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Alison Beasley sends word that GaiKai, the cloud gaming service being developed by games industry vet Dave Perry, is about to begin beta testing in Europe. (Sign-up page.) GaiKai is a competitor to OnLive, which started beta tests of its own recently. IGN got a chance to try out GaiKai for themselves, and they’ve posted a video showing how it performed. From Perry’s announcement: “Our closed beta has two goals. #1 is to bring our servers to their knees so we can choose the final configuration before we start ordering large quantities of them. (We think we have it worked out, but you can be certain our staff will be swapping cards and testing different processors as each day goes by.) Goal #2 is to test older computers. We’ve had lots of emails from people describing their computers and 99% of them have ample performance. Remember you don’t even need a 3D card to see a 3D game run on our service. I know this is strangely counter to what people expect, but we actually want to get plenty of basic office-grade XP machines testing so we can make sure we can reach the widest audience possible. … After we choose the hardware configuration in Europe, our next phase will be our USA Nationwide Network Test, that will be using 8 Tier-1 Data Centers, getting hammered by Closed Beta testers. During that process, [we] will be identifying the other data centers we need to include to blanket the USA in a low latency array. Phase 2 of that is Europe, in exactly the same test.”

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By Soulskill

News about video games, you can leave a comment.
The W3C Systeam’s blog has a hilarious item W3C’s Excessive DTD Traffic. Apparently, generic XML systems are trying to download the DTD using the DOCTYPE declaration system identifier (i.e. what it is for) on XHTML files, or downloading the schemas from the namespace URI (i.e. not what it is for) for documents with XHTML fragments. And it is a lot of bogus traffic. W3C does not want to cop having to serve dumb XHTML requests for DTDs and schemas. A different DOCTYPE and a lazy loading parser policy would help. But I think all the ISO/MathML special character public entity sets should be built into XML.
By O”Reilly news

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CWmike writes “Think you’re a Monopoly whiz? Remember running the board and shaming your property-less competitors when playing board games on the living room floor? Well, the age-old game of buying property and making your rivals pay big for landing on your Railroad is now going global. The new, free web game will use Google Maps and Street View to make the whole planet the game board. The online version of Monopoly is set to launch on Wednesday.”

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By Soulskill

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blacklily8 writes “Gamasutra has just published our history of Doug Neubauer’s Star Raiders, a 1979 game for the Atari 8-bit that offered ‘high-speed first-person perspective through a fully navigable 3D-like environment in just 8K of RAM (memory) and 8K of ROM (storage).’ Designed by the creator of the Atari’s POKEY chip, Star Raiders was a hit on its home platform but now seems to have fallen into obscurity: ‘Star Raiders is a shining example of what happens when a developer is told that something can’t be done, does it anyway, and then is promptly forgotten for having done it.’ In addition to describing the game itself, the article focuses on its impact on later games such as Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Elite.”

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By Soulskill

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Karen Hertzberg writes “Ask any 10 gamers what constitutes an ‘indie MMO’ and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. But one definition that most can agree on is that an indie game lacks the financial support of a well-funded publisher. But do smaller budgets mean greater freedom? Ten Ton Hammer asked Nathan Richardsson, Executive Producer for CCP (developers of EVE Online), and Todd Harris, Executive Producer of Global Agenda, to share their thoughts on the bright future of independent MMOG development. ‘By definition a niche market is a segment that is currently underserved by the mainstream providers. So, to serve that audience a developer typically needs to deliver something really different and innovative vs. just more of the same thing available elsewhere,’ says Harris. ‘With a big budget there could be a temptation to cover up stale gameplay by shoveling out more content or simply pumping up the marketing hype. However, for an indie developer such as Hi-Rez Studios, the game must stand on its own merits and we find that liberating.’”

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By Soulskill

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traycerb writes “It’s been 10 years since 9/9/1999, when the Dreamcast launched on American shores. The hardware was ahead of its time; online capability, web browser, a visual memory unit, and a controller that anticipated the much-loved Xbox 360 controller. The games were amazing: Jet Set Radio (the first popular 3d cell-shaded game on a console), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (still the apotheosis of 2-d fighting; just try finding a copy on ebay), Soul Calibur (still looks good compared to the recent Xbox/PS3 versions), NFL 2K (came out of nowhere, and was so good that it shook EA into spending tens of millions of dollars to seal up exclusivity for NFL rights), and many others. No doubt some of the reasons for the Dreamcast’s demise lay with Sega, whose dubious hardware decisions (ahem, 32x) finally caught up to them, in the form of ambivalence from both developers and gamers, just as the console-making world was shifting to the multinationals with big pockets who were willing to spend it on pricey hardware design (or could absorb the cost of faulty hardware design). It was also one of the first consoles widely used for homebrew. In honor of the 10th anniversary, a new game is being released for the Dreamcast, called Rush Rush Rally Racing. The Dreamcast is dead! Long live the Dreamcast!”

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By Soulskill

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whisper_jeff writes “There’s been a confirmed outbreak of Swine Flu at PAX. Those who attended and are feeling under-the-weather after the con should not write it off as a typical convention cold and go see a doctor to make sure, just in case.” The linked post also lists the airplane flights of the cases known so far, so if you flew from Seattle on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday for any reason, you might want to compare your itinerary.

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By timothy

In a press release related to its filing with the SEC, GameStop reported sales and earnings results for the second quarter ended August 1, 2009.

Sales were $1.74 billion. This is a 3.7% decrease compared to the same quarter last year. Comparable store sales went down 14.1%. The company said this was due to lower new console unit sales, a lack of strong new software titles, as compared to last year’s record releases, and customer spending down because of the weak economy.

The top five games

GameStop says the best 5 selling games during the quarter were THQ’s UFC 2009 Undisputed, Activision’s Prototype, EA’s  Fight Night Round 4  and  NCAA Football 2010,  and Atari’s  Ghostbusters.

“Due to the effects of the recession and strong prior year comparisons, the video game industry experienced a sharp decline in consumer spending during the quarter,” said Daniel DeMatteo, GameStop CEO. “Looking ahead, as the new title release schedule improves, we expect positive earnings growth in the back half of the year.”

The press release states the company’s updated guidance.

“Weak trends in consumer spending related to on-going economic uncertainties, and some key new title slippage such as Bioshock 2 ,  StarCraft II  and  Splinter Cell: Conviction,  have prompted GameStop to forecast a lower and widened earnings range for the remainder of the year. In spite of these challenges, new software sales in the second half are expected to increase over the prior year period, led by highly-anticipated title releases such as  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2  and  Halo 3: ODST.”

“We now expect to generate free cash flow (a non-GAAP measure of operating cash flow less capital expenditures) of approximately $400 to $425 million, after having invested $175 million in capital improvements, including the opening of approximately 400 new stores worldwide.”

GameStop says it is the world’s largest video game and entertainment software retailer, with over 6,000  stores in 17 countries.

A recording of the company’s conference call with financial analysts is posted on the company’s website.

News about video games you can leave a comment. This article about the Xbox failure rate reminds me of why we offer a guide for Xbox repair.
Colonel Korn writes “The Seattle PI Blog is reporting that a soon to be published Game Informer survey finally shows the failure rate of XBOX 360s: 54%! The survey also shows the rates of failure for the PS3 (11%) and Wii (7%). Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn’t buy a new 360 because of hardware failures.”

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By CmdrTaco

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kamapuaa writes “According to a study published in the upcoming October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the average US video game player is 35 years old, overweight, and tends toward depression. Specifically, female video game players tended towards depression, while males tended towards large BMIs. While the study itself points to several conclusions, one researcher noted: ‘… habitual use of video games as a coping response may provide a genesis for obsessive-compulsive video-game playing, if not video-game addiction.’” On the flip side, the Washington Post is running a story about the mental health benefits of playing video games.

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By Soulskill