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Risen 2: Trying to achieve same quality across all platforms “doesn’t make any sense”, says Oberlerchner

Risen 2′s senior brand manager Daniel Oberlerchner feels its doesn’t “make any sense” for development studios to try and produce a game with the same quality across all platforms.

Speaking in an interview with Strategy Informer, Oberlerchner said having the optimum experience across all platforms is what studios should strive for instead, due to what he feels is a “technology gap,” between PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

“Some studios say they are going to have the same quality across all platforms, which is to say you take the weakest platform – the Xbox 360 – and you have the same crappy textures for the Playstation 3 and the PC,” he said.

“It was just a couple of weeks ago there was a PC game that was… well, I don’t really want to go into details, but our decision is that we want to have a really hi-res experience on the PC. There is no reason why we should create hi-res textures, then just make them blurry for a console version, then put everything back on the PC again – it doesn’t make any sense.

“We want to make sure everything is maxed out on every platform – for example on the Playstation 3, it is a bit better in terms of Aliasing, but then extra memory is going to be better on the Xbox 360 because the PS3 doesn’t have direct memory – so it has to share everything. So it’s going to be different, but it’s going to be the same game, with the same features.”

Risen 2 launches for PC, PS, and Xbox 360 in 2012. Check out Stace’s impressions of the game here.

Thanks, EvilAvatar.

GMAs 2011 – Liveblog tomorrow from 8pm BST

Part of London’s South Bank is about to be filled to tipping point with a ton of games journos and PRs. It can only be the Games Media Awards 2011.

Last year’s awards pointed to some big wins for now OXM-based Jon Blyth, Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, now-departed CVG ed Tim Ingham and RetroGamer, while PC Zone took over the Media Legend throne from Pat following his win in 2009 alongside best online writer and best blog.

We won nothing last year despite being nominated for best blog. This year we’re up for the same award. Brenna’s on the sacking line if we don’t win – it’s only fair, it happened to me last year – so if you see her out of a job come Thursday, blame yourself if you didn’t vote for us.

Pre-show chatter will likely begin before the show, but me and Pat are aiming to start blogging from the actual awards at 8pm BST. Catch what happens below.

Games Media Awards 2011

Black Ops Double XP coming this weekend, earn yourself a Prestige Token

Black Ops players will get Double XP this weekend, starting Friday, October 28 from 10.00am PST until Tuesday, November 1 at 10.00am PST. Also, players will unlock a Prestige Token for Modern Warfare 3 and for every Call of Duty game prestiged since the original Modern Warfare.

According to Robert Bowling, with the new Prestige Shop coming to Modern Warfare 3, every time you prestige in the game, you’ll receive a prestige token. Players can then unlock rewards like double XP for a limited time, an extra custom class, or choose one piece of gear from your custom class to keep unlocked from Rank 1 of future prestiges.

Those who have prestiged in Modern Warfare, World at War, Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops will get tokens to use in MW3 on day one.

The Double XP weekend should help players out with this a bit. Thanks, Voodoo Extreme.

PSA: inFamous: Festival of Blood hits PSN today in the US

Just a reminder that inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood is available today on the US PS Store. It will run you $9.99, but if you are a Plus member, it will run you $2 less at $7.99. The stand-along game, meaning inFamous 2 isn’t required to play it, also contains Move support. The new cutscene tool and Move support will appear in the main inFamous 2 game “any day now,” according to Sucker Punch. Check out screens and a video for the game below. UK should be getting the game tomorrow with the normal update.

Bethesda lists minimum and recommend PC specs for Skyrim

Bethesda has revealed the minimum and recommended PC specs for Skyrim.

The hardware list was announced via Twitter by Pete Hines, who said to expect full details on PC specs and some console information to be posted on the Bethesda Blog shortly.

Until then, here’s what you will need in order to run the game.

Minimum PC Specs:

• Operating System: Win XP/7/Vista (32 or 64 bit)
• CPU: Dual Core 2Ghz
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• Video Card: DirectX9c video card w/ 512MB RAM

Recommended PC Specs:

• Operating System: Win XP/7
• CPU: Quad-Core Intel/AMD CPU
• Memory: 4GB RAM, 6GB Hard Drive Space
• Sound: DirectX compatible sound card
• Video Card: DirectX9 video card with 1GB memory. GTX 260/Radeon 4890 or higher

The recommended settings are to run the game on “High” graphical output, according to Bethesda. However, if you want to run the game on “Ultra” graphics, well, you better get a bigger boat.

Skyrim releases on November 11.

Ubisoft to open new Abu Dhabi studio in December

Ubisoft and twofour54, the Media Zone Authority in Abu Dhabi, have announced the upcoming opening of a new Ubisoft development studio in Abu Dhabi, which is the first time a major games publisher has established a direct presence in the GCC.

The Media Zone Authority in Abu Dhabi, an initiative by the Abu Dhabi government to create an Arabic media and entertainment hub for the Middle East and North Africa.

The studio’s slated to open its doors in December, with a core team of Ubisoft veterans who will help “train an initial team of local recruits,” while contributing to twofour54′s gaming academy, which is a new, full-time game development academy.

“We are excited by the partnership with twofour54,” said Christine Burgess-Quémard, executive director, worldwide studios at Ubisoft. “Their commitment to developing a strong regional gaming industry and their knowledge of the region were the perfect foundation on which to continue building our development teams.

“The demographics and the pool of skilled technical talent in the Middle East and North Africa region are key factors that will contribute to the success of this new studio.”

Ubisoft’s Abu Dhabi studio will start by working on online gaming titles in collaboration with other Ubisoft studios, and will eventually create original titles which will “appeal to local and international audiences alike.”

“Digital gaming has always been a priority sector for twofour54 and to partner with an international market leader such as Ubisoft is great news for the region’s gaming industry,” commented Wayne Borg, deputy CEO and COO of twofour54. “The digital games played by Arabs have traditionally been developed outside the region, which means that they rarely have a direct relevance to Arab gamers.

“Our agreement with Ubisoft will benefit the region in that it will enable the development of titles that resonate with the local population, whilst also building the skills of young Arabs to allow the region to create its own games and developing a gaming industry base here at twofour54.”

Yannick Theler, a ten-year veteran at Ubisoft, will manage the new studio. Yannick was previously Ubisoft Switzerland’s as marketing and sales director before becoming VP of business development for Ubisoft China and human resources director of Ubisoft Shanghai.

Watch the first 15 minutes of Battlefield 3

It’s D-Day in the US as far as Battlefield 3 is concerned, but those in the UK won’t get it until Friday, so to help tide you over, or make the wait even worse for you, check out the first 15 minutes of the game below, courtesy of G4.

Blizzard: Offering Diablo III for free is a show of “gratitude,” to WoW player base

Blizzard COO Paul Sams has said the firm is offering Diablo III free to World of Warcraft Annual Pass subscribers as a way to “show an amount of gratitude,” to the player base.

Speaking in an interview with VentureBeat, Sams said giving Annual Pass subs the game, is a way for WoW fans to enjoy both games without having to pay out anymore than they already do for the MMO.

“We talk about, all the time, how can we do something cool for our players that’s going to benefit them, benefit us, and that they’ll feel is a give-back of sorts,” he said. “That’s where this started. There’s a variety of benefits that come from it. Certainly the players get DIII, which is pretty exciting. That doesn’t mean they get the expansion sets, it means that they get DIII, right? So we get people excited about playing that … they get to touch it, feel it, experience it. And then from our perspective, it also is a situation where they aren’t necessarily going to leave WoW to play our own game.

“We don’t want to take players from our universe and shift them over from World of Warcraft. There’s a lot of players playing WoW that have huge amounts of friends and family that they play World of Warcraft with, so [giving Annual Pass subscribers Diablo III] says, enjoy both of them. You don’t have to pay any more than you already do for WoW.”

“We thought it would be a cool thing to have our players be able to experience that game without having to leave WoW. We really view it as a give-back to the players. Will that mean that there’s more people potentially playing DIII? Maybe. Does that mean more people might engage in the real-money auction house? Possibly. That could be very positive for the organization, and I think for the players.”

The Annual Pass, announced during BlizzCon, is available for a limited time and allows players to sign up for a monthly-billed, 12 month subscription plan. Along with Diablo III, subs will get access to the Mists of Pandaria beta and receive the exclusive Tyreal’s Charger mount.

NOA announces Metallic Rose and Midnight Blue DSi XL bundles

NOA has announced blue and pink DSi XL bundles for the US. The packs will land in stores starting November 6. The Metallic Rose and Midnight Blue versions will come with Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem, and will run you $169.99. Nintendo announced earlier today that Icy White and Misty Pink 3DS bundles would launch in Europe on November 18, and will include a copy of Super Mario 3D Land, and Nintendogs + Cats, respectively.

Battlefield 3 pre-orders hit close to 3 million

EA has announced that pre-orders for Battlefield 3 hit close to the 3 million mark when it went on sale, today in the US. It’s unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. EA will report its Q2 results this coming Thursday, and while the fiscal report won’t include sales figures for the shooter, the firm may provide a more solid figure for the pre-order sector. Just last week, the firm said pre-orders were at “around 2 million,” and back in early September, EA CFO Eric Brown said the figure stood at around 1.25 million. BF3 is out today in the US and hits the UK Friday.