The PC Weekend Warrior: blazing Blizzard, TF2 ladies and love, Spore success, and backstabbing Microsoft
As the week draws to a beautiful close, we’re left with another ton of news developments to weave our thoughts to. This week may have been Blizzard‘s party, but even Team Fortress 2 and Spore fans have something to tip their drinks to. We’ll also recap terrible tidings for PC gaming from Microsoft, plus some luscious ideas for TF2. All that and more in PC Gaming’s Weekend Warrior.
We’ve braved a hailstorm of news in the PC gaming community since the last Weekend Warrior, and though a few statements may have doused our glorious mood, there were plenty more announcements that brought the cheer right back.
This week, we’ve seen the release of a few independent games on the PC, the announcement of one of the PC’s biggest franchises in history, as well as an electronic Battlefield jingle from DICE Illusions to put you in the summer mood.
Okay, maybe that last one was a bit unusual. Moving on, we’ll be kicking this week’s Weekend Warrior off early, starting with the major developments that rolled out for our games and gaming platform.
It’s our party and we’ll cry if we want to…
Tremendously Heaven-trembling this week was the announcement of bad ol’ Lord of Terror and his third nightmarish trek across the lands of Sanctuary. Diablo III was announced along with new developments in StarCraft II and input on Wrath of the Lich King.
But as the game community would have it, the recent World Wide Invitational was venue for just one celebration: the return to Sanctuary.
Read: Blizzard World Wide Invitational 2008: Diablo 3 unveiled
Read: More from Blizzard’s WWI: Diablo 3 gameplay details, features
Not long after Blizzard spilled the beans on Diablo 3, a host of interviewers managed to extract a broad set of opinions from the company’s leading executives. Everything from Blizzard’s take on the revival of the PC game to inquiries on the pending Blizzard-Activision merger was probed.
But what was more interesting is that all the games featured in WWI 2008 weren’t all that Blizzard had stewing in the pot. Yes, they have proposals to improve Battle.net, conduct a StarCraft 2 Beta test, and they’re working on a next-generation MMO that they wouldn’t identify. Plus they’re still supporting the older games, aren’t they?
Read: Blizzard’s Paul Sams thinks Microsoft should put more focus on PC gaming
Read: Blizzard: Activision was our choice for merger
Read: Diablo 3 producer responds to art style criticisms
Read: Blizzard claims another next-gen MMO, planning new Battle.net features, hints StarCraft 2 Beta
Read: Warcraft 3 patch 1.22a goes live
On the other end of the mainstream spectrum, we’ve seen just how successful Electronic Arts has been with its Spore marketing campaign. In the timespan of a week, they’ve managed to rival sales of other best-selling PC games by selling just a small part of a huge game coming up this September.
Sure, US$ 10 would sound like a rip-off for many, but that didn’t stop Spore Creature Creator from climbing to number six of all best-selling software in a week – it was also the only game appearing in NPD Group’s top ten. Now fancy that?
Read: Spore Creature Creator rises to top of US PC software sales
Valve also hasn’t lost steam (Get it? Steam? No?) in supporting one of the most played multiplayer team games in their arsenal. After dishing out a major update for Team Fortress 2 since the incorporation of the Pyro’s new toys, the game developer and distributor are ready to address the needs of the Sasha-lovin’ crowd of the Heavy Gunner class.
Read: Team Fortress 2 July 1 update released
Read: Team Fortress 2: Heavy class to get new weapons and achievements
Oh, and Crytek also plated a new gameplay trailer of Crysis: Warhead, though we didn’t hear much of Psycho’s one liners while more baddies were forcibly filled with lead. Perhaps Crytek wanted us to focus on the new vehicles and dual wield submachine guns instead.
Read: Crysis Warhead teaser trailer
Addressing our gaming lifestyle and preferences was news that the upcoming E3 won’t be equally exciting for the PC gamer as it would be for the console gamer. We’re told by Microsoft‘s Games for Windows and Intel that they’ve jumped ship for other game expositions that can treat console games and PC games equally.
Read: E3 Media & Summit 2008 now narrowly focused on console games
Yet an even bigger blow to the PC gamer was that of Peter Zetterberg’s opinions of just how vaulable the PC gamer was to Microsoft. The manager of business development at Microsoft Game Studios Europe claimed that simultaneous releases on the PC and Xbox 360 would be like shooting themselves on the foot.
According to Zetterburg, Microsoft would rather release the Xbox 360 first so that PC gamers could buy an Xbox 360 instead of staying with PCs and resorting to PC games. Now he’s said that we (Xbox 360 and PC gamers) are all important to Microsoft, but how does this count in giving the platform it’s love?
Read: Microsoft considers PC, Xbox 360 equal platforms, focuses on 360 releases first
Luckily, not all faith is lost in the PC market. BioWare sees developing PC exclusives as feasible, which could mean we can expect a few more PC-centric projects to follow in the future.
Read: BioWare ‘looking at’ iPhone development, says continuing PC exclusive development ‘feasible’
You didn’t see this coming…
Other things that have happened during the week, but weren’t covered by my little, evil, mill-churning hamsters while I was away were the release of Shelled! Online, the shareware multiplayer equivalent of Red Thumb Games’ freeware Shelled! in the indie community.
Futhermore, adventurers got to dive into the surreal world of Perry Rhodan in The Immortals of Terra – arguably one of the most gorgeous and addicting adventures to date.
In the mainstream side, we’ve also seen a new update and map go live for Day of Defeat: Source, while Sporepedia continues to rack up oodles and oodles of custom creations from Spore Creature Creator fanatics. Imitations of real people, game characters, and even objects are flooding EA’s online Spore repository.
Lucky World of Warcraft gamers will also soon be awarded with a limited-time Tyrael the Archangel who’s likely to battle Tal Rashas and shatter Worldstones around Azeroth with you. Or not. But as community manager Bornakk hints, there’s lots of fun to be had.
Rather offish but barely qualifying for newsworthy (only because very little does come out of DICE these days) is a new update from the Battlefield Heroes official website. Summer’s already here, so we’re expecting something new to drop for the free-to-play Battlefield game. Hopefully something that sings to the tune of “open beta.”
Oh, and before we forget, we lazed our eyes upon some sweet ooh-la-lahs, courtesy of the imaginative Deviantartist *ghostfire.
Valve. DO WANT. NAO. Please?
Microsoft, come here you backstabber, you!
Here’s what I don’t understand: why is it that Microsoft is campaigning the Xbox 360 in a nation that’s considered the heart of PC gaming? Anyone who’s ever been a true-blue PC gamer once in their lifetime would know the significance of the gaming populace in Germany – after all, it was here that the LAN parties started becoming a social norm in pop culture.
If Peter Zetterburg’s claim that the PC was as equal in value to the Xbox 360 in Microsoft’s eyes is true, then we don’t see how sifting the core of PC gaming’s populace to the Xbox 360 is helping the PC in any way. In fact, it’s like downright stabbing PC gamers at the heart.
Let’s view this from their perspective: they say that Germany is overrun with gaming capable PCs (okay, so duh) and Xbox 360s are few and far between. They want it so that Xbox 360s are equal to PCs, and they mean equal to PCs in quantity.
Let’s help Microsoft figure this one out: can the Xbox 360 surf? Can it rip music? Will it allow you to hotwire a game mod in a LAN party on-the-fly? Will it pimp your status quo in a hardware community where bare minimum five digit 3DMark06 scores are laughable?
Answer no to any of those questions, and you’ll have the answer why the Xbox 360 won’t equal to the PC game demand – and that’s just scratching the surface. Bottom line is, they already have the bang for their buck liquid cooled and tucked neatly inside a Blockbuster Storm barebone, and it comes with Blu-ray writers.
Germany should have a choice whether they want PC games or not, rather than have this forced torture period that only serves to milk the region for Microsoft’s profit. We know that PC gamers can wait, but waiting for uncertainties is different.
Take for instance that some games that are meant to release on PC and are released earlier on the Xbox 360 – with no hint that it’s actually coming for the PC as well until after the game has released for the Xbox 360. Sometimes even later than that.
Mass Effect and BioShock are just some of these examples – and don’t ask us to remind you how long it took Halo 2 to come out for the PC.
Full steam ahead!
What’s there to look forward to in the coming weeks? There’s a bit of uncertainty for big news, as E3 is already around the corner, and we know it’ll be light in the PC gaming front.
But we’re expecting that Deep Silver and GSC GameWorld won’t particularly disappoint with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. Also, we’re keeping our eyes on DICE and the ongoing closed beta test, in hopes that one day the European developers will finally open the doors to a broader Battlefield Heroes beta test for most regions.
We’ll also have a few featurettes propped up soon just for the PC gaming community. Watch out for that and more when they stroll by.
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