Rumor: Radeon HD 7990 Set to Launch After Nvidia's Kepler
06:10 - Friday 16 March 2012 by Doug Crowthers - source: NordicHardware

With Nvidia's new Kepler set to release this month, we are now hearing that AMD has the Radeon HD 7990 ready in the wings.

Right before the New Year, we learned about the upcoming "New Zealand" graphics card, which is based on two "Tahiti" HD 7900 series graphics chipsets. With Nvidia set to release its first 28 nm based Kepler card later this month, Fudzilla reports that AMD plans to launch the Radeon HD 7990 just weeks after NVIDIA introduces its new GeForce GTX 680.

Though the final specifications are not known, it is rumored the HD 7990 will feature a core clock of 850 MHz, memory clock of 1250 MHz (5 GHz effective), 6 GB GDDR memory (3 GB per GPU), with 384-bit (x2) memory bus. It will be based on a PCIe 3.0 interface and support for DirectX 11.0 and OpenGL 4.0. In addition, the card will include 62 compute units for a total of 4096 (2048 x2) stream processors, 256 (128 x2) texture units and 64 (932 x2) full color ROPs.


Image Credit: NordicHardware

The one thing we do know based on past experience with AMD's dual-GPUs, is the Radeon HD 7990 will be 1) expensive (suggested price around $850 dollars) and 2) a lengthy graphics card (over 11.5 inches). For those Nvidia fans, I wouldn't worry too much, as it is rumored that Nvidia already has its own dual GK104 card ready to counter attack.

Braben: Used sales are killing single player games

By Fred Dutton Published 19 March, 2012

Elite creator blames pre-owned for The Outsider cancellation.

The market for used games is helping kill off the core-orientated single player-only game, according to UK industry veteran David Braben.

Speaking in an interview with Gamasutra, the Elite creator and boss of Kinectimals developer Frontier Developments argued that stores are less likely to re-order single player titles as gamers are more likely to trade them in once they've finished them. As a result, developers are less inclined to make them as they don't see a return.

"The real problem when you think about it brutally, if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games," he said.

"In some cases, it's killed them dead. I know publishers who have stopped games in development because most shops won't reorder stock after initial release, because they rely on the churn from the resales.

"It's killing single player games in particular, because they will get pre-owned, and it means your day one sales are it, making them super high risk. I mean, the idea of a game selling out used to be a good thing, but nowadays, those people who buy it on day one may well finish it and return it."

Braben suggested that if gamers held onto their purchases and helped stunt the growth of the used market, the prices of new games would start to fall.

"People will say 'Oh well, I paid all this money and it's mine to do with as I will', but the problem is that's what's keeping the retail price up - prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells.

"Developers and publishers need that revenue to be able to keep doing high production value games, and so we keep seeing fewer and fewer of them."

All this is part of the reason why Frontier's action adventure The Outsider was recently sidelined mid-development.

"The fundamental nature of it is of a story-based game, and from a design point of view, the story itself doesn't lend itself very well to being a multiplayer game other than as a tacked-on affair, which we've seen with quite a few games, and it's not generally worked," he explained.

"It just becomes a higher and higher risk. I would very much like it to see the light of day - it's a really good game which we're very proud of, and the story is fantastic. But justifying that is much harder at the moment.

"That's not to say that it won't see the light of day, and I plan to work on it at some point and show what we have publicly."

Braben's stance is at odds with that of Alan Wake developer Remedy. Last month, its head of franchise development Oskari Hakkinen told Eurogamer that the success of solo experiences like Skyrim has encouraged them not to give up on story-led titles.

Iniciado por Aferro

Hola. Pues yo soy de PC. Mi hijo de 14 años mas de consola.
Mi GP 32, mi Nokia y mi PSP al final hans sido mas de mi hijo que mías.

Yo no concibo jugar en el salon. Juego en mi despachito, con auriculares y generalemente en la tarde noche.
Juegos como Stalker (los 3) , Halflife, Dead Space, Seriois Sam, Fear, etc solo se pueden jugar con teclado y ratón.
En general el online es gratuito.
Yo ya no compro nada fisico. Uso la plataforma STEAM y excepto la saga STALKER que la compro nada mas salir, siempre espero a ofertas y normalmente por 10-15 euros compras juegos muy decentes. Encima ya te despreocupas de bajar parches.
No niego el atractivo de las consolas pero yo soy de PC .

Salut

Blizzard: Diablo 3 on Console "Makes Sense"

07:10 - Tuesday 27 March 2012 by Kevin Parrish - source: CVG

Blizzard COO Paul Sams says that Diablo 3 on console "makes sense."

Officially Blizzard says it's "exploring" the possibility of Diablo 3 on consoles. Behind the scenes, it's hiring on new talent to tackle the project like this one position for a Game Systems Designer. Whether or not an actual product will hit the market remains to be seen at this point, but COO Paul Sams says that of all the Blizzard games, Diablo 3 makes perfect sense outside the PC arena.

"We're continuing to explore [Diablo 3 on consoles]," he told CVG. "We think that the way we built it for the PC may need some tweaking, but it will ultimately be the type of game that can really make sense and be really fun, well polished and a true Blizzard-level experience on a console."

So why didn't Blizzard just develop the action/RPG for consoles alongside the PC? Because the company doesn't build games for a specific platform/business model -- they build games that just happen to work perfectly on the PC. Gameplay is the primary focus whereas platform is secondary.

"We have to make sure the game is great and it's something that everyone wants to play," he said. "If we provide a great game, a great experience, the business model - if we're being fair with you - will work. Same with the console; we don't decide up front that we want to make a console product. We just want to make a great game."

"If the best experience involves a mouse and a keyboard, we'll put it on PC," he added. "If it plays better with a controller, that's the route we'd take. If it works on both, and we don't have to make any meaningful alterations or compromises to the experience, we'd make it for both."

Naturally a game like Diablo 3 can't be ported over to a console without a few hurdles to overcome, one of the highest being Microsoft. We've already seen Valve Software struggle to get its Steam-laced Portal 2 on Microsoft's closed Xbox Live network -- Sony was a bit more forgiving with Portal 2 on the PlayStation Network. As it stands now, Valve's upcoming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive won't even feature cross-platform gameplay as originally announced.

That said, Blizzard's Battle.net-connected action/RPG might not see an Xbox 360/720 release at all unless the team makes the multiplayer component Xbox Live-specific. Ultimately that might be costly in both time and money. "If I've got to jump through 17 different hoops and pay a lot more money to be on a console, that causes you to pause," he said. "But that doesn't mean we wouldn't do it if we thought we could deliver a Blizzard-quality product on the platform and it was right for the game in question."

"That's why we're looking at it for Diablo 3; we think that we can have a really exciting and compelling experience that will play well on console in addition to PC We do feel it's an exciting opportunity

Iniciado por mileuristico

Yo también era de jugar en habitación con una tele de 14". Pero cuando pruebas los juegos en una tele de 37" led con hdmi la cosa cambia y ahora no lo cambio por nada. Además la ps3 me sirve como reproductor de dvd, de música (mp3 o cds físicos), fotos, y me puedo conectar a internet y a los canales de tv online donde puedo seleccionar programas y series.

Las productoras de videojuegos están centrando sus esfuerzos en un nuevo frente: eliminar a el mercado de segunda mano. El "te lo vendo" y el "te lo compro" entre particulares está tan arraigado como el oficio más antiguo del mundo y sigue funcionando en facetas del comercio y artículos de consumo tan diversos como ropa, automóviles, y hasta propiedades inmobiliarias. Foros, redes sociales, mercadillos, webs de subastas o el boca a boca son puntos de encuentro habituales para comprar y vender videojuegos, una práctica que permite a los aficionados a este ocio, recuperar parte de la inversión para reinvertirlo en nuevos títulos.

El intermediario es también una figura importante. Las tiendas de videojuegos compran juegos usados a bajo precio y lo recolocan en sus estanterías a un precio superior, pero más bajo que el precintado. Se calcula que el mercado de videojuegos de segunda mano supone más del 50% de los beneficios de las tiendas especializadas.

"Cuando se lanza una novedad, son los mismos compradores los preguntan si el título está disponible de segunda mano antes de hablar del juego precintado", apunta el dependiente de una tienda de Game en la madrileña calle Preciados. "Pueden ahorrarse entre 15 y 18 euros en un producto de 70, y además damos un año de garantía". La tienda supera semanalmente las 50 compras de videojuegos a particulares y unos ingresos de mil euros. "La gente busca la forma de ahorrarse un dinero" afirma el dependiente. También existe el coleccionista, comprador de juegos antiguos. Para el traductor Ramón Méndez, la segunda mano es "una excelente fuente de títulos descatalogados". En los precios "hay de todo" desde títulos que se venden a 10 euros, "a los 400 del juego fetiche de SEGA para mi consola Saturn Panzer Dragoon Saga". No es lo más habitual.

En Estados Unidos representa una facturación de entre 2.000 y 3.000 millones de dólares, la mayor parte se la lleva la cadena GameStop, pese a los esfuerzos de cadenas como Best Buy, Amazon e incluso Walmart. En el Reino Unido y en 2011, la ahora en quiebra Game y su asociada GameStation tuvieron unos beneficios netos de 387 millones de libras. En España no se tienen datos.

Pese que las tiendas afirman que los videojuegos usados "tienen un valor residual" y una función de "devolver crédito a los jugadores" como apuntaba el CEO de GameStop, Paul Raines, para las productoras esto supone dejar de ingresar grandes cantidades que pasan a engrosar este mercado paralelo. Desde hace dos temporadas, aplican políticas y medidas de choque para poner trabas e impedimentos a aquellos que compran juegos usados: el Online Pass, capar el juego online y obligar a comprar un pase para volverlo a activar, deshabilitar logros y recompensas para el segundo en jugar, capar misiones, niveles o los personajes disponibles como la maniobra de Warner Bros privando de la presencia de Catwoman en el último Batman: Arkham City, o despedazar los contenidos para después venderlos como descargables, pese a estar incluidos en el disco.

Todas ellas son prácticas habituales en empresas como Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Capcom, THQ o Sony y han generado una gran repulsa social. En MeriStation los usuarios han vertido comentarios como "poner trabas a la segunda mano debería ser sencillamente ilegal", "supone un maltrato al jugador", "es indignante, nos hacen pasar por el aro", "boicot, boicot y boicot", o "tratan de destruir el formato fisico".

Los últimos rumores apuntan a que Microsoft podría prescindir de los discos en la nueva Xbox 720, por un almacenamiento en la nube. Esto podría traducirse en una política más leonina para la segunda mano si no su total desaparición, aunque la mayoría de los analistas les restan credibilidad por el altísimo riesgo: PSP Go, la portátil de Sony que únicamente funcionaba con juegos descargables desde internet, fracasó.

Los bandos en esta guerra están muy definidos. Usuarios y tiendas contra productoras y estudios. El debate, lejos de enfriarse, se recrudece. Denis Dyack de Silicon Knights, afirmaba que "los juegos de segunda mano están canibalizando la industria". El creador de Minecraft insistía en que precisamente la segunda mano había tenido mucho que ver en la quiebra de Game UK, y recientemente desde el estudio francés Quantic Dream calculaban que su Heavy Rain habría generado cerca de 9 millones de dólares en ventas del mercado de segunda mano.

El siguiente frente son las plataformas de descarga digital. Steam, Origin, Battlenet, PSN, Xbox Live, Uplay o GOG.com. Allí las productoras comercializan directamente sus títulos o los de terceros con unas condiciones más ventajosas, mismos precios para el aficionado, pero mayores beneficios al prescindir de tiendas y de los costes asociados a editar el videojuego en formato físico. Un ejemplo cercano: Blizzard prevé lanzar su esperado superéxito Diablo III a 59,90 euros, independientemente de si se adquiere en disco o descargable.

Iniciado por indenaiks

Objetivo: acabar con los juegos de segunda mano
Objetivo: acabar con los juegos de segunda mano | Tecnología | EL PAÍS