Intel purchases young game development house Offset

Thursday 21st February 2008, 06:00:00 AM, written by Farid
In a surprising turn of events, Sir Sam McGrath – founder of Project Offset – announced yesterday on the official company website that he and his team were now part of the Intel Kingdom.

Today we have some major news to announce.
Intel has acquired Offset Software. Yes, you read it correctly!
Project Offset is going strong and we are excited about things to come.
Stay tuned.

- Sam McGrath

As one can see, the missive couldn’t be any more to the point, while at the same time being short on information. Information such as an answer to the question everybody has in mind when confronted with this news: Why would Intel buy a small game developer that is currently working on a promising 3D engine and game?

It goes without saying that to us here at Beyond3D, this latest gaming-related purchase from Intel has Larrabee’s shadow all over it. Even though Larrabee’s architecture and scope are still shrouded in mystery, it seems clear to anyone who has followed the development of Intel’s elusive new graphics architecture that the CPU giant realised software would be a key issue for the completion of the project.

Intel has already shown its commitment to purchasing talent via the acquisition of Neoptica last November. In the meantime, the company has been steadily drafting 3D software experts into its stable of 3D knights, including TomF. The inclusion of a full fledged development house is an interesting move, however. We knew that Intel was in dire need of graphics API – or at least optimised libraries – tailored to Larrabee’s specifications. But what good would such a platform be without any impressive game or large application (demo) to take advantage of it?

At the same time, it is worth noting that recent pre-GDC rumours indicated that Intel was in potential talks to purchase German game developer Crytek. Now, did these talkative birds mistake Crytek for Offset Software, or is Intel still in a developer shopping mood? Well, let us wait and see.

[Via Beyond3D]

Activision GH3 Replacement policy

 

 

Activision and their requirement that people who purchased their defective game send it back and wait a month in order to receive a replacement.

hows that for BS?  Nope you can’t play the game which rumors say Activision KNEW was funked up before shipping, and wait a month to play it again.

‘Machinimas’ build bridge between film and videogames

Activision, Inc.’s “Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare” video game. Machinimas, animation films that use characters pulled from video games, are popping up all over the Internet, highlighting the creativity of gamers and bringing together the worlds of film and video-games

Machinimas, animation films that use characters pulled from video games, are popping up all over the Internet, highlighting the creativity of gamers and bringing together the worlds of film and video-games.

Little known to the general public, what was once a niche phenommenon in the 1990s is catching on quickly, gaining visibility on online video sites such as Dailymotion or Youtube and winning new adepts.

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“The name machinima comes from machine plus cinema,” said Xavier Lardy, who founded French site machinima.fr in 2004. “It is both a product and a technique, a film made from a video-game. Game players become actors and cameramen.”

Machinimas are made by extracting the images and sound from a video game with the proper software and then giving them a new life in a film, and adding dialogues.

The first machinima comedy sketch was made in 1996, using elements from the first-person shooter game, Quake, by the ID software studio, Lardy explained. “At the time, this type of comic film was called a ‘Quake movie’”, he said.

While most of today’s machinimas are made with elements from one game, some put characters from rival video-games side-to-side. A machinima for example can pit famous bounty hunter Samus Aran, from Nintendo’s Metroid series, against the no less famous Master Chief from Microsoft’s shooter game, Halo.

While the Sims, the well-known character-based video game, is the game most drawn on for machinima sketches, the most favourite series on the web is “Red Vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles”, which has been well received by both the machinima community and film critics.

Started in 2003, “Red Vs Blue” grew into a saga of almost 100 episodes over five seasons, ending only recently.

The US machinima studio, Roosterteeth, creator of the series, has no less than 655,000 site subscribers, all of whom are free to subsidise the team’s creations.

And just as with any other genre, the world of machinimas has trends.

“At the moment you find lots of machineastes playing online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, particularly on the game developer sites,” said Lardy.

The most common software application used to make machinima films is Australia’s “Fraps”, which allows users to capture images and sounds from ongoing games.

However, another software, a virtual studio management package called “The Movies”, developed by Lionhead studios, was used to produce European machinima success-story “French Democracy”, one of the first with political content.

It was made by Frenchman Alex Chan during the riots in the outlying Paris suburbs in 2005.

Another French machinima success, “The Adventures of Bill and John”, made by the BilletJohn studio, won several prizes, including Best Film, at the 2006 Machinima Festival in New York, for its second series, Danger attacks at Dawn, based on the game Lock On.

America is generally at the forefront of machinima developments, but it is spreading to other areas with the European Machinima Festival in Leicester, Britain, and another for Asia in Singapore.

Although the majority of machinima makers are people who work in or around the audiovisual industry, others are younger — more guerrilla like, said Lardy, for whom the technology is a shortcut to being a filmmaker, without the normally required qualifications or cash flow.

And machinimas are now coming full circle, with game editors occasionally adding functionalities from machinima creations.

While the financial return is not, as yet, immediately evident, the productions are bringing new life to the gaming community. “You get attached to a game, it makes you want to play it again,” explains Lardy.

It’s difficult to predict the future of machinimas, but Lardy is optimistic.

“The situation today makes me think of what it was like at the time of the first animated films, with five or ten people working together on a production.”

 

[Via PhsyOrg.com]

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Have you created Machinima and posted it to Youtube?  Let me know and I’ll post it here also! (If it’s good. )

Microsoft Opens Game Development

Microsoft Corp. says it will make Xbox 360 video games developed by players available for download through the console’s online service.

Microsoft said Wednesday that the new games will double the size of the Xbox 360 game library, to 1,000 games. The new service is expected to launch by the end of the year.

To distribute a game on the Xbox Live service, game creators must use Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio software or be an XNA Creators Club member. Each game will be vetted for quality and appropriateness.

Microsoft also announced that game developers also will be able to build games for Microsoft’s Zune digital media players.

Xbox 360 price Drop… in Canada?!

In order to sell more gaming units, Microsoft decided to cut the price of their finest product, also known as Xbox 360. But there is one strange detail, this cut is only going to happen in one country – Canada.

Can it be only Canada because there aren’t many Xbox’s being sold there? Are they trying to make a point with this? Or is there any other reason? I really don’t know, but according to David Dennis from Microsoft - each market makes its own decision on the matter.

About the new prices: the Elite model (most expensive one) went from C$499 to C$449; the medium Xbox 360 version now costs C$349, it used to be C$399; and lastly, the basic model saw its price being cut by C$20, in other words, in the past it cost C$299 and now costs C$279.

In case you don’t remember, we also reported the story when Microsoft dropped the price of the HD DVD player add-on, and set it at $129.

[Via CoolestGadgets]

GeForce 9

Looks like Nvidia is prepping itself to roll out its first GeForce 9 series graphics chip known as the GeForce 9600 GT on February 21st.

The 9600 GT adopts a 65nm process and is manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The GPU sees an increase in processing units, 64, and memory bus width, 256-bit, over previous 8600 GTS cards, 32 and 128-bit. The GPU’s performance should see an increase of over 40% compared to the 8600 GTS, said the sources. The new GPU also introduces Dual-Streaming Decode technology which allows two high-definition image decoding processes to be performed at the same time and provides picture in picture (PIP) functionality.

Thankfully, you won’t have to fork out so much for this sweet spot graphics card as it will retail between $169 and $189.

[Via CoolestGadgets]