Boomtown X

Dear friends I’m sorry to say that I come here this morning to bury BoomtownX rather than to praise it. We’ve reached the end of the run - which for me began all the way back in 2004. The truth is that that BTX hasn’t managed to support my family and so I have to put my and energy elsewhere. There’s a limit to how much time and effort we can put into a site that doesn’t pay its way. And so today BoomtownX closes as an ongoing daily concern.

That’s not to say we’re going to suddenly disappear. Oh dear me no. The site will be here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on. But it’s unfair for publishers and developers to send us games we can’t promise to get reviewed in a timely manner due to a lack of time and resources. And so while we’re likely to still post some of the usual nonsense, we’re not going to be a commercial site anymore, nor are we going to expect to receive review code that will just pile up waiting for someone to tackle it. So dear friends in the trade, thank you so much for your support, it has meant an awful lot to us. But please delete us from your mailing list to receive your games, we just can’t promise to review them.

Let me take you back in time a little. Back in late 2004 I had been working as a professional online writer/editor for several years. At INC I’d worked on such concerns as IGN, Gamespot, Daily Radar, FGN Online, BW Vault and Racing Gamer. I then moved on to edit sites for Telefragged - including PS2Faction which was hugely successful. I then moved out of mainstream games coverage for a while editing channels for the ISP Supanet and then developing a new website for Firesoft Technologies.

In November 2004 I became the UK editor for Boomtown.net. This was one of the greatest career moves I’ve ever made. Not in terms of riches, but in terms of job satisfaction and the wonderful friends I have made over the years. Of course many of you will think that getting paid to write about games is as good as jobs get but that isn’t true. But working for Boomtown was as good as you might imagine it could be thanks to wonderful colleagues such as Jakob Paulsen, Christian Johansen, Michael Ronde and James Hamer-Morton all of whom I’ve known since the very beginning. And there are many more names I could mention who have joined the writing team since 2004 and become good friends.

During most of the time I worked for Boomtown we were owned by TDC (Danish Telecom). We were a very small cog in a very big machine and didn’t really receive the resources to do our excellent team of writers justice. But while we didn’t have a flashy Web2.0 site what we did have was integrity, honesty and a team of writers striving to put the reader first. Our aim was honesty - which often didn’t sit well with fanboys or publishers - but meant we actually reviewed games between one and ten out of ten, rather than the current tabloid site norm of nine for good games, eight for poor ones.

In addition to the NGP handheld Sony also announced another new gaming platform last night - the PlayStation Suite.

This is a plan to deliver PlayStation content to Android devices such as phones and tablets.

But do you really want to play PSOne titles on a touchscreen? Do you really? It sounds awfully like Sony is dividing its attention when the company should be focussed on making NGP a success.

Check out the PR after the jump.

Angry Birds developer Rovio has confirmed that the free ads-based version of the brilliant Angry Birds has now reached seven million people.

Answering a question via Twitter about some free Android apps being free the company said:

"true, but the ones with more than 50K downloads are... We just hit 7M downloads on Android."

Angry Birds is available for Apple and Android devices, you should download it, the game is better than most regular retail releases.

Source; Rovio on Twitter

Those of us with Android devices were blessed with an update to Rovio;s Angry Birds last night which added 45 levels and fixed a variety of issues.

The levels are from The Big Setup - levels set within a construction yard - these are already available on the IOS version of the game.

Angry Birds 1.4.2. also fixes graphical problems with devices running Android version 1.6 and below and also adds support for smaller QVGA screens.

You can grab the update now from the Android Market.

Rovio has put out a trailer for the Halloween expansion to the best game around right now Angry Birds.

Alas there's no Android version - iPhone/iPad only - it costs $1.99 for the iPad version and $0.99 for the iPhone/iPod Touch game.

The Halloween version releases today.

Sports Interactive and Sega have announced new social networking features that will be part of the latest Football Manager game.

Players will be able to publish manual or automatic achievement updates to their Twitter account or via the Steam community.

In addition it will be possible to capture movies from the games new 3D TV camera match view and upload them to YouTube.

Football Manager 2011, for PC and Mac and Football Manager Handhel 2011 for PSP will be released on the 5th November.

Activision boss Bobby Kotick says that we should expect to see the Call of Duty franchise become richer, deeper and more engaging.

Kotick told attendees at the Deutsche Bank 2010 Technology Conference that over the next five years technology will allow for a more engaging and emotional experience from the popular shooter franchise.

"I think when you see Black Ops this holiday, that’s going to give you a great sense of how different the games will visually look. But if you look at that game, it’s only going to get richer, the characters are only going to get deeper, the stories are only going to get more engaging.

"The characters you see on the screen are going to be much more realistic than they are today. They’re going to be more compelling, they’re going to be more believable, there’s going to be so many more things you can do from a gameplay perspective than what we can do today.

"When you see innovations like Kinect or Move, where you now have the ability to use voice to actually control what you see on the screen, and for motion to control what you see on the screen, those are going to be big changes in the interface that will probably broaden the appeal of videogames."

Source: VG247

Blizzard has announced that a forthcoming update for World of Warcraft - which paves the way for the Cataclysm expansion - will mean PPC Mac hardware will be no longer supported.

The following was posted in the game's Mac support forum:

A little forewarning to those of you that play World of Warcraft on these systems. Shortly before the release of Cataclysm, a patch will be released in which PowerPC processor based Macs will no longer be supported. This update indicates the removal of PowerPC support from World of Warcraft. Attempting to run the game after the update will bring up a message stating the hardware is no longer supported, and the game will not run.

You Mac loving Warcrafters are going to have to get yourself an Intel-based Mac or even a proper computer^1
1Joke

Hold on to your hats, people: Valve has confirmed a February 9th release date for Portal 2.

The sequel to one of the most innovative and humorous games of 2007 will be making an appearance on Xbox 360, PC and PS3, with the latter, according to Valve boss Gabe Newell, being the "best version on any console."

The Office's Stephen Merchant is even voicing the Buddy Sphere, Wheatly. Marvellous.

Source: CVG

Microsoft has announced the first wave of games coming to the new Windows Mobile 7 platform later this year.

While we're big fans of the Android platform, the obvious links with Xbox Live do make this new Microsoft platform rather enticing.

Full PR after the jump:

Microsoft has put out a press release detailing the topics it's keen to talk about at Gamescom in Cologne this week.

Obviously the focus is on Kinect and the new Windows Mobile 7 platform.

Full PR after the jump: