We have a few mighty battles in today's blips -- video-game music versus stuffy critics and pirates versus common decency. Who will win? Let's find out together.
News Blips:
New Assassin's Creed will be announced in May. In an investor's call today, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that the next main entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise would be released this fiscal year. Previous reports stated that Desmond and his Animus would be getting 2011 off, and that could still be the case -- Ubisoft's fiscal year ends in March 2012. Although a holiday 2011 release wouldn't be a surprise for Assassin's Creed 3, the series probably has the capability to sell well any time of the year. Just as long as they move on from Ezio's memories -- I'm sick of hearing about how "cute" he is from my girlfriend. [G4TV]
Civilization 4's "Baba Yetu" is the first piece of gaming music to ever win a Grammy. Last night, composer Christopher Tin was awarded the Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists. Tin noted that this was the first time music from a video game was nominated, let alone won. "I hope this brings more awareness to the fact that great music is being written for video games," Tin said in his acceptance speech. "Hopefully other game composers will follow me up here some day." And yes, I did listen to the song on repeat while writing these blips.
Pirated copies of Killzone 3 and Crysis 2 leak well before their release dates. The stinky copyright infringers are at it again. Killzone 3, the PlayStation 3's big title for early 2011, is already widely available on torrent sites, while an early developer build of Crysis 2 has been made available to unscrupulous individuals across the Internet. Crysis was one of the most pirated games in history, which lead to the sequel coming to consoles. I'm going to start a political party called "The Piracy Rates Are Too Damned High," and our platform will be to yell "SHUT UP!" every time a pirate tries to justify their actions. Killzone 3 and Crysis 2 are scheduled for release February 22 and March 22, respectively.
Financial periodical Forbes calls Valve more valuable per capita than Google and Apple. The operator of digital-distribution channel Steam is likely worth somewhere between $2 and 4 billion. That number falls a wee bit short of Apple's $300 billion value, but Forbes points out that the amount of value Valve has created per employee is astounding. With only 250 people, Valve has a higher worth per person ratio than either Apple or Google. Take that, pirates. [Forbes]
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