A Little Pre-GDC Evening Reading

Tomorrow's when this year's Games Developer Conference (GDC) kicks into high gear for the enthusiast press. Don't mind that sucking sound you're hearing, it's just the water pulling back from the shoreline before the coming media tsunami.

So how about some non-GDC news to tide you over until tomorrow?

$750 million dollars. That's the slice of games development pie Dallas-Fort Worth locals are guesstimating the two cities contribute to a Texas total of$1.75 billion. Peter Raad, founder and executive director of The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University believes North Texas is the third largest gaming market in the country after San Francisco / Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.

Autodesk to buy AI middleware developer. That's kind of out of nowhere. Autodesk makes design software, but apparently sees this as a way "to simplify video game development by providing cutting-edge tools to create, animate and integrate 3D assets into game engines." So says Autodesk media and entertainment's senior veep Marc Petit, anyway. Developer Kynogan SA's tools are already used by Electronic Arts and Activision as well as in defense and security simulations, e.g. military operations.

Disney recruited Atari VP to helm new games drive. Follow-up to what I reported this morning about Disney's new games push: It looks like they've pulled in Jean-Marcel Nicolai, who worked at Atari for seven years. Atari, as you've probably heard, is in serious trouble, with its most recent losses more than double the prior period. Why pluck someone from the deck of a sinking ship to helm your new baby? Who knows, but Nicolai apparently hinted Atari's problems came down to frequent management changes.

Will Microsoft partner with Netflix? I say yes, and that it's just a matter of time. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings joined Microsoft's board of directors last March, and insiders claim Microsoft is considering foregoing an internal Blu-ray verison of its Xbox 360 because it (I think rightly) sees the future of home movie-watching as online. MSNBC speculates that announcement of a partnership could happen as early as GDC tomorrow.

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