the heels of EA’s successful launch of the Online Pass, there’s little doubt about the inference, and Namco-Bandai is not alone in the industry in watching the new trend toward heavier DLC.

While Compte envisions, “A good price of a game should be around £20 [$25 US] – but for this price we can’t make a ten to 15-hour adventure. So for £20 we should offer consumers four to five hours of gameplay, then after that we can make additional money with DLC,” video game retailers seem to disagree.

One of the most outspoken critics of the move to paid DLC is indie gamestore owner Chet Muzzalupo of Level 1 Games in Columbus, OH. Through a series of online petitions, Facebook and MySpace campaigns, and YouTube videos, Muzzalupo has been very vocal in his opposition. In one such statement he said, “When [EA CEO] John Riccitiello makes $8 an hour working at the food court down the hall from me, he can come in and tell me that he is going to punish gamers for wanting to save a few dollars. Until then he’s just another rich guy, an extortionist, motivated by pure selfishness, preying on the rest of us.”

GameStop CEO Dan DeMatteo disagrees, citing EA’s move to the Online Pass having not [yet?] affected game sales. He then added, “We will turn this into a positive with our ability to sell DLC through our investments made in technology to market and sell this content in our stores.”

While this seems like a measured short-term solution, it underlines one of GameStop’s (and, indeed, all video game retailers’) biggest problems: the platforms and publishers are leaving them behind. While it might make sense for a gamer to go to GameStop to purchase Call of Duty, the 16-hour game with 14 maps, it will make much less sense to do so when the game is hacked apart as Compte envisioned. A 4 to 5-hour game can move to exclusively downloadable, which then begs the question about the future of video game retailing.

The answer to that may be found not far from GameStop’s front door, at minority owner Barnes & Noble. In the 1990′s, many called the move to internet and digital content the death of the book business. Yet through the onslaught of technology that has slammed against the book retailers’ doors since, none has yet corroded the foundation of the business, and it yet thrives today, long after many “experts” thought it would be gone. Perhaps most telling is this forum comment by Neeneko, “Oddly enough, this whole ‘online pass’ thing would probably encourage me to buy used games even more. One can think of the cost of a new game being ‘game+pass’ while the used game is now just ‘game’. Since I never use on-line play, I can think of this as finally having a way to not pay for a feature that gives me no benifit.”

And that is where the future of video game pricing will ultimately lie: can the game be carved and delivered in a targeted method so players can purchase only want? Can publishers create online content consistently compelling enough to force players online? If they do, will Microsoft maintain the $50 per year Gold Membership program, or will new pricing schemes be constructed to capitalize on the increased traffic? And, finally, all of this relies on high-speed internet service, and with Comcast fresh from its Supreme Court win against Net Neutrality and the FCC seemingly powerless to intervene, what role will ISP’s play in the future of gaming? While many of these questions will play themselves out over the next year, the first glimpses at the answers will be at E3 – and we’ll be watching.

[tip of the hat to Game Politics]

Bethesda Softworks, developers of games such as the Elder Scrolls series, Fallout 3, and publishers of the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas, have announced that the company has formed two new offices in Europe, one being located in Frankfurt, Germany, while the other is located in Paris, France. Their responsibilities will be to “directly oversee sales and marketing” of future game titles within their respective areas.

With so many games coming out being published by Bethesda Softworks in the coming years, they’ll most likely be incredibly busy pretty soon. Good luck to them all!

Bungie has just signed into a contract to have Activision Blizzard publish their games for the next 10 years.  This is a rather unexpected move with all the bad press Activision has been getting lately.  However, it can only mean good things for the company after the success Bungie has had with the Halo franchise.  The future is looking murky with the potential fall of the Call of Duty brand lurking, so Activision will require a brand new IP to help keep them competitive.  Especially since the company’s success is linked to only several franchises.

"We chose to partner with Activision on our next IP because of their global reach, multi-platform experience and marketing expertise, From working together over the past nine months on this agreement, it is clear that Activision supports our commitment to giving our fans the best possible gaming experiences."

                                                                 – Harold Ryan, President of Bungie

Apparently they didn’t get the memo about Activision taking apart Infinity Ward after they made them a few billion dollars.  Bungie better hope to not make an overly successful title if they want to stay intact.  In all seriousness though, with the end of Halo nearing with Reach set to release later this year, excitement will run rampant as to what the next title to be tackled by Bungie will be.  Let’s just hope Bobby Kotick keeps his greedy hands from interfering with whatever Bungie may be working on next.

[via IGN]