Gaming and financial analyst Roger Eherenberg’s epic post tracking EA’s stock price and strategy is a great great read which he’s just revisited and revised. I’m actually still ingesting it all after the third read, but I can’t help but agree on just about every point raised. Focusing on EA’s mistake with focusing too much on the PS3, the article also takes Sony to task for their continued mis-steps in getting the PS3 into the homes of gamers and Nintendo’s brilliantly handled Wii which Eherenberg predicts is replacing the PS2 as the console of choice for mainstream gamers.

Read more: EA Revisited: Playing Catch Up on the Wii, Waking up to the Failure that is PS3

A letter from Capcom has informed us (and just about every other major gaming press on Earth) about the upcoming Lost Planet: Extreme Condition launch party in San Francisco on January 11th. Compete in a huge multiplayer tournament for big prizes and the chance to play against the Lost Planet development team. The first 50 through the door get exclusive t-shirts, the rest just get lots of swag, nerd points and free food and drinks.

Space is limited so you have to RSVP via the Capcom community site, Neovenus Construction, username: Genesis and password: 111.

The party takes place Thursday, January 11th from 8pm - Midnight at the S.F Concourse Exhibition Center - East Hall in San Francisco, California. Have fun and someone grab me a shirt!

Venerable UK game developers Warthog, who many of you have heard about thanks to their past acquisition by the infamous crooks behind Gizmondo, are still alive and kicking, and seeking to be acquired by someone, anyone. Currently, the company is maintaining their AIM market listing, incurring losses quarterly while it actively looks for someone to come in and swoop them up, but probably not for the price they went to Gizmondo for.

Read more: Warthog losing money as it seeks acquisition | Warthog entry @ Wikipedia

Whosa whatsa!? It was recently revealed that Killzone PS3’s production is aiming to be the most expensive in Dutch history, topping the 16 million EUR ($21 million USD) mark of the Dutch WWII movie Black Book. A large part of the costs are attributed to localizing the game into 20 different languages. Yes, 20 different languages. As the bubble continues to inflate, fanboys around the world quiver in anticipation.

Read more: Killzone PS3 costing way too much

ML Enterprises, an up and coming games industry consultancy startup from Munich, Germany, has announced their assumption of production for Replay Studios’ upcoming PC title, Sabotage. The interesting part of the announcement is the mention of ex members of Rockstar Vienna, Rockstar’s European development studio which was axed in May of this year, being involved in not only their own startups but also involved in work that actually gains them a little bit of credit. Good luck guys…

Read more of “ML Enterprises, ex-developers from Rockstar Vienna, take over production on Sabotage“

DING DING DING. In what will probably be their most expensive marketing campaign ever, Nintendo has stated that they will spend more than $200 million USD in order to market the Wii console. With Nintendo’s success with the DS handheld and their profit on every piece of hardware sold, Nintendo has built a nice little war chest in order to compete against the new PS3 from Sony and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. 80% of the marketing spend will go towards adult markets, also marking a shift in strategy for Nintendo, which is trying to broaden it’s appeal among adults as the gaming market ages and younger consumer tastes continue their shift towards the mature market. Nintendo is projected to shift over 1.2 million units of the Wii this holiday season, with projections of only around 500,000 units for Sony, thanks partially to the manufacturing difficulties of Blu-Ray components. It’s also not helping Sony that their new console is over priced and their image among many gamers is severely damaged after months of public relations mis-steps.

Read more: Nintendo to spend $200 million

Since working in the games industry and always having a casual fascination with interior design, I often wonder what other game developers’ studios looked like on the inside. This led me to start a new series of posts for Playthrough, where I’ll be collecting photos I find around the internet which give us an inside look into game development studios, large and small, posting them for my and your enjoyment. So let’s get started.

CCP, developers of MMORPG EVE Online is perhaps one of the most under-rated developers within the games industry. With tech that most developers would die for and an office situated in a location that most of us can only dream of, CCP and EVE are growing at a rapid pace. With many new players joining the ultra-massive multiplayer world on a monthly basis and with CCP well into EVE’s expansion into China, this MMORPG is a force to be reckoned with, sans publishers.

See photos from a recent blog post by EVE employee “Redundancy” after the jump..
Read more of “An inside look at CCP Games, developers of EVE Online“

Independant game developer Wolfgang Deutsch has posted a thought-provoking rant over at his games and software development blog, On Programming, taking the industry and more specifically, programmers within the industry, to task over their seeming lack of appreciation for quality coding practices. As one would expect from a blog about coding practices and software development, coders take the brunt of the rant for ignoring proper coding practices within their implemented code and for many times simply substituting hacks in-place of actual tested code. Also included is a stern warning for producers to pay more attention to their project’s souce code, keeping an eye out for apathetic or just plain pathetic comments or notes explaining hacks to the source that just may end up in the final product. Though I’ve heard many excuses from many conferences, blogs and presentations on what ails the gaming industry, this is honestly the first time I’ve heard a rant against the coding practices of the industry’s developers. I have to admit, though many points in Deutsch’s post do ring with some truth to my ears (er, eyes), I think these are but some of the many problems that ail the mainstream gaming industry.

I’ll end this with a random quote from Wolfgang’s rant on the lack of quality coding practices within the games industry..

The real reason for exploding costs in game development is incompetent software developers. I am sorry to say. It’s not the big, all encompassing, unrelenting and unchangeable advancement of technology and refinement of consumer taste and expectations, neither is it those “risk averse” publishers who won’t finance your creative idea. No, it is simply incompetence. Our skill in devising reliable and flexible software architectures is, to put it mildly, severely lacking.

Read more: Game dev rants about the lack of quality coding standards within the industry

Those Rockstar fans in or around San Diego on September the 28th will be lucky enough to see a presentation sponsored by Rockstar Games and IGDA San Diego, titled, “The Characters of Table Tennis“. Wolfgang Engel, author and senior developer will discuss the real-time graphic algorithms used in Table Tennis, as well as the shaders used to mimic skin, sweat, eyes, eyelashes, cloth and the various hair-types. The event will take place Thursday, September 28th at Qualcomm Auditorium in San Diego, California.

Read more: Wolfgang Engel presents the characters of Rockstar’s Table Tennis

The rumour mills kicked into high gear yesterday after a Shacknews story was posted regarding a ‘mass exodus’ of key members from the Duke Nukem Forever team departing 3D Realms. Reportadly 10 (or more) major members of the team have left with multiple departues occurring in the past few days. Scott Alden, Will Bate, Brian Cozzens, Keith Schuler (a 16 year vet of Apogee and 3D Realms) and many more have been confirmed to have left the team since December of last year, creating more doomsday predictions for one of the gaming industries most legendary projects. However, many look at this as the possibility that the project is nearing completion, where it wouldn’t be surprising to see large amounts of members leave a 10+ year project as it winds down and their roles become significantly reduced. Either way, Duke Nukem Forever still proves it has the ability to move media mountains with just it’s mere mention in a news story.

Read more: Key developers of DNF departing from 3D Realms