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This week, Bizarre Creations announced that its upcoming action packed race game, Blur, will be released to the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on May 25 in North America and in Europe on May 28.
The game was set for a November release last year, but was delayed till 2010 for improvements on the multiplayer portion of the game.
Up to 20 players can play online at once as part of the multiplayer feature in the game. Blur has over 50 licensed vehicles and several cities from all over the world featured in the game.
Stay tuned to Division-Gaming.com for more updates on the game.
It seems as if the video game industry is always riddled with legal trouble, and when a new case comes along, it usually sticks around for a while. The latest example would have to be the Activision vs ex-Infinity Ward studio heads battle.
The latest development in this ongoing story is that Activision has issued a response to the lawsuit that was filed by Jason West and Vince Zampella, the two studio heads that are no longer with Infinity Ward. Activision is calling West’s and Zampella’s decision to file suit “meritless.” Activision’s full statement reads:
Activision is disappointed that Mr. Zampella and Mr. West have chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes their claims are meritless. Over eight years, Activision shareholders provided these executives with the capital they needed to start Infinity Ward, as well as the financial support, resources and creative independence that helped them flourish and achieve enormous professional success and personal wealth.
In return, Activision legitimately expected them to honor their obligations to Activision, just like any other executives who hold positions of trust in the company. While the company showed enormous patience, it firmly believes that its decision was justified based on their course of conduct and actions. Activision remains committed to the Call of Duty franchise, which it owns, and will continue to produce exciting and innovative games for its millions of fans.
Apparently, Activision is also looking into the possibility that West and Zampella were in talks with competitors of Activision, one of which may have been EA. This probably isn’t the last we’ll hear of this case.
If there is one thing that I think of most when I think of The Sims, it is that they always have tons and tons of expansion packs. The Sims 3 is no exception, as The Sims 3: Ambitions was announced by EA today.
The Sims 3 Ambitions will open a wider selection of careers for your sims to chose from. Your sim can finally be such things as a fire fighter, an architect, or even a tattoo artist. Heck, your sim can be a ghost hunter or private investigator if they want to be. Also, you can now control your sim’s actions and interactions while they’re on the job, and the choices you make will affect the town and other sims.
“The variety of careers to choose from is unmatched and we’ve never given players the opportunity to follow their Sims to work and affect their actions on the job,” said Scott Evans, General Manager of The Sims Studio at EA. “The Sims 3 Ambitions changes that. Players’ actions at work now directly affect their lives, community and neighbors and become an extremely important part of how the game is played.”
This expansion pack will arrive this June for the PC and Mac.
With MAG off to a great start, Zipper Interactive is once again returning to the SOCOM franchise. Zipper is already hard at work on SOCOM 4.
With an expected release this fall, SOCOM 4 is being developed exclusively for the Playstation 3. Jeremy Dunham, Senior Community Manager of Zipper Interactive dropped the first details of the game:
“Of course, as with any new announcement, what you really want to know are the details: Who’s in your squad? Where have they been deployed? What kind of threat are they up against? Though we’ll be revealing the answers to all these questions and plenty more throughout 2010, we don’t want to leave you completely in the dark, so what we will tell you is that a militant revolutionary has unexpectedly seized control in an important South Asian country. As the Ops Com, your mission is to command an elite five-man squad charged with stopping his aggressive agenda before it’s too late. In only six days, you must lead your team through a hostile jungle and urban environments against an army of well-armed rebel insurgents that completely outnumber you.”
In addition to single player, there will also be a 32-person multiplayer mode that “boasts more Special Forces units than ever before!”
For those of you wanting to see the first look at the game, tune in to Spike TV tonight at 12:30 am EST/PST to see the world premier trailer.
In case you didn’t know, Shaun White is a professional snowboarder and skateboarder. Now that we have that cleared up, it turns out that Shaun White’s next game has been announced….and it’s a skateboarding game this time. Go figure.
Shaun White Skateboarding is currently set for a Holiday 2010 release. The game is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, who also developed Shaun’s 2008 game, Shaun White Snowboarding. No specific platforms have been announced.
We pretty much saw this coming. Jason West and Vince Zampella, the now former Infinity Ward studio heads that were fired on Monday, have filed suit against Activision for terminating their employment before the date that they were scheduled to receive “substantial royalty payments as part of their existing contracts for Modern Warfare 2.”
“Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual ‘investigation’ into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of ‘insubordination’ and ‘breach of fiduciary duty,’ which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st,” said their attorney Robert Schwartz.
If you’re wondering why nobody at Infinity Ward has been paid their royalties for Modern Warfare 2 yet, it’s not that unusual according to EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich. Divnich told Joystiq that, “If royalties haven’t been paid out yet, I wouldn’t consider that too alarming.” But getting back to the legal suit, West and Zampella had a few things to say:
“We were shocked by Activision’s decision to terminate our contract,” said West. “We poured our heart and soul into that company, building not only a world class development studio, but assembling a team we’ve been proud to work with for nearly a decade. We think the work we’ve done speaks for itself.”
Zampella added, “After all we have given to Activision, we shouldn’t have to sue to get paid.”
The suit goes on to say that in addition to the unpaid royalties, Activision also seized control of the Infinity Ward studio, to which Activision had previously granted creative control over all Modern Warfare-branded games. The suit was not only filed because of the lack of payment, but it also seeks to return the contractual rights Zampella and West previously had to the Modern Warfare brand.
Rest assured, we’ll be hearing more about this.
Take-Two’s financial results report was just full of ‘delay talk’ today. Red Dead Redemption is the victim that we didn’t mention early. But not to worry, the delay pushes the release back only a few weeks, from a previous April release to a May 18th release in the US. It will see international release on May 21st.
The delay was given in order to extend the pre-release marketing period. I don’t see why marketing required that the game be delayed, but I suppose that’s why I’m not in marketing. Here’s to hoping that a few extra weeks of waiting doesn’t turn us into brain dead zombies that just want their fix of next-generation sandbox-style gaming.
Take-Two Interactive’s financial results briefing today included several highlights worth mentioning on here. The biggest one worth mentioning is that Mafia II has been delayed to a fourth fiscal quarter release. The game was already delayed last year to allow more time for development.
Also, currently, L.A. Noire, Mafia II, Max Payne 3 and Sid Meier’s Civilization V are all planned for release in the fourth fiscal quarter. But according to the briefing, “the Company’s fiscal year 2010 guidance reflects the potential movement of one of these titles into fiscal 2011.” Max Payne 3 has already been delayed from a Winter 2009 release to a 2010 release, L.A. Noire has only just recently been given a September date, and Civilization V was just recently announced. And yes, even though Mafia II was just delayed to a fourth fiscal quarter release, it is eligible for yet another delay. When will the madness end?
A few other neat tidbits worth mentioning:
In some nice, reassuring news, we’ll be getting new LEGO branded games for atleast another 7 years. LEGO and developer TT Games have extended their partnership to make LEGO videogames through 2016.
The LEGO games have also made quite the impression in the video game industry:
“TT Games is the publisher and developer behind the award winning hit LEGO videogame franchises including, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Batman: The Videogame and LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, which have sold close to 50 million units worldwide.”
The next LEGO title, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4, is due out this May. LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars will hit shelves sometime this Fall.
This was actually included in the investor statement that we reported on earlier today, but we felt that it deserved its own news story.
Activision has officially announced that studio heads “Jason West and Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward.” Activision Publishing chief technology officer Steve Pearce and head of production Steve Ackrich will be the new heads of the studio, but on an interim basis. Also, the “Call of Duty business unit” will be led by Philip Earl, who is currently the head of Activision’s Asia-Pacific region.
This statement comes after we discovered yesterday that Infinity Ward’s President and CTO (Jason West) and their CEO and Studio Head (Vince Zampella) were ‘allegedly’ no longer with the company. Even though Activision has now confirmed that the two are now ex-Infinity Ward heads, we still lack details and explanation of what actually happened at Infinity Wards’ studio yesterday. What we do know is that West and Zampella were not seen by anyone at the studio after the two had a meeting with Activision yesterday morning, and that ‘bouncer-type’ security showed up outside the offices.
Whatever happened and why it happened must have not been pretty. We can assume that the two senior employees mentioned in this SEC filing are West and Zampella, but it hasn’t been confirmed. For more on that, go read our original story.
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