Onling Gaming Tidbits for March 4th, 2009

A few of the latest online gaming related stories in the news:

• Empire: Total War Launches with Steamworks – The positioning by Valve is revealing: The announcement places equal value on the development vs. marketing value of Steamworks. Publishers want both.
• Study: MMOG communities mimic real life – MMO communities are now big enough that University of Minnesota researchers can use the games like Everquest II as an accurate proxy for studying (unspecified) human behavior.
• GameTap subscription service gets a redesign, but drops many features – Apart from Mac support, the relaunch also no more support for leaderboards, challenge play, customizable controls, instant messaging, save states and some personal playlists.
• Qube, RedBedlam Partner For ‘Messiah’ MMO Tech – ‘Qube’s Q Engine middleware will provide the genre and platform-agnostic client base, while RedBedlam’s ZoneBubble System will provide the server technology for a single, persistent virtual world.’
• Capcom On Digital Distribution – Christian Svensson proudly touts the highest revenue-generating Xbox Live title, highest revenue-generating Wii title and PlayStation Network successes and says digital distribution is more important than retail channels.
• Online Business Heats Up – Gaming analyst Piers Harding-Rolls of ScreenDigest digs deeper into the recent user metrics touted by both Microsoft and Sony for their online services.

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