Microsoft has gone after Google before in ads attacking its search and Gmail products, but today the big M has launched a new off-kilter commercial showing off Google Apps’ biggest weaknesses.

The video, titled “Googlighting,” portrays the Google Apps productivity suite in human form as “Googen Apperson,” a slimy salesman who shows up an hour late to his appointment. Apperson has 12 years of advertising experience and is meeting with an executive to sell her company Google productivity software. The executive asks a lot of tough questions, and Apperson squirms in his chair, unable to answer most of them.

Without mentioning it by name, the video is trying to attract businesses to Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity software. Office 365 brings Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Exchange, and SharePoint to the cloud and aims to make collaboration for teams easy. Outside of having more familiarity with businesses, Microsoft is hoping to position its software as better for your company’s privacy in light of Google’s recent controversial privacy changes.

Personally, I didn’t find the ad that funny, but it does make a lot of fair points. While Google Apps is cheaper that Office 365, it still has quite a few limitations. Chief among them is that Microsoft Excel is miles ahead when it comes to spreadsheet creation and management. Excel might be boring on its face, but it is one of the most important applications used in business today. In my hands on with Office 365, I made the case that Excel in the cloud could be the number one reason businesses choose Office 365 over Google Apps.

[Source:VentureBeat]

Now that Bayonetta developers Platinum Games are working on Metal Gear Rising, Kojima Productions is free to work on something else. Like…another Metal Gear Solid game.

The studio has begun a recruitment drive for “the latest Metal Gear Solid” which will be appearing on “high-end consoles and PC”. It’ll of course be built on the company’s proprietary FOX Engine.

Interestingly, it’s being pitched as a global development operation, with positions available in both Tokyo and California.

The last we heard about a new Metal Gear game was when series creator Hideo Kojima saidthere’d “probably” be a Metal Gear Solid 5. And late last year images surfaced of a “new title” Kojima Productions were working on which, with its military leanings, looked very much like aMetal Gear game.

There’s of course no mention of whether this is Metal Gear Solid V or some other project, but given the scale of the operation (and the platforms involved) there’s certainly hope for fans that this’ll be something big.

In addition to the job postings, the below art was also posted to the site. Metal Gear Fans, get speculating.

Big Boss Wants You [Kojima Productions]

[Source:Kotaku]

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare has launched on Xbox Live Arcade this morning following the successful launch of the PC version of the original last week.

The grindhouse action spin-off from Wake 1, which is widely assumed to be a small stopgap ahead of a much-expected Alan Wake 2, sees the writer in Arizona in an episode of Night Springs written by him, as he goes up against main enemy Mr Scratch.

Get it queued to your 360here for 1200 MS points.

Read our interview with Remedy franchise boss Oskari Hakkinen on American Nightmare here.

[Source:VG24/7]

Naughty Dog community boss Arne Meyer has debunked reports the developer is working on PlayStation Vita.

It comes as reports came out yesterday via a GameTrailers interview with PlayStation brand marketing VP Guy Longsworth that said “all of our studios” at Sony’s Worldwide Studios family were working on the system.

The automatic assumption was that also included the Uncharted and Last of Us developer. Not quite, but Meyer said it isn’t ruling out going down the handheld route in the future.

“I won’t say never, ever, but there’s no plans for it right now – we’ve always felt that consoles play to our strengths as a studio the best,” Meyer said in a post on GAF (via EG).

He added in a separate post: “I hate to sound like a treading the line spin-meister here, but I’ve said that traditionally consoles have played to our strengths – and desires to push the utmost limit of resources and memory our tech and engine.

“That can change with the right handheld, as why I said I won’t ever say “never” but we hadn’t encountered that yet – that’s why Jak TLF [Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier on PSP] wasn’t an internal project for us.”

Naughty Dog has outsourced worked on the very first Uncharted game outside the studio to Sony Bend for Golden Abyss on Vita. Get our interview on that with game director John Garvin here.

[Source:VG24/7]

A tweet from EA senior PR Erik Reynolds, noted by CVG, has teased a big Maxis reveal at this year’s GDC conference, which is due to kick off in just a few weeks time. He mentions that more information will be appearing over the next few weeks on the Game Changers Facebook page but there’s already rampant speculation suggesting that it’ll be a new SimCity. We’ll get to find out in 13 days, 20 hours and counting according to the reassuringly massive clock on the Game Changers page, where EA’s GDC event will be broadcasted live to the world in just under two weeks time. Anyone up for some more SimCity?

[Source:PCGamer]

BioWare writer Jennifer Hepler is trying to delete her Twitter account as of yesterday after feeling the hate of gamers who are angry about what she apparently said in a 2006 interview.

She’s been called terrible things on the Internet, after a flame that was lit by a post on Reddit calling Hepler, as the “cancer that is killing Bioware.” She’s worked on Dragon Age: Origins,Dragon Age II, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The original Reddit post that surfaced earlier this month (shown above) was a screenshot of the BioWare forums with alleged comments from Hepler’s interview with website Killer Betties.

Reddit /r/gaming moderator ohemeffgee removed the post for violating Reddiquette. He cited some of the problems:

1. It directly targets an individual. Keep in mind when you sharpen those pitchforks of yours that you’re attacking actual human beings with feelings and basic rights. Follow the Golden Rule, please.
2. On top of that it cites quotes that the person in question never made. This person was getting harassing phone calls and emails based on something that they never did.

The link where the original interview from October 2006 was supposedly posted is now faulty, and in fact the entire site seems to be empty. But you can find the archived version here.

The cause of this uproar appears to have been her response to a question about what her least favorite thing about working in the gaming industry was. Her answer: “Playing the games.” The original Reddit post featured a heavily edited version of the interview, which subtracted the fact that Hepler is expecting a child in the coming months, and therefore has a minimal amount of time to dedicate to gaming. She also mentioned that she finds it difficult to get immersed in a game that is not complemented by a good story: “While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn’t have a good story, it’s very hard for me to get interested in playing it.”

Hepler also seemed to anger some gamers with her suggestion to add a fast-forward button to skip combat in games, similar to the skip button for dialogue and in-game cinematics.

The biggest objection is usually that skipping the fight scenes would make the game so much shorter, but to me, that’s the biggest perk. If you’re a woman, especially a mother, with dinner to prepare, kids’ homework to help with, and a lot of other demands on your time, you don’t need a game to be 100 hours long to hold your interest — especially if those 100 hours are primarily doing things you don’t enjoy. A fast forward button would give all players — not just women — the same options that we have with books or DVDs — to skim past the parts we don’t like and savor the ones we do.

The original screencap posted on Reddit included the words: Cancer, Infection, Sewage, Plague. These are not light comments. Reddit’s ohemeffgee also said that Hepler has been harassed with phone calls and emails from people echoing the statements made by Reddit user corporateswine, who uploaded the first Reddit post that spurred the witchhunt.

Hepler has also been receiving nasty Twitter replies. BioWare’s Studio GM, Aaryn Flynn, rose to her defense against the attackers on Twitter, albeit perhaps not in the most PR-friendly manner possible.

Update: For the sake of balance, we should note that Hepler herself has responded with some fire of her own, Tweeting on Saturday, “I just figure they’re jealous that I get to have both a vagina AND a games industry job, and they can’t get either.”

A YouTube video was created with instructions in the description to send “hate mail” to David Gaider, one of BioWare’s other writers. The harassment has gone so far as to prompt the BioWare writer to try to delete her Twitter account.

Whether you agree with Hepler’s comments on video games and her suggestions for making a better experience still does not excuse the treatment she’s been receiving today.

We’ve reached out to EA PR for comment from Jennifer Hepler, and we’ll post an update as soon as one is available.

[Source:Kotaku]

We could all speculate on what the most wanted next gen feature is on consoles, but what’s obvious is the power of touch. When the next Wii was announced, the most glaring aspect was the addition of a hideous and seemingly unwieldy touch screen controller. I still can’t imagine how games are going to glow with that thing, but more on that later. Recently Microsoft also announced that the next Xbox is going to have touch screen functionality. And of course, the latest Sony handheld, the Playstation Vita incorporates a fantastic OLED touchscreen. So again, no matter what gamers really want for next gen systems it’s obvious developers think slashing and swiping are must haves.The PS4 hasn’t even been announced but it would be safe to assume that thing’s also going to include a little touch action.

It’s easy to understand this latest trend in console hardware. Touch functionality adds another layer to gaming interactivity, making the player even more involved with these portable casual games. The puzzle genre is especially suited to the gaming style, hence the renewed success of games like Bejeweled on mobile devices. If you add some cool physics ingredients into the mix due to highly accurate accelerometers, then you get your game changers like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, the former being so popular that a fourth iteration was revealed just a few days ago. This time, our kooky avian mascots will be taking their talents to space where new anti gravity mechanics add to the fun.

Well fun and interactivity comprise only half of what make touch games so appealing. Cost plays a big deal in this era of touch gaming. It’s not expensive for developers to makes these games. Infinity Blade 2, which is currently the best looking, most graphically intensive game on iOS only took half a year to make with a team of 12 people and a cost of only around a million bucks. Its profit? 10 million dollars and counting. It’s priced at $6.99 at the app store so people just keep snatching it up. Compare that to the big titles on consoles, which take around 70 people to make and years to finish, the cost difference is ridiculous. Game developers would be stupid not to see the up side in migrating to the Touch Side (TM, this phrase is mine!).

So now consoles have wised up and are trying to cut in on that touch action. And why not? Several genres popular to consoles and PCs have also tried their hand in the little screen. You have FPS titles like Modern Combat 3, RPGs like Zenonia, and platformers like Sonic CD. See, even Sega classics are joining the revolution, despite the fact that a touch d-pad is far from optimal for games like this. So who’s got the touch? Well, two years from now it’s going to be everyone and it won’t stop with consoles. The whole tech industry will follow suit. Soon we’ll all be playing Tetris on our washing machines and Angry Birds on our windshields. Time to listen to some Stan Bush.

[Tukkolabs]

When people think about online social gaming, two broad categories of games immediately spring to mind: casual social games and hardcore MMOs. Despite the criticisms leveled by traditional game designers at casual games for their Skinner Box-like appeals to our core psychic compulsions, these games have become wildly popular on Facebook and mobile devices. MMOs, while never as broadly appealing, enjoy multi-year runs and rabidly loyal user bases. One common contributor to the success of both types of games is their unique social mechanics, which might be summarized as follows:

Casual social games:

• Inviting “neighbors,” sending gifts, visiting your friends’ playspaces
• Asynchronous play with asymmetrical, loose-tie relationships

Hardcore MMOs:

• Forming parties and joining guilds, chatting with guild members, coordinating real-time group battles
• Synchronous play with emphasis on symmetrical relationships that build strong ties

As a current designer/producer of hardcore strategy MMOs at Kabam and former designer/producer of casual social games at Zynga, I’ve become intimately acquainted with both sets of social mechanics. And I find both are very useful in developing sticky, engaging gameplay experiences. Neither is necessarily better than the other.

In fact, as free-to-play (F2P), online, multiplayer experiences make up an increasingly large share of the overall games market, we’re seeing titles emerge that mix and match social mechanics from both the casual and hardcore lineages to great effect. League of Legends is a great example of this: Riot’s DotA redux came from out of nowhere to make tens of millions of dollars by combining social mechanics from MMORPG PvP battles, RTS duels, and more casual F2P games to create an entirely new genre, the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA).

Lobby screen in League of Legends.

Much of this evolution of what comprises “social” is being driven by the F2P business model itself. Traditional retail games equate to a single consumer decision: to buy or not to buy. F2P games, on the other hand, feature an ongoing courtship between the player and the developer. Because of the low barrier to entry, players are inherently less committed to any given F2P game. This means developers and publishers must do everything they can to keep players engaged deeply and regularly with their games. This can be done with core gameplay and an effective monetization system; the opportunity cost for leaving a game in which you’ve invested substantial time and money is high.

But “crowdsourcing” engagement and retention to the players themselves via compelling social features remains one of the surest ways to make a game both sticky and fun. A single-player game is a game, but a social game is a community, with all the fascinating human relationships one expects: competition, collaboration, peer pressure, rebellion, jealousy, compassion, and more. The difference between playing Scrabble against the computer and playing Words with Friends is the difference between killing time and a pop culture phenomenon.

So, for today’s F2P online social games, “social” is about the user experience AND about business — the two are inseparable. Game designers must determine which social mechanics fit their game’s target market, gameplay, and business model. Whether these mechanics are traditionally found in casual Facebook games or hardcore MMOs is irrelevant.

Instead of viewing social through this limited, binary lens, this article will analyze player interactions using a set of three general heuristics. The advantage of this approach is that these heuristics can be applied to any online multiplayer game. Freed from a specific game design, their functional value becomes more apparent. Developers can then choose the interactions they feel will best serve their game’s design.

Three Heuristics for Categorizing Social Mechanics

Of the three social mechanics we’ll examine, one relates to the timing of social interactions and two involve the type of social relationship. Together, these mechanics encapsulate the social interactions of most online games:

• Synchronous vs. Asynchronous player interaction: do interactions occur simultaneously in real time or at different times as in a turn-based game?
• Symmetrical vs. Asymmetrical relationship formation: does forming a relationship require input from both parties or can they be formed unilaterally by a single party?
• Strong Tie vs. Loose Tie relationship evolution: do relationships tend to become deep and long lasting or are they more likely to be light and transitory?

Three heuristics for social game features.

Let’s break down each of these heuristics in turn.

Click here to read full article.

[Source:Gamasutra]

The Xbox 360 and Wii are, if you want to stay under warranty, locked entities. You can’t upgrade them at all. The PS3, though, lets you swap out a hard drive, and with the coming of the age of solid state drives (SSD), this can result in big performance gains.

Running a series of tests across games using a standard PS3 hard drive, a hybrid drive (half regular drive, half SSD) and a Samsung SSD, tech specialists Digital Foundry have found that, depending on the game, there are some major improvements to be had in both a PS3 game’s loading times and associated stuff.

RAGE, for example, looked way better, with much of its annoying texture pop-in resolved.Skyrim gets a big boost too, including a noticeable reduction in the “lag” that’s been affecting PS3 owners of the game.

It’s not a magic fix for all games, though. An SSD didn’t do squat for Battlefield 3, nor Kingdoms of Amalur, and only made a slight difference to a range of other titles.

You can see the full run-down, including handy comparison vids, below.

Can SSD Upgrades Boost PS3 Performance? [Eurogamer]

[Source:Kotaku]

A Chinese court is leaning in favor of Apple in a convoluted case over who holds the right to use the term “iPad” in that country.

Chinese manufacturer Proview Technology had owned the trademark, but it failed to transfer the trademarks for “iPad” to Apple, which claimed to have purchased the product name years ago.

“We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago,” according to a statement from Apple. “Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple, and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter.”

Proview Technology says it has owned the trademark since 2001, but Apple says it made a deal to buy the trademark before the iPad was ever released.

Proview has locations in Taiwan, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Hong Kong and Europe, with its Taiwan office acting as Proview Electronics, an affiliate of Proview. The company says Apple bought the trademark from its Taiwan entity. Since the patent belongs to the Shenzhen office, Proview did not feel the need to honor the agreement.

Judge Hon Poon of the High Court in Hong Kong, however, formally disagreed with that assessment.

All Proview’s entities are run by Yang Rongshan, who was the chairman and chief executive of the company until it went bankrupt in August 2010.

According to court documents, the deal between Apple and Proview occured in December 2009, with the “iPad” moniker selling for around $55,000. Apple says it was led to believe all of the Chinese trademarks for “iPad” existed with Proview Electronics, the Taiwanese entity, as proprieter and thus were due the transfer of ownership.

When the iPad was released, Apple found that some of the trademarks existed under Proview Shenzhen and reported it as a “mistake,” after which Proview demanded Apple pay $10 million for the trademark. China Daily reports a lawyer for Proview suggested that Apple either pay the sum requested by Proview or find another name for the iPad.

The financial clues leading up to Proview’s bankruptcy emerged, including a stop on the sale of its stock on the Hong Kong stock exchange. And since all the Proview entities existed under Yang Rongshan, Judge Poon called foul:

“Here, the conduct of all the defendants demonstrate that they have combined together with the common intention of injuring Apple and IP Application by acting in breach of the Agreement. Proview Holdings, Proview Electronics and Proview Shenzhen, all clearly under Yang’s control, have refused to take any steps to ensure compliance with the Agreement so that the China Trademarks are properly assigned or transferred to IP Application (Apple’s third party trademark purchaser). Instead, they attempted to exploit the situation as a business opportunity for the Proview Group by seeking an amount of $10,000,000 from Apple.”

He went on to say, “It is plain the defendants had the necessary intent to injure Apple.. and their conduct will cause damage to them. Accordingly, I am satisfied that there is clearly a serious question to be tried for the claim of conspiracy.”

[Source:VentureBeat]