Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There are two different stories here, really. The first is Intel’s presentation at GDC last week, in which Intel’s Matt Ployar (the new PCGA president) stood up to talk about the growth in PC game sales. In addition to what we’ve already heard about growth in the last year, he predicted that the PC would be a bigger market than “all the consoles combined” by 2012. This is partly due to massive growth in Asia, and a shrinking of sales in North America, where people can’t quite afford their $60 PS3 games anymore.

The second story is from this interview with EA’s Frank Gibeau (via GI) who says that PC downloads are “awesome”. Continuing with that line of thought he explained: “The margins are much better and we don’t have any rules in terms of first party approvals. From our perspective, it’s an extremely healthy platform. It’s totally conceivable it will become our biggest platform.”

So that’s the news about bigness.

I mean, “Sandy Bridge?” That’s a euphemism for unwashed undercrackers if ever I heard one. Intel seems to think it’s an appropriate codename for its latest generation of processors, however. Processors apparently so good that they prompted Gabe Newell to say they’re “a game-changer” and will “bring a console-like experience to PC.” This is, apparently, because the CPU includes built-in graphics processing that’s actually up to the job of modern games.

Hmm.
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The Intel Troll (pictured) dropped us a line to announce their new Level Up competition, and it’s looking fairly shiny. There’s a couple of tiers to the competition, with pros/hobbyists and students judged separately. The lowdown is that the grand prize for professional/hobbyist level entries is an all-expense paid trip to the Tokyo Game Show. The prize for the student-level competition is a pass to GDC San Francisco 2011, as well as marketing support for their game from Intel and “a marketing firm”. There are also “Best Game For Desktop, Laptop, and Netbook” categories, each with their own $5000-plus-big-fat-PC prizes, and more for “judges choice” awards. Thousands of dollars worth of stuff, basically. So that’s probably worth looking into if you’re in the game-making business. Details on how to get in on it below.
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Intel send word that this year’s Level Up development competition is up and running. Or “Level Up 2009, the Intel Visual Adrenaline Game Demo Challenge,” as they call it. There’s three categories, including, er, optimised for Intel Graphics, and “Best Threaded Game”. Anyway, Intel supply a load of the development tools for nowt, and the prizes are pretty enormous, including a US$4,000 PC, with a similar amount of development software, and free GDC passes for the winner. All good stuff for aspiring indies. The basic FAQ is here, and the more detailed information doc is here. Probably worth signing up if you’re into that sort of cleverness.