Bayrunner.com BLOG

The Real Metal Gear More »

The Real Metal Gear More »

Tonight’s big Xbox 360-themed Cirque du Soleil performance will be co-hosted by iCarly’s Jennette McCurdy and MTV’s Sway Calloway. More »

More TV station websites are turning a profit in 2010 and many sites are increasing their content while dropping site features that may not be working well, according to a new survey from the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University. The survey found TV station websites have continued to see an increase in profitability, up 4.3 percent in the last year

Go here to read the rest: 
TV Station Websites Generating More Revenue

This article does a great job of explaining the impact of net neutrality on gaming. I’d like to add a few comments.

First, it’s important to note that the court decision is only about the F.C.C.’s current powers and does not reflect a position about net neutrality itself. Basically, the court is saying that if the F.C.C. wants to control behavior like Comcast’s then it needs to get permission from Congress first.

Second, although this isn’t *good* for net neutrality proponents (of which I’m one) it isn’t necessarily all that bad. This decision may spur Congress into action on reviewing F.C.C.’s mandate and explicitly giving them the power to regulate internet access to the extent that they already regulate all other electronic communications (radio, TV, satellite, cable). Once Congress acted then the F.C.C. would no longer have to expend so much energy in “proving” that they can regulate ISPs and instead could focus on their mandate.

Third, net neutrality is not as clearly defined by politics as some would have you believe. The F.C.C.’s action against Comcast was taken during the Bush presidency. The current administration has certainly ramped up their support of net neutrality but this is by no means a (R) v. (D) issue.

Personally, as a Comcast customer I have serious concerns about their business practices and am going to start investigating my options. They’ve already shown their willingness to treat data packets differently based on their perceived content or use. Although at this point we only know about their blocking of bittorrent traffic (which they vehemently denied), I have no confidence that they will stop there.

What would prevent Comcast from slowing down my Xbox 360 data to the point that I cannot stream a movie through Xbox Live? If Comcast is offering the same movie through their Pay-Per-View service wouldn’t it be to their benefit to degrade my internet speed to the point that I instead use Comcast’s PPV service?

Not only that but a 11GB movie from Xbox Live (“District 9″ was just over that size) counts toward my 250GB monthly limit with Comcast and imposes a limit on my movie viewing ability. If I instead used Comcast’s PPV service then it doesn’t count against my monthly limit. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

Comcast’s efforts to buy NBC Universal makes this a scarier proposition. Would anything prevent Comcast from making access to CNN online slower than NBC news online?

In a perfect world we could rely on ISPs to act appropriately and in the best interest of their customers but clearly we cannot; it’s not the fault of the regulators but instead the fault of those “bad” ISPs that made regulation a necessity in the first place. More »

I work with Gravity Bear and I can tell you that, for us, Achievements are important and we wouldn’t give them away like candy. I understand you’re asking a larger question and it’s not specifically about Battle Punks or Gravity Bear. But I just wanted to comment to make sure it’s clear that it doesn’t apply to our game in particular.

Our team has been making games for a long time (Diablo 2 and many others). What was shown in this demo was strictly that… a demo. We ported a tiny subset of our full game to the Windows Phone 7 in order to show that the device could run a 3D game, connected to XBox Live and Facebook. When thinking about the demo, you have to figure that Microsoft has maybe a minute or two to show each game in a press interview, and we all wanted to show off the fact that you could earn some Achievements. So, we made the demo such that a couple Achievements could get unlocked easily and quickly, in order to illustrate the point in a brief press interview. The fact that games on Windows Phone 7 are fully connected to Xbox Live and can unlock Achievements is pretty awesome, I think, and it’s also a pretty huge advantage for Microsoft vs other mobile phones.

Unlocking Achievements as easily as we showed in the demo, however, is not indicative of what a full release will be like, at least for us.

Hope this reply is helpful!

Anyway, if you want to check out Battle Punks and get a sense for what kind of game it is, feel free to check it out on Facebook now: [apps.facebook.com] Fair warning: it’s a very casual, social game and the gameplay is 100% asynchronous, so it’s not going to be your cup of tea if you’re only looking for hardcore play. But hopefully you can appreciate the fact that while most Facebook games are extremely simple and fairly junky, we’re trying to kick up the quality a bit. What you see in live beta today is just the beginning for what we plan to do with Battle Punks in the future, and we’re developing the game live with player feedback, which is pretty fun compared to the old way of making games! More »

Not this one. This one is the U.S. promotional poster for the big screen version of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It’s…boring! Russia, god bless ‘em, did a much better job.

Just look at it! We get the two leads, the dagger, and the backdrop in one fell swoop. The poster informs the views and lets them know a bit about the film. It’s a preview that doesn’t move.

The U.S. poster is just an image of a movie star. How dull!

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time kicks up theaters this May and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina and Toby Kebbell. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Russian Poster for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [ComingSoon.net]

A lot of developers have earned publishing deals with Sony this generation, but only a small handful have managed to deliver a real “blockbuster.” (Sorry, Lair and Heavenly Sword .) Three million… Visit Grevs.com for more info

Read more here: 
Media Molecule becomes a wholly-owned Sony first-party studio

Sony liked LittleBigPlanet so much they bought the company, as Media Molecule becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment. Announced via a posting on the European PlayStation… Visit Grevs.com for more info

Original post: 
Sony Buys LittleBigPlanet Developer Media Molecule [Acquisitions]