NBA 2K Goes Online and Moves to China
2K Sports has always held the second place in the sports games race, which has been dominated by EA Sports. So, it needs to offer some pretty good and innovative concepts in order to gain ground on the dominating force of the market.
One such innovative idea has just been announced, as the company is saying that NBA 2K10, its fully-licensed basketball simulator, is being brought to China and the larger South East Asian market via a partnership with Tencent Holdings. And as if this wasn’t enough, the game is also being offered online.
Ben Feder, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Take Two, declared that “I’m pleased to announce our first strategic move in what is now the fastest growing online game market in the world. Given the universal appeal of sports, specifically NBA basketball, we believe that our partnership with Tencent to make NBA 2K Online is the perfect entry point for Take Two into this market. NBA 2K has revolutionized the basketball gaming genre and we are confident that its best-in-breed pedigree can be fully leveraged in China with the support of our valued partners at Tencent and the NBA.” Read more
DivX Goes Mobile
If you thought the highly compressed DivX multimedia format was only for PCs and DVD players then you might be interested to know that it has now made its way onto mobile phones and one of the first outings is on the new shiny, slidy LG Secret. Video on titchy screens tends to be a bit jerky and blurry and quite frankly a pain to watch for more than 30 seconds but on this very neat and well-featured 3G phone it is truly immaculate. The picture is clean and crisp with vibrant coilours and fluid movement. The Secret has a neat iPhone-like trick and when you turn it on its side the image automatically rotates, so you get the full benefit of the phones’ 640 x 480 widescreen display. Getting video onto the Secret is pretty straightforward too. DivX files can be uploaded by a USB cable from a PC or copied to a Micro SD card, (conversion software is included with the phone) or there’s the DIY method as the Secret has a built-in encoder, and you can shoot DivX videos on the phone’s camera. Read more
Zune 3.0 Is Here
The fall 2008 update for Zune takes Microsoft’s iPod killer at version 3.0. The Redmond company is preparing to release a new lineup of devices, including a new 120 GB model for $249.99, but also variants of 80 GB for $229.99, 16 GB for $199; 8 GB – $149.99 and 4 GB – $129.99. But the new devices are only a part of the Zune 3.0 evolution. According to the software giant, the new models will be accompanied by the introduction of fresh color schemes: blue-on-silver and sleek all-black. And as the new Microsoft digital media players will hit the shelves, consumers will be able to enjoy new features and upgraded firmware.
“Digital music services really come alive when they help people find not only the music they know they like, but the music they didn’t know they would love. With the combination of subscription, wireless access to millions of tracks, and powerful discovery features like personal recommendations and the ability to buy music from FM radio, Zune is taking the digital music experience to the next level,” explained Chris Stephenson, general manager of Global Marketing for Zune at Microsoft. Read more
Make YouTube YourTube
YouTube is great, well, some of it anyway, and even occasional visitors will see a video that they would like to download to watch again or send to someone else. There are lots of recording utilities on the web but this one, called Better YouTube has to be one of the easiest to use. It’s a Firefox add-on and it only takes a few seconds to install. Thereafter, if you see something you fancy simply click the ‘download this video’ link that appears just below the player screen and the download of the chosen video, as an .flv file, starts automatically. Incidentally, if you haven’t got a .flv player on your PC then I can thoroughly recommend the subject of a previous Top Tip, called VLC, which plays just about anything.
Live Season for FIFA 2009
EA Sports has recently announced that it plans to introduce a new update system, called Adidas Live Season, which should bring the characteristics of the in-game players in line with those of real life players. The service will have a subscription price which is not yet determined and will cover the most important leagues present in FIFA 2009.
It seems that the Live Season service will gather player data as it is provided by the same soccer experts who now determine the initial stats of the players. They will now watch the players perform on the pitch and rate their appearances as being bad, poor, neutral, good or excellent. Based on the centralized ratings, the attributes will be modified by the update service from EA Sports. Read more
New soccer MMO announced
Most of the massively multiplayer online games are slowly turning into social networks, offering their players a chance to make more friends, talk with different people from all over the world and have fun at the same time. The most important thing is that this trend can be associated with any type of MMO, including sports titles.
This will be proved by the most recent game from Elephant Entertainment and Sleepy Giant – Goal Or No Goal (GONG!), a soccer simulation that comes with a pretty neat 3 vs 3 multiplayer format. The game also has a few adventure elements for those who wish to do even more than play soccer matches and socialize with new friends. Read more
Live Your Life with PlayStation
This is certainly the day for announcements made by Sony. In addition to revealing a video rental service designed for the PlayStation 3, the company is also launching a few other initiatives that are designed to make its gaming console more attractive to other demographics than the “hardcore” gamer. The social aspect of the PlayStation Network is brought into focus in an effort to compete with the Xbox Live service from Microsoft.
While mentioning that the PlayStation 3 has so far shipped more than 12 million units all over the world, Kaz Hirai, President of Sony Computer Entertainment, revealed that this number is past the critical stage at which the company begins to focus on providing more content to its users rather than on extending the installed base at an accelerated rate. Additional content is intended to create loyalty amongst the player base. Read more
