The Warp Pipe

It was a motley crew at the Venice Beach, CA skate park on Wednesday, as EA held a public launch party for Skate 3. Skater kids were running everywhere, checking out the game, taking full advantage of the free food and giveaways, and of course skating, grinding and jumping on the various rails and bowls available to them.

In among all of the skaters was one Chris “Cuz” Parry — even as he gave out free copies of the game and limited edition skateboards to raffle winners, he would see a 12-year-old pull some air and respond directly over the PA: “Did you see that little ripper go? That was sick!”

After he finished the giveaways, we pulled the producer of all three Skate games to the side and asked him about what EA’s Black Box studio has planned post-release.

Continue reading Interview: Skate 3 producer Chris Parry

Interview: Skate 3 producer Chris Parry originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 14 May 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Update: We managed to get in touch with both Wizards and Microsoft PR, who acknowledged that the launch of the DLC did give users a few problems. However, the “DLC is now running smoothly,” so happy downloading! You can find the original post below.

Original post: It would seem the recent injection of fresh cards into Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalker has had an unintended effect for some players, with the new DLC apparently crashing the game and displaying only a black screen. Users on both the GameFAQs and Wizards of the Coast forums have reported the same issues.

Downloading the Title Update gave us some hiccups — specifically, we were booted back to the dashboard after downloading it and then were forced to download the entire Magic: The Gathering – Duel of the Planeswalkers game again. But the actual DLC pack itself didn’t give us any problems. We even played a game online and tried restarting the title multiple times to repeat the effect to no avail.

Eric Sorensen from Wizards of the Coast’s community team is aware of the issue, and WOTC is working with Microsoft to resolve it. We’ll let you know when we’re all in the clear.

Source – Wizards of the Coast forums
Source – GameFAQs forums

Users report Magic: The Gathering ‘Expansion Pack 2′ DLC breaks the game [update] originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 14 May 2010 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We struggle to find anything else to say about the Fallout: New Vegas boxart that’s been revealed via the Bethesda Blog. Depicting a single New California Republic Ranger standing alone (you know, the guy from the first trailer?), he wields his pistol, presumably ready for any ne’er-do-wells lurking. Or maybe he’s just showing his gun to us? We can’t imagine it’s very impressive, what with all the sand in the post-apocalyptic desert.

Of course, if the regular edition of the game doesn’t do it for you, don’t forget there’s a collector’s edition you can snag for $79.99 on PS3 and Xbox and $69.99 on PC — or about 7,162 bottle caps.*

*Note: Please don’t mail bottle caps to Bethesda.

The Fallout: New Vegas box art is stoic originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 13 May 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A handful of tipsters recently sent in a link to a survey currently being distributed by Sony, which appears to test the waters regarding two updates considered for Zipper Interactive’s big ol’ shooter, MAG. The first article of interest in the survey is a reference to an “Interdiction” mode, in which 128 players from two factions would fight over three neutral objectives, removing the attacker/defender dynamic of the game’s other main modes. The survey also inquires whether we’d purchase this content for $8.99 (or $12.99, depending on the participant’s earlier answers).

On the very next page, the survey mentions an offer which would give MAG players an extra character slot (presumably opening up the option to belong to more than one faction at a time) for a fee of $.99 per month. If this subscription plan is actually being considered, we don’t know how popular it would be. We couldn’t imagine cheating on our beloved PMC. (S.V.E.R. Forever!)

Zipper community manager Jeremy Dunham has addressed these potential changes on the MAG forums, stating, “we haven’t announced any DLC details whatsoever. Nothing is official unless it comes from us.” While these details may not be “official,” it’s worth noting that the survey was distributed by an official Sony email address. Food for thought!

[Thanks, Steve and Logan!]

Sony survey suggests new mode for MAG, additional paid character slot originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 13 May 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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These don’t all necessarily refer to future Call of Duty games. The fact that all of these were registered makes it likely that Activision is securing domains for potential future projects, even before those projects exist in any form, to avoid having to pay domain squatters later. Or, one of these could be a real game, and the rest a clever smokescreen by Activision, to prevent us from knowing which is real. It would be smart on Activision’s part to use at least one of these — after all, they all have most of the same words as “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” which we understand to have been rather successful.

Superannuation speculates that one of these could refer to Sledgehammer Games’ new Call of Duty game, which kind of makes sense — if it’s apparently going to be a drastic change in genre, why not a more fantastic, futuristic setting?

Activision registers several ‘Call of Duty: _ Warfare’ domains originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 13 May 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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