On Gear Live: Verizon FiOS vs. Comcast: Feature-by-feature

Games With Online Multiplayer Sell More

Posted by Paul Hamilton
Categories: Corporate News, Downloadable Content, Internet, Microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Sony, Wii, Xbox 360

Multiplayer, Globe with Halo 2 Lobby

A research paper from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research has been released that suggests that games with online support can be crucial to a game’s retail success. Not surprisingly, another way to boost sales is to create a quality game (defined as those with a 90+ score on Metacritic), with these well-reviewed titles outselling the average release well above 5-to-1.

While making good games typically means making good money, naturally, it is a bit surprising to see the report indicate that sales can be doubled by dropping in an online mode. With online games selling twice the number copies that offline titles do, it’s curious to note that over half of games released don’t offer even basic online support.

Click to continue reading Games With Online Multiplayer Sell More

Read More | Ars Technica

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Nokia Takes Another Stab at the N-Gage

Posted by Paul Hamilton
Categories: Hardware, Portable/Mobile

Nokia N-GageApparently is nothing if not persistent. This week Nokia plans to introduce a third cell phone to bear the name and try yet again to gain some traction with its cell phone/game device hybrid. This time they spent some time with the design firm Ideo to research what consumers wanted in such a device and think they have it right this time. “The graphics problem has been removed. And phones today are always connected and you always carry them with you. Phones are now the perfect device for gaming,” says product manager Tomi Huttula.

Most curious perhaps is the decision to stick with the name N-Gage, which at this point carries some pretty negative baggage. The idea of a cell phone that plays half decent games isn’t particularly bad on the face of it but the Finland-based company learned the hard way in 2003 that gamers, who are likely to be the early adopters and initial market for such a device, won’t jump on board just because an idea has potential but lacks proper execution. There’s no reason to stick with the brand name when it has already failed twice.

Still, Nokia seems undaunted by past disappointments and is focusing this time around on the multiplayer features and streamlining the experience to be more attractive to casual gamers. Also Nokia isn’t focusing on a single model this time around but will offer N-Gage games on a few of its Series 60 smartphones, presumably as a trial run, before gradually expanding to all Series 60 models. The prices have yet to be announced, but more details should be available later in the week.

Read More | New York Times via Game | Life


Researchers Use World of Warcraft to Study Real-World Response to Disease

Posted by Paul Hamilton
Categories: Culture, MMORPG, PC, Role Playing Games, Simulation

Testing Disease Response From Corrupted Blood WoW EventThe New York Times has a story about a group of researchers who examined the outbreak of the in-game disease ‘corrupted blood,’ originally designed to affect only high-level characters, for clues about what the social response might be to an actual pandemic. The game provided the authors of a research paper set to be published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal a unique set of conditions for this research that had typically been difficult to simulate: A wide population, an emotional response (because WoW players get really attached to their characters) and the ability to disseminate information among the population.

The corrupted blood outbreak was a glitch in WoW that took place in September 2005 and provided a unique look at the responses both by the population and the “bug:”

As the virus spread, very real challenges emerged, such as the failure of quarantine measures, further transmission by character’s pets and the existence of “immune” characters, who act as carriers, passing the virus to others while failing to succumb to symptoms.

It’s a fascinating use of the social construct that WoW has become.

Read More | Times Online via Slashdot


Cell Speeds Up Medical Imaging Fifty Times

Posted by Christopher Sasaki
Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 3

Cell PlayStation 3 users have been racking up the work units through the built-in Folding At Home client in the console. The PS3 has proved to be particularly effective at folding proteins, doing the job more efficiently than the PC client. Now, IBM and the Mayo Clinic are announcing that the Cell processor can speed up 3D medical imaging by up to 50 times over traditional CPU configurations. While the new uses for the Cell processor might not be directly applicable to gamers, the more usages that can be found for the CPU can drive up demand, possibly leading to more optimizations in the manufacturing process and ultimately driving down the costs of producing the chip.

Read More | Mercury News

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