GameTap Taps Gamecock

GameTap is on a roll! Just yesterday they announced a partnership with THQ to bring their full line of PC titles to the service and now they've gotten themselves mixed up with the bad crowd over at Gamecock Media Group. The two companies have entered into a partnership to digitally distribute GC's wares via the magic of the internet, both in fully purchased form and via the standard GameTap subscription service.

“Gamecock is committed to providing gamers with original titles from the most talented developers,” said Gamecock’s ‘El Presidente’ Harry Miller. “With the growth and acceptance of digital download, gamers now have greater access to original titles. By partnering with GameTap, we have another chance to ensure that gamers can find and play great games made by independent developers.”

Both current and future titles will be made available for the service, from the intentionally buggy Insecticide to the sexy spy action of Velvet Assassin. If that doesn't interest you, then I offer the director's cut headline for this story, "GameTap Gets Stuffed With Cock."

The Spore creators have started releasing prototypes, apparently modeled on certain parts of the title's overall gameplay, and now you can download and explore the first: "ParticleMan."

Euro Go!View PSP Video Service This Summer

First announced by Crecente last year before the Sony Games Convention press conference, the Go!View video download service for the PSP will be launching across Europe this summer. The service, the result of a partnership between SCEE and Sky, will allow PSP owners to download high-quality video via their PC for viewing on their PSP, as opposed to the current system which involves us converting our porn to a more friendly format before playing it on the handheld. No news of the prices involved, though they will be offering both purchase and subscription payment models. Still no word of a U.S. release, though honestly I think most PSP owners who want to watch tv shows on their handheld already do anyway.

Sony reveals "summer" launch for Go!View [GamesIndustry.biz]

Preview HAZE In A Not-Too-Gimpy Demo

Remember Haze? It was the cross-platform game that went PS3-exclusive last year (when it was originally supposed to be released). Now it's slated for a US launch on May 20th and it's got a demo to boot—with 4-person, drop-in drop out multiplayer (all on top of a more standard single-player experience).

Whether or not Haze looks like just another FPS or something better, the still undated demo will give us all a chance to decide for ourselves before the game comes out. It reminds us a lot of what Criterion gave us with Burnout Paradise—a small, robust chunk of the entire gameplay experience. Good stuff.

Universe At War Demo On Marketplace

Back in Leipzig, McWhertor and I hung out at Sega's booth while Crecente played Universe at War on PC for hours. After a while, he let me take his game for a spin. I immediately blew up a non-replaceable ship. As I may have mentioned before, he was not happy.

But Universe at War looked fantastic, despite its only moderate reception. And now it's available as a demo on the Xbox 360. So if you enjoy RTSs but don't have a PC or trust console-ported controls, it might be worth giving a download. And just think: if such demos were around back at Leipzig, I probably wouldn't have to run all my posts by Tristan before publishing. And Mini Bash might have approved my raise, too.

Demo: Universe at War: Earth Assault [Major Nelson]

Sony: By 2018, 90% Of Games Will Be Downloaded

Sony Computer Entertainment UK's Ray Maguire, amidst a discussion on the Byron Report (chastising it for not keeping up with a growing internet-based industry), made a prediction about the future of games:

...ten years from now the ratio of games sales will have gone from 90 per cent in-store to 90 per cent online.

Unreal Tournament 3 Gets Free Classic Map Pack

Epic has just released a 160MB "Bonus Pack" of maps for Unreal Tournament 3 that brings some old faves back along with one new offering. The PC/PS3 update resurrects classics Morbias and Facing Worlds, and it introduces Searchlight (designed for Capture the Flag). Only three maps in all, it's not huge. But it's free on PC and PSN.

I remember loading Facing Worlds from the original UT on my first bohemeth 19-inch monitor and feeling dizzy as I looked to the Earth below, making my stomach churn. A few years of innovation later, my 46-inch HDTV should force an alien baby through my shirt.

Free DLC Now Available for Unreal Tournament III [Gaming Today]

Mass Effect PC DLC May Be Different

We're asked if we're going to do Bring Down the Sky for PC, and it's a consideration. We're looking in to exactly what we want to do; maybe we'll do something different, because the PC offers some different potentials.

Wait, Now Microsoft Is Pushing Movies Again?

The advent of Video Store is a competitive advantage from a PR standpoint, alongside the range of games on our platform. In the last two months, since the launch of Video Store in the UK, our audience figures have grown dramatically.

Some PlayStation 3 users have been savvy enough to create multiple accounts with different regional access, allowing them to download various area-timed content before it hits locally (like demos and stuff). Keeping these nationalities straight used to be difficult require reading, but now you can download new flag avatars to keep the logins organized (and your PS3 looking Sony-made). NeoGAFer McBacon started the project, creating a slew of smiley flags PNGs for your XMB designed to keep accounts straight, even providing a PSD template for creating your own. That's a lot of TLAs!

PS3 - Regional User Faces...[NeoGAF via DigitalBattle]

PS3 Unreal Tournament III Gets Its First User Created Content

The PlayStation 3 version of Epic Games' Unreal Tournament III has long been crowed about as the first game on Sony's console to support user created content, such as mods and maps. Today, owners of UTIII have their first taste of homebrewed PS3 add-ons, as FileFront presents the game's first player-created map, DM-Shrine, for download. The deathmatch map is designed for 2-6 players and was built by 23 year-old Thomas Browett of Nottingham.

FileFront has the download and installation instructions, which, curiously, point out that removable storage of some sort is required for import. Whether it be compact flash, Memory Stick or simply a USB thumb drive, it seems one can't simply download to the PS3's built-in mass storage via the internet browser. What's up with that?

FileFront Exclusive: First Ever PS3 Unreal Tournament 3 Map [FileFront]

The Future of the PC PlayStation Store

I don't think we're ready to look at that and say, "This is the way it should go right now." But we're at an interesting point in the industry where consumers know they can get things fast and they're getting used to it with other devices from other companies. So it's something we always wanted to do.

Kuju Launches Digi-Download Studio

UK dev Kuju takes aim at another segment of the gaming industry and a new studio opens. Their new Double Six studio will be dedicated to developing addictive games for Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, WiiWare, and PC. The studio is made up of developers from Geometry Wars Galaxies for the Wii and DS as well as Nucleus for PSN, overseen by the new studio head, James Brooksby.

"We want to become the best, the go-to place, the studio that is known for carving out our own part of the industry. Double Six is going to be the place to go for the absolutely best games on digital platforms"

Kuju targets digital downloads with new Double Six studio {GamesIndustry.biz]

EA Recommends Backups on Floppies and Stone Tablets

Directly downloading games can save a lot of time and hassle compared to going to the store, but at least one non-US Electronic Arts site wants to make sure that customers don't lose their large, multi-gigabyte downloads.

Save a copy of your downloaded files on a Zip-drive, floppy disk etc. in case you computer breaks down.

...three action games, two music-based games, one racing title and a shooting game...

Stories of Comcast banning their high speed customers for excessive use have flooded the Internet this week, and many of us began to worry just how much is too much when online games are a mainstay of our existence, complimenting our interest in fully legal, fully decent movie downloads. Comcast clarified the policy a bit with GameDaily. And while we don't have exact numbers, we do know that Comcast deems "excessive use" to:

...any customer who downloads the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month.

Comcast Clarifies High Speed Extreme Use Policy [gamedaily]

Correction: XBL Has Reached 45 Million Downloads

More news from Gamerfest 2007: Microsoft announced that 7.1 million Live users have downloaded 25 45 million...things...from XBL. With that level of user base, that puts the download average of everything—from games to themes—at a (what I think is very, very low) average of 3 per person.

Given that they also said the attachment rate is reaching an average of 6-7 XBLA titles per user, we're a bit confused by all the numbers at the moment. Either those 25 45 million downloads are arcade title exclusive, or that 6-7 title figure is inflated and based upon only the most current users. We have an email out to Microsoft and will let you know if the numbers start making more sense.

UPDATE: We've talked to Microsoft PR. The real number is actually 45 million Xbox Live downloads.

Gamefest 2007: 25M Downloads on XBL [1up]