Game Developers See Potential, Not Gold Rush in Apple’s iPad [Well Played]

On its surface, Apple’s iPad may seem like a glorified e-book reader, but developers working on games for the system say they see within its extra-large screen and faster processor, great gaming potential . “Our creative teams are really just digging in and brainstorming ideas that the power and specs of the iPad might bring to life,” said Andrew Stein, director of mobile platforms for PopCap games , maker of Bejeweled and Peggle. “Nobody could have anticipated the huge blossoming of creativity engendered by the iPhone and iPod Touch and I think the iPad could easily take this to the next level.” The iPad is essentially an over-sized iPod Touch . The device features a 9.7-inch re-engineered multi-touch screen , a 1Ghz processor and 16GB to 64GB of storage. The device will be available either with WiFi only support or with the ability to connect to the Internet through a 3G AT&T cell service. The iPad, which hits this March, will sell for $500 to $830. Game developers looking to support the new device have two ways of doing so. Because the iPad will run the same sort of operating system as the iPhone and iPod Touch, it can also run the same apps built for those devices. But those apps will either have to run at their original, smaller size, or lose a bit of fidelity when they are artificially enlarged . Developers could also decide to develop games specifically for the device or to develop a higher-resolution version of their iPhone or iPod Touch games for the iPad. Firemint, which has a community of 6 million people playing their games Flight Control and Real Racing GTI, say they are already working on an “enhanced for iPad” version of Flight Control. “We want to do more than just up-size the art assets to the higher resolution,” said Alexandra Peters, Firemint’s community manager. “When we design a game we always think about the fundamental and unique qualities of the platform and how we can best work with those.” But, Peters says, they can’t forget that there are 75 million people with the iPhone and iPod Touch and currently zero with the iPad. “We wouldn’t be surprised if people line up at Apple stores around the world on the day iPad is released but even so, there’s a logistical limit to how quickly devices can be manufactured and sold, so it will take a while for the iPad installed base to ramp up,” he said. PopCap, despite its exuberance for the iPad and successes with the iPhone and iPod Touch, haven’t yet announced any games for Apple’s latest bit of gadgetry . “Apple has a tough act to follow in the iPhone and iPod touch – they really rewrote the book on portable gaming with those devices,” Stein said. “From a technical spec, the iPad looks like it could be a phenomenal gaming machine and I would expect games to be the leading revenue category of apps. Commercially, the iPad is in an interesting niche and we’ll have to see if Apple has hit another home run a la iPod and iPhone.” The team behind one of the iPhone’s most talked about gaming success, Trism, have no such doubts about the success of the iPad, they’re already at work on two titles for the device. Trism 2, a sequel to their best selling puzzle title, is being developed for both the iPhone and iPad and Trism Spinoff is being developed exclusively for the iPad, said Demiforce founder Steve Demeter. “Trism Spinoff is intended for a larger footprint device because of certain characteristics such as a higher count of trisms as well as an onscreen metagame,” Demeter said. “Trism 2 was originally going to be exclusively for iPhone and iPod Touch. However, when we realized it would be so easy to cross-compile apps for the iPad, we decided to do Trism 2 for it as well. It will look more resolute on the iPad, but other than that, it’ll be the same game.” Namco Networks were already thinking of what they would do with more screen real estate before the iPad was announced, now they’re moving forward on a number of their “concepts and plans,” said Jon Kromrey, general manager of Namco Networks Apple Games division. That includes updates to existing titles like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, which will get new capabilities and have social gaming features added, he said. And, Kromrey adds, Namco has a “big announcement” planned for March’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. iPhone game publisher Ngmoco think the device will push developers to make more substantial games for the iTunes Store. “It is easy to imagine that gamers will be more engaged and less snacky on the iPad,” said Simon Jeffery, Ngmoco chief publishing officer. “Games like Eliminate which are perhaps more time and focus intensive will benefit from couch play. We envisage that the iPad will take game time away from the frontline videogame consoles, and drive the usage of those devices to be yet more hardcore.” While more processing and screen space could mean more complex games, the feature developers seem most excited about is the iPad’s ability to allow the portable device to become a platform for multiplayer gaming. “It’s the perfect device to have in the lounge room,” Firemints’ Peters said. “There’s something very satisfying about a group of people sitting in a circle with a single shared focus point, whether it’s gathering around a camp fire, around the kitchen table or around an iPad. At the moment multiplayer games are physically distancing, either because you’re in completely different places as with (massively multiplayer online games), or because you are all facing a large screen instead of each other, as with lounge room consoles. Once a family has gathered around an iPad to play a board game, they are far more likely to try other kinds of games as well, so it could open up yet another huge new audience for all game developers.” Demiforce’s Demeter, Ngmoco’s Jeffery and Namco’s Kromrey also see the potential for single-device multiplayer gaming as the iPad’s biggest addition to the realm of portable gaming. “We are looking closely at extending the Mobile gaming experience to the couch in a transparent, frictionless way,” Jeffery said. “It’s important that one of our customers can get off the bus after playing an iPhone game and then pick it up again seamlessly on the couch.” Much of the iPhone’s surprising gaming success was driven by its ability to tap into a group of people who had never played or even considered playing games. Rather than cannibalize those customers, the iPad could achieve that a second time because the audience picking up this e-reader and video and music playing tablet are likely to be made up mostly of an entirely new audience. But Apple’s past successes have almost always been driven by its ability to stay focused on a single message, a single device. The iPad’s launch though, diffuses that message, coming at a time when the iPhone still enjoys rocketing success and the potential market needs convincing that they need a device that fits awkwardly between laptop and iPhone.

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Game Developers See Potential, Not Gold Rush in Apple’s iPad [Well Played]

Firemint Plans Dedicated iPad Version of Popular iPhone Game [Ipad]

Firemint, maker of Flight Control for the iPhone and iPod Touch ( reviewed by Gawker boss Nick Denton in December ), has announced it will bring an “optimized and re-imagined version” of that game to the iPad, announced today. In a statement, Firemint pointed out that the existing version of the game available in the App Store now will work on the iPad with no changes, “but we want to ensure a delightful experience on iPad that feels just right.” “We are already building our next generation of games for higher definition, more powerful devices than are available today,” the statement continued. ” The iPad announcement and Apple’s A4 chip have come at a fantastic time for us. We are working on some incredibly fun and exciting games that will look amazing on iPad and take full advantage of its features, as well as working brilliantly on iPhone and iPod touch.” Firemint, also the maker of Real Racing , did not give a time period for the release its iPad version of Flight Control.

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Firemint Plans Dedicated iPad Version of Popular iPhone Game [Ipad]

MLB 2K10 Preview: Battling Back to Even the Count [Preview]

2K Sports ‘ baseball franchise, maybe more than any other sports title, will have this year’s title judged against and compared to last year’s offering, and not for its good qualities. It’s hard to tell whether last year’s MLB 2K9 – one of the worst-reviewed (and deservedly so) games ever for this class of sports simulation – raises or lowers consumer expectations for MLB 2K10 . 2K9 suffered from glitches, clipping, bizarre baserunning and fielding AI, and, frankly, unacceptable graphics, especially in the player modeling. Conditioned to expect subtle changes in the fundamentals of year-to-year sports titles, I really didn’t know what to expect. A set of drastic changes could bomb just as badly as ones tone-deaf to last year’s problems. 2K gave me a four-hour guided preview of the game at their Novato, Calif. studios on Tuesday. Rather than attempt to certify whether this is an overhaul, a tuneup, or something in between, I decided to do what Visual Concepts seems to have done: Clear my mind of last year’s game, and start all over on this one. What Is It? MLB 2K10 will be the current version of 2K Sports’ major league baseball offering. In 2K Sports’ defense, last year’s game was pushed out in a nine-month development cycle owed largely to transferring the project and its team up from Kush Games (maker of MLB 2K8) to Visual Concepts at the 2K Marin studio. Well, maybe that’s said in defense of the development team, not necessarily those making the decisions that hamstrung it so late in the game. But in my time at the studio, the Visual Concepts guys were honest and accountable for last year’s shortcomings, while reasonably confident this year’s product will be a vast improvement. They started over with a 12-month schedule and new development team members in hopes of getting it right. What We Saw On the Xbox 360, I played portions of several standard singleplayer games, as much to get a feel for its new gameplay mechanics and to see how the stadiums and players were presented. I was also given a tour of the “My Player” mode, a well-received concept in NBA 2K10 making its debut here. Again, 2K Sports is tinkering with both its swing and pitch mechanics. While both remain based on right analog gestures, this year’s configurations make loads more sense. They also represent a deliberately more deterministic mode of play that account for the many degrees of success or failure within the delivery of a pitch or the swing of a bat. In pitching, players will select a pitch with a face or bumper button and then be given a diagram of how to execute it with the right analog. How closely your motion matches the diagram determines the overall effectiveness of the pitch. It’s a much better method than last year’s, which did not have the selection step, and could result in throwing a completely different pitch than intended – an outcome as unrealistic as it was frustrating, and mystifying. In this game, you’re helped by a pitch analyzer that will pop up and show you the path your right analog traveled in case you botch the pitch, hang a curveball, or bottom out a changeup. The analyzer, plus what felt like a finer-tuned pitch gesture motion, help flatten out the learning curve. It’s not a button-based pitch meter, but those can deliver almost impossible accuracy. This new pitching system will better incorporate walks into your game, no small victory for realism. Hitting was vastly different and a little hard to time at first. The biggest reason is the ball’s apparent velocity is faster than in 2K9. Part of this is because of a shift in the camera angle for the hitting view. But the new tilt enables a much cleaner view of whether a ball will arrive inside or outside the strike zone. 2K Sports is sensitive to the fact that hitting in video game baseball is often based on a decision, before the ball is even thrown, to swing at the next pitch. The new camera angle is meant to help you sensibly work the count and, again, reach base by walk. The swings themselves have changed subtly. There’s no drawing back to ready for a pitch on a standard swing (although there is for the power swing.) That will throw your timing at first, but removing that step is key to preserving bat speed while processing what’s been thrown for an extra fraction of a second. A third, new swing – the defensive swing – is engaged by flicking the stick right or left. This probably won’t result in a base hit, but it allows you to protect the plate with two outs, foul off pitches until you get one you like, and frustrate opposing pitchers into making mistakes – all aspects of baseball that haven’t really come through in previous games. You’ll also be presented with visual cues indicating the likely pitch location and type, depending on your batter’s “eye” rating. This is how the game will manifest the “book” of knowledge that good hitters keep on pitchers’ tendencies, and is much more useful than the game’s previous “hitter’s eye,” which didn’t enable successful guess-hitting as much as it did randomize your chances of whaling a fat pitch. And lastly, the left stick is given a more appropriate degree of influence. There is no need to use it to aim within the strike zone – your hitter will make contact without it. The stick is meant to influence the flight of the ball, but that path still will be more determined by timing and pitch type. In other words, you can go an entire game without using it if you like. Holding up on the left stick, last year’s shorthand for “hit for power” is now converted to a sacrifice-fly decision – which both reduces cheap home runs and gives you more deliberate means of getting that ball in the air with a runner on third. How Far Along Is It? The build I saw is about a month from delivery. The guts of this game are essentially finished but some fine-tuning in the menu selections, and tweaks to the frequency with which the pitch analyzer appears will need to be implemented. Judged by the visuals alone this will be a much better game than 2K9. All of the major league stadiums have been rebuilt, as well as character/face modeling, eliminating last year’s embarrassments. Cap logos are appropriately proportioned, one of my pet peeves from 2K9. One of the best updates will be the addition of two-player animations, in which double-plays or plays at the plate incorporate both runner and fielder (and the ball coming loose, where appropriate), for seamless collisions and outcomes with no distorted clipping or incongruent behaviors. Though not as visually strong as MLB 09: The Show, this at least gets 2K’s game back in the conversation. What Needs Improvement? Honestly? For what it’s set out to do here, not much beyond a final coat of polish. The bugs I saw on the preview build were minor (inconsistent shadow redraws, some dead-ends in a menu) and fixable. I felt the swing stick was a little twitchy at first, but on further review, it needs to be that way to preserve the blink-of-an-eye decision to swing that a face button enables. I’ve heard and I’ve sympathized with the complaints that 2K Sports should bring its game back to pitch meters and button swings. But a successful pitch isn’t a binary act – do A and B is always the result. Nor is a successful at-bat. Flat curveballs can still fool hitters unprepared for an offspeed pitch. They can also be hammered 500 feet. Off an All-Star pitcher. Punch-and-judy hitters can hang in against lights-out closers by shortening up the swing and waiting for the right pitch. A successful baseball simulation should not feel like you got to these moments purely by chance, and the player should own the decisions and outcomes that got him there. From what I saw of it, MLB 2K10’s hitting and pitching philosophy justifies the use of the analog sticks. What Should Stay The Same? The brief time I spent with My Player looks like it will take advantage of the opportunities baseball presents for a solo, singleplayer career mode. Whether it will be as strong as what The Road to the Show in MLB: The Show has become remains to be seen. Unfortunately, if you create yourself as a catcher, you won’t be calling pitches like your character will in this year’s Show. Otherwise it looks like a fun, up-through-the-minors sim that reduces grind by not forcing you to participate in every pitch of every game, only those in which your player is involved. I didn’t spend enough time with it to get a feel for the difficulty; whether you’ll have trivially short stays in the minor leagues (you start in double-A, from which big league call-ups are frequent) or be stuck in the long tours common to My Player in NBA 2K10. Final Thoughts 2K Sports knows it has to repair a ton of trust with the public after MLB 2K9, and really after some disappointing management of the franchise after signing its exclusive license with Major League Baseball. For some, last year’s game was unforgivable, and that’s an entirely understandable reaction. PS3 owners are solidly entrenched in MLB The Show, and I can’t suggest MLB 2K10 will come any closer to unseating that game on that platform, much less as the best-in-class offering. But what I saw in Marin is more than worth a second chance, and I’m eager to spend more time with this game when my review copy arrives.

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MLB 2K10 Preview: Battling Back to Even the Count [Preview]

MLB 2K10 Preview: Battling Back to Even the Count [Preview]

2K Sports ‘ baseball franchise, maybe more than any other sports title, will have this year’s title judged against and compared to last year’s offering, and not for its good qualities. It’s hard to tell whether last year’s MLB 2K9 – one of the worst-reviewed (and deservedly so) games ever for this class of sports simulation – raises or lowers consumer expectations for MLB 2K10 . 2K9 suffered from glitches, clipping, bizarre baserunning and fielding AI, and, frankly, unacceptable graphics, especially in the player modeling. Conditioned to expect subtle changes in the fundamentals of year-to-year sports titles, I really didn’t know what to expect. A set of drastic changes could bomb just as badly as ones tone-deaf to last year’s problems. 2K gave me a four-hour guided preview of the game at their Novato, Calif. studios on Tuesday. Rather than attempt to certify whether this is an overhaul, a tuneup, or something in between, I decided to do what Visual Concepts seems to have done: Clear my mind of last year’s game, and start all over on this one. What Is It? MLB 2K10 will be the current version of 2K Sports’ major league baseball offering. In 2K Sports’ defense, last year’s game was pushed out in a nine-month development cycle owed largely to transferring the project and its team up from Kush Games (maker of MLB 2K8) to Visual Concepts at the 2K Marin studio. Well, maybe that’s said in defense of the development team, not necessarily those making the decisions that hamstrung it so late in the game. But in my time at the studio, the Visual Concepts guys were honest and accountable for last year’s shortcomings, while reasonably confident this year’s product will be a vast improvement. They started over with a 12-month schedule and new development team members in hopes of getting it right. What We Saw On the Xbox 360, I played portions of several standard singleplayer games, as much to get a feel for its new gameplay mechanics and to see how the stadiums and players were presented. I was also given a tour of the “My Player” mode, a well-received concept in NBA 2K10 making its debut here. Again, 2K Sports is tinkering with both its swing and pitch mechanics. While both remain based on right analog gestures, this year’s configurations make loads more sense. They also represent a deliberately more deterministic mode of play that account for the many degrees of success or failure within the delivery of a pitch or the swing of a bat. In pitching, players will select a pitch with a face or bumper button and then be given a diagram of how to execute it with the right analog. How closely your motion matches the diagram determines the overall effectiveness of the pitch. It’s a much better method than last year’s, which did not have the selection step, and could result in throwing a completely different pitch than intended – an outcome as unrealistic as it was frustrating, and mystifying. In this game, you’re helped by a pitch analyzer that will pop up and show you the path your right analog traveled in case you botch the pitch, hang a curveball, or bottom out a changeup. The analyzer, plus what felt like a finer-tuned pitch gesture motion, help flatten out the learning curve. It’s not a button-based pitch meter, but those can deliver almost impossible accuracy. This new pitching system will better incorporate walks into your game, no small victory for realism. Hitting was vastly different and a little hard to time at first. The biggest reason is the ball’s apparent velocity is faster than in 2K9. Part of this is because of a shift in the camera angle for the hitting view. But the new tilt enables a much cleaner view of whether a ball will arrive inside or outside the strike zone. 2K Sports is sensitive to the fact that hitting in video game baseball is often based on a decision, before the ball is even thrown, to swing at the next pitch. The new camera angle is meant to help you sensibly work the count and, again, reach base by walk. The swings themselves have changed subtly. There’s no drawing back to ready for a pitch on a standard swing (although there is for the power swing.) That will throw your timing at first, but removing that step is key to preserving bat speed while processing what’s been thrown for an extra fraction of a second. A third, new swing – the defensive swing – is engaged by flicking the stick right or left. This probably won’t result in a base hit, but it allows you to protect the plate with two outs, foul off pitches until you get one you like, and frustrate opposing pitchers into making mistakes – all aspects of baseball that haven’t really come through in previous games. You’ll also be presented with visual cues indicating the likely pitch location and type, depending on your batter’s “eye” rating. This is how the game will manifest the “book” of knowledge that good hitters keep on pitchers’ tendencies, and is much more useful than the game’s previous “hitter’s eye,” which didn’t enable successful guess-hitting as much as it did randomize your chances of whaling a fat pitch. And lastly, the left stick is given a more appropriate degree of influence. There is no need to use it to aim within the strike zone – your hitter will make contact without it. The stick is meant to influence the flight of the ball, but that path still will be more determined by timing and pitch type. In other words, you can go an entire game without using it if you like. Holding up on the left stick, last year’s shorthand for “hit for power” is now converted to a sacrifice-fly decision – which both reduces cheap home runs and gives you more deliberate means of getting that ball in the air with a runner on third. How Far Along Is It? The build I saw is about a month from delivery. The guts of this game are essentially finished but some fine-tuning in the menu selections, and tweaks to the frequency with which the pitch analyzer appears will need to be implemented. Judged by the visuals alone this will be a much better game than 2K9. All of the major league stadiums have been rebuilt, as well as character/face modeling, eliminating last year’s embarrassments. Cap logos are appropriately proportioned, one of my pet peeves from 2K9. One of the best updates will be the addition of two-player animations, in which double-plays or plays at the plate incorporate both runner and fielder (and the ball coming loose, where appropriate), for seamless collisions and outcomes with no distorted clipping or incongruent behaviors. Though not as visually strong as MLB 09: The Show, this at least gets 2K’s game back in the conversation. What Needs Improvement? Honestly? For what it’s set out to do here, not much beyond a final coat of polish. The bugs I saw on the preview build were minor (inconsistent shadow redraws, some dead-ends in a menu) and fixable. I felt the swing stick was a little twitchy at first, but on further review, it needs to be that way to preserve the blink-of-an-eye decision to swing that a face button enables. I’ve heard and I’ve sympathized with the complaints that 2K Sports should bring its game back to pitch meters and button swings. But a successful pitch isn’t a binary act – do A and B is always the result. Nor is a successful at-bat. Flat curveballs can still fool hitters unprepared for an offspeed pitch. They can also be hammered 500 feet. Off an All-Star pitcher. Punch-and-judy hitters can hang in against lights-out closers by shortening up the swing and waiting for the right pitch. A successful baseball simulation should not feel like you got to these moments purely by chance, and the player should own the decisions and outcomes that got him there. From what I saw of it, MLB 2K10’s hitting and pitching philosophy justifies the use of the analog sticks. What Should Stay The Same? The brief time I spent with My Player looks like it will take advantage of the opportunities baseball presents for a solo, singleplayer career mode. Whether it will be as strong as what The Road to the Show in MLB: The Show has become remains to be seen. Unfortunately, if you create yourself as a catcher, you won’t be calling pitches like your character will in this year’s Show. Otherwise it looks like a fun, up-through-the-minors sim that reduces grind by not forcing you to participate in every pitch of every game, only those in which your player is involved. I didn’t spend enough time with it to get a feel for the difficulty; whether you’ll have trivially short stays in the minor leagues (you start in double-A, from which big league call-ups are frequent) or be stuck in the long tours common to My Player in NBA 2K10. Final Thoughts 2K Sports knows it has to repair a ton of trust with the public after MLB 2K9, and really after some disappointing management of the franchise after signing its exclusive license with Major League Baseball. For some, last year’s game was unforgivable, and that’s an entirely understandable reaction. PS3 owners are solidly entrenched in MLB The Show, and I can’t suggest MLB 2K10 will come any closer to unseating that game on that platform, much less as the best-in-class offering. But what I saw in Marin is more than worth a second chance, and I’m eager to spend more time with this game when my review copy arrives.

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MLB 2K10 Preview: Battling Back to Even the Count [Preview]

Dark Void Zero Micro-Review: Classic, Focused Fun [Review]

Dark Void Zero is built around not one, but two stories. One is a story of a jet pack wearing hero named Rusty trying to stop the invasion of Earth by aliens. The second is the fiction surrounding the game’s creation, a false history that claims the game is a remake of a classic NES-era title for the Nintendo DSi. The truth is more interesting. Capcom, it seems, decided to make a Game Boy-esque retro version of its third-person action shooter Dark Void , to help promote the game. Dark Void Zero features 8-bit graphics, a genuine retro soundtrack and maybe two hours of gameplay with three difficulty settings. But is the 500-Nintendo Points DSi title a commercial or a game? Loved Classic Controls: Dark Void Zero is everything good about those classic Game Boy titles. The controls are almost painfully straightforward; you move your character around with the directional pad, jump with one button and shoot with the other. That’s it. No super special moves or weapon select. No clicking on thumbsticks or tapping bumper buttons. After I got used to it, and it didn’t take long, it reminded me how much fun it is to be able to focus on the gameplay and not worry about memorizing complex control diagrams. Retro Look: Other Ocean Interactive nailed the look of a classic Game Boy title, but without the pixelation. The game’s tiny graphics pop on the DSi’s touch screen and the top screen is filled with an easy to see map and some scoring details. Bit Bop By Bear: Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary composed all of the music for Dark Void Zero using original 8-bit equipment, or so I was told. The soundtrack is a wonderful selection of upbeat original tunes the push the envelope for what you’d expect to play along a retro title. Dark Void, the more expensive console title, had its moments and I enjoyed the flight and cover systems, but Dark Void Zero is hands-down the better overall gaming experience between the two. I had forgotten just how much I enjoy these simple, straightforward games. For some odd reason, Dark Void Zero reminds me of all of the time I spent playing through Duck Tales on the original Game Boy back when plot and graphics were a distant second to fun. And that’s a very good thing. Dark Void Zero was developed by Other Ocean Interactive and published by Capcom for the DSi on Jan. 18. Retails for 500 Nintendo Points ($5 USD). A copy of the game was purchased for reviewing purposes. Played through the game in medium and easy modes. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

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Dark Void Zero Micro-Review: Classic, Focused Fun [Review]

And The Nominees For The 10th Annual GDC Awards Are… [Game Developers Choice Awards]

The nominations are in for the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards , with Uncharted 2 , Flower, and Assassin’s Creed II dominating the nominating. Naughty Dog could win big at the 10th annual awards show, held every year during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has been nominated for no less than seven awards, including Best Game Design, Best Visual Art, Best Technology, and the coveted Game of the Year award. In fact, the only four categories Uncharted 2 isn’t up for are the ones it doesn’t qualify for – Best Debut, Best Downloadable, Best New Social / Online, and Best Handheld. Unsurprisingly for those of us who played thatgamecompany’s latest downloadable PlayStation 3 game, Flower comes in second in terms of number of nominations, in the running for Best Game Design, Best Audio, Best Visual Art, Best Downloadable, and Innovation. Assassin’s Creed II fares well also, with nominations for Best Game Design, Best Visual Art, Best Technology, and Game of the Year. As for the rest of the GOTY nominees, Uncharted 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 are joined by Dragon Age: Origins, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Demon’s Souls. Check out the full list below to see if your favorite game got a nod. Keep in mind, these nominations are made by game industry professionals, so these are the best games as picked by the folks that make them. And make sure you join us on Thursday, March 11th, when Kotaku attends the annual award show during our visit to GDC 2010 . Best Game Design Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady) Assassin’s Creed 2 (Ubisoft Montreal) Flower (thatgamecompany) Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Plants Vs. Zombies (PopCap) Best Visual Art Borderlands (Gearbox Software) Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal) Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward) Flower (thatgamecompany) Best Technology Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward) Red Faction: Guerrilla (Volition) Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Killzone 2 (Guerrilla Games) Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal) Best Writing Brutal Legend (Double Fine) Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady Studios) Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare) Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Halo 3: ODST (Bungie) Best Audio Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare) Rock Band: The Beatles (Harmonix) Flower (thatgamecompany) Brutal Legend (Double Fine Productions) Innovation Scribblenauts (5th Cell) Flower (thatgamecompany) Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Plants Vs. Zombies (PopCap) Demon’s Souls (From Software) Best Debut The Maw (Twisted Pixel) League Of Legends (Riot Games) Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style) Torchlight (Runic Games) Zeno Clash (ACE Team) Best Downloadable Game Plants Vs. Zombies (PopCap) Trials HD (RedLynx) PixelJunk Shooter (Q Games) Shadow Complex (Chair Entertainment) Flower (thatgamecompany) Best New Social/Online Game Restaurant City (Playfish) Farmville (Zynga) Dungeon Fighter Online (Neople/Nexon) Free Realms (Sony Online Entertainment San Diego) Bejeweled Blitz (PopCap) Best Handheld Game Scribblenauts (5th Cell) Flight Control (Firemint) Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (Rockstar Leeds/Rockstar North) Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style) Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (Nintendo EAD) Game Of The Year Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog) Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare) Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady Studios) Demon’s Souls (From Software) Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal)

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And The Nominees For The 10th Annual GDC Awards Are… [Game Developers Choice Awards]

PlayStation Around the Web: What We Read

“Why don’t you ever do anything on the East Coast?” That’s a common refrain when we announce plans for our events and meet-ups . Well, this week we’re going to roll up our sleeves and get going on our community plan for PAX East . How many of you will be in the Boston area at the end of March? What would you like to do, and where? For the past two Seattle PAXes, we had a donut breakfast meetup (I think Joystiq is doing something similar this year), and we invited community into our (formerly) media-only MAG event. We’ve already got some ideas, but let’s hear it from you! The PS Blog weekly reading list (Week of January 11, 2010) Gran Turismo 5 Screens Burn Some Rubber – Kotaku Gran Turismo’s creator takes a fifth stab at a perfect racing game – VentureBeat Korean Airline Uses PSPgo For In Flight Entertainment – Siliconera The man behind Nathan Drake: I “get paid to do what used to get me detention” – GamePro Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll looks like a crazy painting – Destructoid Exploring the ‘Physical Action/Reaction’ of Heavy Rain – Destructoid Sony Touts Biggest Sales Month Since PS3 Launch – IGN White Knight Chronicles Online Impressions – IGN Industry expects PlayStation 3 to bounce back in 2010 – gamesindustry.biz ‘Gran Turismo’ creator talks and test drives latest model – USATODAY.com The Flying Hamster fights laser-shooting owls in a race for beer, on PSP – Joystiq IGN 2009 Game of the Year Demon’s Souls: Overstated Difficulty Hides Solid Game Design – Bitmob CES 2010 Video: An In-Depth Look at Sony’s PlayStation Booth – GamerLive.TV Tekken 6 for PSP Review: Big Things Come in Small Packages – Geekadelphia Ace Combat: Joint Assault Announced – IGN Metal Slug XX trailer brings the bullets – Joystiq The Top 25 PlayStation 3 Games: 25-21 – IGN Super Stardust 3D: 720p120 confirmed – DigitalFoundry Guide To The New Plasmids Of ‘BioShock 2′ – MTV Multiplayer Monsters Probably Stole Your Princess – Kotaku CES 2010: Under the Hood of Sony’s ModNation Racers – GamerLive.TV Sony PlayStation 3 3D Upgrade – Popular Mechanics Aksys Triggering US Release Of BlazBlue Portable – Siliconera CES 2010: 3D Super Stardust HD Wows – IGN

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PlayStation Around the Web: What We Read

Your In-Flight Entertainment: The PSPgo [South Korea]

Hate in-flight movies? Didn’t bring a book? Like to game? A subsidiary of airline Korean Air, Jin Air, is here to help by renting PSPgo consoles to passengers. The PSPgo is available for rental for flights out of Incheon for 4,000 won (US$3.50) — way cheaper than the $6 that some airlines charge economy passengers for booze. It’s not clear exactly what games are loaded on the UMD-less machine, but Sony Computer Entertainment Korea publishes titles like Patapon, LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival and Persona 3 Portable. So it’s possible some of those titles are playable. It is also possible that they are not as Jin Air did not name specific games. This is not the first airline to offer slick, new portables for passenger gaming fun. In 2006, Japanese airline JAL also introduced an in-flight DS Lite service . The then new DS Lite could be enjoyed free of charge by first class and executive class passengers in a special, limited time only promotional campaign. The following year, the Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport set its sights on banning the use of the wireless functions on portable game devices like the DS and the PSP. The extent of the ensuing crackdown seemed to signs reminding passengers not to turn own the wireless functions during landing and takeoff and friendly warning from flight attendants. Korean Airline Uses PSPgo For In Flight Entertainment [Siliconera]

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Your In-Flight Entertainment: The PSPgo [South Korea]

Your In-Flight Entertainment: The PSPgo [South Korea]

Hate in-flight movies? Didn’t bring a book? Like to game? A subsidiary of airline Korean Air, Jin Air, is here to help by renting PSPgo consoles to passengers. The PSPgo is available for rental for flights out of Incheon for 4,000 won (US$3.50) — way cheaper than the $6 that some airlines charge economy passengers for booze. It’s not clear exactly what games are loaded on the UMD-less machine, but Sony Computer Entertainment Korea publishes titles like Patapon, LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival and Persona 3 Portable. So it’s possible some of those titles are playable. It is also possible that they are not as Jin Air did not name specific games. This is not the first airline to offer slick, new portables for passenger gaming fun. In 2006, Japanese airline JAL also introduced an in-flight DS Lite service . The then new DS Lite could be enjoyed free of charge by first class and executive class passengers in a special, limited time only promotional campaign. The following year, the Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport set its sights on banning the use of the wireless functions on portable game devices like the DS and the PSP. The extent of the ensuing crackdown seemed to signs reminding passengers not to turn own the wireless functions during landing and takeoff and friendly warning from flight attendants. Korean Airline Uses PSPgo For In Flight Entertainment [Siliconera]

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Your In-Flight Entertainment: The PSPgo [South Korea]

Solid Steel, No Moving Parts, This Flight Stick Is A Pricey Wonder [Ces10]

Made of solid steel, Saitek’s X65F Pro Flight stick doesn’t actually move when you use it to fly a plane, instead the shaft sensing the pressure you’re exerting on the stick and translates it into movement. I had a chance to play arund with the X65F Pro Flight System a bit earlier this week and was impressed with the design and seeming sturdiness of the set-up. The flight stick includes three 8-way hats, an 8-way thumb hat, a trigger, two buttons and two pinkie switches. It also ships with a throttle controller that includes two rotaries, a mouse hat, four 8-way hats, a 2-way “K” switch, a scroll selector, a 4-position mode switch and a split throttle that can be locked together for single-engine fighter control. Testing the stick out in H.A.W.X. and Flight Sim X, I was impressed with how sensitive the force-sensing technology was, even detecting when I twisted the stick for rudder controls. Because the stick is made of steel, the heft gives the entire controller an added sense of realism and, I suspect, a longer life. The one issue I did run into was that when I tried pulling off steep banking turns the base of the flight stick tended to lift up or try to fall over. The controller does come with pre-drilled holes so it can be mounted to a surface, but it would be nice if it also came with temporary clamps of some sort. I suppose with the stick running $400, the people who will be picking it up won’t be too worried about mounting it to their furniture or life-sized cockpits.

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Solid Steel, No Moving Parts, This Flight Stick Is A Pricey Wonder [Ces10]

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