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Games for Windows Live adding Games on Demand beginning Dec. 15

by Randy Nelson { Dec 3rd 2009 at 3:30PM }

Games on Demand, a.k.a. full game downloads, is one of the more recent additions to Xbox Live -- and today Microsoft has announced that it's bringing the service to its Games For Windows Live platform beginning December 15. GFWL creative director Chuck Osieja calls the initiative "Microsoft's return to delivering Windows games built on unique LIVE experiences." The service has a rocky history of sporadic supported releases and last summer ditched its subscription fees in the face of competition from the likes of Steam.

The move puts Microsoft up against Valve's digi-distribution service, which similarly offers community features and its own Achievements system, but boasts a much larger catalog at present. The GFWL Games on Demand initial lineup will include Resident Evil 5, Red Faction: Guerrilla and Battlestations Pacific along with new GFWL-enabled versions of 2D Boy's excellent World of Goo and Hemisphere Games' Osmos -- all titles currently offered by Steam, with some available via Stardock's Impulse service. Microsoft hasn't divulged pricing for titles offered via GFWL Games on Demand.

A reworked version of the former Windows Vista Ultimate Extra Tinker will be made available free to GFWL users when the Games on Demand service launches a week from next Tuesday.

Steam Deals Day Four: Prince of Persia, Lucidity, Guild Wars marked down

by Griffin McElroy { Nov 29th 2009 at 12:30PM }

The next-to-last day of Steam's "Early Holiday Sale" brings with it an eclectic collection of discounted PC titles, including last year's Prince of Persia ($14.99), Battlefield 2 ($14.99), Lucidity ($2.49) and Guild Wars Trilogy ($24.99). Also, here's a link to a Black Friday sale for a 1TB internal HDD. If you've been following this Steam sale for the past few days, you're probably hurting for hard drive space right about now.

Make sure you free up some room before tomorrow -- at 8 a.m. PST, the last batch of 24-hour sales will be announced. Stay tuned!

NintendoWare Weekly: WiiWare demos, Pokemon Rumble, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures

by David Hinkle { Nov 16th 2009 at 11:30AM }

This week, we get our first taste of Nintendo's new WiiWare demos. Surprisingly, it didn't take Nintendo that long to flip the switch for North America, considering the company revealed the long-overdue feature -- and day-one annoyance -- only earlier this month. And on top of the free trial versions of select WiiWare titles (five total this week!), there are also two new Virtual Console titles to enjoy, as well as three new DSiWare games. Hit the break for the full list.

Continued →

A world of data from the World of Goo birthday sale

by JC Fletcher { Oct 26th 2009 at 5:30PM }

Following the completion of the World of Goo birthday sale, 2D Boy gathered up all the statistics it had from the "pay what you want" sale and connected them all into a big pile of interconnected info blobs. After the last stat update, when the developer revealed that many people were buying the game for one cent, something magical happened! The average price went up by a noticeable amount.

Linux users were, on average, more generous with their purchase prices (maybe they offset the money they don't spend on operating systems?), and Swiss buyers were the most "generous," according to a metric that compares average purchase price to a country's per-capita GDP. The most generous individual? One "Stuart", who handed over $150 for a copy of World of Goo!

Meanwhile, the average purchase price for the WiiWare version was $15 -- because the sale didn't apply to that version.

Devs show Steam love as Pitchford defends his criticism

by Ben Gilbert { Oct 20th 2009 at 5:30PM }

Just under two weeks ago, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford let out his less than pleasant feelings regarding digital distribution platform Steam and its owner, Valve Software. Today, Ars Techinca posted a rundown of developers from World of Goo's 2D Boy to Sam & Max's Telltale Games who all feel ... the exact opposite of Pitchford. "If this is exploitation, more please," Audiosurf creator Dylan Fitterer said.

According to Telltale CTO Kevin Bruner, "Steam may be one the greatest things to happen recently ... we put Steam as one of the A-list distribution channels; up there with XBLA and WiiWare." The praise doesn't stop there -- Ars points out that it was unable to find even one developer who would "admit to feeling exploited" by Valve's business practices concerning Steam.

We reached out to Pitchford, who told us, "As a gamer, I love Valve ... as a customer, I love Steam." He clarified, "From an industry perspective, Steam would be even better off if it were a separate company ... trust issues that result from conflict of interest could be mitigated." To Pitchford, it's a question of appearances rather than actual impropriety. "It's just perception within segments of the publishing and development community that, I guess, no one is really talking about."

We've posted Pitchford's entire (and quite lengthy) response after the break. Hopefully we're not alone in hoping everyone will just hug it out.

Continued →

World of Goo birthday sale deemed 'huge success'

by Alexander Sliwinski { Oct 20th 2009 at 12:00PM }

2D Boy seems quite satisfied with the results of its "pay what you want" World of Goo experiment. In celebration of Goo's first birthday, developer 2D Boy allowed people to determine the game's price at checkout. The result: 57,000 sales at an average price of $2.03. Although a significant number took the game at one penny (really, people?!), the developer's graph of purchases reveals that almost as many bought the game for $1. There were also sales spikes at $5 and $10.

What's probably most interesting is that while this experiment was going on at 2D Boy's site, sales on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam, went up by 40 percent from the previous week, at $20 a pop. WiiWare sales increased by nine percent, but the devs aren't sure if that was just normal fluctuation.

2D Boy also put up a survey asking why customers decided on the amount they paid. The top answer, at 22.7 percent, was "That's All I can Afford Right Now." We seriously hope those weren't the penny payers, because that's just tragic (even in a recession). A close second, at 22.1 percent, were people who wanted to support the pay-what-you-want model.

World of Goo on sale for 'your' price; iPhone port coming

by David Hinkle { Oct 13th 2009 at 4:30PM }

My my, how time flies. On this date one year ago, World of Goo entered our lives and, well ... it made everything all gooey. (The good, warm kinda gooey.) To celebrate the game's birthday, 2D Boy is offering the title for -- wait for it -- whatever price you want to pay.

Seriously, once you enter a price into the appropriate checkout field, you buy the game for that amount. We'd encourage you to cough up as much as you can spare though, because 2D Boy totally deserves your money. The sale ends Monday, October 19, so start digging under those couch cushions.

You may also want to set aside some loose change for the upcoming World of Goo iPhone port. 2D Boy has a build running on a 3GS right now and is working to get the game going on the vanilla 3G. We'll be sure to keep you posted on its progress.

Direct2Drive continues $5 anniversary sale with discount indie games

by Griffin McElroy { Sep 28th 2009 at 6:00PM }

Direct2Drive has elected to show some love to the little guy this week. The digital distribution site continues its impossibly thrifty anniversary sale by offering a number of popular indie titles for just $5. If you've yet to dip your toes into the refreshing waters of World of Goo, The Path or Gish, Direct2Drive has the best deals on them (and a number of other indie games) that you're likely to see for a long, long time.

However, if you're craving a more mainstream offering, a bunch of discounted games from previous weeks -- including BioShock, Saints Row 2 and EVE Online -- have retained the $5-discount price. You could just as easily pick those up instead, you conformist, you.

Labor Day 'Impulse' buy: Sins, Demigod and Dawn of Discovery on sale

by Alexander Sliwinski { Sep 3rd 2009 at 9:51AM }

With what we're told is the weekend of Labor Day ahead of us, an Impulse sale is trying to do its best to keep us indoors on this last unofficial weekend of summer. The Impulse store currently has some great titles at deep discounts.

Stardock-published games Sins of a Solar Empire (with Entrenchment) and Demigod are both only $20. Meanwhile, the economic real-time strategy sim Dawn of Discovery is $25. There's plenty of other deals, including World of Goo for $10, so try not to spend those last fleeting days of summer inside. We dare you.

[Via Big Download]

Steam offers 75% discount on indie games this weekend

by Andrew Yoon { Aug 8th 2009 at 2:00AM }

Steam is offering the "who's who" of independent video games in an incredible sale you'd be silly to miss. For $30, you can get 10 indie games via the service:

There's a lower-budget $20 option as well, which only includes half the games above. Either way, you'll be feeding starving independent developers without having to break the bank. Oh, and most of these games are pretty fun, too. It's a win-win for everyone, so make sure you rush to Steam before the sale ends on Monday, August 10.

2D Boy's Gabler clarifies next project

by Alexander Sliwinski { Jul 22nd 2009 at 2:15PM }

2D Boy's Kyle Gabler tells Joystiq that the current project he's working on with Henry Hatsworth creator Kyle Gray and World of Goo programmer Allan Blomquist is not the next game from 2D Boy. Following up on yesterday's confusing reports on the new game, Gabler told us that he and 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel don't want to prematurely announce their next project, which he believes will have huge expectations following the plaudits plopped on World of Goo.

Gabler explained the game he's working on with Gray and Blomquist isn't a 2D Boy or EA title, and he later sent us a link which goes into more detail on the Experimental Gameplay Project website. The game he's working on with the "EGP guys" will be high quality, though only a couple of hours long.

2D Boy's Gabler drops hints on upcoming WiiWare game

by Alexander Sliwinski { Jul 20th 2009 at 4:00PM }

2D Boy's Kyle Gabler, speaking with Nintendo Dpad, mentions he's currently working on a new WiiWare project with Henry Hatsworth creator Kyle Gray. Programming things along will be World of Goo code guy Allan Blomquist. Gabler states that the trio hasn't mentioned "anything about it to anyone," but drops the gooey detail that the new game is based on an experimental title from their past. Hmmm.

We're following up to find out if there's any further information on the title and whether Ron Carmel -- 2D Boy's other co-founder -- is also involved in the project. We'll update as soon as we receive more details.

Update: Gabler let us know this is not the next project from 2D Boy, but a separate thing he's working on.

[Via Go Nintendo]

2010 Independent Games Festival accepting submissions

by Griffin McElroy { Jul 9th 2009 at 12:00AM }

If you're ready to unleash your totally deviant, totally original and totally counter-cultural Tetris remake upon the world, your best chance to do so has arrived. The Independent Games Festival is now accepting entries into its Main and Student Showcase categories. You've got until November to get your submissions in, and finalists in the Main Competitions will be announced January 4.

If you're looking for reasons to enter your humble project, the festival's organizers have about 20,000 good ones, and by "ones" we mean dollars, by which we mean $20,000 is the grand prize for the competition. In addition, finalists will have their games exhibited on the GDC show floor, where they can be played, admired and possibly exalted by the gaming press -- a treatment received by titles such as World of Goo and Castle Crashers in the past. If your game is of that caliber, we highly suggest throwing your hat into the ring.

The industry chimes in on the importance of reviews for Wii games

by JC Fletcher { Jun 18th 2009 at 9:35AM }

Various industry figures have come out in support of Peter Moore's claims that review scores don't impact the success of Wii games. One developer told Eurogamer that how a Wii game does is contingent entirely upon marketing, calling Wii games "pure risk." "A lot of these games that you think are the perfect game for Wii don't sell because companies don't have the money to market them," the developer said. "Whereas Nintendo is spending gazillions of dollars marketing their games."

Michael Pachter suggested that review scores aren't important because many Wii owners don't read reviews. ""I think that Metacritic scores are irrelevant for people who don't look at them - how's that for obvious?" Pachter said. "While there are many Wii owners who are hardcore and who care very much about scores, there are many - perhaps half - who are quite casual, and wouldn't know Metacritic if it fell on them." He offered games like Carnival Games and Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum as examples of successful titles with little critical acclaim.

However, 2D Boy's Kyle Gabler offers an instance in which Metacritic scores and reviews do make a difference: indie games, like his own World of Goo, which happens to be the third highest-rated game on Wii. He compares mainstream games to Will Smith movies, which draw audiences without reviews.

"But for indie guys like us, Metacritic and review scores matter a lot," Gabler said. "In fact we link directly to them from our web site. So does Steam. It makes a lot of sense - potential players don't feel comfortable dishing out cash for some random unknown indie game without an aggregate thumbs-up from solid reviewers."

PC game developers foretell the death of DRM

by Griffin McElroy { May 11th 2009 at 5:30PM }

If you were one of the many recruits in last year's war on restrictive, invasive DRM, you may want to check out a recent article on Gamasutra that features opinions on PC gaming piracy protection (that's a mouthful) from a number of gaming industry movers and shakers.

The general sentiment of these interviewees is that DRM is extremely ineffective when it comes to preventing piracy, and that developers should either come up with alternate ways of ensuring the retail product is more valuable than the pirated product, or determine a different way to make money altogether (such as micro-transactions). For interesting insight from fine folks like 2D Boy's Ron Carmel and Stardock's Brad Wardell, we highly suggest checking out the full article.

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