Gaming
Treyarch Claims Three Year Development Cycle Made ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 3’ Better

Treyarch Studio head claims a three year development cycle has made Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 the strongest title in the series
No matter if your love or hate the Call of Duty franchise, no one can deny that it is a powerhouse in the gaming industry. Its yearly releases regularly sell a million copies or more and hit the top lists of multiplayer console titles. There is another side to all of that fame though as gamers begin to complain more each year that the franchise is growing stale. A lack of innovation dragging it down is the plague of every annual release series like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed.
They both suffer from the same key problem, trying to hit that yearly release schedule pushes developers to stick to the same formula. Trying to pump new life into the Call of Duty series recently, publisher Activision pushed the series from a two year to a three year development cycle, that means that three studios will be working on it instead of two. Their hope is that the increased time will give Treyarch studio developers a chance “to envision and innovate for each title” Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was the first title we’ve seen after the development time change.
Introducing exo-suits into gameplay Advanced Warfare was definitely different from what gamers have seen from the series in the past, even if they didn’t like the change. Now Treyarch Studio head Mark Lamia believes the next title, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, will push the series even farther. During an interview with the Official Playstation Magazine, Lamia says that: “Without a three-year cycle, we wouldn’t have been able to take the kind of risks that we took on this game.” Later saying that Black Ops 3 will simply be more of what we’ve seen from the Black Ops series in the past. Dropping new details about the game that make his argument hard to refute.
Treyarch has pushed the series AI to all new heights so that it can support the open-play space engagements the studio has in mind. They have also created environments larger than in any other Call of Duty title all thanks to that extra development time. Extra time also gave developers over a year to test and refine the games all important multiplayer maps. Lamia is promising that the extra time Treyarch was given didn’t go into simply creating new gameplay features.
Lamia is promising Black Ops 3 features will offer more depth than what players have seen in the past. The extra dev time gave Treyarch a chance to push the games engine to support a higher “volume and density of activity and art,” using technological advancements. What that all means is that Treyarch has used those three years of development time to ensure that Black Ops 3 will not only look better it will also play differently from other titles in the franchise. That will hopefully give Call of Duty the boost that it needs to keep it going strong and slow the drop in its sales.
Source: [highlight]Games Radar[/highlight]
Gaming
Sony Has a “Monopoly” on the High-End Japanese Gaming Market, According to a US Senator

The never-ending saga surrounding Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has a new participant. Today, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from the state of Washington, said some things about the subject that were hard to understand.
The senator, whose remarks were reported on by ResetEra, spoke at a Senate finance committee hearing on “the president’s 2023 Trade Policy Plan,” which we are sure was quite interesting.
Senator Cantwell said that she had been told that Sony “controls a monopoly of 98% of the high-end game market” despite the fact that “Japan’s government has allowed Sony to engage in blatant anti-competitive conduct through exclusive deals and payments to game publishers, establishing games that are among the most popular in Japan.”
This 98% statistic is highly deceptive because it ignores PC, Nintendo, and mobile games and instead refers to Sony’s adoption rate over Microsoft in Sony’s native country of Japan, a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone who is even somewhat familiar with the video game business.
What can we do to rectify these problems and create a level playing field, she said of US Trade Representative Katherine Tai after charging Japan’s Federal Trade Commission with improperly failing to look into this purported “exclusionary conduct”?
It is absurd to claim that Sony has a monopoly on the Japanese video game market, as Luke Plunkett of Kotaku correctly points out, “because Sony doesn’t even have a 98% share of the market for the God of War series, a title they own, as Steam is getting 30% of every sale on PC.”
It goes without saying that we can’t expect elected officials to be experts in every field, but this is a visible step at a time when the ongoing attempt to buy the company is at a very important point.
Is it significant that Microsoft, along with Nintendo, maintains its headquarters in Redmond, Washington—Senator Cantwell’s district—or that Microsoft has given Cantwell more than $500,000 over the past two decades? Let us leave that up to you.
Consoles
Eating trash, Pizza Possum destroys the PS5

Pizza Possum is an arcade action game in which you, a possum, attempt to consume as much trash as you can without being discovered. It is a web-based sequel to the anarchy simulator Untitled Goose Game.It will eventually be available on the PS5.
We couldn’t help but notice that the possum in the title doesn’t look like the cute Australian possum that comes out at night to visit people.On the other hand, it looks like the horrible North American opossums are the ones that will attack trash cans and cause general chaos.Even though we think the second choice was better in terms of theme, we prefer the first one and are happy to explain why.
Your thoughts on Pizza Possum? Does it possess the necessary mass appeal to successfully skitter along the back fenceline while setting the dog off in the process?
Consoles
The Mercenaries, a free piece of DLC for Resident Evil 4 Remake, launches on April 7

Resident Evil 4 is now out, and the excellent remake can be bought right away.Even though you probably plan to play it all this weekend, you can take comfort in the fact that The Mercenaries, Resident Evil’s almost-required challenge mode, will be available as free DLC on April 7.
The mode’s exact details are still unknown, but if it’s anything like previous versions, you can expect some pretty hard tasks to test your skills.
You’re stumped about something? If you are still debating whether to purchase Resident Evil 4 Remake, be sure to look at our exhaustive guide for the answer or our in-depth review. Are you spending this weekend playing Resident Evil 4? Are you anticipating The Mercenaries?
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