| "Rightsizing. The Word is Rightsizing."
Yup, more company downsizings. Psygnosis is the most recent downsizing in gaming corporate sufferings now. The publishers of the classic favorite Lemmings, has closed down its San Francisco arm. The press is being told that this is merely a belt-tightening move. This has resulted in twenty newly unemployeds. Others working on external titles are moving to Foster City. Psygnosis will still be developing its other games however, and claims that business will go on as usual, which is currently set on getting Drakan: Order of the Flame and Hired Guns out the door. According to GameSpot News however, one unnanounced title was killed with the subdivision. Wonder what it was... Westwood Studios is shutting down it's support section in Irvine, California. That includes customer support and quality support. The presses are telling us, that like Psygnosis, the move is not any cause for alarm, business does proceed as usual, and the shutdown was merely cost-cutting. Being recently acquired by EA, Westwood will have access to EA's already formidable support sections. Workers in the divisions that were terminated moved to EA's other areas or were laid off with severance packages and other goodbye-thingies. Westwood has long been under the wings of Virgin Interactive Entertainment, and has been handling support for most of the other games. However, the move to EA means that customer support for those games will end by next month. Virgin's still in an ugly mess, and it will be up to them what to do to support their other titles. Westwood is currently developing
Lands of Lore III and Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun
"Burn, Baby, Burn!"
Currently, Baldur's Gate,
the most delayed and awaited RPG of all time, is now available on the network.
(I don't have it yet, so stop mailing me on how it is). A week now since
it's induction into the network, the game has become the second most played
game. Heat.Net said that they will soon
have promotional plans to get Baldur's Gate going even more.
Everyone's An Upstart Developer
These Days...
His team have opened up their website, and updated the official pages of the two games they have in development, namely Askalaron: Egarthen's Revenge and The Invasion!, so check out the respective pages! Both Askalaron
and The Invasion!
are being developed on the currently in works SCRAMM Engine by Jimmi Thorgesen
and company.
More Awards!
Thirty different categories are up for grabs by the this year's best products, the most prestigious of which is (like the Premiere Awards) the Game of the Year award. Not to be outdone by all them other awards shows, the IAs are also being given to special achievements furthering design, engineering, audio and other categories. Only titles which were released between April 1, 1998 and February 28, 1999 will be eligible. Nominations close by March 1, 1999. (Say didn't Starcraft get out the door on April 1st, coinkydoink?) The awards ceremony will be held
at this year's E3 in Los Angeles on the 13th of May.
Nintendo King Goes to GDC
In order to get clearance for the talk, assuming that you ARE attending the GDC, you must have a CLASSICPass, AUDIOPass, GIGAPass, VIP Pass, or Student Pass ticket. The GDC is the world's largest game
developers only congregation, which has more than 100 speakers annualy
and showcases the latest in techniques and ideas on game development.
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