Sony Online’s SOEmote software provides you with your Everquest II character’s expressions and voice

Sony Online’s SOEmote software provides you with your Everquest II character’s expressions and voice

This really is going to be a bigger deal than it seems right now, yep.

As a collaborative concoction between Sony, Image Metrics, and Vivox, SOEmote captures your voice and facial expressions and pastes them onto your in-game character. It also modulates your words into the pitch appropriate for your race such as the deep baritone of an ogre or the gnome’s tinny squeak. We at GamesBeat recommend turning off this feature when spilling large, expletive-inducing cups of coffee.

 

In the below video, David Georgeson, Everquest II director of development, demonstrates SOEmote’s capabilities with his mighty Froglok warrior, proving anthropomorphic amphibians look terrifyingly creepy when grinning.

Game Over for GameStop and Video Game Retailers?

Game Over for GameStop and Video Game Retailers?

Before it even launched, Diablo III had sold 2 million copies, making it the biggest game release of the year by far. The same week, though, video game retailer GameStop announced a worse-than-expected quarter of falling revenues led by plummeting in-store sales. Together, those two facts signal a massive re-alignment of how games are sold.

What’s Next in TV: Machinima, The No.1 Entertainment Network on YouTube

What’s Next in TV: Machinima, The No.1 Entertainment Network on YouTube

Video content is one of the fastest growing categories online. Television networks are scrambling to keep up, because the success stories so far have been smaller entities creating highly targeted and Web native content. The most successful video content producer right now is a company calledMachinima, currently in the middle of an investment round that will include money from YouTube parent company Google. Machinima (its name is a combination of the words ‘machine’ and ‘cinema’) is a “video entertainment network for video gamers,” specifically targeted at the 18 – 34 year old male demographic.

Video games at the Smithsonian draws massive audience, perhaps future show

Running from March through September, The Art of Video Games exhibition at the museum understands that video games are art and spends its space and time tracing that art’s evolution and influence.

and

“I had many of them come to me and say that they had never considered video games before, but they will never look at them the same way again.”