8 Ways to Sunday

Johnny Liu of 1UP.com expounds on the archetypal video game characters:

There are five character types that shall be prevalent in gaming until the end of time: monkeys, ninjas, pirates, zombies, and robots. Until the day when all five are forged as one, we’ll have games that make the most of these separate necessities.

And when the day comes that a game introduces us to the zombified robotic ninja pirate monkey, I’m totally slapping down my $50 for that baby.

The hotly anticipated sequel to Microsoft’s hit Xbox game Halo has been leaked onto the Internet with only weeks to go before its release.

The leaked version appears to be a PAL copy with French text, leading to speculation that the pirated version of the game was stolen during the localization and internationalization process. The pirated version of the game — a three gigabyte download — won’t be playable on US, Canadian, and other NSTC Xboxes. It also won’t be playable over Microsoft’s Xbox Live online service. All things considered, it isn’t expected to make a substantial dent in Halo 2’s expected sales.

Microsoft says that the game’s November 9th release date will not be pushed back as a result of the theft.

See also GamesIndustry.biz, Slashdot, and GameSpot stories on the theft.

Valve Software and Vivendi Universal Games are locked in a contract dispute that may delay the release of Half-Life 2 for up to six months, according to legal documents recently uncovered by GameSpot. At issue (and at stake) in the dispute is nothing less than full intellectual property rights to the Half-Life franchise and the legal viability of Valve’s popular Steam distribution system.

That second article goes into the details of the threatened six-month delay, and relates the story of a similar fate that befell another unfortunate game development company. Sounds like VU is a real bastard when it comes to IP demands and distribution. I hope they lose a shitload of developer contracts over this.

The new Xbox game Fable has broken sales records in its first week and raked in about $18.7 million — a domestic take which tops that of box office champ Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow over the same period — according to a press release from Microsoft Game Studios.

Anyone who doubts that games have come into their own as a form of mainstream entertainment: now is the time to get out from under your rock.

Valve Software’s Gabe Newell has announced the voice cast, approximate release date, and other details about the infamously delayed shooter. Voices will include those of Oscar winner Louis Gossett, Jr. and Michelle Forbes of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame.

As for the release date, a seemingly humbled Newell was quoted as saying, “we [are] planning on delivering the game to Sierra in August… to the best of our admittedly weak planning abilities, we are looking at August.” Gee, thanks for that exceptionally vague and entirely non-official update, Gabe.

Among other details mentioned in same article with the release date quote was a passing indication that a re-issue of the original Half-Life, gussied up with the new Source engine, would be included in the box with the new game. I’d heard rumors of a Source version of HL1, but this is the first official confirmation I’ve seen.