S3 Games Dev Blog

Rigid Classification Fees Threaten Australian App Market! – This will finally kill of what little hope the games industry in Australia has of rebuilding and surviving its toughest economic troubles since the industry first began.

Making it compulsory for game companies to PAY to have their games classified to be sold on the iTunes App store in Australia is stupid… bordering on idiotic. It will dramatically effect the small Indie teams trying to start something up and will also most likely kill off those hobbyists that develop games in their spare time.

Sure the Australian iTunes sales market is small compared to the US and Europe, but  imagine Australian games developers not selling their games in their own country due to excessive classification fees? Idiotic!

Read the full article here

Rant mode off.

I apologies for the lack of content and posting here recently. It’s been a fairly crazy time over the last few months with a new project starting up and an existing project getting a re-define (more on that in a future post) so there hasn’t been much time left in the middle for posting and socialising.

One of the benefits of teaming up with a bigger games company is that we have the opportunity to work on bigger projects and put way more work into updating some of our existing titles, but there are also drawbacks too.

One main drawback is because we are working on bigger projects, there isn’t as much to say as often, and add to that any NDA’s or other specifics we cant talk abut yet, we are left with long gaps between posts about what we are all doing here and often find we are not at liberty to share much info.

But all that said, we are working very hard on some very cool things. One of the most important of them is cross platform opportunities for some of our existing and future titles, so a lot of time is being spent on that front. What does cross platform mean? Well consoles might come into play here

We are also starting to sell our games on other game portals, and the first title to hit the gates is StuntMANIA over at GamersGate on both Mac and PC (Excuse the pun). We will be posting more info about other portals soon, so stay tuned.

Stop reading this blog post, get off your computer or mobile device and go spend some time with your family or friends!

I have to be honest and admit I have always been a Sony fan… PS2, PS3, PSP… but when the XBox360 came out I decided to give it a go (well to be honest, I wanted to play GOW) but after setting it up and playing with it once, we were burgled and my 360 was stolen. Funnily, my PS3 was left behind!

When my insurance replaced my 360, I decided to sell it unopened rather than open it and use it. Why? That’s very easy to answer:-

It was LOUD, and it ran REALLY HOT and it was also LOUD…. VERY LOUD!

I swore that day that as much as I would like to play a 360, I would never own one again until MS fixed the LOUD HEAT issues… so I dug in and prepared to wait many years until the XBox 720 (or whatever it will be called) hit the streets, hoping that MS would learn from their nuclear 360 atrocity and make a console that didn’t heat my house at 150dB

So when I was shown the new 360 online today by a colleague and I read on the XBox.com website that it’s WHISPER QUIET… I think deep down inside something went *tick* and now I think I might be going out to get a new Sleek 360… Once I stand next to one running first to see if it is whisper quiet…. what? You think I would just trust MS on a whim? Hahahaha…

This wont mean the end of my PS3 though… My PS3 is the media centre hub of our house… and I am sure it wont mind sharing some cabinet space with my new XBox

We have had some really great feedback about our StuntMANIA 4.2 release and about the new StuntMANIA images on our website.

“The Improved graphics look amazing on my computer, and to
top it off I wasn’t even expecting an update. Thanks very much.”
Philip Meyer

For those that asked about the images, they were made from actual in game screenshots, and then touched up by one of our awesome art guys.

For those that commented on the new (and unexpected) update to StuntMANIA and for others that might not be aware, we provide periodical updates for our games for free for anyone that has already purchased the title. The update may just be minor bug fixes, or in this case (StuntMANIA 4.2) might include new content and improved graphics.

Ultimately, as all can see, StuntMANIA is alive and well, and we have some amazing things planned for the StuntMANIA brand over the next 12 months, so stay tuned…