Lawsuits come and go, but this one holds special significance: I can finally joke that Square Enix's neural net got broken by rebellious hackers. Wait, that actually sounds pretty lame….
News Blips:
Square Enix launches a lawsuit against the perpetrators responsible for distributing a leaked preview version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The complaint states that unnamed individuals piggybacked the press credentials of an Italian gaming magazine named GMC. While the suit clarifies that the defendants aren't associated with the publication whatsoever, it alleges that the anonymous assailants used GMC's access information to download and disburse the press-only preview build of the game. Square Enix claimed $5,000 in damages and are asking for an undisclosed sum in restitution. [Patent Arcade]
Metal Gear Solid franchise creator Hideo Kojima praises L.A. Noire's MotionScan facial animation technology. "I'm very interested in L.A. Noire, and I'm waiting for it to be released in Japanese," he told Edge at the Gamelab Conference in Barcelona, Spain. "I haven't played it yet, but I was able to go to the studio where they were [performing the facial capture]." Kojima called developer Team Bondi's accomplishments an "absolutely fantastic" piece of technology that "will change the direction of adventure games." Don't hold your breath for painstakingly accurate facial expressions in Metal Gear Solid: Rising and beyond, though — Kojima said MotionScan "isn't necessarily the technology I need, so I don't think it goes along with the next game I would like to create."
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime says the Wii U has a much wider policy toward hosting third-party publisher networks. "We’ve seen what our competitors have done, and we’ve acknowledged that we need to do more online," he told Forbes in an interview. "For Wii U, we’re going to take that one step further, and what we’re doing is creating a much more flexible system that will allow the best approaches by independent publishers to come to bear." Fils-Aime continued: "So instead of a situation where a publisher has their own network and wants that to be the predominant platform, and having arguments with platform holders, we’re going to welcome that. We’re going to welcome that from the best and the brightest of the third-party publishers." Fils-Aime believed that Nintendo's stronger bond with its publishers upon the Wii U platform provides "an extremely robust online experience."
Market analyst firm Wedbush Morgan shaves off $25 million of its first-quarter revenue predictions for publisher Take-Two after faltering sales of Duke Nukem Forever. The firm anticipates Take-Two now earning $350 million instead of $375 million after the game sold well under expectations — 1.5 million copies versus the projected 3 million. Luckily, the success of L.A. Noire buoyed Take-Two's revenue from dipping further, with Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter saying, "Of the major publishers, Take-Two has had the fewest 'misses' in terms of game quality over the last two years, and as a result, delivered a profitable FY:11 without a Grand Theft Auto release. It has over a dozen core franchises, and if it can streamline development, it can be expected to increase franchise releases to three or more per year." [Gamasutra]
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