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September 26, 2007
Pre-Order to Earn 10 Free Days of Tabula Rasa®!
AFS recruits who pre-order Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa® and play during the beta are eligible to receive 10 days in addition to their first month of subscription beyond the time included with the full retail box activation. Click here for more details.Posted by adunkin at 4:02 PM
September 24, 2007
NCsoft's Richard Garriott meets with fans, real superhero
Austin, Texas, September 22–NCsoft® held a fan meet-and-greet event in Austin where gaming legend Richard Garriott met with hundreds of fans as well as with The Defuser, AKA Jarrett Crippen, the City of Heroes® devotee who won Sci-Fi Channel’s “Who Wants To Be A Superhero” reality show.
Garriott, who is developing the soon-to-be-released Tabula Rasa™, appearing as “General British” in full uniform was joined by the Ghost Widow, one of the signature characters from City of Villains™. The event also included representatives from other NCsoft titles including Dungeon Runners™, Guild Wars®, Lineage® and Lineage® II, as well as City of Heroes and City of Villains, who signed autographs and provided insight into their respective games.
Crippen appeared along with the City of Heroes representatives and gave autographs to an enthusiastic crowd. Crippen was also promoting a non-profit organization, “Scare for a Cure,” an Austin-based Halloween haunted house that raises money for breast cancer research.
The fan event included Garriott answering questions from attendees as well as providing autographed Tabula Rasa items. NCsoft has conducted a series of meet-and-greet events around the country this year, providing time for fans to meet one-on-one with its game developers.
Watch the Meet & Greet Montage Video!
Quicktime 7 - 640x360 - 64.7 MB
Windows Media 9 - 640x360 - 48.9 MB
Posted by adunkin at 4:04 PM
September 18, 2007
Exteel is looking for Beta Testers
Interested in beta testing one of our newest games, Exteel™? We're looking for beta testers right now. Click here to enter.Posted by adunkin at 6:03 PM
Gametrailers has the goods
Gametrailers.com's newest episode of Gameone features a lot about Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa®, including an interview with Richard Garriott, video of the Zero-G® flight, Britannia Manor and the Logos Academy event. You can watch it all right here.Posted by adunkin at 5:02 PM
September 10, 2007
Dev Corner: NCsoft and Sony
One of the most exciting things that we have to talk about this year is our new relationship with Sony, a deal which frankly gives us an unprecedented opportunity to bring our online portfolio of games to a suite of highly popular console gaming systems, including the PlayStation 3. Many in the industry and the press have asked me why we have chosen this path, and what kind of games they can expect to see on their favorite console—not to mention when. Here I hope to provide some insight into this relationship and how it fits into the vision for our products in the coming years.
It has been one of our business strategies to bring customers to a catalog of games where the customer has the choice to play a variety of different products. However, we don’t want to limit ourselves to the PC, especially while the console market continues to grow by leaps and bounds with every new generation...and console makers want to get into the online space. The ideal system would be an extremely capable, stable platform, with the best Internet connectivity and greatest freedom of web access and interaction available to the user. This combination of access, openness and ability to bring NCsoft to the console market is very attractive. In this case, we felt like Sony fit the bill. We like their vision of where they are going and we believe Sony complements our strategy moving forward (this is not to say we are going to stop developing on the PC, far from it).
Specifically, this relationship allows NCsoft to develop titles across all of Sony’s console hardware platforms—the focus being on the PlayStation 3 and perhaps the PSP. This long-term relationship will allow us to start developing console products, as well as build our growing catalog beyond just massively multiplayer games for the PC.
I am sure you are all interested to know what we will be developing. Unfortunately, for now, I can’t tell you, as we’re still keeping that under wraps. We are hoping, but can’t promise, to have the first of our products available for the holiday season in 2008. Yes, it’s a bit of a short time frame. One thing is certain, however. We won’t just be porting our games over to the PS3. We want to make new products using our current, popular Intellectual Properties (IPs) that will take advantage of the console, specifically in terms of user interface, connectivity, and play styles. This tends to take a lot longer than a normal port. We are also looking at all sorts of new, original IPs that we can use for the console games we create. That process, however, will take two to three years at a minimum.
So where will these console games be developed? We currently follow a distributed model of development for the PC, and the same type of system will be in place for console game development. While we are exploring the idea of starting a new studio solely for console games, outside of Austin, we are also looking at specific projects that we may house in other studios. This includes our Austin offices or our other currently existing studios. Console game development won’t just be at one single location.
Finally, you may be curious about what kind of business models we plan on using. Currently our plan is to utilize all of our business models with our anticipated Sony products. There will be the traditional subscription models, micropayment systems and free-to-play games with membership options.
While I still cannot go into much detail, I hope to have provided you with a glimpse into our strategy and plans regarding our expansion into the console world. It is an exhilarating time for NCsoft, and in the future we hope to have more information for you regarding our upcoming console products.
Stay tuned! There’s more to come.
Robert Garriott, Chief Executive Officer
Robert Garriott has been CEO of NCsoft North America since May 2001. Prior to joining NCsoft, he was President of Origin Systems, which he co-founded with Richard Garriott in 1983. In 1992, Electronic Arts acquired Origin. Robert stayed on with EA as vice president of business development and later senior vice president of product development. Mr. Garriott left EA in 1995 to pursue personal interests. He and brother Richard co-founded another game company, Destination Games, in 2000. Robert joined NCsoft Corporation as President of its North American offices when it merged with Destination Games in 2001.
Posted by adunkin at 2:53 PM
September 6, 2007
NCsoft Announces Launch Date for Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa
Austin, Texas, September 6, 2007— NCsoft®, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, announced today that Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa® has reached gold master status and will launch commercial service in North America and Europe on October 19, 2007. Pre-order customers will begin their three-day head start on October 16.
One of the most anticipated PC games of the year, Tabula Rasa is gaming legend Richard Garriott’s newest title, which combines a vast, persistent game world and rich storyline with fast paced action. Set in a near-future science fiction storyline, players create characters that must fight to save humanity against hostile alien enemies while trying to gain control of the universe. The game introduces several innovative elements to massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, including a Character Cloning System™ that allows players to explore different character classes without having to create a new character, and dynamic battlefields where players experience the frenetic action of combat in an ongoing war.
“It has been a heck of a journey,” said Richard Garriott, the game’s executive producer. “The fact that we are getting ready for the final stretch towards launch feels great, but it is also just the beginning. I think we’ve managed to do something truly unique and I hope that the gaming community likes it as much as we do. Now, I am looking forward to a really fun ‘end of beta event’ for our incredible testers, and focusing development on new planets and innovations for future expansions of Tabula Rasa.”
The standard edition box of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa will be available at major online retailers at an expected retail price of $49.99 and at the PlayNC® store (https://secure.plaync.com/cgi-bin/Store.pl). Customers will be able to purchase the recently announced Limited Collector’s Edition box from major retailers at an expected retail price of $69.99. Both products include the first month of online game play. After the first month, players will be charged a monthly subscription fee of US$14.99. Sixty-day game time cards will also be available at many North American retailers for an expected retail price of US$29.99. The game is rated Teen by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
For more information about Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa go to http://www.rgtr.com. For more information about the Limited Collector’s Edition go to http://www.plaync.com/us/news/2007/08/ncsoft_reveals_2.html.
About NCsoft Corporation
NCsoft North America is headquartered in Austin, Texas and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation. NCsoft, with its own development and publishing offices in Texas and California, also works with other NCsoft subsidiaries and third party developers throughout North America to develop and publish innovative online entertainment software products. The company has successfully launched multiple online titles in the last three years and continues to support its franchises, which include Lineage®/Lineage II, City of Heroes®/City of Villains®, Guild Wars®/Guild Wars Factions™/Guild Wars Nightfall™/Guild Wars: Eye of the North™ and Dungeon Runners™. More information about NCsoft can be found at www.plaync.com.
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NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, Tabula Rasa, Character Cloning System, PlayNC, Lineage, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Dungeon Runners and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. City of Heroes, City of Villains and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation and Cryptic Studios, Inc. Cryptic Studios is a trademark of Cryptic Studios, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Posted by adunkin at 9:23 AM