Peoww News

Having been shown the door last year, Jason West and Vincent Zampella, co-founders of Infinity Ward have had a court date of May 7th 2012 set for their royalty claim against Activision.

The pair were acrimoniously dismissed amid allegations they were in illegal contact with EA, so along with the plaintiffs claim for $125m (£80m) in Modern Warfare 2 royalties, their former employers have counter-sued Zampella, West & EA for $400m (£250m) claiming that EA attempted to poach the pair.

While we hope the little guy wins, we don’t rate their chances against the throbbing multidimensional behemoth that rules from beyond the ultraworld. Ian

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According to EA’s Chief Financial Officer, Eric Brown, EA have made $10-15m in revenues since the Online Pass scheme’s inception. He also stated that “The revenues we derive from that haven’t been dramatic. I’d say they’re in the $10-$15 million range since we initiated the program.”

 At $10 (£6) a time, that’s a heck of a chunk of revenue if you ask us. No wonder Ubisoft have attempted to implement a similar system, only to hastily retract it due to a printing cockup on the Driver San Fran manual.

The solution is clearly to buy new, but heavily discounted. That way you stick it to the retailers who aggressively push pre-owned stock over new games to unsuspecting punters. For example, our correspondent bought Mass Effect 2 brand new six months after release for just a fiver. Ian

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Despite the reviews suggesting that its either quite poor or quite good (depending on how much advertising space they’ve bought), we’re tentatively excited about Dead Island – the zombie survive ’em up that hits UK shelves today.

That said, the game does seem cursed right now with plenty of technical issues plaguing the game (and eating its flesh).  The worst/most hilarious of which was them releasing a debug version onto Steam by mistake.  A version which has now led to further controversy when it was discovered that one of the early skill perks was called ‘Feminist Whore.’

Oh dear.  That said, if it had been in the full game, people probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.  The lesson here is that if you’re going to be a cunt, be Rockstar and base your entire marketing strategy and softography around it.  Rich

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Activision have given us yet more ammunition to dislike them. They’ve announced Dreamworks Super Star Kartz [sic]. Delightfully it’ll feature all your favourite animated Dreamworks characters.

Though if you’re anything like us, you’ll struggle to name one of them besides Shrek. In fact you’d probably have more luck naming the incidental characters in the Shrek series than you would the other Dreamworks IPs in the game.

For the record they include the titular Monsters vs Aliens, characters from How To Train Your Dragon and a myriad selection of Madagascar characters. At least the latter are charming, if forgettable. Even the zebra voiced by Chris Rock.

It’s due out on all major formats in time to be ignored by everyone with half a brain and subsequently given as presents to poor unsuspecting children (although you’ll be whoring them for the achievements – Ed). For once we feel sorry for them. Ian

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The Driver series has been dead to us, and all other right-minded gamers, ever since the reviews scandal around Driv3r but, for whatever reason, they’ve released a new one, Driver:  San Francisco, to universal apathy. 

The ridiculous drive-and-possess-’em-up’s soon-to-be-entirely-vacant multiplayer component was due to get one of those money-grabbing ‘online pass’ things but thanks to a printing error in the manual, they accidentally gave it away free to everyone in America, leading to Ubisoft having to do the same for the rest of the world.  Not that anyone will be playing it for long.

Some free DLC is also on the way although they have also announced plans to drop extra DLC (not for free) weekly for ten weeks.  Whatever.  Rich

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id Software (via Bethesda’s blog) have unveiled the PC system specs for forthcoming apocalypse-em-up Rage.

Minimum spec is a Core2 Duo processor or equivalent with 2Gb memory & 25Gb of hard drive space. Yes. 25Gb. As is the case with most PC games, the more bang you can throw at the game the better, with recommended spec being a GeForce 9800 instead of the minimum 8800.

We  miss the days when you could get away with a Geforce and a Celeron 300A overclocked to 450MHz.

Rage is due to be released on PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 4th.  Ian

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GAME have unveiled their pricing for the forthcoming Modern Blahfare 3 special edition Xbox 360 320Gb model.  A penny shy of £270 gets you the customised console and two controllers (how long will they last when Timmy loses his temper?) plus the game and usual ephemera you’d expect when buying a 360.

An unconfirmed bonus extra are nanobots that come out at night injecting you with additional stupid and making you swear blind loyalty to Activision and GAME (you get reward points, so it doesn’t matter if you pay full price!).  Ian

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Fans of the pretty-but-punishing off-roader Pure and the straight-to-bargain-bin Split/Second will be dismayed to learn that Black Rock Studio, the Brighton-based developers of arcadey racing games is being shut by Disney Interactive.

We’re sure they’ll resurface with yet another racing game somewhere else but, for now, we mourn yet another UK dev team.  Even if we never really liked their games.  Rich

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Call us cynical but something’s making us uneasy about Square Enix’s new undead-’em-up Dead Island.  The review embargo ends on the release date, retailers are already slashing the price of it for pre-orders and the one review to come out, courtesy of IGN, gives it an apologetic 8 out of 10 write-up whilst the entire site carries adverts for the game in the background.

Also, a quick bit of research on the devs, Quick Silver, reveals a less than stellar softography that includes Risen and the annoying-as-fuck Sacred 2.  Amusingly Quick Silver is the UK arm of parent company Koch Media.  Chortle! 

We’ll be reviewing the game soon and you can be sure we won’t be swayed by the pressures of Koch.  Rich

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Seasoned gamers will be no strangers to the effective high-street monopoly of Game and the like, those not living in a large town being subject to their extortionate prices for both new and pre-owned games. Case in point, Winchester where I work has an HMV, Game & Lacklustre Video.

Madden NFL 12 was released today, so it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to expect maybe a slight reduction in the cost of the 2011 edition. Definitely not the case. They had no new copies (natch), so pre-owned it was. £17.99. Given they probably paid the poor sap that traded it in about £7, that’s £11 clear profit into their coffers. The same £17.99 was the price last week, prior to the release of the sequel.

It’s currently no better when it comes to the FIFA series, FIFA 10 pre-owned is a fiver. Fair enough, but FIFA 11 is still £25 new in their stores, with pre-owned a only a little less. I’ll bet even money that it drops a lot when FIFA 12 comes out later this month.

The sales droid said “FIFA pre-owned drops quickly ’cause loads of people trade it in! We don’t get that many copies of Madden traded in, that’s why the price is high”. No, the price is high ’cause you’re money grabbing profiteering bastards.

Shopto are doing Madden 11 brand new for £14.86 so if a canny ebay bid doesn’t pan out, they have my business.

I’ll stick to Game for the (very) occasional pre-owned bargain, ta.  Ian