Parents in the UK, prepare to be badgered by your little ones – Finnish game maker Rovio is days away from opening its first Angry Birds theme park there.

Of course, there will be those who are absolutely fed up to the back teeth with Angry Birds. Among them may be the early adopters who’ve since grown weary of the bird-slinging game, or those who were suspicious from the start, steadfastly refusing to become one of the many many millions of people who’ve downloaded the game onto their mobile devices and continue to enjoy spending countless hours battling with egg-stealing green pigs.

Among those many millions are, for sure, a huge number of kids, drawn in by the cutesy graphics and simple game play. These same children – at least the ones living in the UK – will likely be impatiently tapping their parents on the back the moment they discover the country’s first ever Angry Birds theme park is about to open.

Located in Nottinghamshire, England, the new activity park forms part of Sundown Adventureland, a popular day-out destination for families in the area.

According to the designer of the new attraction, there’ll be themed swings and roundabouts, as well as several climbing towers. Of course, there’ll be a giant sling too, though hopefully someone will be on hand to stop over-excited kids catapulting their friends into the North Sea. There’s also talk of themed rides being introduced at some stage.

Paul Tomlinson, park manager at Sundown, said he was delighted to be hosting the UK’s first Angry Birds attraction “as the brand is so well known throughout the world.”

Of course, this isn’t the first Angry Birds-based theme park to open – there’s already one in China (albeit unauthorized), and another in Finland, where Rovio, the company behind the game, is located.

Rovio’s CEO, Peter Vesterbacka, told Reuters earlier this year that the Angry Birds attractions – of which there are plans for many more – will resemble small adventure playgrounds rather than full-on Disneyland-style affairs. “We can’t afford to invest billions into theme parks,” he said. “We are a tiny company from a tiny country.”

[via the Guardian]

The directors of the festival favorite movie, Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, talk about bringing Tetris to the festival circuit.

It’s probably easier to count the number of people who haven’t played a game of Tetris at some point in their lives than those who have, but precious few have approached the block-arranging triumphs featured in filmmaker Adam Cornelius’ new documentary, Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters.

Already a popular film on the festival circuit, Ecstasy of Order takes a deep dive into the competitive world of Tetris “masters” whose ability to twist, stack, and think several moves ahead of the blocks descending down their television screens seems almost superhuman. The film chronicles the path to crowning the first-ever “World Champion of Classic Tetris,” and also takes a fascinating look inside the lives of some of the game’s greatest players — from the kid whose life was forever changed by winning the 1990 Nintendo World Championship to the Tetris masters of today.

Digital Trends spoke with Cornelius about the film, which is available now in limited release, and also became available via various forms of Video On Demand this week.

How did you end up doing a documentary about Tetris, of all things?

The simple answer is that I was actually trying to master Tetris myself. It was a hobby I took on as early as maybe 2003, and I noticed that Harry Hong was at the top. So some of those names that ended up in the film were in my consciousness for a long time, because I was looking at the Twin Galaxies scoreboard. Even though I wasn’t that good, I was curious about it, so I started watching Harry’s YouTube videos of his record games to try and figure out why he was so good. I was doing that for a while, but it never occurred to me that it would be a good documentary idea until I met Robin Mihara, who’s in the film. It turned out that he was inspired to make it into a big tournament, and I had just filmed my first interview with Harry at that time, so it was a stars-aligning moment. Robin and I realized we were basically doing the same project from slightly different angles, trying to bring these people together — and it just unfolded from there.

When you decided to move forward with the project, did you have any difficulty wrangling all of the great Tetris players and getting them into the same room?

It wasn’t that hard, because we initially went through Twin Galaxies. And because Robin was part of the Nintendo World Championships, he knew of players like Thor [Aackerlund] who hadn’t posted anything with Twin Galaxies, but he knew they were just as good as kids in 1990s as the current crop of players are now. I think that was really what gave the movie its life and heart and depth. It actually has a history. When I started the project, I’d never even heard of the Nintendo World Championships, but I really think that became the heart of the movie. You have this group of 30-somethings, and their attempts to be Tetris masters has cast a shadow over their lives. Some of the people in the movie weren’t involved in that, but the ones who were gave it a lot of depth.

You brought up Thor, the guy who won the Nintendo World Championship when he was a kid, and I feel like his story was one of the most fascinating narrative threads in the movie. There was so much going on with him and his life up to and including what happens in the documentary. Did you know about any of that going into this project?

I had no idea. My focus early on was Harry and Jonas [Neubauer], because they had maxed out the game. When I started the project, I said, “As long as we can get those two guys in a room competing, something good will happen.” The thing with Thor came about later, because he’d never verified any of his scores — they were things he did in hotel rooms in L.A. back in the ’90s that some kid witnessed. So he had this lore surrounding him that went beyond the other kids in the competition. His picture was in Nintendo Power, and he had such memorable name. Everyone linked him with that film The Wizard with Fred Savage and Christian Slater, and people thought of Thor as the real-life version of The Wizard.

So his importance in all of this emerged, and it became more and more obvious that he was already slightly famous. For me, that was something I had to discover on my own — it wasn’t something I knew going in. Everything you see in the movie — the rumors surrounding him and such — that was what I was experiencing behind the camera. I try to let his appearance in the film and what he does speak for itself, but for me, behind the camera, I was experiencing the same thing people on the other side of the camera were experiencing. I didn’t know this guy. I didn’t know if he would even show up, and I was ready to make a movie without him. So it was good fortune that he was ultimately interested in being involved.

We’ve seen quite a few documentaries about video games and gaming culture over the last few years, from King of Kong to more recently, Indie Game: The Movie, and now Ecstasy of Order. Why do you think that is?

It’s becoming the dominant form of entertainment in our culture. Video games started outgrossing Hollywood as long ago as 2004, and we’re on the cusp of this wave. Not too long ago, film was looked down upon as a medium. Theater was the real thing, and literature was the real thing, but film was this tawdry, seedy thing that you wouldn’t want to put your name on. I feel like video games are coming out of a phase like that now, too. If an actor did a voice in a video game a couple years ago, he or she might use a pseudonym, but now people are proudly being a part of this stuff and it’s being viewed as a real art form.

Even though Tetris doesn’t exactly fit in with all that, right now our whole culture — including academia — is scrutinizing video games and what they mean to us, while a few years ago people were dismissive of it. That can be seen in the fact that this movie is being screened with Indie Game at an event hosted by MIT. I grew up with video games, and I feel like a gamer myself to some extent, but I feel like the people who weren’t part of that and didn’t have that experience now have this intense curiosity. Those people are starting to realize that this isn’t just a trend, it’s a part of who we are now.

This movie chronicled the 2010 championship, so what’s happened in the aftermath? Has there been an epilogue that people should know about?

There have been a lot of updates as far as the players. We had another tournament in 2011, and I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say that the tournament in 2011 was really exciting and the rankings ended up a little different. We now have five people who have maxed-out the game that we know of, and I think that number is going to keep growing. I joke that this movie is the worst thing I could do to everyone for their standings, because all of these new players are coming out of the woodwork. People all around the country, they’re sitting in a screening, and suddenly they realize that they’re as good as someone in the movie. I think my best all-time score would’ve ranked me 15th when the movie started, but now I’m down around the 30s now.

What did you learn about Tetris and what sets it — and its fans — apart from fans of other games?

I felt that the Tetris players were a very diverse group, as opposed to what you’d get if you did a documentary about Call of Duty or something like that, you know? I think there’s a whole spectrum of personalities represented in Tetris players. People might have it in their minds that these Tetris players will all be run-of-the-mill eggheads, but it’s not like that at all.

When the film received such positive buzz on the festival circuit, were you surprised? Did you expect it to have this sort of mainstream appeal?

I was shocked. People who have never even played a video game tell me it’s one of their favorite documentaries. I absolutely didn’t predict that. I thought people who were in their 50s or 60s, who never played video games, would take one look at it and run away screaming. That hasn’t happened at all. I’m blown away by how accessible it seems to be. I assumed it would be sort of gamers-only, but I thought that was okay, because there are millions of gamers. But it hasn’t been that way at all, so I’m very happy.

And if gets more people interested in Tetris, that can’t be bad, either…

[Laughs] That wasn’t necessarily my goal, but hey, that’s fantastic.

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters is available this week on various Video-On-Demand platforms, including PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, and will be available for download next week on iTunes. You canget more information about the movie at EcstasyOfOrder.com.

Hate the ad playing on YouTube? Lucky for you, YouTube is integrating its TrueView skippable ads in its mobile platform.

YouTube changed the way advertisement could be watched in 2010 when it introduced a new form of skippable video advertisements, TrueView. As of today, TrueView’s ad-skipping feature is available for users of YouTube’s mobile site.

Surprisingly ,video viewers will sit through and watch ads from beginning to end, whether it’s an overt attempt by an advertiser to create a viral video, or the latest movie trailer. They’re more likely to skip through the ad if it has absolutely nothing to do with the viewer’s interests, however, or if it’s an ad that has been watched once before. In either ad viewing scenarios, the advertisers are only charged if the ads are watched for at the least thirty seconds, or to completion for an ad that is shorter than thirty seconds. Users are given the option to skip the ad after five seconds of the ad playing.

“Giving viewers choice over ads they watch has led to a better, more engaged viewing experience, benefiting the entire YouTube community of users, advertisers, and content creators,” Phil Farhi, group product manager of YouTube, said in a statement.

YouTube’s mobile platform is critical to its strategy, as more consumers carry multiple devices on the go. According to YouTube, more than 20 percent of global YouTube views come from mobile devices. And based on their latest figures, YouTube is available on more than 350 million devices. In the latest Nielsen figures measuring the top online video destinations, YouTube topped the charts with over 136 million unique viewers and over 16.5 billion total streams in May 2012 alone. 

“We’ve only just begun testing TrueView on mobile, but early indications are that people engage with these ads in the same way as they do on desktop,” Farhi said. “This is just the start — we’ll continue to innovate to bring the best of video to the best of mobile”

In a move that may affect YouTube’s mobile views, Apple recently decided to not renew its licensing contract for the native YouTube app, which will be excluded from its forthcoming iOS 6 mobile operating system. Instead, users will be required to download YouTube from the iTunes store, or simply browse YouTube through its mobile site. While this will undoubtedly affect the number of views garnered from mobile devices, it will also allow YouTube to monetize videos on its new iOS app, which was not possible on the native iOS app.

The first-person shooter adaptation of The Walking Dead will explore the stories behind two of the show’s strongest characters.

Like the limb-dragging zombies it depicts, The Walking Dead franchise has already transformed once from a little-known comic series to a hit TV show on AMC. Now, Activision has enlisted game developer Terminal Reality to give it yet another life: As a first-person shooter. Fans of the show, which has become one of the top cable series on TV, will get an origin story for Daryl and Meryl Dixon.

“These guys seemed like a perfect fit for the game, because as we looked at the Internet and what the fans really liked, they really loved Daryl,” said Glenn Gamble, principal effects artist, Terminal Reality. “If you’ve watched the series over the course of Season 2, he really has shown this huge growth in his character.”

Working with AMC, Terminal Reality has planted the seeds of what Daryl becomes in his early days. The game will sketch in a number of details from his past, including how he acquires his famous crossbow, what he was doing when this whole apocalypse went down, and what events transpired to bring him and his brother to Atlanta.

“We’ve also got other aspects in the game,” said Gamble. “These two guys seemed like a perfect fit because they’re also natural hunters and survivalists. Since this game is focusing heavily on survival, that format fits them really well.”

Like the television series, the game will challenge players with more than just aiming at “walkers.” The structure of the game will allow players to make decisions both minor (like what direction to venture), moral (like which survivor to invite into your truck) and tactical (whether to shoot the undead with a headshot and risk more coming your way).

Because of the horde mentality of walkers, Gamble said guns are usually a last resort in taking out these zombies. Melee weapons, which are strewn throughout the game world, make a more discreet way to eliminate threats. The game also rewards players for avoiding walkers completely, something the characters in the TV series do regularly. Sometimes it’s hard to see enemies, which blend into the surroundings. And dark areas inside structures are perfect places for zombies to take you by surprise. One bite is all it takes to end your life, and the game.

The undead won’t look alike in this game. Terminal Reality is randomly generating its zombies from a palette of hundreds of options, including skin tone and quality, animation, eyes, wounds, and other deformities.

The Dixons aren’t the only humans remaining in the world. They’ll come across many survivors as they navigate towns, cities and open fields on their journey to Atlanta. And not every human will be equal. For example, a hunter will be a sharpshooter when targeting walkers, but a doctor can find the necessary medicine to keep your group alive.

“We’ve been working on an original story that takes place only a very short time after the apocalypse hits,” explained Gamble. “AMC has been really helpful in helping us guide our story, so it feels more like a story arc and not just like an episode of the show. There are certain rules we need to follow from the show, like: Walkers are slow and stupid and they can’t use weapons or anything like that.”

Many of the developers at Terminal Reality were fans of the show even before Activision approached them to develop this prequel. Gamble said fans will get a lot more back story and history.

“I’d love to tell you some of the ideas we have of where to take these characters, but unfortunately, I don’t want to ruin anything for anybody,” said Gamble. “I can guarantee you that there will be some surprises along the way and a lot of interesting events. Hopefully, if you re-watch the first episode of season one, you’ll see these guys in a different light after you play the game.”

Gamble said the game’s focus is on a survival-FPS type hybrid. The player has to figure their way across a town. They can look for supplies to help them out later as they’re travelling, or they can try to blaze their own trails. There are all these open options to the actual game and how the player plays it themselves.

“You’re travelling across Georgia, collecting resources, and finding other survivors,” said Gamble. “We’re trying to go with a deep story, because that’s what Walking Dead is all about, that deep story with engaging characters. The Walkers are there to never let you feel comfortable. Then we’ve got the whole FPS aspect of it, where the player is actually in survival scenarios, going through a town that’s maybe abandoned. Maybe there’s someone trying to get their attention or trying to send a signal.”

Because of the decisions players will make, the adventure should offer a variety of twists and turns that separates one player’s experience from another. Gamble said this game will separate itself from the critically acclaimed The Walking Dead from Telltale Games, which is based on Kirkman’s comic book.

“It’s actually a great world that we live in that we can actually have two Walking Dead games at the same time,” said Gamble. “As a fan and a developer, I’m excited to be working on one and being able to play the other.”

With the third season of the show debuting this fall, the new game will launch in 2013 to offer fans another entry into Kirkman’s acclaimed work.

A third Humble Bundle has come to Android, this time with top titles like World of Goo, Osmos, and BIT.TRIP BEAT.

If you haven’t played any awesome little indie games lately, now is a great time to catch up. The Humble Bundle for Android #3 — a package of games you can name your own price for while also supporting charity — has one week remaining before it expires. To sweeten the pot for potential players, four new games have been added to the already stellar line-up. You can now net nine top-notch Android games for $6.22, though the basic four games bundle is unlocked for any price you decide to pay.

If you decide to opt to name your own price and go below the average purchase price, you’ll find yourself in possession of Fieldrunners, BIT.TRIP BEAT, SpaceChem, and Uplink. For $1, a Steam key will be included, making the games available on your PC, Mac, or Linux computer. If you pony up and go above and beyond the average purchase expense — currently at $6.24 — you’ll also nab these top notch titles: Spirits, World of Goo, Osmos, Anomaly, and EDGE. No matter how much you kick in, you’ll be rewarded with the soundtracks of your new possessions as well.

The Humble Bundle has been distributing packaged indie games at a discounted price since the spring of 2010. In the 14 Humble bundles available since its launch, the packages have sold just short of $20 million. The money is distributed amongst the game developers, charities, and the Humble Bundle company itself, and the amount for each is determined by purchasers. The Humble Bundle for Android #3 has brought in half a million dollars in its first week. Pitch in however much you’d like to that total and snag some great Android titles.

PS Vita needs a price drop now more than ever as troubling sales figures are disclosed.

The Nintendo DS is the second best-selling video game console of all time, its 152 million plus total bested only by the PlayStation 2. Hence why when Nintendo shipped (sold to retailers, not customers) more than 3.6 million Nintendo 3DSs during its first two months on sale, it was still considered a monumental failure as a successor to the DS. Then again, in an era when Apple can sell 1 million pre-orders for an iPhone just 24 hours after it’s announced, the stakes in the portable electronics market are a little different.

All of this is to illustrate this point: The PlayStation Vita isn’t doing so well.

Sony told Joystiq this week that, since December 2011, it has sold just 2.2 million PS Vitas around the world. That’s up from 1.8 million worldwide as of May, but still troubling for a device edging up on its one-year anniversary.

The Vita needs a price drop. Bad. Nintendo dropped the 3DS’ price from $250 to $170 in July 2011 and by September its worldwide numbers had jumped to just under 6.7 million.

Sony says that it will not drop the price of the PlayStation Vita any time soon though. There are great looking games for Vita on the horizon, but Sony needs people to actually pay for the system. Time to make a choice, Mr. Hirai.

Verizon appears to be sticking with its plan to support Windows Phone 8 later this year. A Nokia phone may hit Verizon shelves.

Windows Phone 8 may be making an appearance on the Verizon network later this year. Bloomberg is reporting that sources with information on the matter say a Nokia-made handset running Windows Phone 8 will be released on Verizon this year, making it the first Windows Phone to land under Verizon’s coverage since May of 2011. 

This announcement not only puts an end to a long drought for Microsoft products on Verizon’s network, but also shows Verizon’s intention of making good on previous promises. Earlier this year, Verizon promised to give the Windows Phone a major push in the mobile market. The smartphone market is a pretty deep pool so we’re hoping Verizon has prepared some floaties for the little brother of iOS and Android.

While a new Windows Phone might not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, remember that the platform hasn’t received much publicity to date. Verizon has only sold one Windows Phone in the two years since Microsoft unveiled the operating system and it was right as the carrier shifted its efforts toward 4G LTE devices. If Verizon follows through on their plan to back the Windows Phone 8, there’s a chance that the OS could see a surge similar to the one Android experienced when Verizon committed to the original Droid. It also gives Nokia a third major carrier to house its product on and a potential outlet for feature devices. AT&T has been the biggest supporter of Windows Phone, but T-Mobile picked up the lower-end Lumia 710 last year. This is, of course, assumes that Nokia’s device sells better than the ill-fated Microsoft Kin, a device Microsoft very much wants us to forget.

The newfound partnership could also help Verizon become less reliant on iPhone sales. Apple takes a sizable royalty for each iPhone signed up to a carrier’s network, plus takes in profit from the actual hardware sales. This system puts carriers at the whim of Apple. For Verizon, pushing Windows Phone is a way of fighting back. Introducing another major player into the game could chip away at Apple’s market share and put control back into the hands of the providers. It’s a very subtle type of warfare that mostly take place behind spreadsheets and thick-rimmed glasses.

Two years after its debut, Kinect's price is dropped. Is it a sign of life or a quiet fade before the next generation of Xbox tech?

Want to get hardware moving? Drop the price. Microsoft’s doing just that with the Kinect. The price drop is more than just a good sales pitch though: It’s the herald of new technology.

The Xbox 360 has enjoyed an Indian summer these past two years. Microsoft’s console turns 7-years-old in November, and the technology in its guts is even older, but a slick console redesign in 2010 and the release of the hands-free motion controller Kinect later that year rejuvinated the Xbox business. It has been the best-selling home console in the US for two years running. All good things must end though, and the Xbox 360 is starting to show its age at retail. In April, Microsoft announced that global sales of the Xbox 360 were down 50% year-on-year and they haven’t recovered since. In the US alone, 360 sales were down 26 percent in July compared to 2011.

Microsoft’s been particularly canny about dropping the price on the Xbox 360 though, only recently cutting down to a $99 price point, but as part of price gouging subscriptions plans run through Best Buy and other retailers. What’s an alternative? Dropping the price of the Xbox 360’s close hardware companion, Kinect.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it would drop the price to $109.99 in the US. An unusual price, but one with some canny psychology behind it: Dropping Kinect to $99 would label the device as outmoded to consumers, while keeping it above $100 marks it as a discount on what’s still considered cutting edge technology.

The Xbox 360 Kinect isn’t cutting edge anymore though. It was surpassed thanks to the Kinect SDK for Windows in 2011. Microsoft’s next-generation of console technology is already out in the development wilds. An Xbox 720/Durango dev kit showed up online in July, and the same anonymous leaker posted images of the Kinect 2 running earlier in August.

The price drop for the Kinect is how Microsoft aims to bag one more holiday season of profit out of its aged hardware. It keeps the 360 price up while still luring in customers with a discount. In 2013, the Xbox 360 and this Kinect will become Microsoft’s very first budget line of game hardware.

The last hurrah comes at a good time for Microsoft too. There’s Halo 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Forza Horizon and solid Kinect games like Dance Central 3 and Fable: The Journey out this fall. It’s a good way to go out. That said, you’ll be able to get ye olde Kinect for even cheaper in less than one year.

Superfluous slow-motion, CGI bullets and wire-assisted acrobatics abound in the latest Resident Evil: Retribution footage.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: The Resident Evil movies are not good movies. They’re shallow, the characters featured in them are one-dimensional, and they aren’t even all that terribly faithful to the Capcom video game series that serves as the film’s source material.

Of course, that’s all speaking objectively. Subjectively the Resident Evil films are a lot like those Peeps-brand marshmallow baby chickens: Yes, they have no redeeming nutritional value to speak of, but when the mood strikes there are few things as decadently satisfying as a vaguely chicken-shaped blob of fluffy sugar. Likewise, though the Resident Evil films offer no real useful commentary on the plight of the modern man, if you catch one on TV late at night and want to see zombies being kicked to pieces by attractive women, then yes, they will serve that niche nicely.

Why did we begin this piece with that clarification? Simple: We’re about to show you some almost brand-new (it has been previously seen at this year’s Comic Con) footage from the upcoming Resident Evil: Retribution and we want to make sure that you all know what you’re getting into by pressing “play.” Effectively, this clip is 2:20 of cliches that the Resident Evil films have already run into the ground (slow-motion, bullet time, anything else it could possibly lift from The Matrix) jam-packed into a single ice ax fight. Again, it’s not objectively good, but it’s certainly attractive eye-candy.

Also, fans of Capcom’s Resident Evil games will delight to see Jill Valentine as the character squaring off against Alice, the Milla Jovovich-portrayed character invented specifically to be the heroine of these films. Actually, not only is it Jill Valentine, but it’s the arguably inferior Resident Evil 5 iteration of the character in which she’s totally nutbar, wears a skintight vinyl catsuit and has some kind of organic ruby embedded into her chest. Please note that this is the same version of the character later seen in the Marvel Vs Capcom 3 games, though since she’s not Mega Man, the Internet probably won’t get too excited about that.

Finally, we have Michelle Rodriguez’s character. Yes, she died in the first Resident Evil movie, but as you can see from this footage, she got better. Though her handy syringe accessory makes an utterly baffling noise when used, we’re happy to see the former corpse benefit from medical science. That whole “eject bullets from your fingertips into the snow at low speed” thing seems like a really effective tactical option.

Did you guys get the sarcasm there? We were laying it on pretty thick, but couldn’t tell if you’d get it or not. In the end, this clip mostly bores us. We’re as up for meaningless, mindless entertainment as the next person, but based on this clip the Resident Evil series is just recycling its ideas ad nauseam until people stop going to theaters to see these things. Hopefully the full movie, which hits theaters on September 14, has a few more novel things to show us.

Ubisoft is the latest big publisher to turn to free-to-play games to combat piracy in its PC games business.

Ubisoft wants you to play its games. It wouldn’t make them if it didn’t. The French publishing giant does, however, want you to pay for the games you play. It doesn’t really care if you download them from the Internet, buy them from a store, or rent them from someone. As long as that copy of Assassin’s Creed III your playing saw some cash involved, Ubiosoft’s happy. (Unless you bought it used from GameStop, in which case it would prefer you buy a Uplay Passport.)

It’s getting a little pushy about how you buy its PC games at least. Uplay PC, a Steam and EA Origin competitor, opened for business last week. Ubisoft has every right to sell its downloadable PC games directly to people but seeing as how the Uplay network is really an elaborate form of digital rights management—one that’s left users’ privacy exposed in the past—it’s tough not to wonder if the pub’s being a little overzealous.

Maybe it’s not being zealous enough. Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot told GamesIndustry International in a Wednesday interview that on PCs, the number of people who pay for retail games and free-to-play games is identical. Just 5 to 7 percent of players spend money on PC games. That means that 93 to 95 percent of people playing multi-million dollar releases like Assassin’s Creed 3, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist are playing pirate versions of the games. That’s a tough statistic to swallow for any business, even one as big and profitable as Ubisoft. That’s why, like its chief competitor Electronic Arts, Ubisoft is reimagining its PC business as free-to-play first and foremost.

“We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it,” said Guillemot, “The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn’t previously—places where out products were played but not bought. It’s a way to get close to your customers, to make sure you get revenue.”

He goes on to quote those troubling statistics about which of those customers pay and which don’t. From the perspective that Ubisoft has found a way to continue making money so it can fund creative projects, the free-to-play revolution is great. Free-to-play won’t replace Ubisoft’s biggest moneymaker anytime soon though. Retail console games are still king. “We must be careful because the consoles are coming. People are saying that the traditional market is declining and that F2P is everything—I’m not saying that. We’re waiting for the new consoles—I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. This time they took so long so the market is waiting.”

The FBI has taken control of three websites for allegedly offering the illegal download of Android apps.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that it has begun seizing websites for allowing visitors to illegally download Android apps. So far, the FBI, in coordination with international law enforcement partners, has taken control of three websites as part of the federal government’s latest anti-piracy efforts.

The seized websites are: applanet.net, appbucket.net, and snappzmarket.com. Anyone who tries to visit these sites will be met with a “seizure banner,” which indicates that a site has been taken into custody by federal authorities. The DoJ says that preventing mobile app piracy is a “top priority” for the U.S. government.

“Cracking down on piracy of copyrighted works – including popular apps – is a top priority of the Criminal Division,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, in a statement. “Software apps have become an increasingly essential part of our nation’s economy and creative culture, and the Criminal Division is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to protect the creators of these apps and other forms of intellectual property from those who seek to steal it.”

U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of the Northern District of Georgia added that copyright laws protect mobile apps to help “encourage the hard work and ingenuity of software developers entering this growing and important part of our economy.” Yates added that the federal government “will continue to seize and shut down websites that market pirated apps, and to pursue those responsible for criminal charges if appropriate.”

The FBI claims to have downloaded “thousands of  popular copyrighted mobile device apps” from these websites. Many of these apps were stored on servers based in countries outside the United States. Because of this, the FBI worked with law enforcement agencies from various other nations, including the Netherlands and France. U.S. authorities also issued nine search warrants in six domestic districts located in Mississippi, Michigan, Indiana, Rhode Island, Florida, and Texas.

The FBI is one of 19 federal agencies that make up the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), which orchestrates the U.S. government’s anti-piracy efforts. In mid-July, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, seized 70 domains over copyright infringement of physical goods, like Beats headphones and Tiffany’s jewelry. Since 2010, nearly 850 websites have been seized by the U.S. government over copyright infringement allegations.

As mandated by the 2008 PRO-IP Act, law enforcement may seize a website after presenting sufficient evidence of copyright infringement to a judge. The seized website’s owner may then counter the authorities claims. But even if the site has been seized without having broken the law, it can take many months for control of the domain to be handed back to its rightful owner. In at least one case, that of hip hop site DaJaz1, the feds took an entire year before admitting that the website had not violated any laws and handing back control of the website.

Hitman: Absolution players will be able to design their own challenges for other players in the new multiplayer “Contracts” mode.

Square Enix and IO Interactive used Gamescom 2012 to debut a brand new online mode for Hitman: Absolution. A new “Contracts” online mode allows gamers to create and share their own custom hit challenges within the game. Gamers can choose a level, targets, weapons, and then set the rules for completing the contract based on time, style and witnesses. Everything is done without a complicated editor. Tore Blystad, game director on Hitman at IO Interactive, detailed this innovative new online mode in the exclusive interview below.

Can you explain how ‘Contracts’ works in Hitman: Absolution?

In Contracts mode we enable it so that every single character in the game is a potential target and the player can choose for themselves how to play through it. So they can go into any section of the game, select their targets in whatever way they choose, and then exit. They can then make this into a hit and send it to their friends.

What do you feel that user-generated content does for the longevity of the multiplayer?

The Hitman fans have always been doing this with the previous games, even though there was no support for it in the game. Because the gameplay in the Hitman games is based on the AI running by itself, there’s no scripting of whatever they’re doing. It means that essentially, however you want to play through the game, the AI will adapt to your play style. That makes a feature like Contracts very natural for us to create. Enabling anyone to be a target is the same thing we’re doing when we’re creating the game itself. So it was a very natural succession. We believe that this will give the game a lot of longevity because basically you can create an infinite amount of hits within the game.

Can you talk about the depth of what there is for people to create in this mode?

The special thing about Contracts is that you actually have to play the game to create the contracts. That means that you open up a level, you go in and you select which weapons and disguises to bring with you, and then as you go around you can target in the level and say, ‘this guy is a target’ or ‘that guy over there is a target.’ The way you choose to take him down in whatever disguise, if you hide his body or not, all of these things are logged and become a part of that contract. If you look at the regular hits within the game, this is something that is far more specific and you can go into great detail in saying, ‘I want this guy taken down with a knife while wearing a chicken suit.’ Whoever wants to make the perfect play through this contract will have to do the same thing as you. They can even one-up you by performing the hit correctly but doing it faster than you. They can challenge you to beat them at the same hit. If you want to create a contract that’s just about killing this guy over here and then getting out, you can turn all these conditions off and say the contract is very simple. It’s just a regular hit.

Tore Blystad

What impact do you see this mode having for the diehard fans that have been playing these games from the beginning?

We can see, after we announced it, that the fans just exploded online. They really, really love it and it was made for them. They can really see that this is something that will give the game something that the other Hitman games didn’t have. Contracts will hopefully keep them playing and enjoying it for a long time.

What are your goals heading into this new Hitman game?

With this new Hitman game we were looking at all the old games that we made and the legacy that we have, and basically taking apart every single game mechanic and putting it back together to create a more dynamic experience. Absolution is a more modern game then the old games. Previously, Hitman games have been notoriously hard and punishing for the players, only allowing the most hardcore players to enjoy them. We wanted to make it a more open experience, where the game wouldn’t punish the players as hard as the old games.

How has new technology enabled you to bring this game to life?

We built an entirely new technology for this game centered around AI, rendering, and the audio portions of the game, which is very central to us. We wanted a very cinematic experience combined with the very open nature of the game. It’s basically the player’s choice, whatever is happening. Then we needed a very flexible system from the engine to support being cinematic in any kind of circumstance.

Can you explain how Glacier 2 technology was created?

When we started on this game, we found out that the in-house technology that we had was running very old. We either needed to license something, or build something ourselves. Since IO Interactive is very much based on technology in-house, the old games were very renowned for their innovative technology. We decided that since there wasn’t anything on the market that we could use directly, we would rather build our own technology and tailor it for this game. The AI that we have is very advanced. It’s far beyond anything we’ve done in the past. Also, on the rendering side, to be able to live up to the art direction that was made, we built our own renderer as well.

How did you design this game’s environments?

We’re going for a darker and more dense style then before. It’s still a humorous game in many ways, but every location is very dense with detail. Since it’s a game that incorporates exploration, stealth, slow-paced gameplay, and a lot of voyeurism, we needed to build locations that were extremely rich in detail to be able to keep the players around for a long time to explore the environments and the characters within them.

What’s it like for you hitting the home stretch now and having that release date in sight?

It’s great. It’s always tough to finish off a game. Back home in Copenhagen they are working 24/7 to make this happen, but having a deadline and knowing that it will be out soon it’s tremendous for us. We’re very happy with that.

SCE Liverpool Studio, the creator of WipeOut, was shuttered on Wednesday while it was working on two PlayStation 4 games.

Compared to Nintendo and even Microsoft, Sony has never managed to solidify an identity as a game maker. As a console maker, it’s become synonymous with hubris (the $600 PS3 launch price), obnoxious proprietary formats (Vita memory cards, UMDs), and technological flash (PS1’s Red Book audio, PS2’s DVD playback). The face of the company that makes games has never moved past this hardware face though, which is a shame. Sony has spent most of the past 20 years funding some of the most creative games out there across the broadest spectrum of subjects. Echochrome and God of War were born under the same banner.

Wednesday was a sad day then, as one of the studios most responsible for fostering Sony’s unsung identity as a publisher closed its doors. SCE Studio Liverpool, the team formerly known as Psygnosis responsible for iconic Sony futuristic racing series WipeOut, was shut down.

MCV reported Sony has moved all resources at Liverpool onto other games in development throughout Sony’s other studios. “As part of SCE Worldwide Studios, we do regular reviews to ensure that the resources we have can create and produce high quality, innovative, and commercially viable projects in an increasingly competitive marketplace. As part of this process, we have reviewed and assessed all current and planned projects for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to our European studios. It has been decided that Liverpool Studio should be closed.”

The Liverpool campus won’t close however and Sony will still use it for localization and its XDev, FQA, and CSG-Video operations.

An anonymous source told Eurogamer that Liverpool Studio was knee deep in development on two PlayStation 4 projects when it was shuttered, namely a new WipeOut and a Splinter Cell-style spy game in a brand new franchise.

Liverpool Studio is just the latest of Sony’s internal studios to get the axe in 2012. Zipper Interactive, creator of the SOCOM series, was closed in March just weeks after it shipped its PlayStation Vita shooter Unit 13.

Sony Cambridge (MediEvil), Sony London (EyeToy, Wonderbook), and Evolution Studios (MotorStorm) are what remain of the company’s UK development resources not counting the XDev groups work with independents like Media Molecule (Little Big Planet). Which is to say, Sony’s presence in the UK remains strong. With the exception of Sony London’s PlayStation Eye experiments though, the UK studios are no longer in the business of producing new intellectual property. Sony Cambridge hasn’t created a new IP in 8 years at this point, and multiple new properties in development like Eight Days were cancelled. Liverpool Studio was WipeOut in many ways, but it’s especially tragic that they were closed right when they were branching out.

Nintendo will discuss the Wii U's release in detail at an event in September.Here's what to expect based on past Nintendo console launches.

Nintendo’s been taking its own sweet time letting folks know about the Wii U. Weirdly detailed videos about what each and every button on the Wii U tablet controller does? Nintendo’s got you covered on that front. If you want to know how much the console will cost of even when you can buy one, well, tough. Release date, launch line up, just what controllers and games will come packed in the box: All unknown.

Nintendo announced on Tuesday that it would host an event in New York City on September 13^th. The invitation we received yesterday has a touch of the ol’ Nintendo Hubris in its wording: “Interested in learning more about how the Wii U will change the future of gaming and entertainment?” It promises presentations from Nintendo of America’s unusually popular president Reggis Fils-Aime and hours of play time for those in attendance.

Tantalizing and vague, Nintendo’s favorite teaser tools. The company’s tricksy when it comes to press events. Remember the Nintendo 3DS conference in the middle of E3 2012? Nintendo promised it would reveal a bunch of unannounced games for its handheld and then proceeded to show footage exclusively of games it had already discussed in its main stage press conference. Wily is the word when it comes to Nintendo.

Prognostication—and an ability to recognize patterns—is our specialty though. Here is what you can reasonably expect to appear and be discussed at Nintendo’s September event.

* Release date, price, and bundle details.

No duh. This will be the event when Nintendo finally stops procrastinating and announces when it will put its latest no-a-sure-thing to market. Wii U will likely hit Japan and the US in November, heading to the rest of the world shortly thereafter due to manufacturing hiccups. Expectations are that Wii U will cost $300, and odds are good that Nintendo will put the system out with a game packed in. The Wii’s astronomical success in the US owed much to the Wii Sports pack in, and Nintendo of America knows it. The mystery: Will Nintendo pack in a Wii U Controller Pro? A Wii remote for multiplayer? Unknown.

* A flexible launch line up.

Nintendo will commit itself to 2 or 3 first-party titles for Wii U’s release. These will likely be the divisive NintendoLand and the promising Super Mario Bros. Wii U. Third-party games, particularly ports like Assassin’s Creed 3 and Batman: Arkham City, will also get locked in for day one. Many, many games however will be relegated to the dreaded “launch window.” This means that, best case scenario, games like Pikmin 3 will be out before the end of the fiscal year in March. As the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and pretty much every Nintendo system ever has proven though, games scheduled for the launch window—from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time all the way to Kid Icarus: Uprising—will come out whenever Nintendo feels like releasing them.

What won’t be announced? Nintendo’s online strategy. There will be no news about a unified account system for the eShop or any specific details about Miiverse. Nintendo will claim the day is about the Wii U’s games and launch details. 

Verizon wireless employees are reportedly forbid from taking vacation from September 21-30. Is that when Apple will launch its new iPhone?

Word on the street is, Apple’s new iPhone will go on sale starting September 21. We’ve heard that date before, but now there is new evidence: Jordan Crook of TechCrunch has reportedly spoken with an anonymous Verizon Wireless employee who says that the company has forbidden employees from taking vacation from Sept. 21 through Sept. 30, essentially corroborating previous rumors that Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone will launch on Sept. 21.

We have reached out to our own sources to verify Verizon’s vacation block for the last week of September, and will update this space as soon as we hear back.

As for the actual unveiling of the next iPhone, that’s widely expected to happen on Sept. 12, according to numerous reports that say Apple has a big event planned for that day.

The new iPhone is expected to look much like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, but with a taller — but no wider — touchscreen, which will make it about 4 inches in size, when measured diagonally. The resolution is said to be 1136 x 640, which would keep it in Retina territory. According to a variety of leaked components, the headphone jack will be placed at the bottom of the device, as opposed to the top, where it appears on current iPhone iterations. And a new, smaller dock connector will also likely debut on the new iPhone. A larger battery, updated CPU, and 4G LTE connectivity are also expected updates to the next iPhone.

Aside from the sixth-gen iPhone, Apple may also debut the long-rumored iPad Mini, a 7.85-inch version of the current iPad, which has a 9.7-inch display. Updated versions of the iPod touch and iPod nano may also make an appearance at the rumored Sept. 12 Apple event.

We chat with the Beenox exec producer on The Amazing Spider-Man game about the challenges of building the game alongside the movie.

Spider-Man’s elaborate web work has nothing on the twisted web that Beenox had to navigate in getting the video game epilogue to Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man reboot, which hit movie theaters just days after the game in July 2012. That was the overriding impression we got from a recent chat with Brant Nicholas, who served as executive producer on the game.

Negotiating a Story

The main thing that people might not realize is the number of proverbial cehfs in the kitchen for a project on this scale. Due to the fact that the game is a movie tie-in, and in fact functions as a sort of epilogue to the events of the film, as well as the fact that the movie is based on yet another company’s comic book series, Beenox was in constant communication with both Sony Pictures and Marvel Comics, as well as its Activision parent.

“There are essentially two separate canons,” Nicholas explained. “There’s the Marvel Comics canon and then there’s the Sony Pictures canon that came when Sony licensed the universe from Marvel several years back.”

“Whenever there’s anything that we want to do in the game, not only do we have to get it approved by Marvel, who has to bless it and give recommendatations that we [use to] tweak and to iterate, but then after that we go to Sony, and Sony has to give recommendations that we iterate on and tweak.”

It helped that Beenox was a player in the process almost from day one. Webb was already on board, but there was no script, only the loosest idea of what the story would be, and some general thematic guarantees, both in terms of Webb’s vision and in terms of the story rebooting the film side of the Spider-Man canon.

“We actually worked together with Marc Webb [and Sony Pictures] to review the script together, brainstorm the possibilities, think about the directions that they were going and the directions that they wanted to make sure we went,” Nicholas said.

“Marc really wanted this to be the story of Peter Parker more than it was the story of Spider-Man per se. He really wanted this to be a telling of Peter’s story, and of the love story between him and Gwen, and what that relationship is. Marc worked with us very carefully to make sure that we not only honored Spider-Man as a Marvel character, but that we also stayed true to the story that he was trying to craft.”

Alongside the film creator’s vision are basic Marvel edicts about different characters that simply aren’t open to interpretation. In the case of Spider-Man, it’s the fact that he doesn’t let anyone die. Or, as Nicholas put it: “He is the guy who always saves everyone even at his own personal expense.”

This universal trait for any version of the character resulted in Beenox having to make some changes to the planned game, which was to offer more of a complex plot built around player choice. “In our original story, Spidey had to choose in the first scene between saving Alistair or saving Gwen, and then your choices had impact in the story further on. Due to our ongoing discussions, we realized we were in a situation where Spidey couldn’t let either one of them not be saved,” Nicholas revealed.

“We originally wanted an additional layer of complexity to the story and the decisions for the player, but narratively, for Spidey as a character, his DNA, we would have to write in a way where he could have saved both of them.”

“For each of the characters in our story, we had to find ways to honor that and to stay true to that,” Nicholas added. “It was a long process. Everybody involved wants to write in these cool twists, and sometimes Marvel comes back saying, ‘Ehhhhh… noooo, we don’t think we want you to go that way.’ Or Sony goes ‘No, we don’t think we want you to close the door on this character, we may want to use XYZ in the future.’”

“All those things are part of the ongoing process of negotiating how we introduce these characters… because that has impact on the licensing agreements for each of the characters. The costs are different depending on how you license them.”

Cross-species Compromise

Also important from the game’s perspective was the movie’s handling of cross-species characters and Oscorp genetic experimentation. In the movie, the genetic research of Dr. Curt Connors and Peter Parker’s father feeds into the origins of both Spider-Man and The Lizard. On the game side, those same experiments inform one half of the villains you face off against.

“Specifically with the cross-species characters that were in ASM, [executive producer] Avi Arad and Marc really wanted us to try to drive home the biological emphasis behind the genetic experiments that Oscorp was undertaking,” Nicholas explained. It was another long fight to get legal approval for this fresh take on cross-species characters in the Spidey universe, but in the end it was just an idea that made more sense for a 21st century Spidey tale.

“One of things about Rhino, for example– he began [in the comics] as a Russian spy back in the day, and he got experimented on to give him armor [but] his costume kind of got bonded to him,” Nicholas said. “That story is kind of dated now. It’s not the ’80s anymore. Things have progressed a little further and it’s not the U.S. versus the Soviet Union. So one of the things we wanted to do was update Rhino to be a blend [of old and new].”

The rebooted Rhino actually went through a few iterations during development. Marvel’s feedback to Beenox came with the note that he should be a human with rhino DNA, as opposed to the animal mixed with human DNA that all cross-species characters other than Spdiey and The Lizard turned out to be in the final product. It was Marvel that later came out in an interview with a position that reversed the comic publisher’s initial feedback.,

For Beenox, the goal was simply to deliver a compelling character. “We’ve gone both ways with the character and wanted to find the thing that gave the best personality to him,” Nicholas said. “I can’t really touch on where we’re going with our plans for the next game, but it’s something even cooler.”

The extended fight to bring a new take on cross-species into the game actually worked out to the game’s benefit. Since characters like Rhino and Scorpion were caught up in legal negotiations, Beenox was free to further flesh out the plotline with the introduction of Alistair Smythe to the Sony canon.

Creator of the so-called “Spider-killer” robots in the comics, Smythe brought some classic Spidey villain cred to the narrative while also eventually serving as a research-oriented figure who could be the agent of this expanded focus on cross-species that Arad and Webb wanted the game to embrace, once it was approved.

`These various license approval discussion led to some epic boardroom showdowns. Nicholas descibes meetings in which legal teams from Activision, Marvel, and Sony all faced off to hammer down what could and couldn’t work. “No one could say anything without being quickly silenced if we were going in the wrong direction,” he said, laughing.

Tuning the Rush of Web Rush

Beenox worked within what was roughly a two year development cycle for Amazing Spider-Man. This includes the pre-production work like those aforementioned creative approvals as well as the technology refinement and world-building.

Amazing Spider-Man is the studio’s first open world game, Nicholas revealed that it required a complete overhaul of the engine that previously powered Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time. The new game also introduced an entirely fresh approach to Spidey’s traversal abilities in the Web Rush mechanic. All of which left Beenox with plenty to actively work on while legal teams juggled the content negotiations.

“We just knew [when we first started work] that it was a Spider-Man game and that we wanted to re-introduce Manhattan. Eventually we built things out from there,” Nicholas said, describing how Web Rush grew out of those early conversations. “You’ve never really been able to control yourself in the past. We began right away working on the Web Rush technology, and how we wanted to do that,” he continued.

The traversal mechanic that sees players sending Spidey leaping and bounding off to a designated destination went through at least seven or eight iterations during the two-year development period. There were even times that the team considered dropping it entirely. The goal was to tap into Spider-Man’s natural agility without that translating into a complex set of finger gymnastics.

“We weren’t aiming for the core Spider-Man audience like we might with Shattered Dimensions or Edge of Time,” Nicholas explained. “We were aiming at the market that a Sony Pictures movie might appeal to. With that in mind as our core target, [the question became] how do we make something that is fun and entertaining, and makes you feel like Spider-Man in the movie.”

“We wanted to find a way to actually bring that to the player. So the running along the tops of buses, the bouncing off of walls, the flipping off of flagpoles and all of that, it took us a long time to find the right balance. At one point we had Web Rush going about 250 miles per hour, which was awesome but the slight problem with it is [how quickly you can get across Manhattan].”

It took a great deal of experimentation to get the feel to a point where the mechanic achieved the dual goal of being fun and widely accessible. Even with all of the time spent toying around, there were still certain ideas that never made it into the finished product.

“In the end, we got about 80 percent of what we wanted to get into the game done in time and polished in time to ship with it,” Nicholas said. “We still have another 20 percent of all sorts of extra combat content that I’m not going to talk about. All sorts of environmental interactions and prop interactions that are definitely on our current slate… for some future iteration of the game. They’re the things that we wanted to do, but we just didn’t have the time at the end.”