Steam Works!

Valve Software, creators of the best-selling game franchises Half Life and Counter Strike, have released a new complete Suite of Publishing & Development tools known as SteamWorks, absolutely free of charge to Developers and Publishers.

Here's a list of features included in SteamWorks:

• Real-time stats on sales, gameplay, and product activation: Know exactly how well your title is selling before the charts are released. Find out how much of your game is being played. Login into your Steamworks account pages and view up to the hour information regarding worldwide product activations and player data.


• State of the art encryption system: Stop paying to have your game pirated before it’s released. Steamworks takes anti-piracy to a new level with strong encryption that keeps your game locked until the moment it is released.


• Territory/version control: The key-based authentication provided in Steamworks also provides territory/version controls to help curb gray market importing and deliver territory-specific content to any given country or region.


• Auto updating: Ensures all customers are playing the latest and greatest version of your games.


• Voice chat: Available for use both in and out of game.


• Multiplayer matchmaking: Steamworks offers you all the multiplayer backend and matchmaking services that have been created to support Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, the most played action games in the world.


• Social networking services: With support for achievements, leaderboards, and avatars, Steamworks allows you to give your gamers as many rewards as you would like, plus support for tracking the world’s best professional and amateur players of your game.


• Development tools: Steamworks allows you to administer private betas which can be updated multiple times each day. Also includes data collection tools for QA, play testing, and usability studies.

Head over here for more information on SteamWorks.

A Far Cry Movie?

Seems like it.

The co-founder and CEO of the German Game company Crytek, was a featured speaker at Imagina 2008, the annual 3D technology conference in Monaco. He discussed many upcoming things with his company, including Crysis 2, and a Far Cry movie.

Far Cry - one of Crytek's biggest games which was released back in March of 2004, has been re-created into a movie, and is expected to hit theaters by 2009. Director Uwe Boll has just finished production on the film, and is expecting it to be a hit, due to the writers Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer.

Crytek states that:

"Unfortunately, we have not been involved in the film since very early when it was a script," said Yerli. "However, I think the script changed and improved radically since then, at least I hope it has, since I can't wait to see the movie. It will be so exciting to watch the Far Cry movie."

The movie is expected to have the same storyline as the game. More details on the movie can be found at the IMDB page.

Expect to see this movie late 2008/early 2009

Super Smash Brothers Brawl Hits 800k sales!

The much anticipated game by Nintendo Super Smash Bros. Brawl has already sold more than 800 000 copies since its early release in Japan on January 31st 2008. During that week, many new games were released, including Capcom's Devil May Cry: 4, but none of those games topped off SSBB. Devil May Cry 4 was trailing behind SSBB with only 205 390 sales.

The release of SSBB in Japan has also helped increase the sales of more Wii Systems, with around 95 000 consoles sold during the same week as the Super Smash Brothers Release while over 40 000 Playstation 3 consoles were sold along with the release of Devil May Cry 4.

With the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl just around the corner for North America, the anticipation gets higher, and the Wii Sales are climbing.