Valve’s Steam service has undeniably emerged as the most well-known digital distribution platform for PC games, but just how much of the digital pie do they consume? Gamasutra reports that according to internal estimates from Stardock, publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire and owner of the Impulse distribution service, Steam takes 70 percent of the market share.
“Our estimation is that Steam — as the current market leader — enjoys approximately 70 percent of the overall digital distribution market with Impulse at 10 percent and all others combined at 20 percent in terms of actual dollars generated per month,” wrote Stardock chief Brad Wardell in their 2009 customer report. Wardell goes on to estimate that digital distribution will have contributed 25 percent of revenue “for a typical PC game publisher on a new title” in 2009.
One of the problems in making Impulse more competitive with Steam, Wardell explained, is that developers who use Steamworks in place of DRM are essentially cut off from Stardock. “Examples of this include THQ’s Dawn of War II, Sega’s Empire: Total War, and more recently Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” Wardell wrote, all of which “limits our content.”
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Are you a Left 4 Dead fan? Do you love burrowing into a game’s directories on your PC and modifying files? Then this somewhat complicated tutorial is for you. A group of modders have figured out how to import the first game’s campaigns into Left 4 Dead 2, and it will only take owning both games, some technical know-how, and quite a bit of patience.
Since Valve has yet to release the SDK for Left 4 Dead 2, the process of modding the game is a little more in-depth than usual. You can find a full tutorial of how to make the process work on L4DMods.com (via Kotaku), but be aware it’ll involve a lot of manually editing file names and transporting certain files from one directory to another. And even then, to get it all working you’re going to need to fiddle with the command console in Left 4 Dead 2 (although honestly, that’ll probably be the easiest part of this process).
So what do you get for all of your troubles? The option to play through No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air, and Blood Harvest from the first game, with the new infected and the new baseball bat melee weapon from the second. Oh, and you’re also going to need to deal with a number of known bugs and issues…
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Right around last week’s release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Microsoft issued a wave of Xbox Live bans, with some reports saying they totaled between 600,000 to as many as 1 million modified consoles. While the extent of the bans was certainly immense (a glance at Craigslist following the culling proved that conclusively enough), Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten denies the number was as stratospheric as a million.
“We didn’t release the number. I cannot explain to you why people would think it was a million people. It wasn’t a million people,” Whitten said in an interview with VentureBeat, where he also called the process of banning XBL users a “cat and mouse game.”
“These were people that were pirating software,” Whitten explained. “We try to keep sanctity of life from a safety and anti-cheating perspective and we protect our partners…I think we do a really good job understanding what people are doing on the system. That applies to intellectual property (piracy) and how we treat the community in terms of harassment. We are committed to making it better and better.”
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If you believe that the original Super Mario Kart is still the best, then you’re in luck. The classic racer will be available on Virtual Console next week, along with two other highly-requested games.
GameSpot is reporting that Super Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. and Pilotwings are all on their way to the service, which should be welcome news for fans who have been waiting for the games since launch. They will all be available for 800 Wii Points ($8).
All three games are regarded as classics, with Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. having kicked off two of Nintendo’s top franchises. Pilotwings, meanwhile, was a Super Nintendo launch title that served as a showpiece for the system’s Mode-7 graphics.
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If you were hoping to play games using Android, you may have to start looking into alternatives. Reuters is reporting that Gameloft has “significantly” cut back on its investment in Android games, and that it’s not alone.
“We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,” Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference.
Criticizing the Android application store, Rochefort said, “It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”
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Ubisoft is the nominal publisher for No More Heroes, but that won’t be the case for the upcoming Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports. The publisher told G4 that they’ve decided to pass on a North American release for the game.
In a brief statement, a company representative said, “Ubisoft will not be publishing either of these versions.”
No reason was given for their decision. It’s still possible that No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise will make it to North America, but it’ll be through a different publisher. One possibility is Capcom, which published Grasshopper’s Killer 7 back in 2005. Otherwise, there’s the usual suspects such as Atlus.
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Live TV by Ustream
Time: Friday, November 20, 2009, 5 p.m. PST
Location: Watch the embedded video player above.
This Friday, 1UP invites you to join us while we play the Battlefield Bad Company 2 beta. For those without a PS3, or are stuck at work, this is your best chance to check out the action on day one of the beta. Watch our live stream as we challenge our community members in 24-player matches. We’ll be playing most of the day, so feel free to stop by when you get the chance.
Update: Code Giveaway
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GameZone – 92
The board brings the franchise to life in remarkable ways. There is a decent variety of game modes and the ‘80s look is a nice touch.
Game Informer – 58
The huge level of frustration is not worth the time it takes to master the awkward gameplay idiosyncrasies. Instead, it’s more tempting – even as someone with experience – to just spam the waggle movements for a passable high score.
IGN – 50
Tony Hawk Ride never came together. It straddles an uncomfortable line between casual and hardcore without being satisfying in either respect and it lacks the polish and presentation necessary to cover up the gameplay shortcomings…File this one under “gimmick.”
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Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo revealed to them that a few oft-requested classic titles will be added to the Virtual Console within the coming weeks. According to the report, the festivities will kick off this coming Monday, when Super Mario Kart (which has been available in Japan for approximately forever) will be added to the storefront for the standard price of 800 Wii Points ($8).
Later in the holiday season, Nintendo will also reportedly drop the original Pilotwings onto the platform, then shortly after that, will also toss Super Smash Bros. into the mix. No prices have been announced for these two titles, but according to the Gamespot article, both will be released by the end of the year. That’s just great. It’s not like we’re already drowning in huge, time-draining blockbusters. Now we’ve got to start perfecting our drifting and shell-flinging once again. We appreciate the gesture, Nintendo — but your timing is rotten.
Report: Mario Kart, Pilotwings and Smash Bros. coming to Virtual Console by year’s end originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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