How The Mighty Have Fallen (Parts 1 & 2), Wideload and Midway Get Local, and more

1. How The Mighty Have Fallen (Part 1)
2. "Hellish Holiday Lineup ... Could Spell Disaster For Many Publishers"
3. Paramount Options Motion Picture Rights To Area 51
4. Download The Men Of Valor Musical Score For Free
5. How The Mighty Have Fallen (Part 2)
6. Atari Gets On The Retro-Game Bandwagon -- In A Big Way
7. Xbox Video Chat Hits Japan November 25
8. XBox 2 Controller Rumors
9. ATI Almost Done With Xbox 2 Development?
10. Wideload Games Partners With Austin's Aspyr Media, Inc.
11. Midway To Open Austin Game Development Studio
12. Microsoft's Video Codec Added To Blu-Ray
13. New Releases

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NEWS:
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1. How The Mighty Have Fallen (Part 1)
     * 'Tis a sad story: Once-mighty industry mainstay Acclaim has joined the likes of 3DO, the original Interplay, Sierra, and Black Isle Studios -- top-notch game companies that went before their prime. After booting staff out of offices worldwide on Friday (August 27), Acclaim filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy last week, which means it will liquidate all assets to pay off as much debt as possible. Unlike reorganizing while protected under Chapter 11, this likely means the end of Acclaim. They have an estimated debt of $100 million and assets estimated at between $10-$50 million.

     * Acclaim has verified Juiced, Worms 3D, and The Red Star will not be published by Acclaim, even though one Acclaim Studios Austin ex-employee said at least Juiced has been completed. No mention has been made of Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets, probably the biggest loss of the current story. Development funding firm Fund 4 Games financed Juiced, and will be seeking a new publisher. Worms 3D looks like it may be in the same boat with its EU developer. Mum's the word on The Red Star and 100 Bullets.

     * I've pinged Austin-based publisher Aspyr Media, Inc., and said, "What up?" -- hoping maybe they'll pick up a couple of the products employees toiled hard over in the recent months. Though, hopefully, the remaining properties play better than the XBox demo of The Red Star ...

2. "Hellish Holiday Lineup ... Could Spell Disaster For Many Publishers"
     * In its its annual preholiday season report, titled "The Nightmare Before Christmas: Hellish Holiday Lineup of New Video Games Could Spell Disaster for Many Publishers," financial analysts Wedbush Morgan Securities says the upcoming console lineup is "the most formidable...ever released in a single year."

     * The report lists 11 console titles and 3 PC titles that Wedbush Morgan says will "exceed 30 million units in calendar 2004", adding to a staggering skewing of half of the 218 million units of software projected for 2004 to move in the last 3 months of year.

          > Console Titles: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Take-Two, PS2); Halo 2 (Microsoft, Xbox); Madden NFL 2005 (Electronic Arts, PS2); Need for Speed Underground 2 (Electronic Arts, PS2); Gran Turismo 4 (SCEA, PS2); Spider-Man 2 (Activision, PS2); Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (Activision, PS2); Pokémon LeafGreen (Nintendo, GBA); Pokémon FireRed (Nintendo, GBA); Metal Gear Solid 3 (Konami, PS2); Mortal Kombat: Deception (Midway Games, PS2)

     > PC Titles: Doom 3 (Activision), The Sims 2.0 (Electronic Arts), and Half-Life 2 (VU Games).

     * The dire title of the report refers to any publishers shipping Q4 titles other than those listed above, will see holiday sales make or break those companies.

     * Those wacky financial analysts, with their impartial reporting on industry trends, always being so careful not to _cause_ financial news ... waitaminute ...

3. Paramount Options Motion Picture Rights To Area 51
     * Paramount has optioned the motion picture rights to Midway Games' upcoming remake of the alien arcade shooter. Though Midway also recently announced top-tier Hollywood talent for the game (like X-Files David Duchovney), no commitment to extend their involvement to the movie version has been made.
     * Area 51 is being developed by Austin's Inevitable Entertainment, but you generally don't see that trumpted as much as it could be.

4. Download The Men Of Valor Musical Score For Free
     * VU Games made the outstanding musical score for Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay available for free download, and now they're doing the same for their upcoming well-storied Vietnam FPS, Men of Valor. The music was scored by awar-winning Inon Zur (Shadow Ops: Red Mercury and SOCOM II: U.S. Navy Seals), the score was recorded at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. Studios.

     * Download the score from www.menofvalorgame.com, and check out Zur's website at www.inonzur.com.

5. How The Mighty Have Fallen (Part 2)
     * 'Tis the season of big-gun releases, with Doom 3 for PC and Fable and Sudeki on the XBox leading the pack. After being obnoxiously hyped and under development forever (around 4 years for each game), how are these new games doing? At best, middling. (All scores out of 10):
          > Sudeki -- 6.5 from the Official XBox Magazine and Gamespot.com.
          > Fable -- 8.6 from Gamespot.com, and as high as a 9.1 (teamxbox.com).
          > Doom 3 -- 8.5 Gamespot.com

     * Other than Sudeki, these aren't bad scores, per se, but they're certainly not great given the development cycle and the marketing machines. Meanwhile, games like The Chronicles of Riddick slip under the radar, blow everyone away, and are contenders for game of the year (which these other titles arguably are not).

     * We'll see what reviewers and gamers have in store for other upcoming big guns like Halo 2, Half-Life 2, the XBox versions of Doom 3 and Far Cry, and the like.

6. Atari Gets On The Retro-Game Bandwagon -- In A Big Way * Atari announced it will releasing its own anthology for the XBox -- containing a massive 85 games. Personally, I'm looking forward to Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Missile Command, the Swordquest franchise, and Yars' Revenge.

     * The full list of games, and a blurb about a plug-and-play, two controller, 20 game retro console, can be found on GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/07/news_6106808.html

7. Xbox Video Chat Hits Japan November 25
     * A bit delayed, but the video version of XBox Live (with included webcam) will hit shelves at ~$62. Those Japanese gamers that already have XBox Live can get just the camera and software for ~$16. No release date has been set for the US, giving us yet another reason to hate people of other ethnicities ... seriously kidding ...

8. XBox 2 Controller Rumors
     * A now-defunct link on the Spong.com forums posted an image of what it claimed is a prototype of the new XBox 2 controller. Somewhat smaller than even the current Controller S, the device had repositioned "Start" and "Back" buttons, 4 triggers (rather than 2), and no black and white buttons.

9. ATI Almost Done With Xbox 2 Development?
     * At the Smith Barney Citigroup 2004 Technology Conference, ATI Technologies' CFO Terry Nickerson made the comment, "We're actually winding down development on some of the Microsoft product," leading many to believe he was referencing ATI's GPU work on the next version of the XBox. ATI won the XBox business from current XBox GPU provider NVidia. ATI is also providing the GPU for the next version of Nintendo's console.

10. Wideload Games Partners With Austin's Aspyr Media, Inc.
     * Chicago-based Wideload Games and Austin-based Aspyr Media, Inc. announced an exclusive worldwide deal where Aspyr will publish Wideload's games. Ex-Bungie and Halo/Marathon/Oni creator Alexander Seropian generously touted Aspyr's customer-centricity, and Aspyr said, "We've padded our walls and removed all sharp objects from our offices, so we can be ready for the craziness that Wideload will deliver."

     * Wideload Games' first title will be based on the Halo engine, and will be "injecting a unique blend of their visionary development model, creative gameplay and oddball humor into the computer and video games industry."

11. Midway To Open Austin Game Development Studio
     * Midway announced they will be opening a game development studio in Austin "in the near future." This is good news to the Austin game community, given Acclaim's recent shuttering, and Electronic Arts (EA Games) shuttering of Origin months ago.

     * I'm reserved on my excitement (though I think it is cool), because this may be a zero-sum gain (even without considering the Acclaim loss). My thought is maybe Midway will acquire an Austin developer, like Inevitable Entertainment, who is working on Midway's remake of Area 51.

12. Microsoft's Video Codec Added To Blu-ray
     * The Blu-ray Disc Association announced Microsoft's VC-1 video codec will be included in the BD-ROM specification, alongside MPEG-4 AVC High Profile. This is huge win for Microsoft, Since their codec is also included as mandatory in the competing HD-DVD standard. Currently, it's rumored XBox Next will support HD-DVD, and Sony's Playstation 3 will support Blu-Ray. This latest announcement means if the latter is true, Microsoft will be in Sony's next-gen console. Heh.

13. New Releases

September 5
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* Burnout 3: Takedown (Driving)
* Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums (Adventure)
* Guilty Gear X2 #Reload (Fighting)
* Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders (RTS)
* Silent Hill 4: The Room (Adventure/Survival-Horror)

September 12
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* Fable (RPG)
* ShellShock: Nam '67 (Action)
* Syberia II (Adventure)
* Vietcong: Purple Haze (Action/FPS)

September 19
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* Def Jam: Fight for NY (Fighting)
* Headhunter: Redemption (Action)
* NHL 2005 (Sports)
* Second Sight (Action)
* Star Wars: Battlefront (Action/FPS)
* Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (Sports)
* X-Men Legends (RPG)

September 26
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* Crash Twinsanity (Action)
* The Dukes of Hazzard: Return of the General Lee (Driving)
* Get On Da Mic (Puzzle)
* GTR (Driving)
* Rocky: Legends (Sports)
* Shark Tale (Action)
* Still Life (Adventure)
* SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom (Fighting)
* Torque: Savage Roads (Driving/Motorcycle)
* Trigger Man (Action)
* Xbox Live Arcade (Multiple)