As soon as the news popped up in our inbox, we shot out a couple of queries to industry observers to get their take on the deal. First up was the ubiquitous, loquacious and perspicacious Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. Here's what his initial reaction was to the press release, published with his permission:

It's a great deal, at any price.

They had the rights to the ancillary books (ghost written and co-created with Clancy), but didn't have rights to Clancy-authored titles or to movie titles. They now have the rights to both, and the term is expanded to perpetuity instead of 15 years (was going to expire at end of 2013). This means that if Clancy comes up with anything that works, they have the rights. Also, they were paying a small royalty (I think it was 1-2 percent of sales) on the games, and that is going away, so they should have incremental profits going forward. The press release says operating profit contribution of 5 million Euros per year, and Clancy sales were likely around 250 million Euros annually [$386 million U.S. dollars], so the 2 percent royalty figure is probably closer to the mark.

My guess is that they used the overvalued Euro to buy these rights for around $100 million.

Recalling that Ubisoft had previously announced plans to open a digital animation studio in Montreal, we followed up with Pachter to see if he thought there were any similarities between the Ubisoft-Clancy deal and how comic book companies like Marvel, DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics were approaching Hollywood. He replied:

 The cover for the first edition of Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October," from FirstEditionPoints.com

This just came across the transom: Ubisoft has purchased the intellectual property rights to best-selling author Tom Clancy's name and intellectual property, in perpetuity, free of all future royalty payments, for use in videogames, related books, movies and merchandise. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ubisoft did state that it was an all-cash transaction that will reduce its expected net cash position to roughly 130 million Euros ($201 million U.S. dollars) by the end of its fiscal 2007-08, compared to a prior expectation of around 150 million Euros ($232 million U.S.), with additional payments to be made in in fiscal 2008-09 and fiscal 2009-10. Given the anemic state of the U.S. dollar, we wouldn't be surprised if Clancy opted to take his payment in Freedom Fries Euros as well. For the complete release, rclick on the link below.

 The song list menu for Rock Band PS3 

Despite the PlayStation 2's utter dominance during the previous console cycle, we began to notice a trend emerging from casual conversations with developers: many of them were doing the bulk of their gaming on the Xbox. When asked, said game makers cited a variety of reasons, including better graphics, a wider selection of first-person shooters, and, of course, the superior online functionality of Xbox Live. This developer gap has only become more pronounced with the Xbox 360's yearlong head start and Sony's shockingly un-integrated Playstation Network feature set. We've spoken with a number of developers who don't even own PS3s; among those who do, several use it as nothing more than a Blu-Ray player. What's more, we've been to countless press events where third-party publishers are demonstrating their multiplatform games with nary a PS3 in the house. And when inquiries are made about its absence, we're greeted with a look that's either sheepish or knowing, as if it's now simply taken for granted that the PS3 version is of course lagging behind its Xbox 360 counterpart. Such is the state of PS3 development among third parties today.

We bring this up because, in our persistent state of naivete, we made yesterday what we thought was a simple request of Harmonix's PR firm.

To read the rest of this post, and to see the remainder of the screenshots for the PS3 version of Rock Band's in-game store, click on the link below.

 

At last month's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Harmonix invited a handful of journalists to its suite at the W Hotel to check out its long-awaited in-game store for Rock Band. Until now, players have had to use the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Playstation Store to purchase new tracks and song packs for the hit game. No longer. Harmonix has officially announced an update that will offer you what we were shown: a music store that is fully integrated into the game itself. The Rock Band music store will let you listen to audio previews of each available track, which means no more searching YouTube to figure out if a song you've never heard is worth your hard-earned Microsoft Points dollars. You'll also be able to check out the album artwork that accompanies each track; see a ten-point scale difficulty rating for each part (guitar, drums, vocals, bass and overall); and sort songs by multiple categories, including genre.

We were suitably impressed by this much-needed improvement. (See below for screenshots of the interface.) With a current catalog of just over 125 songs both on the disc and available for download through the store, Harmonix's interface makes zipping through its song library a snap. That said, we're not convinced that it will suffice when the database hits 1,250 songs, 12,500 songs, or 125,000 songs. On a computer, text searches are an effective way to navigate large databases of content. The same could be said for consoles, but on-screen keyboards quickly become annoying after an extended period of use, and not everyone is going to buy a wireless keyboard or keypad attachment. That's why we've long believed that speaker-independent voice command will be required as the amount of content on consumer electronics devices like consoles and personal video recorders grows. And based on conversations we've had with folks at Harmonix, it wouldn't surprise us at all to discover that they're investigating the possibility of such a solution.

To see screenshots of the Rock Band music store on the Xbox 360, as well as information about additional announcements that Harmonix made this morning, click on the link below. For exclusive screenshots of the PS3 version of the Rock Band in-game music store, click here.

 NCsoft executive producer Richard Garriott

When we got the report that Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax had passed away, we first shared our own reminiscences on The Pen-and-Paper Game That Started It All. Then we reached out to some of the top computer and videogame developers--those who either work in the role-playing game genre or whose titles are clearly inspired by RPGs--to find out how D&D influenced them both personally and professionally. Our next respondent is the legendary Richard "Lord British" Garriott, justly celebrated for his pioneering work on the Ultima series of role-playing games and the equally visionary massively multiplayer online game Ultima Online. His most recently released project is NCsoft's MMO Tabula Rasa. Here's what he told us.

What do you remember about your first experience with Dungeons & Dragons?

I remember it well. I was spending a summer in high school in 1977 at the University of Oklahoma. Some students who had arrived for the summer classes before me gave me the nickname British, as they thought the accent I picked up growing up next door to NASA was British. (Thus many of my early characters were named British, which became my eventual pen name.) I was simply amazed by this wondrous fantasy game. That same summer I set myself to writing fantasy games on the computers of the day.

How did your parents feel about you playing D&D?

My mother was the neighborhood den mother and helped host our Friday and Saturday evening games, which often included games going on in several rooms at once. She would often play with us, or make food for the all-night affairs.

Were you primarily a dungeon master or a player?

 EA Mythic general manager Mark Jacobs

When we got the report that Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax had passed away, we first shared our own reminiscences on The Pen-and-Paper Game That Started It All. Then we reached out to some of the top computer and videogame developers--those who either work in the role-playing game genre or whose titles are clearly inspired by RPGs--to find out how D&D influenced them both personally and professionally. Our next respondent is EA Mythic general manager Mark Jacobs, best known for his work on massively multiplayer online games like Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Here's what he told us.

What do you remember about your first experience with Dungeons & Dragons?

In 1977, I was in college at Syracuse University. One evening I was sitting in the basement of my girlfriend’s house, and I saw a magazine article about gifts for Christmas. The article singled out Dungeons & Dragons as a particularly incomprehensible game. Well, that was all I needed to hear, and the next day I went searching for the game. I found it at a local gaming store in Syracuse--I believe it was called Nebulous Books--and from the moment I bought the white-boxed set, I was hooked. 

How did your parents feel about you playing D&D?

They both hated it with a passion and thought that, quite frankly, I was wasting my time and losing track of reality by playing the game. Of course, they said the same thing about my desire to make computer games two years later in 1979, so you can see how well I listened to them.

Were you primarily a dungeon master or a player?

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