WildTangent Suffers Studio Closure [Edge]

Wild Tangent's CEO, Alex St. John, made some 'brazen' claims at the ION keynote — one of the boldest being that console gaming is dead and the PC is looking towards a renaissance. It should be noted that St. John has blabbered about this before, so he's just retreading previous ground:

Beginning one of several brazen claims in his keynote, St. John spoke of the death of video game consoles: “Nobody needs a console when a game's value and DRM is defined by community or an input device. Consoles just serve to keep you from playing a game you didn't pay for.”

He asked, “What's Sony and Microsoft's motivation to make another console? It's been so rocky, and it's not about the pretty graphics anymore.” According to St. John, spectacular graphics have become a commodity, and not the platform for games to differentiate themselves. “The Wii is the exception that proves the rule — it's not about the graphics, it's about the input device.

He went on to talk about advertising models and targeting the right audience — but his statements on the console vs. PC pack the most punch.

WildTangent's St. John Declares Consoles Dead, Claims PC Renaissance [Gamasutra]

The PC version comes with the now standard stuff, including Skin Edit, Puzzle and Time Attack modes. Lumines is available to Windows users on a pay per play basis, free with a healthy does of advertising or for download at $19.99. It's also available on just about everything else.

PC Release of 'Lumines' Brings Music Mayhem to the WildTangent Games Network

WildTangent and Q Entertainment Deliver Game's PC Debut to Online Gamers

Redmond, Wash. - December 3, 2007 -WildTangent, Inc., the fastest growing online game property in the U.S., today announced the PC launch of Q Entertainment's award-winning puzzle game, Lumines, on the WildTangent Games Network. The PC version of Lumines comes packed with the challenges and excitement from the console version, and now makes its online debut exclusively on WildTangent at www.wildgames.com.

WildTangent is rapidly adding console-quality games to its catalog of more than 450 games from nearly 200 developers. Lumines indulges the fusion of puzzle play, stylish visuals and upbeat music from a variety of genres that is dynamically synched with gameplay. The player must maneuver falling blocks to create 2x2 squares in the same color or pattern as the vertical timeline wipes away the squares to allow more room on the playing field. The addictive title, which was originally released on the PSP (PlayStation Portable) and later on the PlayStation 2, Xbox LIVE Arcade and mobile devices, offers up to 40 different skins and five single-player modes to keep players coming back for more. While providing audio and graphics on par with the enthusiast category, Lumines for PC is easy to learn and can be played with a simple mouse click.

Additional key features of Lumines include:
• Skin Edit Mode: Customize your Lumines experience by creating your own play list with your favorite skins that you have unlocked
• Time Attack Mode: Test your skills and see how many blocks you can erase in a given amount of time and compete with your own record
• Puzzle / Mission Mode: Twist your brain and strategic thinking to create specific shapes (such as a dog, heart, or number) using the blocks
• Detailed play history: Analyze your play style with detailed play history such as the number of erased blocks, highest scores and more

"We continue to focus on bringing console-quality games, like Lumines, to the PC in an ad-supported model that offers gamers unmatched choice in how they play the games they love," said Alex St. John, CEO of WildTangent. "Lumines is one of many console-quality, enthusiast game titles we will be offering our customers in the weeks and months to come."

Consumers can purchase the game for $19.99, pay on a per-session basis using the company's innovative WildCoinsTM arcade-style payment system, or play for free when sponsored by one of WildTangent's advertisers. Lumines is rated "E" for Everyone by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). To play Lumines, visit www.wildgames.com.

About WildTangent
Founded in 1998, WildTangent is the fastest growing online game property in the world with 11.5 million
unique monthly gamers (comScore - July 2007) offering hundreds of the most popular online and
downloadable games from the world's top developers and publishers including its own WildStudios which
publishes Polar Bowler, Penguins, Fate and many more.

The WildTangent Games Console ships directly on the desktops of leading PC manufacturers including
Dell, HP, Gateway and Toshiba, representing more than 25 million new consumer PCs annually in North
America. Gamers of all ages and demographics play more than 250 million game sessions a month across the WildTangent game network.

For more information visit www.wildtangent.com.

About Q ENTERTAINMENT, Inc.
Formed in 2003, Tokyo-based Q ENTERTAINMENT, Inc. creates, produces, and consults in digital entertainment content across multiple game consoles, PC broadband and mobile units. It is best known for their critically acclaimed music and luminary action puzzle game series "Lumines," which was released
worldwide in 2004/2005 for the PSP® system (PlayStation®Portable) and has now developed into mobile
("Lumines Mobile"), Xbox Live Arcade ("Lumines Live!") and PlayStation®2 ("Lumines Plus") platforms.
Q ENTERTAINMENT's impressive line-up also includes the action puzzle title "Meteos" for the Nintendo
DSTM and fantasy action title "Ninety-Nine Nights" for the Xbox 360TM.

Founded by principal game creator and Chief Creative Officer Tetsuya Mizuguchi ("Sega Rally" franchise,
"Space Channel 5," and "Rez") and industry veteran and Chief Executive Officer Shuji Utsumi (Sony
Computer Entertainment America, Sega, Disney), Q ENTERTAINMENT is comprised of experienced
designers, programmers, and producers. Q ENTERTAINMENT collaborates with other creators, artists and development studios in Japan and overseas. With a large network and enthusiasm, Q ENTERTAINMENT is always on the "Quest for the future entertainment," anticipating the trends and changes in times to come and brings new value to the game industry with fresh new content. More information can be found on the Internet at http://www.qentertainment.com.

After Wild Tangent sent out that email saying that essentially the only web games that seem to work on Vista are theirs, I decided to check it out for myself.

Hit the jump for the report on Real Arcade, MSN, Yahoo Games, AOL Games, and yes, even Wild Tangent. Brian Crecente

Real Arcade
Installation: Infested my computer with Googleware, after warning me, but otherwise installed without issue.
Game Explorer: Doesn't seem to recognize Real Arcade as a game. Not sure if I would argue the point. ZING!
Game Test: I downloaded the demo of Bejeweled 2. Installation was fine, game was fine. No difference that I noticed.

Yahoo Games
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: No recognition
Game Test: I downloaded Beetle Bomp, it worked just dandy.

AOL Games
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: No recognition
Game Test: I downloaded Atlantis Quest, it worked fine.

MSN Games
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: No recognition
Game Test: I downloaded Sudoku, it worked fine.

Wild Tangent
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: Recognized Blasterball 2 Holidays when I played it.
Game Test: I downloaded Blasterball 2 Holidays, it worked fine.

Ok, to summarize, the only difference between Wild Tangent and all of the others is that when I played a game using their service it popped in into the Games Explorer. While I'd agree that means Wild T provides better support of Vista I think it's an extreme overstatement to send out a press release that says "Vista is breaking games."

I received a sorta odd press release last night from Wild Tangent. In it they claim that Vista, which launched today, is "still breaking even some of Microsoft's own games on Zone.com, not to mention smaller web-based casual games across the web."

Alex St. John says that fortunately his company, Wild Tangent, spent the last year working to make sure that wouldn't happen with their games, which are 100 percent Vista compatible.

Hmmm, seems like an attempt to grab some facetime with new Vista gamers. I have the system loaded up on my super computer, so I'll be checking out his claims in a bit. Hit the jump to read the full release, that came with the subject line: Vista is Breaking Games. Brian Crecente

Microsoft Vista Failing 70 Million Online Gamers and Developers

WildTangent offers a 100% Windows Vista-Ready Games Console to Ensure Casual Gamers Have a Positive Gaming Experience

REDMOND, WA - January 29th, 2006 - As Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Vista launches, the new operating system is breaking online games and disrupting gameplay, not only its own games on MSN but also at RealArcade (NASDAQ: RNWK), Yahoo Games (NASDAQ: YHOO) and AOL Games (NYSE: TWX). WildTangent offers the only 100% compatible gaming solutions with the WildTangent Vista Ready Console available for free download at WildTangent.com giving gamers access to over 300 popular gaming titles. Vista's incompatibility with most downloadable casual games, including those on Microsoft's own gaming portal demonstrates the enormous challenges facing many small game developers with getting their games to work with the new OS.

Alex St. John, CEO and co-Founder of WildTangent, and one of the principal creators of Microsoft's DirectX technology believes that Microsoft has gone overboard in making Vista so secure that the security restrictions have broken most online games. "WildTangent has spent the last year preparing for Vista. We worked with nearly every major casual game developer to get their games tested and compatible with Vista in our network in anticipation of these problems," said Alex St. John.

Gamers can download a free fully compatible Vista-ready games console at www.wildtangent.com and continue to play games regardless of which operating system they are running. The WildTangent games console will also ship on 25 million new Vista-ready PCs and laptops from Dell, Toshiba, HP and Gateway in 2007 ensuring that popular online games will be available and work on Vista PCs purchased from these OEMs.

In addition to breaking existing games, the security restrictions of the new operating system will rely heavily on ESRB (Electronic Software Ratings Board) ratings to block children from accessing inappropriate games. St. John believes that this represents an additional hurdle for the smaller games developers since most of these games are family appropriate but lack expensive ESRB ratings. "Parents who choose to use Vista's parental controls are likely to accidentally block access to hundreds of very popular family friendly games that happen not to have ESRB ratings." WildTangent's new Vista-ready console includes a parental control solution that ensures parental control over downloaded content without blocking access to family appropriate content that happens to lack an ESRB rating.