Saints Row IV’s Enter the Dominatrix Will Cover the Town in Sex Workers

 

Saints Row IV’s Enter the Dominatrix is out at long last. It was originally supposed to be part of Saints Row: The Third, then it was expanded into the entire fourth game minus the title, and now it’s DLC for the fourth game. And here’s the launch trailer…with the great line – and I use that term loosely – “Holy shit this town is covered in sex workers!”

Enter the Dominatrix is free if you have the Saints Row IV Season Pass, but you can also buy it separately for $6.99. Deep Silver says the DLC contains “New weapons, new friends, new enemies, new missions, and some kickass (REDACTED FOR EXCESSIVE AWESOME).”

Check out the trailer below!

 

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Console games need more variable pricing, says Riccitiello

Former EA CEO laments that “$60 is a giant FU to a very large number of people”.

New consoles are launching in under a month, and for the average consumer, buying new hardware in addition to several games at the price of $60 each is a significant outlay of cash. Game pricing has been a sensitive subject for some time now, and former EA boss John Riccitiello believes that the console/PC side of the business could learn a thing or two from the booming mobile space.

“Another thing that console and PC guys could and should learn is variable pricing,” Riccitiello said at the recent Gaming Insiders Summit, as reported by the [a]list daily. “$60 is a giant FU to a very large number of people. There’s not been a console game with even half as many installs as Clash of Clans. Puzzle & Dragons has got more installs than any console game in history. Getting a larger audience through variable pricing is a really useful thing.”

The executive also noted that even with all its efforts of late, the traditional games industry still hasn’t been able to get “games as service” right. The recent GTA Online hiccup serves as the newest example.

“More than anything, what the traditional game industry should learn from mobile is it’s really about service,” Riccitiello said. “It’s an ongoing business. You’d think we would have learned this some time ago, but I find it interesting that WoW and Sim City and GTA and Starcraft and many other games all fell over at launch when they put their service components together. Some of the biggest brands – I’d argue almost all the biggest brands – fell over from lack of the testing and research that mobile people do in the regular course of their day.”

And the traditional industry still makes games too complicated for the masses, he argued. It may be fun for the hardcore crowd, but it’s ultimately limiting when it comes to audience. “The third thing to learn is simplicity,” he said. Riccitiello noted how games used to come with “500 page manuals” and while games have gotten simpler, “It’s incredibly rare for a new game from a traditional game company to be learnable without instruction in ten, fifteen or twenty seconds and get to the fun that quick.”

 

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Video game hijacks entertainment industry

The popular Grand Theft Auto video game series has earned more than Avatar and Titanic- the two highest-grossing films of all time- combined.

A new title will soon top the list of most profitable entertainment franchises, and it never earned a single dollar at the box office. Grand Theft Auto, the immensely popular video game series, has already earned more than Avatar and Titanic– the two highest-grossing films of all time- combined.

Only the Harry Potter franchise, which grossed $7.7 billion, has earned more than the game that recently released its fifth installment in a series whose earnings already total more than $5.45 billion, according to Newsweek.

As the Potter series reached its conclusion in print and on screen, Grand Theft Auto will soon exceed the boy wizard series earnings. The controversial crime video game, in which players must steal cars and evade police, earned $800 million on the first day of its mid-September “GTA5” release alone. By day three it had already reached $1 billion in sales.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board assigned the game a “Mature” rating for “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol.”

The New York-based company that owns the franchise, Take-Two Interactive, reported in November of 2012 that its first four installments of the game combined to sell 125 million copies. This year’s game has sold 17,250,000 copies in its first month on the market, grossing $1.54 billion.

Avatar, by comparison, earned a total of $2.8 billion worldwide, while Titanic raked in $2.2 billion. The third-most profitable movie ever, The Avengers, made $1.5 billion. Earnings for the entire Lord of the Rings series totaled $2.9 billion.

Grand Theft Auto V was released five years after its predecessor, and game stores opened their doors for a midnight release to fans eagerly awaiting the latest installment. Take Two’s stock took a hit last winter when its subsidiary, Rockstar Games, announced the game’s original release date would be delayed, but the anticipation seems to have helped GTA’s unprecedented sales.

 

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Steam Box, Oculus Rift will define next-gen, says Cliffy B

Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski doesn’t see much disruption or innovation coming from consoles and AAA titles.

The new consoles from Sony and Microsoft are now only a little over a month away. While much of the industry is gearing up for the arrival of these next-gen systems, there are plenty who are less enthusiastic about what the platforms mean for next-gen gaming. You can count former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski in that camp.

When asked by the [a]list daily what he thinks will define the next-gen era of games, Bleszinski gave an answer that was decidedly in a direction away from consoles. “Things like the Steam Box and the Oculus Rift, honestly. I’m friends with a lot of folks in Microsoft. Microsoft has been very good to me throughout my career. I’m friends with the folks at Sony. But when I think about my gamer instincts and where I’m going to see a lot of the most disruptive and innovative gaming I don’t see it in the $250 million budgeted game that cost $100 million to market. Because when you have that high of a budget the amount of risk being taken decreases exponentially,” he said.

“I was more excited about playing games like Gone Home than any console release. I am thoroughly excited to dive into Grand Theft Auto V, but it’s sitting on my desk looking like War and Peace to me right now. I’m going to have to clear out a good two weeks of doing nothing in order to just deep dive into it. In the meantime I’m on my Nintendo DS and I’m on my laptop playing Steam games. I got to fire up Two Brothers and I finished Thomas Was Alone and Gone Home. I don’t know if it’s because I’m rubber banding and rebelling against my AAA background, but I will buy a Playstation 4 and an Xbox One. Am I more excited for that than the Rift and Steam? I think Sony and Microsoft are going to do just fine and it’s a known entity. A known entity is not that exciting to me. It’s the disruptive things that are exciting to me.”

Bleszinski is confident that Oculus Rift can become a solid platform, but it needs games designed specifically for its VR interface and not just some console ports. “They know what they’re doing over there (at Oculus) and I think Rift could eventually be its own platform. Putting Team Fortress 2 and Half Life on it is a mistake. The experiences that are going to be the best ones are the ones that are custom made for the pacing of that kind of experience. I got more excited by the trailer for EVE Valkyrie on the Rift than anything I saw at E3 this year,” he commented.

 

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I Sold Too Many Copies of GTA V To Parents Who Didn’t Give a Damn

newageoftruth

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Dear Parents… We need to talk. There is something that has been eating at me for awhile, and I have had enough.P

I have been working in video game retail for almost 10 years now. I love my job. Some of my best memories begin with loving, bewildered parents walking into our store, naïve to the gaming world but eager to learn. I would find myself talking to them about platform choices, game franchises, and getting started online. I’d then enlighten them with my own gaming experiences with my kids. This approach got them interested in what their children were doing and encouraged them to play the games alongside their kids.P

There is no better feeling than a happy parent returning to my store, pleased with my previous advice, and wanting more product.P

So, when a new Mario, LittleBigPlanet, Pokémon, or any kid-friendly game comes out…

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