America's Army game gets new firepower on GameSpot is a report from the Serious Games Summit on a presentation on America's Army outlining the business plan for the freeware shooter as well as future plans, saying development on a version of the game using Unreal Engine 3 will begin in February 2006. The talk by Colonel Casey Wardynski also revealed that by the Army's accounting the $2.5 million they spend per year on the game equates to a cost per person/hour of 10 cents compared to a cost of $5.00-8.00 for television, that 20% cadets entering the Army Academy and 20-40% percent of new Army recruits have already played the game (described as a more effective use of marketing funds than the Army's forays into other areas like Race Car sponsorship and Bull Riding). Other interesting tidbits related from the presentation include that the game's PvP focus is due to the cost of getting even poor AI running, and how they "would have had to pay Microsoft $10 per disc to be on the Xbox." Here's a bit more on the future:
Read More @ the source:
