Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- EA Cans NBA Elite 11
- Indie Developers Mad About New Xbox Dashboard
- Not Much News This Week
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Stands Alone This Week
EA Cans NBA Elite 11
Something outside of just the demo must have gone seriously wrong with NBA Elite 11. I know many people who saw it at E3 thought it was a huge step in the right direction for the series, so one has to wonder what went horrendously wrong in-between July and now. Along with this announcement, EA also said the series was being moved from EA Canada to EA Tiburon (roughly 2,600 miles away), the makers of the Madden series. What has happened to EA Canada recently? They are EA’s largest studio, but they’ve mostly been working on Sims 3 side projects lately.
The good news is that NBA Jam is being retooled to include the modes present in the Wii version. Problem is you now have to pay for it instead of coming free with copies of NBA Elite 11.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Indie Developers Mad About New Xbox Dashboard
Indie developers are feeling like the low person on the totem pole with the new Xbox dashboard update that went live this week. Microsoft has taken the Indie games out of the Marketplace menu and put them in the “Specialty Shops” area. Hopefully some compromise can be found, I know a lot of Indie developers are mad about how games were noted before, often with the same group of games on the top rated section and the like.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Not Much News This Week
I couldn’t find much notable news this week. I think the reason was twofold: the new Xbox Dashboard and the release of the Kinect. It seems like every major site had a rather large number of Kinect review, both of the hardware itself and the various games that came out. I’m interested in Kinect, however I don’t have the space it is needed to work. I’m still not sure why Microsoft let the system out if there was even the chance of there being a software update that could shorten the distance needed between the camera and yourself.
Anyway, I guess I was a bit shocked by how much online space Kinect reviews took up with the major sites. I’m glad they covered all of it, but I think there wasn’t much news this week because of it and then there is that little game coming out next week…
Source: me
Call of Duty: Black Ops Stands Alone This Week
It’s time for Treyarch’s game to finally make an appearance. Many people are saying they won’t pick it up, but honestly if you’re interested in Call of Duty, Treyarch is probably going to be more of a go-to developer than Infinity Ward will be…and chances are that Sledgehammer Games is the holder of the next CoD game. This begins a couple of weeks where one major game really stands out (next week being Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood).
There is the Wii and DSi release celebrating Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary this week as well, but I just don’t see that taking much press time from Black Ops
Source: me