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Archive for the ‘Indian Gaming’ Category
With Sony and Microsoft engaged in sales deathmatches across India, Nintendo fans, upset at having to forage at gray market outlets for their Wiis and its games, may have some good news coming their way soon.
Eager to test the Indian gaming market for Wii titles, Milestone Interactive - one of the biggest distributors in the country, in addition to being Sony Entertainment India’s right arm - will be bringing in Alone in the Dark for the Wii, alongside the PC and the Xbox 360 versions later this week. While we seriously question the logic in field testing the Wii games market with a title like Alone in the Dark, which we feel seems to be the equivalent of testing shark-infested waters with a rubber ducky, we welcome the fact that someone is at least trying to break the iron grip the gray market has over Nintendo hardware and software in the country.
While a lot of gamers would see this as some sort of divine sign that the Wii would soon be available officially in the country, Milestone has categorically denied rumors that they will be the ones to finally tie the bell around the giant Ninny cat. According to Milestone execs, the launch of Alone in the Dark (Wii) is purely to see how well the Indian gaming market responds to Wii games being available through official channels instead of having to hunt for overpriced imports in the gray markets.
Even though HCL was originally rumored to import the Nintendo Wii for sale in India, insiders have pooh-poohed that by saying HCL was already a Microsoft partner and would not be involved with the Wii import at any time in the near future. Which, conveniently, neither confirms nor denies anything, leaving Nintendo fans to flock to modded Wiis and Play-Asia for their fix. With Nintendo never having an official presence in India, even though the GBA and the DS are hugely popular in the country (the GameCube being non-existent here), it remains to be seen whether the Japanese giant will finally see sense and follow their competitors into a burgeoning country full of rising incomes and fat, assertive kids.
Back in May, we got an early glimpse of some less-than-riveting screens of LoveStory 2050 for the PC, the official game based on the upcoming sci-fi film that unapologetically “borrows” as many flicks as Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer can do with Hollywood blockbusters in a few months time (minus the near-existent humor). Then Sanjit Daniel, CEO of Rocking Pixels and 2050’s developer, pops in and slaps us with a large cartoon trout with “Engine Tests!” written all over it. He also promised we’d be seeing some real info in about “two weeks time”, but that was nearly a month ago. Fast forward to today, and now we’re hearing talks of a massively multiplayer online game, backed up by Indian gaming portal Zapak. A sphincter says what?!
Rocking Pixels has associated with Love Story 2050 to create for the first time a Bollywood based 3D game that will bring realistic “avatars” of the stars to the masses that will be able to connect with their most popular icons in a way never before possible. The massively multiplayer games with hundreds of thousands of players competing with each other provide the most interactive lean forward medium which associates players with the stars.
On this occasion, Sanjit Daniel, CEO, Rocking Pixels said, “When Love Story 2050 was announced we realized that the movie will be a great fit to showcase our technology as it was futuristic and loaded with special effects. With Harman himself being a hard core gamer we managed to create a breakthrough game which brings the movie in all its glory to the world of 3D gaming. The game will be released as a massively multiplayer game and will feature exciting game play in a futuristic Mumbai, exactly as depicted in the movie”.
Talk about unexpected developments. Yet, there’s still no mention of a pinned release date or what sort of a MMO will this be exactly. RPG? FPS? Second Life meets Blade Runner? Tieing up with Zapak seems like a good initiative, but having to deal with the weight of a thousand or so players all interacting at the same time is a huge undertaking. That doesn’t come from just an everyday gamer’s perspective, that personally comes from a QA tester too.
The movie will be releasing this Friday. As usual, more info when it hits.
What started of as a leaked scan of a K-mart ad followed by another similar report, the rumor of the Xbox 360 Pro model seeing a price drop to 299.99$ seems to be gaining more ground by the minute.
Our contact in Redington has passed on this little piece of information that mentioned, among other things, that the Xbox 360 Pro model will be seeing a price cut in India that will take it price down to INR 12,000 which seems to gel well with the 299.99$ price-point mentioned in the other reports. The move apparently is to provide a stiff competition to Sony’s PS2 market that is still showing strong growth in India. With the price cut, Microsoft hopes to entice potential buyers away from PS2 towards Xbox 360.
The source in Redington also mentioned the fact that Microsoft will be coming up with a 20Gb and a 60Gb version of the console, besides a host of new accessories. Could they be the new Wii-like controller and LIPS that we have been hearing so much about? Our best bet will be E3 2008 announcement by Microsoft that will either confirm the price-cut and the accessories or kill the rumor for good.
Redington-India has been the sole distributor of Xbox 360 in India from Day 1, besides being responsible for the distribution of Microsoft first-party and EA titles.
Editor’s Note: Microsoft India has rubbished all reports of a potential price cut being on the cards.
A few days ago, Indiagames COO Sameer Bangara was interviewed by AnimationXpress on the company’s current business situation and future mobile gaming plans. When asked about the ensuing development for PC and console gaming, Bangara revealed that the company is working together with UTV-owned, UK-based game publisher Ignition Entertainment on a several number of projects. One in particular that only seems to be possible on the Playstation 3.
Is Indiagames looking at developing high-end games for platforms apart from mobile?
Yes. But, we don‘t compete with our publishing partners. Hence, we only work in sections which are not catered by them because that will conflict with our GOD model. However, our 3D team has excellent potential and we are working on some high-end content. If you take Paanchvi Pass, for example, it‘s a cracker of a game. Then there is 20-20, a cricket game, which is also doing very well. As far as console titles go, we are working on a title called Ashoka. Besides, through our group company Ignition we are working on three other titles, of which one game can only run on a PS3.
Now, there aren’t that many publicly-know PS3 exclusives from Ignition buzzing around the net these days. Actually, there’s just one! So we’re gonna bite the proverbial bullet here and assume that Bangara is talking about the closely-kept guarded secret that is WarDevil. Being developed by Digi-Guys, a subsidiary of Ignition, WarDevil is an action-adventure game being built to accommodate the latest in graphics tech and will hopefully push the PS3 hardware to its limits. So where Indiagames fits into all of this is anyone’s guess, and we highly doubt Bangara will just give us the info on a silver platter. One thing’s for sure: any notable signs of Bhangra music in this post-apocolyptic robo-fiesta, and you will now come to understand how it happened.
Some of you may remember Sameer Desai’s first interview session with Sony Computer Entertainment India Country Manager Atindriya Bose. Much time has passed since then, and Sam decided to get the GamingIndians community together and voice in their questions for the Big Bose (oh snap). New info concerning recent Playstation brand sales (11,000 units across all three primary platforms in each month since the last three) as well as possible servicing for imported Playstation 3 units were some of the many things discussed.
GI: A major chunk of PlayStation 3s in India is imported and therefore warranty does not apply on these consoles. If we do have a service facility in the future, can Sony provide any sort of support or paid repair service for these owners?
AB: We will, most probably, look at providing service for a price, because ultimately it is a Sony customer, although they will not enjoy warranty. If it is tampered with in any way, like is seen often with the PlayStation 2, we will not touch it. Other than that, we will come up with a policy for imported consoles.
You can catch the entire interview here.
The easy going folks down in Bangalore like to believe that their Mumbai cousins have a daily dose of adrenaline in form of hanging on to the footboard of the local trains during their morning commute. However, it seems like the craving for more of it is what drove them to the Battlefield: Bad Company India launch party held at Khar Gymkhana, Mumbai on 25th June, that featured a paintball competition for the attendees. The winning teams got to walk away with some colorful splotches, a couple of angry looking welts as well copies of Gold edition of the game for the PS3.
All we can do in the meantime is shake our fists in protest and gaze at the pictures, after the jump.
Following on the heels of their Gran Turismo 5: Prologue bundle, Sony India is packaging everyone’s favorite murder-simulator with everyone’s favorite Blu-Ray player into one nice, little expensive Christmas gift. Retail pricing goes for approximately Rs. 26,990. Does this mean we’ll be seeing the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle sometime soon? Country Manager Atindriya Bose did mention a possibility. But you know what, a price cut would sure seem nice right about now-ish. Mmhmm. Yup. Price cut. As in, make it cheaper.
Press release after the jump.