Call of Duty 4: PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Comparison

PS3 and 360: Scene for scene, screen for screen. Can you spot a difference?

Memento make it even easier to turn the Memor 32 memory card into a PS2 Mod Chip

Russian hackers Memento have finally done away with the DOS command line version of their hack for the PS2 memory card Memor 32 and have released a windows interface version. This software will allow you to turn the standard Memor 32 memory card into a fully featured mod chip device within a few seconds. The Memor 32 is available to buy from Divineo.de / Divineo.fr / Divineo.es and Divineo.it.

Confirmed: Target stop selling Manhunt 2 due to uncensor hack

Target has confirmed that it has stopped sales of Manhunt 2 in its stores due to the uncensor hack found for the game. A statement read that they wish to make guests comfortable with purchasing decisions in Target and while this title does carry an ESRB rating, the hack pushed them into a decision not to carry the title.

Custom Firmware v3.71 M33-3 coming soon from Dark_Alex

Dark_Alex yesterday let members of the MaxConsole forums know that he will soon be releasing custom firmware v3.71 M33-3 for the PSP along with the new popsloader. However, he notes that v3.72 is almost the same as v3.71 so there is no point in a full reflash. He let us know here (Post 63).

Xbox 360 enjoys another month as leading console in Australia

According to GFK sales figures fo October, the Xbox 360 was the top selling next generation console for the month of October in Australia, following on from its success in September with another very good sales performance in the region. Halo 3 also remained as the top selling software title.

Nintendo: Xbox/Playstation have put themselves in a box they can’t get out of

Nintendo\’s Reggie Fils-Aime has commented that their \’competitors\’ Microsoft and Playstation have gone down the path of building expensive hardware of which they lose money on and these machines make games development hard. Fils-Aime claims they have put themselves in a box and he doesn\’t know how they are going to get out of it…

Scene It? Isn’t the big casual hit that MS would’ve hoped for

IGN has conducted a review on Scene It? Which is a move by Microsoft to try and capture a new demographic of casual gamers. They believe that it does not make for anything too revolutionary but it is a decent enough game which can be fun to play with friends. In comparison to the regular game, $60 for the Xbox 360 version does seem like a better value proposition although it\’s nothing that we haven\’t seen before - 7/10.

The mighty Mass Effect is just 6.74GB in size, plenty of room to spare

It has been revealed that the huge Mass Effect is just 6.74GB in size which of course is well within the upper capacity specification limits of a dual layer DVD-9. So hopefully this will fill Xbox 360 owners with a bit of confidence in light of various news which suggest that the medium used by the Xbox 360 is too small for future blockbusters.

Guitar Hero III contest kicks off in USA, win a Pontiac G5

To support the launch of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Activision, Inc. , Pontiac and Hot Topic are teaming up on a national promotion giving Guitar Hero fans, ages 16 and older, the chance to show off their fret burning skills and win a 2008 Pontiac G5.

Microsoft officially unveils Xbox 360 Family Timer

Microsoft Corp. today unveiled a new parental control feature, the Xbox 360 Family Timer. The Family Timer will enable parents for the first time to set the appropriate amount of gaming and entertainment time for their kids, on a daily or weekly basis.

Mario Party DS Preview

House Party

Check out a sampling of Mario Party DS’s gameplay in this movie.
Watch | Download

Nintendo gave us a few minutes with Mario Party DS at its press event a few weeks ago, and now we’ve gotten our hands on a prerelease version of the game to subject it to further scrutiny. Not that too much scrutiny was really necessary–this is 100 percent, grade-A Mario Party. Anyone who has played the recent console versions should know exactly the sort of minigame/board game action they’ll find in the DS game. But that’s probably the most impressive thing about this package, from what we’ve seen so far: Hudson seems to have crammed the full Mario Party experience into the handheld, even if you have only one copy of the game.

Like its console predecessors, Mario Party DS is for four players, though you can play against up to three computer-controlled opponents if you don’t have any friends. You roll the dice and then move that many spaces on the board, and the type of space you land on determines what happens to you. You might get some coins or lose some coins, face Bowser’s wrath, take a shortcut to another spot on the board, or visit an item store to purchase a power-up that will help you out. The ultimate goal of any Mario Party is to have the most stars at the end of the game, and you pick those up as you make your way around the board. Again, this should all be old hat for veterans of the series.

It wouldn’t be a Mario game without Bowser and his cronies causing trouble.

At the end of every round, you’ll jump into a four-player minigame. This is where Hudson seems to have provided the most meaningful new content in the game, since a lot of the minigames take advantage of the DS’s touch screen or microphone. One game we tried had us racing against our foes to hop across a series of candles–but we had to use the microphone to blow out each candle before we could jump onto it. Another game had all four players using a bow and arrow on the touch screen–by pulling back the bowstring and aiming with the stylus–to hit targets on the top screen. Some of the games are three-against-one, such as one where three players run around on a disc with jets of water shooting across it, and the other player rotates the disc with the stylus to make those players get knocked off by the water. The computer-controlled players in the games we played were laughably easy to beat, but the minigames were quite a bit more fun against three other real people.

Surprisingly, it looks as though you’ll get the full Mario Party experience with only one copy of the game via the DS’s download play. We were able to have those three friends join in with the standard download play option, and it only took a minute or so to get into the game and choose one of the same five game boards you’ll find in the single-player game. It seems like all the minigames will be available during a download-play session as well, since the game would transmit data for a few seconds each time we started a new minigame. We can’t say what kind of multiplayer options you’ll get with multiple cartridges, since we have only one copy of the game in-house, but we’ll tip our hat to Nintendo’s generosity for giving you such a robust multiplayer option when only one cartridge is present.

This is classic board game Mario Party, through and through.

As we mentioned in our last look at Mario Party DS, the game offers some other gameplay options outside of the main board game, such as the ability to play all of the minigames you’ve unlocked at will. There’s also a puzzle mode where you can sample a number of puzzle games from previous Mario Party games, such as Bob-omb Breakers, Stick & Spin, and Piece Out. These seem like moderately entertaining time wasters that follow established puzzle conventions, drawing from games like Tetris Attack.

Mario Party DS isn’t reinventing the franchise’s wheel, but if you’re into this series, now you’ll have a DS version you can take with you anywhere. The game has a nice art style, with full-resolution 2D cutscenes featuring some attractively rendered artwork. The game is out in the latter half of November, so look for a full review soon.

-If Its Games

Super Mario Galaxy Review

Here is the game that Wii owners have been pining for, a game that has tons of appeal for both the less experienced player and the longtime gamer. A game that deftly combines accessibility and challenge, all wrapped up in a package that’s both deep and addictive. Super Mario Galaxy is all of this and more. It is simultaneously one of Mario’s best adventures and a game that doesn’t require fandom of the portly plumber’s previous engagements to appreciate. The sheer quality of Mario Galaxy’s wonderful level designs, tight controls, and brilliant presentation is the sort of thing that just about anyone who loves gaming should be able to appreciate, and that many will fall head-over-heels for.

Mario takes to the stars in Super Mario Galaxy.

The premise for Mario Galaxy begins in fairly well-worn territory. Mario receives a note from his beloved Peach to come to the castle, for she has a special “gift” for him. He arrives, only to walk straight into chaos as Bowser and son arrive in a fleet of airships and use a giant UFO to pluck the Princess’ castle right out of the ground. Mario gives chase, but is unable to rescue her before the fearsome twosome jet off into space. This all certainly sounds par for the course, but it’s where Mario ends up that gives Mario Galaxy its own flavor. Mario eventually hooks up with a creature called a luma, from a race that looks like some kind of cross between an invincibility star and a headless chicken. The lumas are led by an enigmatic woman named Rosalina, who lives with them on a crazy spaceship called the comet observatory. Mario learns that Bowser has made off with a gaggle of power stars used to power the observatory. To reach Bowser’s hideout, Mario has to travel to all the various galaxies in the universe to collect as many power stars as he can in order to power the ship back up, fly to the center of the universe, rescue the princess, and set everything right again.

Mario 64, anyone? If you played that seminal game, Mario Galaxy’s star hunt progression probably sounds familiar to you. But apart from that basic structuring, you can hardly call Mario Galaxy a Mario 64 rehash. If anything, Mario Galaxy simply takes the basics of what made Mario 64 such a dynamite game, and turns them completely crazy.

The definition of crazy here has a lot to do with gravity and physics. Each galaxy contains a series of little worlds that can’t even really be called planets so much as they are floating puzzles. In many of these worlds, Mario can walk just about anywhere. When he lands on a sphere, he can walk all over it, going sideways and upside down in the process. Sometimes you’ll simply jump in one area and end up gravitating toward the ceiling or walls or even another nearby planetoid without even realizing it. Often Mario will need to track down launch stars, which, when you shake the Wii Remote while standing near or inside one, will send you flying to a whole new, previously inaccessible area. There are even sections where you’ll be floating through space, using specialized pull stars to hop from area to area, all while floating through the spatial void.

Practically every galaxy you explore is an absolute joy to experience. The level designs here are top flight in every regard, with tons of clever and sometimes dastardly traps and puzzles for Mario to navigate. The difficulty doesn’t start off terribly high, but as time goes on, the game ramps up nicely, building the challenge steadily until the final areas, which, though perhaps a bit frustrating to inexperienced players, provides the exact sort of tough workout you’ve come to expect from a Mario adventure. But even aside from the challenge level, simply exploring all these various galaxies is half the fun. Whether you’re floating from land mass to land mass on a giant spinning flower, running frantically around a giant series of platforms that shrink to nothing the first time you touch them, or taking on one of several terrific 2D side-scrolling areas reminiscent of New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, you won’t be wanting for variety while playing through Galaxy’s dozens of levels.

In a sort of nod to the suit-happy gameplay of Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario can don a number of different costumes that give him new abilities. For instance, in several levels, Mario can take on the abilities of a bee, buzzing around through the air via his new pair of wings, and wall-climbing specific honeycombed areas of the environment. With others, Mario can freeze water to walk over it, launch fireballs (natch), fly, wrap himself in a Mario-sized spring and jump to great heights, turn invincible (natch, again) and even turn into one of those pesky boos, allowing him to float around and pass through some solid walls. In most cases, the game takes great advantage of these abilities in the context of each level. A few involving the bee suit are a bit frustrating (given that you lose the suit when you touch water) and the spring suit is kind of a pain to control given Mario’s perpetual bounciness, but otherwise, these abilities add a great dimension to the already excellent gameplay.

All the crazy gravitational pulling and perspective shifting is undeniably cool, and also potentially a little queasy.

Apart from the screwiness of the spring suit, there’s very little issue to be taken with Mario Galaxy’s controls. At its core, it controls much as Mario 64 did, but with a couple of Wii-centric twists. For one, Mario’s primary attack is a basic spin move (the same spin move you use to activate launch stars). Simply shaking the Wii Remote engages the spin, and it’s an extremely responsive mechanic. The one trick to it is that you have to wait a second before spinning again, so you want to make sure you’re able to get away from whatever bad guy is nearby if you happen to miss.

The other key change is the addition of the Wii Remote as a pointer. Simply by pointing at them on the screen you’ll collect star bits, which can be found just about everywhere and serve as both Super Mario Galaxy’s currency and as a weapon. Firing star bits is as simple as aiming the Wii Remote at an enemy and pressing B to launch. But you don’t want to fire off too many of those, as they come in handy for unlocking new stages later on. Only in a few specific cases does the game really dabble in true motion control, such as sections where you’re surfing on a manta ray or walking on a boulder. But even these few divergences from the standard gameplay formula are largely successful and quite fun.

Mario Galaxy’s journey is scattered and epic all at once. There isn’t much of a thread tying together all these disparate worlds, apart from the fact that they have power stars hidden within them somewhere. And yet, at the same time, the lack of cohesion in what you’re doing never really gets in the way of your enjoyment of it. Because each level is so much an island unto itself, it actually makes each one stand out all the more.

It helps that practically every stage in the game has a great deal of replayability purely on its own merits. These levels are just inherently fun to go back to again and again, and that the game gives you plenty of reason to is even better. Once you complete an area, you can go back and engage in a specialized version of it in certain cases. Essentially, comets will enter orbit in some of these galaxies, and thus change the way you play in some bizarre way. Whether it’s speeding up all the enemies in an area, putting you on a timed run, or having you race against a doppelganger Mario, there’s a nice variety of change-ups to experience. The adventure probably won’t take you more than 12 to 15 hours if you just collect the minimum number of stars necessary to get to the end level, but you can certainly tack on a great deal more to that if you’re into going back and collecting all the stars. And if you want to unlock the game’s neat end surprise, you’ll need to get all of them.

There is even a multiplayer component to the game, albeit a limited one. Another player can point their Wii Remote at the screen and take part in some of the basic fun, like collecting star bits, shooting star bits, and the like. You can even directly assist Mario by pointing at him and pressing A at the same time as your friend to make him do a super jump, and stop certain enemies from attacking by highlighting them with the pointer. It’s not the most involved co-op mode you’ll ever experience, but it can be fun if you’ve got someone enthusiastic alongside you.

As wonderful as Mario Galaxy’s gameplay is, its graphics are even better. There simply isn’t a better-looking Wii game available. A great deal of credit is due to the art design, which is simply phenomenal. The character designs, level details, animations, all of it is incredibly colorful and vibrant, and just a joy to look at. The technical engine does its part as well, keeping the frame rate drops to minor, infrequent bouts. One area especially worth noting is the game’s camera, which takes a largely cinematic perspective, albeit with a limited amount of player control. You can adjust it right or left in certain areas, and go to a first-person view if you just want to look around. There are a few areas where the camera prevents you from seeing things perfectly, but mostly it does an excellent job of framing the action, especially considering all the kooky perspective shifting the game does as you run around these oddball environments. The only thing that’s kind of a bummer is that you’ll undoubtedly wish at some point while playing that the Wii could support resolutions higher than 480p; but even with the limited resolution, the game just looks beautiful.

Some of the new suits are seriously awesome.

Audio is also excellent, thanks largely to the top-notch soundtrack. Much of the music is made up of classic Mario tunes from a wide variety of different games, and it’s all modernized and orchestrated. These are some of the best renditions of these tracks since the originals, and you’re sure to be humming along as you play. There’s little voice work in the game, but the few voice samples that are there are used to nice effect. It’s probably better to just hear Bowser snarling than it is to hear him being a chatty Cathy, anyway. The sound effects are a touch on the shrill side at times, but the bulk of them fit the vibe of each stage nicely.

When all is said and done, the thing that really makes Super Mario Galaxy such a standout game isn’t the fact that it’s another Mario game, but the fact that it doesn’t even need to be a Mario game to be successful. Sure, it’s got all the nostalgic flavor Mario fans would want, with the updated soundtrack, familiar foes, and various other Mario-related bric-a-brac scattered throughout the adventure, but the game never leans on these nostalgic aspects as a crutch. It instead puts the whole of its focus on its gameplay design, and with good reason. You could probably swap in just about any other characters from practically any other franchise, and this would still be a phenomenally fun game. That it layers all these memorable characters and components on top of that phenomenal design just makes it all the sweeter. If ever there were a must-own Wii game, Super Mario Galaxy is it.

SouthPeak, Destineer get Unreal Engine 3

Despite the ongoing legal fight between Epic Games and Silicon Knights over the former’s licensor support for Unreal Engine 3, it appears that developers aren’t shy about signing on to make games that use the technology behind Gears of War. Destineer Studios announced its license to use UE3 this week, and today SouthPeak Interactive confirmed its new studio license for the engine.

The SouthPeak studio license covers PC and console games on all major platforms for the life of the engine, and will be put to use for the upcoming PlayStation 3 game Monster Madness EX. Destineer’s license is for a yet-to-be-announced project.

The two companies’ approaches to using the engine share some similarities. Destineer president Peter Tamte said in a statement that, “We are using the Unreal Engine to make a game for a genre in which you would not expect to see it.” SouthPeak’s first UE3-powered game was Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, which was singled out by Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski at this year’s Game Developers Conference as evidence that the tech could be used for more than just “first-person shooters with a lot of metal and stone.”

SimCity Societies City Spotlight - Robber Baron

Official Trailer

This is the kind of city you could end up with if you choose to play as a robber baron.
Watch | Download

Scheduled for release later this month, SimCity Societies is a city-building game that promises to offer a much more hands-on approach to urban planning than previous games in the series. For example, previous SimCity games let you place zones designated for residential, commercial, or industrial use, but Societies will task you with placing individual buildings. This will not only give you more freedom to design the appearance of your city, but also to impact its residents in ways that simply weren’t possible previously. How you decide to use this newfound power is entirely up to you, of course, and there’s no reason why you can’t put personal gain ahead of the population’s happiness if that’s what floats your boat. Think you might make a good robber baron? Here’s a brief look at what you can expect from SimCity Societies if you choose that path, courtesy of the game’s associate producer.

Robber Baron

By Daniel Alioto

Associate Producer, Electronic Arts

Polluted, dirty, overpopulated, and crime-ridden downtown regions toil away while the fat cats sit behind their walls, as well as police forces, bathing in money. Workers are getting very high unhappiness levels from their work but are receiving, in turn, very high levels of happiness at their “venues,” which causes large mood swings. Limited venue space can create rapid happiness problems if something goes wrong.

These smoggy cities with cracked streets are packed with people–generally with many more people than there are jobs. There is little regard for the health or safety of individual sims and high salaries for employees are almost nonexistent. However, the upside is that simoleons are abundant and the player will have no lack of funds to continue creating the city. Only amongst high turmoil will the production of simoleons come screeching to a halt, which is entirely possible in a city likened to a powder keg.

As a player, you might feel somewhat like a corrupt politician or mob boss, sitting safely behind hired shields and racking in the cash while the sims are breaking their backs knowing that they are expendable. They also know that if for some reason they did lose their jobs, there would other poor souls eagerly waiting in line for them.

The favored homes and venues of the industrial profile used to create a city like this are also breeding grounds for criminals. Making sure to have enough police stations around is going to be important. While you may not care if your city is crime-ridden, you certainly don’t want to let it get too much of a hold on your simoleon production. But just in case it does, you can use your police stations’ special SWAT ability to send out the riot police to round up the criminals and rogue sims. Of course, such an action isn’t free, but with many other industrial buildings offering additions to the treasury as a bonus to the daily grind of the sims, you shouldn’t worry.

SimCity Societies is unlike any previous game in the series.

In SimCity Societies, a city like this looks and behaves as you would imagine. Choked yellow skies and decreased visibility due to smog, with vandalized building textures, as well as an abundance of litter, mar the cityscape. From the music and the lighting right down to the weary sims and their vehicles, this city looks and feels just like a middle-American 19th-century industrial city.

Robber Baron Buildings

These buildings are mostly associated with SimCity Societies’ industrial profile, whereas pollution and poor living conditions are the theme. Injured? Sick? Unable to get to work? We don’t care! We can pack ‘em in so tight that we have enough people to replace the sick and injured at any time! Cracked streets and yellow skies are the norm here. With criminals roaming the streets in droves, this is not a nice place to live! But do you care? No! You are making a lot of money off of your high-population workplaces, as well as their special abilities, which include a production drive and an efficiency drive. The following is a list of buildings associated with the industrial profile:

Brewery Workplace

Colossal Foundry Workplace

Corrupt Police Station Workplace

Dept. of Public Works Workplace

Firing Range Venue

Foundry Workplace

Liquor Store Venue

Loan Shark Workplace

Machine Shop Workplace

Meat-Packing Plant Workplace

Motorcycle Shop Venue

Nightclub Venue

Off-Track Betting Venue

Oil Refinery Workplace

Pawn Shop Workplace

Racetrack Venue

Soup Kitchen Venue

Speakeasy Venue

Steel Mill Workplace

Super Coal Plant Power

Sweatshop Workplace

Temperance Union Workplace

Textile Factory Workplace

Underground Casino Venue

Union Hall Venue

Unionized Steel Factory Workplace

Vigilante Group Workplace

Vocational School Venue

Welfare Center Venue

Check back for a full review of SimCity Societies in the not-too-distant future.

-If Its Games

Q&A: InstantAction pulls out of GarageGames

To most people Web browser-based games entail finding a way out of an utterly obnoxious room or punting an adorable penguin as many furlongs as possible until it lands, typically in the most gruesome fashion conceivable. However, the indie game gurus at GarageGames are hoping to change that perception with InstantAction, an online portal that promises “console-quality” games aimed at a hardcore audience.

Cyclomite will be an InstantAction launch title.

Eschewing the casual-game formula, GarageGames is building InstantAction out with games that emphasize high production values. Rather than being based on Adobe Flash or similar programs, GarageGames has created the technology to enable either its proprietary Torque engine or any other game engine to work in a browser. For its users, GarageGames has built up extensive usability features including leaderboards, friends’ lists, and stat tracking.

GarageGames has already signed on support from both established developers and up-and-coming indie talent. In October, Bungie cofounder Alex Seropian’s Wideload Games announced it would be contributing a launch title to the service titled Cyclomite. Currently, more than 12 games are in development, and while GarageGames wasn’t willing to confirm rumors that InstantAction would feature a Starsiege Tribes successor, a first-person shooter is definitely in the works for the service.

Backed by media conglomerate IAC, GarageGames plans to roll out InstantAction in January 2008. Beta testing is currently underway, and those interested in participating can sign up through GarageGames’ InstantAction placeholder site.

To get a better idea of how InstantAction will deliver hardcore games through a casual-friendly medium, If Its Games recently spoke with GarageGames CEO Josh Williams.

If Its Games: So what is InstantAction all about?

Josh Williams: We’re doing browser games, right? Normally when you think of that, you think casual games because that’s all that exists in the browser right now. What we’ve been working on in the background for a couple of years is technology at GarageGames that lets you do higher-end stuff in the browser. Basically, we can do console-quality, near-console quality games focused on core mechanics, action-oriented gameplay–multiplayer stuff with full 3D shooter graphics in a browser. We have a couple games up and running in InstantAction alpha, which we’re trying to launch in early 2008. We’re going to try to push it as early in ‘08 as we can.

IIG: As far as the service itself, what kind of features are you all building in to it?

JW: Already everyone has a profile on the site, along with a friends’ list. With that friends list, you can go through and track what games your friends are playing. We have real-time presence information, so you can see who’s online, who’s offline, and what they’re playing when they are online. You can invite friends to come into your party.

One of the cool things on the site is that when you have a party of players, you can move from game to game on the site together as a group. Normally, of course, you’d go navigate through one game’s lobby system to hook up with your friends, and if you wanted to switch games, you’d have to pop out the disc, put in another disc, go through another lobby system, and hook back up with people, or at least people who have that game. This way, it’s more like a virtual couch where you’re playing together, moving from game to game. We make the whole process of inviting people to play really easy, and another thing we do is provide a URL, a link, that you can send through e-mail or instant messenger that anyone can just click on. When they click on it, they’ll either join your party, or if you’re live in a game session, they can actually join your game server if it’s not full. The idea there is to make joining a game online as easy as watching a video on YouTube.

We have tons of other features, such as the whole idea of leaderboards and stats tracking for games will be in there early on, and over time, since this is a site online, we’ll roll out more features. In the future we’ll plan competitions and have official support for groups and clans and that sort of thing.

IIG: So the main thing you’re trying to convey with this is that it’s not just Adobe Flash-style games.

JW: Right. The reason you don’t see real high-end games in the browser right now is that there’s no real technology to support it. You can’t do much other than single-player, 2D stuff in Flash. There’s [Adobe] Director, but that’s not great for making high-end games. It’s not really improving the technology. The technology we have allows you to develop a game as if it were for a desktop like normal. You don’t have to worry about the fact that you’re in a browser when you’re developing a game, and you can use any engine technology you like. Of course, we make the Torque game engine, but you don’t have to use Torque to make games for InstantAction and have them run in the browser and integrated with our backend system and platform. It took us a couple years to figure out this tech, but basically we allow you to render in the browser and have nice smooth user input and controls in the browser, as well as hook up to the backend features and services like the friends list and profile and all the stats tracking stuff through an API. When you develop for a console or platform, you get a development kit for that platform. We basically view this as a new platform for gaming–like a console for the Web. You get a development kit for this platform as well.

IIG: If this is console-quality gaming, what kind of specifications will people need for their computers?

JW: This really comes down to the specifics for the game. When we say console quality, I want to be clear–not many PCs can run Gears of War or Halo 3 like on their Xbox 360, and the whole idea with InstantAction is to get people up and running quickly. We don’t want to have people sit through 3GB of download before they can actually start playing. We’re not trying to create 60-hour epic games. But we can take full advantage of PC hardware. As for minimum specifications, it is going to be title specific. We encourage developers to make their titles fall back to as wide a range of systems as possible, but some games it might make sense to only support shader model 2.0 graphics cards or what have you. The same version of Marble Blast Ultra for Xbox Live Arcade runs on the 360 as on the PC. We’ve added 11 new multiplayer maps exclusively for InstantAction. So it’s the same game running on the 360 that’s running on the PC browser. When we originally ported it to the browser for InstantAction, it required shader model 2.0 hardware. Now we’re working on fallbacks for it so that even though it won’t look as nice, it can work on a wider range of hardware, and any developer can do that.

IIG: So I guess this all adds up to a different way of thinking about browser games.

Far-future gaming.

JW: Right, exactly. All those Flash games are really simple, they’re little toy games, but it’s awesome that there’s so much creativity out there and really the thing that makes those games so popular even though they’re so simple is that you can get a link, click it, go play and waste five minutes. If you had even better gameplay, better graphics, more compelling content that’s just as accessible, those games would really break out and take off.

IIG: While developing and optimizing these games for browsers, have you found one that’s stood out above the others?

JW: No, working in the various browsers isn’t too much different. We want to roll out with support for XP and Vista, Firefox and Internet Explore. And we want to support OS 10 too as quickly as we can. We’re trying to support all the popular browsers and OSes.

IIG: So once people get into these games, how are they going to be paying?

JW: There again we can be pretty game-specific. The fact that we’re online lets us do all kinds of different stuff. If you’re doing a normal game, you’ve got to stick with charging a price for the retail version or downloadable version, and then maybe a subscription fee or something. What we’ll do with each game is take a look at what makes the most sense for that particular title and really what works best for gamers–what people are going to like the most. For some games, we might just stick with the unit sales thing where we’re charging $10, $15, $20 or whatever it is for a title. If we’re updating a game all the time, and it makes sense for that particular game, then we can do subscriptions. It might make sense that we give a game away for free, the initial version, and then sell add-on content or level packs or what have you. The cool thing about being online is that we can be pretty flexible with it, we can try different stuff and really customize it per title and figure out what works best for people that play.

IIG: Will people be able to pay a standard flat fee and have access to all of the games?

JW: We thought about that, but that’s not how we’re thinking we’ll launch it. But basically we want to talk with people who are coming to InstantAction and spending time there, playing games, and figure out what’s the best model for them. If some kind of bundle package works, then we’ll do it. But we’re not looking that way to start.

IIG: What’s the turnaround time for developing these games?

JW: The development cycle for these games is typically about 12 months. Some games that we have in the initial portfolio were already under development with developers that we had relationships with already. So they might have already had six or nine months in to them, and now there’s only another six or nine months left to do. A lot of the titles are close to completion now, and are slated to be complete when we launch in early January or in the coming months thereafter. So a typical development cycle can range anywhere from 6 to 18 months, is kind of our target range.

IIG: Is it cheaper to develop these kinds of games?

JW: I think it is, partially because we bear some of the brunt ourselves, in terms of helping out with certification and QA when we work with developers. Also, for instance, with Marble Blast Ultra, it has a user interface that’s all done in a Web page. If a developer chooses to make their game that way, we often help out with a lot of that work too. Also, it’s just really fast and easy to develop these sorts of interfaces for the Web. It’s easier than doing it the traditional way. The rest of it is pretty standard PC development costs and timelines. Although, of course, if you leverage good technology, you can save a bunch of costs and time that way, whether that be Torque or any other valid PC engine.

IIG: You mentioned Marble Blast, and GarageGames has done several other casual-style games such as Minigolf Mania and Tube Twist. Where do you all stand with casual games on InstantAction?

JW: Most of the games that are on GarageGames’ online store won’t be coming to InstantAction. You’re right, the games we’ve done in the past or published in the past were basically targeted at the audience that was playing downloadable games online, which has been mostly casual stuff. We’ve never done Bejeweled-style total puzzle games or Chess stuff or whatever. We’ve always had higher-end 3D stuff at least, but yeah, Minigolf Mania is a good example of a 3D game that’s still very casual. That’s not our goal with InstantAction. We kind of had to do those games in the past because there wasn’t a platform like InstantAction that allowed us to do really compelling, core-oriented stuff online. And now there is. We really do see our main audience as core gamers and X gamers. Probably folks like you and I, who like to play core games, don’t have as much time as we used to. But for me, if I can just open a URL and start playing a game for five minutes…and maybe that turns into an hour or something at work…then I’d play them, a lot.

Take a break and hope in a tank.

IIG: So with that rumor circulating of GarageGames working on a game in the vein of Starsiege Tribes, InstantAction is more geared toward these type of gamers. Have anything to say on that game, by the way?

JW: We’re still sticking with our official “no comment” response for now. But, we are working on a FPS, and that’s all I’ll say for now.

IIG: OK, so going back to how the games are smaller and quicker to develop. They seem like they might be geared toward the indie development crowd. Is that where most of the games will come from, or are you trying to attract bigger, more established developers?

JW: Yeah, we’re attracting a lot of bigger, established developers. Of course, we want to support indie developers because there’s tons of creativity there, and at GarageGames our philosophy’s always been about helping foster independent games and game development. So certainly we’re already working with some indie teams, and I’d say that’s in the category of undiscovered talent–really creative, effective teams that have great game ideas that are getting them done, so we’re definitely supporting that. But we’re attracting a lot of pro talent, too, in established studios. A couple of weeks ago we announced Alex Seropian and Wideload Games would be doing a game for InstantAction, and we have other bigger-name developers that we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks and months.

We have over a dozen games in development for InstantAction, with three or four of those being developed internally and the rest are all external–second- and third-party stuff from a mix of big-name developers. There are people who are at big studios who are sick of working on three- or four-year grinds and being just a cog in the wheel of a hundred-man team, who maybe are veterans and remember several years ago when it was still fun to make games. And they can take this as an opportunity to focus on fun gameplay, work on a project for 6, 12, 18 months, making sure the gameplay is really fun, making sure it looks sweet, get it out and find an audience, and then maybe update it over time since its online. That’s a thought that appeals to a lot of developers, too; that they can have a direct connection to their players and audience, iterate quickly online, tweak, make it better, create new content, whatever it is, which is much better than having to go dark for three years, start doing prelaunch stuff, then launch on year four, and then do an expansion pack 12 months later.

IIG: So do you think we’ll see big-name studios doing side projects on InstantAction. As in, while we’re waiting for Gears of War 2, or whatever, Epic Games would put out some fun game in the meantime?

JW: Yeah, when you start thinking about it, there’s all kinds of things you can do. One of the things when we work with a developer, even when we fund the development, we work with the developer such that they own the IP. So, one of the cool things that people can do with InstantAction, and we already have people doing this, is they can take their favorite game ideas, the IPs they most want to work on, and put it out on InstantAction. There, they can develop the core idea of it, make it look sweet, but still have the short development timeline and really get that core gameplay feeling really good. Then, if it does well and people like the idea, they can grow it into a bigger project. Whether that be another version for InstantAction and other platforms, or whether that be a boxed product for consoles or retail PC. That’s a really smart way to leverage the Web, and InstantAction is a great platform for that kind of stuff. And yeah, we already have developers that are thinking in that kind of line, and I think we’ll see that a lot.

IIG: About this time last year, GarageGames cofounder Jeff Tunnell wrote an article essentially conjecturing how much money can be made off of Xbox Live, and it turned out that indie developers are getting, not really fleeced, but they have to pay a substantial amount to Microsoft through distribution fees and what not. Is this something you all are trying to change with InstantAction? As in, are you trying to make it more profitable for indie developers and help them get more exposure?

JW: Yeah, we’re trying to do all those things. Of course, we’re not taking potshots at Arcade or anything. Say whatever anyone wants to say about the rates and where they’re moving now, but it’s still been good for indies over all. Arcade is another platform that helps establish digital distribution in the minds of publishers and of gamers, which is great. It’s another platform for distribution that gives developers more options, which gives them more power ultimately, so it’s been a good thing over all. But for us at InstantAction, we want to go a lot farther. Not only do we offer great royalty rates to the developers that we’re working with, but even when we fund a title, again we work with the developers such that they own the IP. We also do something else that is really rare, if it even happens in the industry when we fund a title. We don’t make the developer work for advances on royalties. We actually pay them a fee to cover the cost of development, and then they earn royalties from day one, right from the first unit they start selling they get a royalty on. So that’s been a big thing for us. In building InstantAction and taking on our investment at the company, not sacrificing those ideals was primary in all our planning and strategizing and discussions for this stuff.

IIG: So do you see Xbox Live or PlayStation Network as services that can coexist with InstantAction, not as competitors?

JW: No, we don’t see them as competitors. As a couple of examples, we take good titles from Arcade and PSN, and potentially even Wii Ware in the future, and when it makes sense, we can bring them to InstantAction. Likewise, when there’s great games from InstantAction, whenever it makes sense, we can take those to console partners as well. We have great relationships with Microsoft, Nintendo, as well as Sony. If it makes sense for a particular title, we can do a console version, and already with a couple of the games we’re funding for InstantAction, we’re going to help bring to console platforms. Just thinking about it as a gamer, even if I wasn’t involved in InstantAction, I’d still check it out and play games there, but I’m still going to have my Xbox, PS3, and Wii, even if I don’t always have the time to actually open them up and play them.

IIG: So you’d say that something that would appear in InstantAction would be comparable to something they’d find on Xbox Live?

JW: Compared to the Xbox Live Arcade portfolio, most of the games on there wouldn’t even make it on InstantAction. That’s not to be disparaging to anything on Arcade, but there’s a lot of casual titles on there. We’re not looking to do Hexic HD or something for InstantAction, that doesn’t really make sense. We wouldn’t really be differentiating our channel from some of the other stuff that’s out there. Marble Blast Ultra is, for our example, kind of the minimum spec. So Marble Blast is multiplayer and single-player, entirely physics-based gameplay that’s got 3D, shaderized graphics–fairly complicated game. Arguably, you could say it’s one of the most complicated games on Arcade, or at least it was for a while. And that’s kind of our min spec for InstantAction.

Marble Blast Ultra will be the minimum spec.

IIG: What kind of effect do you think InstantAction will have on the indie community at large? Do you think it will help raise awareness? Do you think it will get indie developers more on the map?

JW: Yeah, we think it will help raise awareness, certainly. Also, again, it should be a great platform for games and game distribution, and a good business model that way. Every time there’s another platform that comes out that’s successful and works with indie developers, it puts more powers in the hands of developers. The games industry used to be ruled totally by console manufacturers and a couple of publishers, and then there were more and more publishers, and now there are more and more platforms. In the end, its platforms and publishers competing for content. And there’s always a million game ideas and a bunch of people who want to make games, and that’s great. But essentially, it’s easier today to be an indie developer than it ever has been, and we definitely want to help that. Yeah, we hope it has an effect on that and, of course, push the industry forward more.

IIG: Just to touch briefly on the IAC/GarageGames deal. InstantAction was cited as a primary impetus behind the deal. Has that relationship been working out well?

JW: Yeah, we’re superhappy about it. We spent a long time talking to IAC and a bunch of other people about funding options, because we’ve had this vision for creating this platform for games in the browser. But we knew we couldn’t do it on our own; it just takes a lot more resources than we had on hand to get it done. Yet, again, GarageGames was founded on very strong principals, and so we weren’t just going to do a money deal and sacrifice all that. It took us a long time to find a partner who got the vision we were talking about, and who was willing to work with us the way we were willing to work with somebody. It took a very wise company to see the value in working with a partner in this way.

We like the idea of working with IAC, and the main reason we wanted to work with them was they had the same plan, which is funny, for doing InstantAction as we did. They wanted to see high-end core games in a browser, and they just couldn’t found anyone who got it. They talked to dozen and dozens of game companies, from traditional publishers to little indie studios, and they couldn’t find anyone with the technology to do it, or really even got the vision. And when we started talking to them, it was funny because we both would say a little bit, then the other party would say a bit, and so on, and we both were talking about the same thing. And it’s been great working with them since. They’ve basically given us the resources to help get this thing done and out there and really promote it and get it in front of people after we launch. And we’ve been able to learn a lot from them in terms of building a great platform.

IIG: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

JW: When you think about games being online in a browser, one of the other cool things we can do is iterate quickly. Since there’s a direct connection between developer and player, one of the cool things we can do is that players can have a lot of input on the direction that a game goes. Developers can try stuff out and test it online. We think that’s one of the cool things that this platform will provide, too. For our games particularly that we’re developing, we really want to listen to the audience. In the beta period, we’ll be trying out early concepts for future games that we want to work on, throw up different types of stuff early on before it gets launched to private groups and get real-time feedback online and have the players help us figure out what would be best to work on.

IIG: That raises an interesting question. You mentioned developers may want to try out ideas on the service. Have you taken into consideration that people may not like having to pay for games that aren’t really “done”?

JW: We’re never going to charge for a game unless it’s polished, and great and worth paying for. That’d be a horribly bad move for us to try to charge for a game that doesn’t feel done. We’ll never do that. But, if you bought a game or two, you could be selected for access to an early game and give feedback on it. You don’t have to pay for access, that’ll be free. You should be rewarded for giving feedback.