The iconic yellow-border logo of National Geographic magazine will soon be seen on videogames.
The nonprofit institution, which started in 1888 as a society of explorers and geographers, announced the opening of its games division today, with former Take-Two and Bethesda Softworks executive Chris Mate as its vice president and general manager.
The new division, called National Geographic Games, will publish and develop games based on the kinds of historical, ecological and cultural themes tackled by the society’s famous magazine. Its first game will be Herod’s Lost Tomb, a PC and mobile Flash game based on the historical figure King Herod of Judea.
NGG has partnered with Namco Bandai and Sony to distribute National Geographic-branded games for consoles, handhelds, PC and mobile devices. This month, National Geographic: Panda will be released for the Nintendo DS and National Geographic: Africa will be published by Sony for an unannounced platform.
The National Geographic Society’s motto is “To increase and diffuse geographic knowledge while promoting the conservation of the world’s cultural, historical, and natural resources.”
Spike TV announced the nominees for its 2008 Video Game Awards and some of them haven’t been played by gamers yet.
Left 4 Dead, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Skate It, Shaun White Snowboarding and Naruto: The Broken Bond all received nominations before being available to consumers. A majority of the nominees for the yearly awards were released after September with many, like Quantum of Solace, Mirror’s Edge and Gears of War 2, having been out for barely a week. READ MORE
South Korea-based MMO publisher NCsoft reports third quarter profits dropped by 50 percent, earning US $3.6 million in the three-month period, down from US $7.2 million last year.
Sci-fi MMORPG Tabula Rasa, developed by famed Ultima creator Richard Garriott and released in November 2007, earned only 2 percent of the company’s revenue and is considered to have underperformed. Garriott left the company last week after returning from a trip into space.
Eighty-four percent of NCsoft’s revenue came from sales and subscriptions to the two games in its Lineage MMORPG series, a huge hit in Korea. City of Heroes, City of Villains and Guild Wars accounted for a combined 13 percent. Korean sales made up 59 percent of NCsoft’s revenue. North America and Japan contributed 13 percent each and Europe six percent.
Before Tabula Rasa, NCsoft’s last major release was the vehicle-based MMO Auto Assault, which came out in April 2006. Citing low subscription rates, NCsoft shut down Auto Assault’s servers in August 2007. Based on original IP, NCsoft will release MMORPG Aion: Tower of Eternity early next year.
With a movie already in the works, Robert Jordan’s bestselling Wheel of Time book series may be returning to games.
Website VentureBeat reports film studio Red Eagle Entertainment will be opening a studio to take advantage of their rights to the fantasy books that have sold more than 44 million copies worldwide.
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Previously available only to those who pre-ordered Valve’s zombie infestation action FPS, now anyone can download the demo of Left 4 Dead. Containing single-player and multiplayer gameplay, the demo is available for PC and Xbox 360 and will run only until the full game is released on Nov. 18.
PC users can download the demo through Steam. System requirements are listed after the break. Xbox 360 users can find the demo on Xbox Live.
Valve also released a patch for the demo made available last week to those who had pre-ordered the game. As well as providing some bug fixes and improving online matchmaking, the patch removes an exploit some players had been using to play as the zombies, a key feature of the game that’s not included in the demo.
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