Apple fanboys plan Steve Jobs memorial in Russia

Plans are afoot to build a memorial to Steve Jobs in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a contest being held to find and decide upon a worthy monument.

Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs sadly passed away in 2011 after a long battle with cancer. Whatever people thought of the man – and opinions really were mixed – most accept he was a visionary who helped shape the technological landscape we now reside in. Apple has carried on after Jobs, with Tim Cook taking charge, but his legacy will be felt for many years to come.


In Russia a contest is being held to find a suitable memorial to Jobs, one that will be erected in St. Petersburg, widely regarded as the country’s technological capital. A private foundation is behind the contest, which sees anyone and everyone invited to pitch an idea for a fitting monument. The winners will be decided by a combination of a jury of I.T. professionals in St. Petersburg and an online vote.

The ultimate winner will see their idea created and put on display, and also receive an iPad for their efforts. Two runners-up will receive an iPhone. The location and other details of the monument will be decided upon by project organizers and city officials once the contest is over. Which isn’t too long away.

Entries have to be in by Aug. 6, with the winners announced a week later on Aug. 13. The scope of the memorial has been left wide open to encourage creative thinking, with everything from a classical sculpture to an installation welcomed. However, Russia Today reports that concepts which have a technical element to them stand more chance of winning.

There have been several tributes honoring Jobs already, with Brazil naming a street after him, and a bronze statue installed in Budapest, Hungary. But this looks to be the most-ambitious Steve Jobs memorial planned so far.

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Kojima Productions: major announcement at Metal Gear event next week

Kojima Productions is celebrating Metal Gear’s 25th anniversary next week with an event at Tokyo Midtown. It appears that Hideo Kojima may be planning some surprise announcements at the event as teased by his staff that will be earth shattering.

According to the latest official Kojima Productions podcast [via Gaming Everything], the crew, Ken Mendoza and Chris Johns revealed that there will be “a lot of exciting announcements” made next week at the Metal Gear event.


Johns revealed that the announcements will not only be big for fans of the Metal Gear franchise, but will shake the industry to its core by the announcements.





Kojima revealed previously that he is producing two games, Zone of Enders and Project Orge. According to Kojima Project Orge is a new open world IP that will be running on the new Fox Engine. The game will feature upwards of 100 hours as gamers will be able to explore within the world in great lengths.

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Microsoft scavenging laid-off OnLive employees with networking mixer

There is an interesting development as a by-product of the collapse of OnLive involving Microsoft. Apparently the company will be hosting an event with the specific goal of picking through and hiring select employees laid-off from OnLive.

As reported, OnLive went through a form of bankruptcy at which point it was bought out by a venture capitalist. In the process of the transaction over 50 percent of the 200 some employees were laid-off.


According to Venture Beat, It appears that Microsoft is taking this opportunity to staff up for its own cloud computing services by inviting the former OnLive employees to a networking mixer at its Mountain View, California campus.

With Sony picking up Gaikai for a cool $380 million, it wouldn’t be all that shocking to see Microsoft augment its workforce with former OnLive employees. Analysts have speculated that Microsoft would not buy OnLive as the company would probably pursue its own homebrew solution.

However, this OnLive networking mixer may be a clear sign that the company is also thinking about cloud gaming for the Xbox 360 and not just focusing on its Microsoft Azure cloud solution, which is geared towards applications.

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Dev wants to bring Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse via Kickstarter

The classic point-and-click Broken Sword adventure games from 24 years ago found new life recently after making its way onto the iOS platform. However, the studio behind the franchise has its sights set on creating a new entry in the franchise with The Serpent’s Curse.

This will be Revolution Software’s fifth Broken Sword game in the series, and first original entry since 2006. Instead of looking for a publisher to fund the game, Revolution is turning to Kickstarter to finish the game. Apparently, The Serpent’s Curse has been in development for six months and the studio is look to raise $400k. So far the Kickstarter campaign is off to a great start with $181k raised after only one day.


The Kickstarter rewards start at $15 which include a digital copy of the game and $100 for the collector’s boxed version and up.

Check out the promo trailer for the game.





If your fans of the old school point-and-click adventure games and want more new games head on over to the Broken Sword Kickstarter page. All I’m waiting for now is a Day of the Tentacle sequel Kickstarter campaign by Tim Shaffer.

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OnLive was $30 to $40 million in debt, CEO to remain with company

With the death of OnLive a new company is born with the same name and around half the existing workforce. According to the latest reports it appears that OnLive CEO, Steve Perlman will also be remaining with the company.

OnLive faced imminent closure recently due to lack of cash to even sustain the company for more than a few days. The company’s CEO Perlman gathered the 200 some staff members and took the blame for the state of the company.


He stated:


I’m the one that brought you here. I’m the one that ultimately made decisions. And I’m the one that ultimately takes responsibility. So I am sorry, and it didn’t end up exactly as we’d hoped.

According to Perlman the company had purchased 8,000 servers and only had 1,600 concurrent users to sustain them. According to Mercury News, the company apparently owned $30 to $40 million to various creditors and was unable to pay them.

The collapse of OnLive was substantial as it even impacted mobile manufacturer HTC, as the company also invested nearly $40 million in OnLive’s integration with its devices. According to reports, HTC’s $40 million is completely lost and cannot be recouped.

OnLive entered ABC (Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors) a form of bankruptcy, at which point venture capitalist, Gary Lauder stepped forward to assume liability of the company. According to a letter Lauder Partners sent to OnLivefans.com (yes, there is a fan site for OnLive), the new owner of OnLive has decided to keep Perlman onboard as CEO of the newly formed company.


Steve continues as CEO and is currently concentrating on the transition; once this is complete, he’ll be very focused on our next product releases and the vision. There will be changes to the organization both with old and new OnLive staff that will be bringing new features and games to the service.

Its surprising to hear that the new owner of OnLive wishes to keep Perlman running the company considering the state it was in before. It will be interesting to see how much influence Lauder will have in the day to day operations of the company.

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Sony shuts down WipEout dev Liverpool, relocating some of the staff

It’s a sad day today in video gaming and especially for WipEout fans as Sony has announced that SCE Studio Liverpool is being shutdown. Apparently, as part of Sony’s regular project review process the decision was made to cancel all of Liverpool’s projects and to close the studio.

Word around the studio’s closure came out earlier today on GRCade forum, as user Shadow wrote:



They got rounded up this morning and Michael Denny [Senior Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios] explained the company was being ‘reorganised’.

This news was shortly confirmed by SCE Studio Liverpool’s Facebook page which read:


As some of you may have heard Sony have chosen to close Studio Liverpool as of today.
This page will no longer be maintained by the WipEout Team.
We have loved making every game, every minute and every one of you. Keep the faith, keep loving WipEout.
Thank you for everything, Pilots. It’s been an amazing journey and we’ll miss you.





As reported by Eurogamer, Sony has issued a statement explaining the reason for the closure of the veteran studio. According to Sony as part of a regular review process, decisions were made to make some changes to the European Studios after assessing all “current and planned projects for the short and medium term.”


As part of SCE Worldwide Studios, we do regular reviews to ensure that the resources we have can create and produce high quality, innovative and commercially viable projects in an increasingly competitive marketplace. As part of this process, we have reviewed and assessed all current and planned projects for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to our European Studios.

It has been decided that Liverpool Studio should be closed. Liverpool Studio has been an important part of SCE Worldwide Studios since the outset of PlayStation, and have contributed greatly to PlayStation over the years. Everyone connected with Liverpool Studio, past and present, can be very proud of their achievements.

Sony revealed that while the team Liverpool will be disbanded the Liverpool Facility will continue to operate as it houses other vital World Wide Studios Europe and Sony Computer Entertainment Departments in the building.

A Sony spokesperson stated that the company will work with the team to try to relocate those affected to other studios.


We will be looking to relocate the team members throughout the studios, but unfortunately some redundancies will be necessary and in those cases we will assist staff in any way we can.

According to Eurogamer’s sources, Liverpool was working on WipEout and a Splinter Cell style game for the PS4. The source revealed that the WipEout game has been in development for 12 to 18 months and the Splinter Cell style game started out as a gangster game but later evolved. Apparently the Splinter Cell style game was using similar tech used by Team Bondai for LA Noire.

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Rockstar drops three new screens from Grand Theft Auto V [UPDATE]

After months of silence about Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar recently dropped some screenshots from the game. The screens show off some of the transport modes that will be found in GTA V, showing a bicycle, exotic sports car and a fighter jet.

The first screen is of a man riding a bicycle across the beach that looks similar to the one seen in San Andreas. Incidentally the last GTA game that had bicycles in the game was San Andreas also. It is widely believed that the bicycle was the least popular transport method due to it requiring rapid button mashing to get speed on it.




The second screenshot shows an exotic sports car labeled as the Cheetah. For those that have played the older GTA games on the PS2 will recall the Cheetah in San Andreas and in the previous iterations of the game.

While the Cheetah wasn’t the fastest car in the previous games, it was popular for its overall speed, super easy handling and braking. According to the screenshot it appears that Rockstar has ditched Ferrari car design for the Cheetah in favor of the Koenigsegg Agera.



Lastly, the final screen should have many gamers excited as it shows a fighter jet as one of the transport methods that will be available in the game. It is speculated that the fighter jet is an upgraded version of the Hydra from San Andreas that was slated for GTA IV but was taken out.

If you closely into the cockpit of the jet, you can see the supposed main character for GTA V, Alberto De Silva flying it.



These pictures are probably taken from the PC version of the game, but they still clearly show a dramatic improvement in graphics from GTA IV. The first screenshot shows off some pretty advanced particle effects and blurring with the second showing off smoke effects for the game.



UPDATED with new screenshots of leisure activities in the game:

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