Sony Move

Taking center stage for Sony at the GDC was the newly-announced Sony Move, being demonstrated through a title called Eyepet. This “augmented reality” title put the player in charge of caring for a furry little gremlin whose endearing mannerisms bordered on the creepy. Demonstrated functions included washing him, taking him on a ride upon a drawn plane, and soaping him down with your hands. Also on hand was a technical demo for the Move itself.

Inspired by the difficulties other developers had with the Wiimote, the Move nonetheless shares some of its difficulties with its competitor when it comes to precise motions and Z-axis detection. There’s promise, but it doesn’t seem groundbreaking; the same basic drawbacks to the Wiimote are still present in that the Move still has trouble with precision movements and movements in-game do not correspond intuitively to movements in the real world. Fortunately, Sony plans to market the Move as an optional accessory for many compatible games, rather than a core system requirement.

Dante’s Inferno and BlazBlue coming to PSP

Sony is beefing up the PSP’s growing library with conversions of two games, Dante’s Inferno and BlazBlue. The demo was small, but textures seemed solid for both, especially considering the platform.

Wacom Cintiq 210X

The Cintiq was on display in the Expo Hall. Combining a wide-screen 21” monitor with a top-of-the-line pen digitizier, it was definitely fun to watch in use.  Vibrant colors and precise motion tracking were big plusses. My attendant artist claims it’s the new standard for graphical tablets.

The NeuroSky Brainwave Headset

This peculiar little gizmo measures brainwave activity, literally linking actions to how hard the wearer is thinking- or it’s supposed to. Unfortunately, the headset apparently was not intended for use by liberal arts majors. Though it’s supposed to interpret four different kinds of thought patterns, for some reason my own mental processes were too puny to register for this future spaceman technology. Control was anything but intuitive and seemed to have very little to do with what you were actually thinking.

Another interesting concept, but I wouldn’t expect to be killing your foes with mind bullets any time soon.

AR Drone

Now you too can control a menacing, quiet robotic drone from your own iPod! An interesting device, this drone has an onboard camera and apparently includes a built-in game where you evade a computer-generated rival drone. The model on display on the expo floor looks like a fun toy, if an extravagant one.

DSi XL

This new GameBoy DSi, slated for release this month, is the same DS- but bigger. Not much more to say; the screen is pretty and the model itself looks nice and robust. If you felt the DSi was too small, now’s your chance.

360 Ventures

This looked like nothing so much as a giant hamster ball. Just what I wanted for the living room! Seeming more a throwback to the early 90s, this virtual-reality control mechanism was on display with a fairly basic demo intended to show what it could do. Considering its size and expense, it’s clearly only intended for the arcade- which raises questions about how well it’ll do in this day and age when faced with Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and all our other options available in the comfort of our homes.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor

An actual game! This on-rail shooter for the Wii was on display at the Nintendo booth. It promises dynamic levels and flashy, animesque firefights. All in all, it seems a good catch for those interested in retro-style shooters with snazzy new graphics. Slated for release in North America in June 2010.

Shatter

This fascinating independent release by Sidhe Interactive seems like an inspired combination of Breakout and an abstracted R-Type style flight shooter. On display at the Independent Games Booths, it boasted a catchy techno soundtrack with intuitive, open-ended additions like powerups, vacuum and shockwave abilities to further guide the flow of the bouncing projectiles and powerups, and boss encounters like fighting living modern art. It is available on the Playstation Network and Steam.

Tera

Among the more interesting sights on the expo floor, this Korean-developed MMO made its first appearance at the GDC. Instead of relying upon auto-attack mechanics and a gear-based difficulty curve, Tera aims to be an Action-MMO, with players actually aiming their shots, attacking on command, and evading attacks by movement. If it’s as fluid in the final product as it was in the demo, it might be among the few MMOs who break the ancient mold of Everquest. At present, no lore details are available, but the game plans to include six playable races and eight classes.

Other highlights included a soft, beautiful graphical palette and bold, vaguely Asian environmental designs. It’s scheduled for release this winter in the US, and is still in beta. Though Korean-developed, it plans to have full support and translation for North American and European audiences. Tera seems like something to watch for MMO gamers tired of the same old paradigm.

Starcraft 2

As expected, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty was on display with a fully-playable demo. Terran and Protoss forces were in evidence, both seemingly in the final stages. Graphically, it’s a nice, immersive upgrade, with detailed environments and excellent lighting effects.  The gameplay, of course, is classic Starcraft; new enhancements have mostly concentrated on combining classic unit functions and diversifying each individual unit type’s possible roles, but it’ll be familiar and welcome terrain to any veteran of Battle.net.  The Terran roster, in particular, seems mostly composed of old units.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, if the hype over the Apple Tablet wasn’t making you go crazy yet, think about this. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will be compatible with Mac OSX.

Ho. Lee. Shit.

blah blah they copied Windows Live blah blah it will be impossible to play SC2/D3 without an Internet connection (even single player). Blizzard says they want to make the game more immersive, I say they want to crack down on piracy and don’t care if it dicks players on laptops with intermittent wireless access (namely, people like me). Keep it classy, Blizzard.

2 new videos from Blizzard’s Starcraft 2 have just surfaced.  The video above is their latest cinematic trailer that shows the struggle between a Protoss and Zerg.  The video below is clips from the single player campaign.  Both videos will surely make any Starcraft fanboy or Korean mouth water.

August 23rd is just around the corner and as expected, the rumor mills and newswires are going cah-razay!  Here is a small summary of whats going around the net for Blizzcon.

But, before we get to it, I would just like to announce that PixelatedGeek will be there for the people who (a) didn’t get a ticket and (b) don’t want to pay for the internet stream.  During the keynote and costume contest, we will be live blogging the events.  That means, right when we hear something good or see a costume on stage, it’ll be posted on the site, right away! Now, on to the news and rumors.

World of Warcraft

Cataclysm. Everyone is talking about that word.  News about that word is that Blizzard filed a trademark on that word the same time the domain name, wowcataclysm.com, expired.  Could this mean a new expansion pack announcement at Blizzcon?

Still no rumors about the WoW Live Action Movie.  They briefly spoke about it at last years Blizzcon and Blizzard really needs to cough up more juicer details about this project this year.  The status of the project has been updated on IMDB.com on June 29, 2009 as being in Pre-Production. So, comon Blizzard. Give us more details!

Starcraft 2

Closed beta should be coming up very soon and many sites are reporting that the game will be coming out by the end of this year.  But, you can’t really bet on ANY release date from Blizzard.  Like they always say “It’ll be finished when it is finished.”

Also in SC2 news, NO LAN MODE FOR YOU.  You must use Battle.net to play with your friends.  Even if you host a LAN party, you must go through the internets due to piracy. Yea. Sucks. I know.

Diablo 3

Not much news here.  Just expect more art work and more dungeons at the con.

So, that’s it!

Don’t forget about the Live Blogging which we’ll do for the opening keynote, costume contest and other on stage events.

1st half of tickets go on sale on May 16. 2nd half on May 30th.  People who cannot make the convention can watch via DirectTV. The ticket price has gone UP to $125.

1) Create a Battle.net Account

We highly recommend you create a free Battle.net account before ticket sales begin, if you haven’t done so already. Please make sure the payment information associated with the account is up-to-date by going to My Payment Options in Battle.net Account Management. Doing these things ahead of time will help speed up the purchasing process for you once tickets go on sale.

2) Entering the Queue

If a certain level of shopping activity has been reached on the Blizzard Store, you will enter a queue before you are able to check out and complete your purchase. The ticket queue allows controlled batches of visitors to smoothly purchase tickets on a first-come, first-served basis.

On the days BlizzCon tickets go on sale, you will be able to initiate a ticket-purchase request from a special streamlined ticket-sales starting page, which will be linked from our websites and forums. From this starting page, you’ll be able to select the number of tickets you want to buy from a drop-down menu, and then click a button to immediately enter the ticket queue.

If you don’t encounter a queue, you will be able to purchase the tickets immediately.

3) In the Queue

Once you’ve entered the queue, you will be redirected to a page which displays an estimate of the time remaining until you reach the front of the queue, along with a meter showing the percentage of ticket stock remaining, updated in real-time. Simply wait at this page (do not close the window or refresh your browser!) until you reach the front of the queue. Please note that being in the queue does not guarantee that you will have the opportunity to purchase a ticket. The system will inform you if tickets sell out before you reach the front of the queue.

4) Finalizing Your Purchase

When your number is called, it’s time to buy those tickets! You will have 15 minutes to finalize all details before your session times out and you are removed from the queue, at which point you would need to begin the process again. If you are unsure of any attendee information now, don’t worry — you won’t need to provide this information until after the ticket purchase is finalized.