By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — Major game development firm Gameloft is looking to open an office in the Philippines that is focused on developing games for the handheld and mobile platforms.

In an interview with hackenslash, Vincent Ricot, who is serving as the Philippines studio manager, said the Philippines office will initially serve as a support location for mostly 3D animation development for Gameloft’s programming branches.

He said the company aims to hire around 50 animators until the end of the year.

“We have a lot of projects to do, especially with the number of console games being ported to the mobile phone and handheld platforms,” he said.

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By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

UPDATE: Editor’s note: Added video taken by INQUIRER.net technology reporter Erwin Oliva.

A FILIPINO startup has announced its entry in the free, advertising-based mobile game market in the country, as it offered at least 800 Java-based downloadable games for free to local subscribers, its chief executive officer told hackenslash Monday.

Ubersoft Inc. CEO Vince Yamat said the company was betting on the increasing demand for free mobile phone games that are currently offered at premium prices of about P30 to P50 per game by local service providers.

“This is something disruptive,” said Yamat, as he pointed out that mobile phone games contribute a significant amount to the total revenues of mobile phone networks.

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By Relly Carpio
INQUIRER.net

GUILDTXT is an SMS-based service that game clan masters in the various Level Up! games may use as a management tool.

“We decided on a soft launch for this new service. It is available and is already being used by the clan masters of our games,” said JC Medina, new media director of Level Up!

Launched two weeks ago, Guildtxt uses SMS group sending so one message can instantly be sent to many members. “This makes the handling of announcements to clan members more economical,” Medina said.

The reality is that clan members are not all online at the same time and announcements in clan forums or even on the guild page in-game are easily ignored. This leads to problems with managing the whole clan before a major activity such as before a clan or territorial war.

“With this new service, clan masters can text all the members of the clan for only P2.50. The clan members receive the message if they are registered to the clan’s Guildtxt group,” Medina said.

By Relly Carpio
INQUIRER.net

LAST week saw the latest addition to the anthology of Kratos the God of War. Subscribers to MyGlobe’s WAP site Download Station received the announcement last week that one of Sony Entertainment’s most successful third-person adventure game is now available for download for mobile phones.

God of War: Betrayal follows the exploits of Kratos, the Last Spartan, in his quest for glory. The game is a 2D scroller which includes certain famous aspects of the original game. Kratos’ Athena’s Blades and Medusa’s Gaze with the trademark “purchase power-up” at the end of each level are included in the game. Two monster types, the basic zombie and the minotaur. are used as mobs. The game has five levels and has a sixth End Boss level.

The God of War series, composed of two titles, were exclusively available for Sony’s Playstation 2 (PS2) series. Its ingenious use of the PS2 graphics engine endeared it to users of the console who were still waiting for a game that pushed the PS2 to its limits. God of War was touted to be one of these. The extremely entertaining storyline of the Kratos “The Last Spartan” in the series was also a factor in the game’s popularity with PS2 aficionados.

The game is produced by Sony Online Entertainment and developed by Javaground using the Javaground Solution.

By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

PHILIPPINE mobile game developer Anino Mobile recently became one of the only five companies to be sponsored for the upcoming Game Connection Europe (), a business networking event for the video game industry.

Anino Mobile was accepted into Game Connection’s Level Up program (not to be confused with the Philippine online game publisher Level Up!), which aims to help promising developers from different countries meet up with other game developers, publishers, distributors, investors and other entrepreneurs in the video game business.

In an interview, Anino Games director for Business Development Jeremiah Chow said the event will help bring the company closer to its goal of becoming a premier game development studio in Southeast Asia.

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