Nintendo is counting on their new controller and low prices for both hardware and software, as the key factors for their next offering, the Revolution console. As a goal it is laudable, but the part I don’t get is… doesn’t this consumer already have exactly that in the form of a PS2 or XBox? Both have a pretty extensive collection of fantastic games at budget prices. That’s the kind of user that Sony counts on to keep the PS2 alive the next 5 or so years.

Blizzard has one of the best track records in gaming history, with every game release becoming a massive hit. But they have had their share of failures as well: Warcraft Adventures was canned after a year or two, and Warcraft 3 was redesigned from the ground up two years after development started. Now, you may have heard that Blizzard has haltedthe development of Starcraft: Ghost. So is Starcraft: Ghost going the way of Adventures, or will they pull off a redesign?

Ah, GDC trip prevented me from uploading the slides from my lecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña on March 16th 2006. Here you go! Edit: Updated with the latest version of the slides. They are in Spanish, and if you have read other slides from previous lectures, most of the material will ring a bell. Call me lazy, but there’s a reason for that: lectures aimed at general audiences (any student at the University) can’t dive too much on the details of technical issues or they will necessarily alienate parts of the audience who don’t have the necessary background.

Cool as ever, with lots of interesting insights and a few disappointments. My one-liner summary: “How we stopped worrying and loved to Prototype”. I’ll post some notes and impressions on various lectures later this week. You can hop over to the GDC Archives or Gamasutra for slides and writeups on several conferences.

Edit: Alberto Garcia-Baquero passed me this link to the Microsoft GDC presentations

Mandatory Will Wright article link

Ok, so maybe not a full-fledged Making of feature, but a very interesting interview with the creators of two of the most beautiful and unique games of the past 5 years: ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Focus is mostly on visual technology, but there’s a little bit for everyone. Both the game and the article are a must for anyone interested in game development.

I didn’t know there was actual footage from Will Wright’s Spore presentation at last GDC. Watch it. The technology involved in all the procedural modelling and animation of the creatures looks nothing short of amazing.

I hope Maxis has authorized its release, and they don’t send a black van to my house. In this day and age where google search gets sued for copyright infringement, you never know. 🙂

Or have you become an obsolete programmer? Fear not, IBM is working hard to ensure that your skillset remains viable. Jokes aside, it’s a very interesting paper that highlights the Cell’s architecture from the point of view of code generation, which means it’s probably the most practical article on Cell programming that you’re going to find in the near term. Yes, for a long time we have been able to ignore the requirements and techniques involved in multiprocessor programming, but that time is over.

Shameless plug coming up: Ilion Studios, a feature film animation studio, which is sort of a sister company to Pyro Studios. You can watch some frames of the CG film they are working on. I have seen some of the in-progress work they have done, and I can attest that the quality of the modelling and animation is astounding.

Best of lucks friends!

The chaps at New York University have been building a really neat set of experimental applications for their force-sensing, multi-touch drafting tablet. The results are fascinating.

I just watched Munich from Steven Spielberg. Now, I have been sorely disappointed by every single movie from Spielberg since, I don’t know, the first Indiana Jones? All of them contain a few touches of brilliance among too much fluff, too many scenes that are either uninteresting (A.I.), pretentious (Schindler’s List) or plainly mediocre (The War Of The Worlds). In most other movies I don’t care too much and just enjoy what good is there to enjoy, but with the talent for storytelling and production that Spielberg posesses, the contrast is just too sharp.