News

Signal Studios (Toy Soldiers) enjoyed the special honor of having its next project, Ascend: New Gods, unveiled on gaming’s biggest stage last week. The action title was debuted during Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference, live in front of millions of gamers watching around the globe. Speaking with Games Industry International, Signal Creative Director D.R. Albright III said that the opportunity came about as a result of the strong bonds the studio established with the publisher while working on Toy Soldiers. Although working with a gargantuan corporation like Microsoft has on occasion tried Albright’s patience, he admitted that “certainly [Signal] wouldn’t be as successful” without its support.

“Ultimately, we do get a shot at doing things a lot of developers don’t get to do,” Albright stated candidly. “For example, Ascend had the only working Smart Glass demo at E3, at least for games. On the surface, this might not seem like a big deal – or maybe we are the only suckers who said yes. Either way, that ends up getting Signal a mention in publications like US Today which is a big deal. We probably only have small developer/XBLA level privileged access. I might know more about what’s happening than some guy commenting on a Neogaf forum, but I am pretty sure that the CoD and Assassin’s Creed folks are privy to a lot more information than me. That’s ok. It makes sense from a business standpoint that they would.”

So if the bond between the XBLA developer and Microsoft is so strong, is there any real possibility of Signal one day being taken into the Microsoft fold proper? The creative director was non-committal on the issue, but asserted that the ball was in the console holder’s court. However, he added that all of that funding and preferential treatment that flows from the software giant to its internal studios is certainly attractive, though working in a structured environment of such a massive size isn’t the most exciting proposition in the world to Albright.

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Babel Rising launched on XBLA yesterday and while we weren’t too impressed, the game’s publisher, Ubisoft, have teamed up with Redlynx to create a new Trials Evolution track based …
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Update: The patch will be downloadable Today, June 15th, 2012.

At 2 million units sold, Minecraft is a hit amongst gamers and it’s still continuing to improve over time. With the promise of patches and updates, we’ve got first word of a list of fixes and features coming soon from Play XBLA. To name a few including autosaves, gamertag display in split-screen, and enabling/disabling settings with hints and tooltips. Read the jump to catch the rest of the list and we’ll let you know when this will be available to you crafters alike.
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Some of you may have signed on to Xbox Live recently and received a prompt for an update. This is a behind-the-scenes update, containing improvements on existing features and foundations …
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Gamers are used to titles launching on a different date than originally announced – it’s just part of the game (so to speak).
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Do you feel like playing as a god to not let people build towers? We have that exact (and only) game for you on this week’s XBLA Wednesday. Babel …
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Beyond a couple screenshots, we haven’t seen much in motion for Blossom Mind’s Walter but that all changes today. They released their first …
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Swedish developer Might and Delight announced this week it has paired with publisher D3Publisher (or D3P) to publish Might and Delight’s platformer Pid on XBLA. The partnership comes at the tail end of the game’s production, according to a news release, so “the vision has been entirely that of Might and Delight, while (D3P’s) years of publishing expertise will solidify Pid as a stunning success.”

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Zen Studios has announced that the Marvel Pinball: Avengers Chronicles DLC for Pinball FX2 will released on June 20 on Xbox Live Arcade. As should be evident from the …
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Ubisoft have released a new trailer for this week’s XBLA release, Babel Rising. The game is an HD remake of a popular iOS and Droid game of the same name and …
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