It seems my article on piracy has caused some good debate to emerge over on the halflife2.net forums. Really quite interesting to read it, find the debate here.

In a very frank interview with Gamasutra Valve’s Doug Lombardi takes the time to talk about the success of AudioSurf, continued indie game support, Steamworks and on how he views the PC market as overtaking the console market.

Recalls Lombardi, “I can remember this story coming around in the mid ’90s… and then 3D accelerator came out, and Carmack released that patch for GL Quake, and everybody shut up, because all of a sudden PlayStation looked like crap. There’s a big shift about to come in the post-GPU space… all of a sudden PC will leapfrog what’s going on on the consoles, in many other ways besides graphics.”

In fact, continues Lombardi, the question mark might be floating squarely in the console’s future, as their prices continue climbing and more post-purchase purchases are becoming necessary. “How much longer will that story still have credibility?” He posits.

“Somebody go back and look at next-gen console install base numbers since launch time, and compare it to PSone and PS2. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we saw these guys stuttering out at 25,000 — nobody’s going to get to 100 million, which we saw from Sony on the last 2 [console generations]. I don’t think anybody’s even thinking of this.”

This is a very in-depth interview and it presents a fantastic insight into how Doug views the PC gaming market and the future of the console industry. Check it out here.

I recently read an article on Eurogamer (link) which deals with piracy and how it should be tackled. It deals specifically in relation to the gaming industry, but it also talks about the music and film industries. The article prompted me to take some time to think about the issue of piracy as it is today, especially in response to recent comments by Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor (read them here) a recent article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun (here) where Kieron Gillen examines piracy figures for one day on a leading pirate torrent site.

As anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock since the mid-nineties should well know piracy is an issue which is effecting the three big entertainment industries; music, film and, most relevant of all to me, the games industry. Since Metallica took Napster to court in 2000 piracy has, for me become a bigger and bigger ever increasingly prevalent issue. You can’t watch a film or a DVD without being bombarded by five minutes worth of adverts and warnings about the dangers and evils of piracy. (I am not condoning piracy in any way here, just sharing how I feel the warnings present it.) In recent years we have seen Sony fall foul of excessive Digital Rights Management (DRM) when they installed a spyware rootkit on their music CDs. We also have an increasing number of PC games use ever more infuriating methods of anti-piracy methods.

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A whole host of Valve related updates right here right now, read them and smile!

Valve and 360 Charges

In a recent chat with Eurogamer Doug Lombardi talked about how Valve would like new content for Team Fortress 2 to be free on consoles. The interview can be found here.

Asked whether that still meant for free, Lombardi said: “Oh, for free, definitely, as much as we can. You know, we don’t have full say over that, but we have some say over how that works.

“So, for us, for free is the way to go. The gamers play the game, they want to keep playing the game, so we’ve collected their fifty bucks at the start, and once they’re in the park, they can ride any ride they want in the park. So, for us that’s been the philosophy.”

This obviously won’t go down well with Microsoft who generally require all content to be paid for regardless of developer plans. Time will tell what happens with this, but for now read the rest of the interview here.

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Have you ever wondered what a Massively Multiplayer version of Call of Duty would be like? Well it is possible that you should all start pondering. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has talked about the possibility.

“When you think about other properties that we own and control like Call of Duty, and what would be the natural evolution of a property like Call of Duty into a massively multiplayer environment…how do you monetize that?”

I wonder what this means, does it mean that Activision are making realistic plans for a MOG (Multiplayer Online Game) Call of Duty or is he just pondering the future?

I don’t think he would have mentioned it if there weren’t any plans for a MOG CoD, so one has to wonder what kind of approach they would take? My early thinking points towards either a WoW or a Battlefield Heroes esque type. My money would be on the latter, just without the cartoon graphics and what-not. CoD4 introduced perks and lots of customization so I expect that would be a probable area to pick up the money while offering free or very cheap regular required payments.

Then again I am probably putting my thinking cap on for no reason!

Wahoo! Kane! Feck yeah!

*disengages hype chip*

Kane’s Wrath, landing later this month with a lovely Red Alert 3 beta opportunity. Story seems a bit better than that of C&C3, gameplay seems to be a bit improved with all the new units and sub-factions. Should be reviewing this when I get my hands on it!

Watch it, tis quite amusing!

BAM! That is the first proper trailer for Battlefield: Heroes. Wow! While Rock, Paper, Shotgun may have some detailed impressions based on what they saw at the GDC…I shall give a quick rundown of my thoughts based on that video.

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