With E3 in full force and the major press conferences having come to a close the gang gets together and takes a hard look at what was really said in each conference and discuss all the games that were detailed.

Opening up with a full orchestra to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda over a montage of all the Zelda games over the past 25 years. A bit of new footage from Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Miyamoto pops out and speaks on the music of Zelda, then starts riffing with the orchestra. Does the getting an item sound with the orchestra while he acts it out. I truly hope he reveals something big doing this, otherwise its just wasted time… Turns out, he’s just wasting time. Revealing a new Zelda title for 3DS in this fashion would have been a win.

Nintendo 3DS eShop launched yesterday. Zelda: Links’ Awakening will be available for download by day’s end (he mentions the first of the Game Boy Color titles, does this mean they all will come eventually…). Next weekend, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D will launch across the world.

Hint movies will be present and the Master Quest version of Ocarina will also be featured.

Free Zelda: Four Swords for Nintendo DSi in September (so you people who bought it instead of the 3DS don’t feel left out).

Zelda: Skyward Sword will be out this holiday season world-wide for the Wii (pretty much confirming that Project Cafe will not be out this holiday).

A special gold Wii Remote will be available as well in promotion of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Miyamoto claims the game is packed full of content and will be the most satisfying of the entire series (very lofty claim).

Legend of Zelda symphony concerts will be held in every region around the world (hence the orchestra intro). Happening in the fall, more announcements regarding this to come. Also, two music cds (Ocarina of Time: 3D soundtrack – a gift to those who register) and the 25th Anniversary Concert (releasing with Skyward Sword). More events to come.

Miyamoto then recognizes all the people who worked on Zelda over the years and thanks them.

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo Global President, is up, speaking on the changes to who and where people game based on 3DS and the Wii. Addresses that the game industry has not created a platform for all users, hardcore and casual (debatable claim). Nintendo’s new console will provide deeper game experiences for hardcore and wider appeal for casual users. Nintendo wants to serve every player (something they also claimed with the Wii… which still hasn’t occurred).

Iwata talks about the upcoming games for Nintendo 3DS.

Montage of Paper Mario 3DS, Star Fox (do a barrell roll), Super Mario Bros (raccoon suit is back), Icarus, Luigi’s Haunted Mansion (really… that one?)

Reggie is up, “Look, we hear you… you want what you always wanted, but you want something new”. Goes on to say, “is it fair to ask, and is it even possible to deliver something to everyone.” He claims that this is what they are aiming for with the new console. But he is going to speak on Nintendo 3DS titles.

MarioKart 3DS (Reggie claims a tricked out version you haven’t played before). Graphics look like they always do, oh…. the kart just tricked out with a parasail, now a motor boat engine, off-road tires. Looks like they focused on variations of racing.

Star Fox – You can use buttons or use the gyro sensors to control the ship (so, if you roll, will Star Fox do a barrel roll?). 3DS cameras can record your friends faces and every reaction when you battle them. Arrives in September.

Super Mario 3D – First Mario created in 3D made for portable systems, screens show Mario in the raccoon suit busting blocks and grabbing coins. Looks like a portable Mario 64, which was a great game. Reggie announces that it would be out before the end of the year.

Kid Icarus Uprising – New footage shown, looks like Final Fantasy style creatures and effects. Voice actor is pretty cheesy and no eggplant wizards shown. You can battle other human opponents via 3 on 3 multiplayer. Kid Icarus AR game via cards will be coming.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 – Luigi’s brother is back with his vacuum. Various game play shots are shown, different color ghosts and a mummy are seen, with Luigi saying his usual “Whoa!”. Reggie claims that the title is not a simple revamp, that it is a new game featuring 3D and several new mansions.

Reggie moves on to 3rd party developers for the 3DS. Montage of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries, Mario and Sonic: London 2012 Olympics, Ace Combat 3D, Tetris, Cave Story 3D, Resident Evil: Revelations, Driver Renegade, PacMan and Galaga Dimensions, Tekken 3D, Metal Fear Solid Snake Eater 3D (all fast, with little shown to really get a feel for each title).

Reggie goes on about the expanded Internet browser and 3D eShop. 10 Game trailers will be up tomorrow but demos will be featured for retail games coming. 3DS will also be getting virtual store and free copy of Excitebike 3DS.

Reggie mentions Pokemon on the 3DS, enhanced Pokedex 3D, which is a AR game. Expand the Pokedex by trading with Spot pass, trading friends or scanning live AR markers. Each pokemon will have its own AR marker, which can be superimposed on photos and saved on the SD card. Pokedex 3D will only be on the eShop and will be free for 3DS users.

Now Reggie introduces the new console: the WiiU (since this is tailor made for you). He also claims that is unique. Shows the new controller, which has the touchscreen. Shows a video of someone playing Super Mario Bros., random guy says the game is on. TV switches over to a baseball game, the player picks up the controller, showing his Super Mario Bros game in progress and continues to play.

Stylus drawing, touchscreen capability (go is shown), motion control that relays to the tv (the controller is used to aim a baseball pitch), new views of the game from the controller (golf is shown, with the ball in sandtrap on the controller, and the fairway on the screen), fitness, oh great… a gun peripheral is shown with the new controller attached…

Can’t we ever get away from these damn plastic peripherals…

Make video calls with the new controller, browse the Internet with it, share to the TV (user swipes a finger towards the TV and a video pops from the controller to the tv), more game details (Skyward Sword has a dungeon map displayed on the controller while the game is on the TV).

Coming in 2012.

Iwata comes back and explains that the controller has 6.2 inch screen, has the usual button arrangement, is backward compatible, can be used instead of the tv and compatable with all past Wii periphreals. Controller has touch screen, microphone, gyroscope, camera and accelerometer. Iwata emphasizes that it was not designed to be a portable game system. However, the controller can be used for interconnective usage with tv or by itself.

Interview with Miyamoto who explains he is excited to see the new styles of play that will come from the new controller (but no evidence that there are any titles going to be shown here, that worries me).

Iwata explains that Smash Bros. will be coming for WiiU and 3DS and that they will work together in some fashion. Okay, Iwata does mention there is WiiU software to play now and brings Reggie back.

Reggie states that the eight interactive demos are not actual software in development just tech demos. Figures… Shows a visual movie with a bird flying towards a cherry tree, very pretty. Cherry blossom hits a pond with a coi fish.

Nintendo will publish Lego City Stories a new open world game from TT Games. Will be exclusive to WiiU and 3DS. Reggie then shows a video from CEOs all speaking about the new system. Danny Bilson’s comment of the “swiss army knive of video controllers” is apt. Okay, some titles are being talked about. Darksiders II at launch, Tekken Wii Successor, Batman Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon Online…

A lot of talk, little actual definitive titles (none really new) being announced. Just as I state that, the video montage begins: Darksiders II footage is being shown. Dirt being shown, Aliens Colonial Marines (game over man…), Ghost Recon Online (not very impressive graphics on that one), Metro Last Night (looks like Fear), Tekken (customizing your fighter with stylus drawings), Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge (yes, blood spattering on the WiiU, nice action shots).

Iwata comes out and brings John Riccitiello, EA President, out to speak. John says that this is the first Nintendo conference he has spoken at. Comments that he looks forward to new innovative experiences on WiiU from EA. John re-emphasizes EA’s approach to bringing more online social experience to their games (is this what Nintendo is relying upon instead of an online social experience of their own… poor choice to make the 3rd party developer do your own work).

Reggie finishes it up by summarizing the hardware, the three 3DS games, eight tech demos and thanks everyone for joining them. No mention of a new online system, no word of the continuation of terrible friend codes, no big new game announcements, no price point indicated. Yeah, the controller is cool, but controllers won’t sell this console alone.

Adam Sessler’s comment at the end of the briefing sums it up best: “Is it a console, is it a controller, I don’t think we know yet!”

The Sony e3 presentation has come to an end and it’s time for another “Not Quite Live Blog”.

Opening video, plenty of game play with a few cuts of new hardware, this is promising. Maybe the PS3 will have games to play this year that I won’t want to play on the 360.

Then again, they are showing movie tie-in games in the video, that’s a bad sign…

Straight to the point, Jack Tretton impressively apologizes for the network outage. Bravo!

And back to the self promotion…. Jack claims 30% of Netflix usage is on PS3… I find that doubtful.

Naughty Dog starts off with Uncharted 3 Drakes Deception demo. Looks amazing as usual. Looks like the lighting engine my have gotten an update. Lets just hope they scrapped the bullshit ending engine that has dragged down the last two games. Bitching aside, it looks like its another day one Uncharted purchase.

Also looks like Drakes Fortune is going have 3D support.

Next up Insomniac with Resistance 3, looks like it’s bad news for mankind but good news for gamers. Looks like 3 is the lucky number for PlayStation this year for graphics. The demo was to short to really tell if the story is gonna be any good.

Now it’s the HD remakes Ico and Shadow of the Colossus and God of War games and it seems they are gonna support 3D as well.

… now Jack is pimping a 24 inch 3D tv.. looks like they aren’t ready to lay down on 3D.

OK a split screen mode utilizing the 3D mode to make it so you don’t have to share your screen. That’s pretty wicked.

TV with glasses and Resistance 3 will be $499, not quite Apple expensive, but not fantastic either.

Now its onto PS Move with 2K sports games.

NBA 2K12 has new mode called NBA on the Move. see the pun they used there… on the move? Yeah, I groaned too.

NBA 2K12 looks impressive though.

Now Kobe Bryant is taking the stage to play, because hey we need something to distract us from the puns.

Next Move title up to bat Medieval Moves … who writes this crap?

This game looks more like a glorified Wii game than something I would expect on PS3.

Definitely an attempt at a children’s game, but I wonder if it might be a bit much for the target audience.

Infamous 2 trailer, looking good… good timing to pimp a title that comes out tomorrow and the user made mission generator.

Here comes Starhawk trailer looks like the Warhawk fans are going to get more of their good thing. No game play though.

Sly Cooper? looks like another Sly game, still no game play footage though. Less glamor and more game play, please.

Looks like CCP’s new FPS Dust 514 MMO will be PS3 and NGP console exclusive. This is gonna be a glaring mistake for them I suspect. Unless they do a PC release.

Looks amazing, almost as good as Killzone 2, which is saying quite a bit in it’s favor for an MMO. Dedicating to one hardware set is definitely in their favor on that account.

Bioshock Infinite looks to be bringing back some of the amazing wonder and scenery appeal the original Bioshock did, I can’t wait for a shot at it.

Saints Row: the Third will have exclusive PS3 content.

PSN will also get an exclusive PS Move prequel story to the new Star Trek game and will feature a phaser move peripheral.

And now for the EA exclusives for the PS3

SSX will feature a Mt. Fuji map exclusive, Need for Speed: The Run will get 7 super cars, and Battlefield 3 will get Battlefield 1943 free on the disk.

Kaz Harai is on stage promoting PlayStation Suite. Sony is pushing the brand out to the mobile environment. This is a smart step on their part.

And here is the NGP details we’ve been waiting for, let’s see what they have named it.

Oh Christ, they went with PlayStation Vita.  I want to make Evita jokes about crying already. Who the hell comes up with these names?
Looks like an amazing piece of hardware and will have 3G and WiFi models… sounds great till they mentioned AT&T. Guess who’s gonna get price gouged for that 3G (hint… vita owners).

Lets see the Vita games:

Another Drake Game, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and damn is it sexy as hell. This looks as good as the PS3 game, and has some cool touch functions. I am impressed and really want to play it.

Next up RUIN… looks like a God of War / Diablo clone, with an interesting twist you are raiding dungeons of friends and associates.  It’s also gonna feature PS3 and Vita drop in/drop out play. That’s a heck of an interesting feature.

A new Modnation Racers game built just for PSVita featuring doodle tracks. Now that’s pretty cool just imagine the mischief tracks you can make with that. First one to the genitals track with a jump at the tip wins.

And a new little big planet game for vita … really should have called it Little Big Vita.

A Street Fighter X Tekken game, I think there is gonna be a lot of excitement over this, fighting games go great on mobile cause their short play nature and this kind of cross over. Oh dear…  infamous’ hero will be a playable character.

And the kicker available this holiday for pricing of 249$ (Wifi Only) 299$ (3G Wifi) I think they hit the pricing hot spot not quite 199$, but still forgivable.

All and all a great performance on Sony’s side. Get the apology out of the way and talk about the games.

In 2012, EA is highlighting “Game Changers”, a system of using connectivity among different platforms and social media to further enhance your playing experience. While not really occurring on all their featured titles this year, EA still has an impressive lineup for the coming year.

Mass Effect 3
EA started off the bat with (debateably) their most desired game this year: Mass Effect 3. A brief movie appears using both prerendered explosions and fake newscasters across the world in a panic. The Reavers are attacking Earth… nothing really new, just something set the stage and get the applause.

Casey Hudson, announces the release date 3/6/12 (all multiples of 3, quaint). Casey goes on to explain that the game will show all the effects of the choices you have made. New players will have the opportunity to join in at Mass Effect’s dramatic crescendo. I should note that if you are using ME3 to start your foray into this game trilogy, you’re insane…

A semi-live demo, played by Cory Gasper, Bioware Combat Developer, showed little gameplay as it relied heavily on amazing prerendered cutscenes intermixed with action. What I did see only made me crave more. Orbital strikes on Reavers, turrets on what I think is the Mako, and am I wrong… or did Shepard just get an energy sword? Yep, the common tool now seems to double as a sword. The first game play trailer, “The Fall of Earth,” is shown after the demo and features little actual gameplay, but shows Shepard impale an enemy on the ground with it.

That over, John Riccitiello, EA CEO, comes on and explains this year’s theme, “Game Changers” and starts making jokes. He boasts that EA doesn’t build elaborate stages or invite random celebrities for guest appearances in a not-so-subtle dig. Interestingly, by the time this conference is over, there will be at least two random guest celebrities depending on how you see it. So John… you might want to watch the full conference before making claims.

Need for Speed: the Run
Jason DeLong, Executive Producer at Black Box, previews Need the Speed: The Run. He promises breakneck speed, intense chase and race sequences, and police force to take you down. Jason explains that every moment in game is tracked by Auto Log to track your progression to share with others, then announces the curious bit… Need for Speed: the Run will have non-racing action moments.

The demo showed very impressive graphics, especially in the intro as he raced a white muscle car through the wet streets of Chicago. Having driven some of those streets, I can say that they recreated their look very well. Mind you, I never raced down them at over 80, but this really sets the mood. Jason seems nervous when he bashes the walls a few times, but that actually helps show off the control schemes (as he doesn’t completely go off the rails).

After crashing into another car, the character jumps out of the car and starts running away from the police. This is where things go wonky. Rather than control the character, this seems to be more of a cut-scene with quick-time events (press A to jump at timed locations, bumper to punch the cop). While these segments can probably help accentuate the story behind the game, nothing shown gives the impression that you will actually control your character.

Why this was called out, or even put into the game at all is a curiosity. When Jason first mentioned it, I thought it would be Need for Speed: GTA Clone… which, honestly, doesn’t sound that bad. GTA has always needed better driving mechanics that Need for Speed could easily provide. Sadly, what was shown Need for Speed: Button Mashing Running. Hopefully, they add more than this, otherwise stick with the much more impressive car sequences.

Star Wars: The Old Republic
Dr. Greg Zeschuk walks out to the Star Wars theme and starts speaking on the huge undertaking of Bioware regarding their upcoming MMORPG. He goes on at length regarding his teams efforts. He announces that they will be showing a lot at E3 (raids, Tatooine, high-end gameplay, and epic boss battles), but decides not to show this at the conference… instead he goes with an impressive trailer showing both sides of the conflict. Some of the content shown was taken from the first trailer ever released for the game so its not all new, and shows no in-game footage. In the end, it leaves me wanting to actually see the gameplay but does not deliver. Yep, a Jedi level tease!

SSX
Peter Moore, showing no visible tats, steps out after the trailer for SSX. This trailer is another example of pretty cut-scenes, but no visible gameplay. Coming out in January 2012, SSX has a tagline in the trailer that will more than likely be delivered… Defy Reality, Own the Planet. To me, the most impressive feature is when Peter explained that they worked with NASA satellites to get data and images of the world and using this, you can drop into any mountain range on the planet. Google Ski, so to speak.

FIFA 12
Peter continues to speak on FIFA 11, rattling off some impressive stats regarding the FIFA franchise then introduces Matt Bilby to speak on FIFA 12. Matt talks about the three big improvements on this year’s version. Tactical defending, where timing and tactics improve. Precision dribbling, more possibilities for dribbling the ball for control in close contact. Player Impact Engine, deliver real world physiicalliaty on the football pitch, showing realistic injuries (I see many Red Cards in the future).

A video starts showing FIFA’s connection to the world. It starts off using actual football stars from around the world speaking on the title. Fans and coaches start speaking about how the title actually helps them play. Scattered throughout are a few oddities. Chad Ochocinco, an American football player pops up… which I will allow because sports often has cross-contamination. However, when Lil Wayne and Drake show up… Rob’s earlier claim of not using random celebrities popped in my head. Yes, they’re fans of soccer, but EA… you’re name dropping for self-promotion. As I am not fans of either of them, they aren’t helping your sales pitch.

After the video, Matt starts going into the EA Football Club, a social network tracking your progression and issuing content throughout the year (challenges based on actual matches from that week, etc.) and connect and compete across platforms and the world. To me, this was the most important feature. This will add hours of gameplay to the title and all future titles (should EA continue to support it). All of this for no additional charge on all platforms.

Madden 12
After FIFA, the dad from the Wonder Years appears portraying the great Coach Lombardi to show the trailer for Madden 12. Rob… c’mon you promised no random celebs… Then Raven’s Linebacker Ray Lewis, Browns’ Running Back Payton Hillis, and Packers’ Linebacker Clay Matthews holding the big trophy and deliver cheesy lines and even more pathetic interaction with Peter to show the big features of the new Madden: improved collision system and defensive AI, dynamic player performance (player mood?), and football dynasties. Personally, it was a better choice than having them play the game, but it glossed over the improvements to the game to showboat the celebs.

Rob reappears to explain the new vision of expanding your play across social platforms and is building this in to their games. Announcing EA Sims, Rob explains that a lot of people are looking forward to it as they are, “tired of robotic games based on agriculture.” Rob paused for dramatic effect as a cow moos in the background while a barn appeared on-screen. Subtle, Rob… very subtle. In the Sim Social, you interact with each Sim being a friend. When you break up on Facebook, yours Sims breakup. The demo shows a pair of girls discussing a relathionship happening in game, showing a couple dancing, a man cooking dinner for her and kissing. Needless to say, I see Brian getting a Sim erection and a lot of Sim divorces over inappropriate Sims Social interactions…

Then Rob goes on to make a social faux pas, calling out Don McCattrick from Xbox, and “a few friends from Sony Computer Entertainment.” Well, we know who Rob prefers… wonder if he got his personal info stolen?

Reckoning
Wow, Curt Shilling gained some weight… and then makes outrageous claims… he quickly rushes through a bit of dialogue explaining that he is just as excited and exhilirated for Reckoning as he was in three World Series.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is called creative license on part of the marketing VP who wrote this dialogue. No one in their right mind can compare an rpg to the amount of money, women, and pride that can come from one World Series, let alone three.
That aside, Reckoning showed some impressive cut-scenes and in game action. While not a fan of McFarlane, I am interested in Salvatore’s story. I wish they would feature more on this.

Overstrike
Finally, Insomniac decides to play in other playgrounds than Sony’s. Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac, goes into the snarky action spy squad that is Overstrike. While Mass Effect 3 left me drooling, Overstrike made an impressive showing for a new intellectual property. Great action, interesting characters, and a great potential for four-player co-op. This made me think what if Borderlands had been done by Insomniac.

Battlefield 3
Time to roll the DICE. People have been praying and waiting for Battlefield 3 to come along and knock Modern Warfare off the pedestal. Karl Magnus Troedsson, GM of DICE and perfect name of a Bond villian, introduced us to Battlefield 3.

Karl first speaks of the new game’s engine, Frostbite 2, the engine trailer showed absolutely jaw-dropping in-game elements of scale, rendering, audio and movement. In addition to showing a quick section of multiplayer combat, Karl talked about Battlelog (which connects everything socially for free). Karl also announced that you’ll be able to play it before the holiday release, with their multi-player platform open beta in Sept, 2011.

Karl then brought in Patrick Bach, Executive Producer of the series, to show a live demo of a desert level. Seeing the dust kick out from under the tanks, helicopters get obscured from the sun, and hear and practically feel the tank underneath you is just a paltry description of the impressive Frostbite engine in action. Seriously, stop reading this, go anywhere and find this trailer (Origin.com)… its that impressive! Although, I have to note that Patrick was using a keyboard to play, wonder how the console versions are coming along if he’s using the PC version.

I have to admit, I am not much of a Call of Duty first person shooter fan, but this I want to play. It comes out October 25th.

Ubisoft’s E3 keynote has come and gone for 2011 bringing us some interesting surprises and a whole lot of awkward silences. Instead of lambasting the presenters however, here is the not so live blog for Ubisofts presentation.

Rayman Origins First up is an Ubisoft staple, a new Rayman 2d platformer with up to 4 player co-op. This latest rendition looks absolutely amazing with gorgeously drawn backdrops and animations.

Driver: San Francisco That’s right boys and girls another Driver game, fans of the series can rejoice, the rest of us instead are one edge for the next game.

FarCry 3 wait, what? Holy cow another FarCry game and it looks fantastic! Ranting madmen and a narrow escape, looks like were in for some more fun in the FarCry 2 Universe.

Brother in Arms: Furious 4 looks like gearbox’s work with Duke Nukem has twisted their heads a little, a new brother in arms game that reminds me to much of the outfit meets inglorious basterds

TinTin: Movie tie in game. At least we don’t have James Cameron rambling on stage again this year. and to be fair it looks fantastic, easily catching the art style of TinTin and running with it.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Bravo on this one, 4 player coop for campaign with everything we’ve expected from the developing Tom Clancy series which takes us to…

Ghost Recon Online yup, everyone knew it was coming but now we get a nifty video showing it off.

Rabbids Live oh god more rabbids now with connect this will either be hilarious or put some folks in the hospital my money is on both.

Just Dance 3 when you sell 5 million copies you’d be crazy not to dip into the well again for another Just Dance game available for Wii, PS move, and Kinect motion consoles.  no word on project cafe.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations It wouldn’t be an Ubisoft E3 if we didn’t get some assassins creed, and here it is Ezio is looking older than ever and well worn for it but it hasn’t slowed him down as he burns a harbor to the cinders.

On one front you have Sony’s PlayStation Division actually improving their situation from previous years with smaller losses than before thanks to the PS3 hardware selling more and being cheaper to produce now.

Capcom managed to post a profit for Q1, but income came at a massive dive of 90.4% due to the massive underperformances of Lost Planet 2 and Monster Hunter Tri. If I remember correctly Capcom had expected Lost Planet 2 to sell in the millions in the long run which doesn’t look like it’ll be happening now.

Lastly Nintendo who had Wii hardware sales actually increase 3 million in one quarter compared to last year’s 2 million posted a rare quarterly loss of $288 million for Q1. They had a positive operating, but the slowing sales of a system in it’s sixth year on the market, smaller software sales on both platforms and the gamble they took with a hedge fund that they lost due to the exchange rates not being favorable to them hurt them.

Luckily, this drop may in fact push them to release the 3DS by the end of this year instead of “Around March 2011″ now. It took more than half a decade, but seeing that the handheld is now at 132 million units sold and DS HW are slowing down yes, finally everyone now does have a DS. – The Ben

PlayStation 3 304.8K
PSP 121.0K
Xbox 360 451.7K
Wii 422.5K
Nintendo DS 510.7K

Top 10 VG Console/Portable SKU’s June 2010
Title Platform Publisher Release Date Units
RED DEAD REDEMPTION 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 582.9K
SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2 WII NINTENDO May-10 548.4K
RED DEAD REDEMPTION PS3 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 380.3K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO Nov-09 200.9K
JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09 174.8K
WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO Oct-09
TOY STORY 3 NDS DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS Jun-10
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED 360 THQ May-10
LEGO HARRY POTTER: YEARS 1-4 WII WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE Jun-10
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED PS3 THQ May-10

The thread the numbers were posted in from the above link was originally about Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg’s afternoon tweet in which he let this little sales tidbit out:

@aarongreenberg
Look out hare, here comes the tortoise…post E3 bump & new console drives Xbox 360 sales up 88% as top selling console in June

It sure was the top selling console for June, although from the way he was describing things you’d think the 360 would be more than just slightly ahead thanks to the 360 Slim but everybody seems to have had a good month.

Except the PSP, hell even the PS3 had a pretty outstanding June all things considered. The NPD doesn’t count PS2 sales anymore remember so that’s probably comforting to Sony. Comforting because can you imagine how things would look if the PS2 outsold the PSP at this point?

Like last month it’s not that there’s no new games for the PSP because hell, there are new games for it! And that just brings up an even more depressing fact looking at the sales numbers again; Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker didn’t even manage to crack the top ten. It didn’t even sell more than 150,000 from the looks of things going by the software numbers. Now that’s a damn shame. – The Ben

One particular part of the WSJ article seems to boil the situation down nicely:

Meanwhile, Sony is developing a portable device that shares characteristics of hand-held game machines, e-book readers and netbook computers, according to people familiar with the matter. Some Sony e-book readers already come with 3G connections but it isn’t clear if a new wireless gadget will use carrier networks.

So if this is to be believed, Sony is tired of not being the champion in the portable game space as it envisioned itself to be by this time back in 2005 and now is setting their sights on taking on another portable market already in a heated battle. At least they aren’t trying to go all the way and make it a phone as well. Just declaring war in all markets to have their bases covered now that’d be crazy – The Ben

PlayStation 3 154.5K
PSP 59.4K
Xbox 360 194.6K
Wii 334.8K
Nintendo DS 383.7K

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 945.9K 1
RED DEAD REDEMPTION PS3 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE May-10 567.1K 2
SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2 WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-10 563.9K 3
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED 360 THQ May-10 221.1K 4
UFC 2010: UNDISPUTED PS3 THQ May-10 192.3K 5
WII FIT PLUS W/BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 6
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 7
ALAN WAKE * 360 MICROSOFT May-10 8
POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 9
SKATE 3 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS May-10 10

Now as these are the new and improved NPD reports take note that we only get the exact numbers for the top five games for the month instead of the usual Top Ten/Twenty figures.

Also note that when a game is launched on more than one platform and both SKUs make it into the top they each count as a seperate figure to report on so in truth we only really get numbers for the top three titles this month. Meaning that we don’t know exactly how much Alan Wake ended up selling in the first month of sales, only that it was below two hundred-thousand units. But at least it made the Top 10!

Hardware sales are same as they always are with Wii/DS looking a bit healthier than before while 360/PS3 sell at their usual paces and PSP…

Well at least PSP has Marcus. – The Ben

I mean granted it is hard to top one half of The Beatles, Steven Spielberg and the bottom of an Avatar’s shoe but this year was light on everything that wasn’t on-stage Kinect demonstrations.

The odd thing about Microsoft’s conference was that while they got their biggest hardcore guns out first with Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears 3 and Halo Reach so that the rest of the time could be spent on their bigger focus, both Nintendo and Sony seemed to do that as well to a smaller extent and managed to come out okay.

What I mean in this case is that Nintendo got the new Zelda demo out of the way (the thing, the ONLY thing really that most gaming journalists talked about at all when talking about what they were looking forward to from Nintendo in the weeks leading up to this E3) so that the rest of the conference could be spent not only on what you didn’t come to see, but to not get anxious and write “Yeah yeah this is cool but WHERE’S ZELDA?!?!” on your twitter feed during the announcements of a new Kirby and Donkey Kong Country game and then feel let down once it turned out Zelda was the same game it’s always been.

Sony did something similar with Killzone 3 (even though I was wondering throughout their presser where The Last Guardian was at and that never really came up at all during the event, guess they’re saving that for TGS this fall) and spent dividing the rest of their conference into designated chunks. Like, this chunk is about 3D, this chunk is about Move, this chunk is about how much we love EA oh please EA we love you MAKE LOVE TO ME EA GIVE ME EXCLUSIVE CONTENT.

Microsoft though once it started on showing off Kinect games, never really got much interest back from most of the audience from looking at the reactions. More than that, when people talk about Kinect now it seems they talk more about the spectacle surrounding Kinect than the games themselves. Nobody’s talking about Kinect Sports but everyone is still talking about the seperate Kinect events that required what the internet now refers to as “Space Ponchos” to wear as Cirque du Soleil took control of most of the event.

The Kinect event seemed similar to earlier Microsoft events like the first 360 unveiling on MTV back in 2005 where more hype was made about the 360 as a brand rather than a machine that played cool games. More time was spent in that special on J Allard talking about how important it was that the 360 looked like an anorexic model inhailing than how Rare’s games were coming along.

Speaking of Rare’s games, the fact that many watching the conference were doing so if only to see what Rare was going to show off in relation to it’s game making prowess after not really making any games since 2008′s Nuts and Bolts, only to find out that all Rare was showing off was Kinect Sports, was a bit of a downer as well.

Sony generally seemed excited about the games they were showing off and using Move to springboard the games onto the audience. Microsoft on the other hand seemed to want people to understand KINECT like it was a revolutionary concept. And unlike last E3 where most of the audience was on board with that line of thinking, it seems that this year many aren’t interested in embracing Kinect and “donning the space poncho” as the term would seem to be. – The Ben

According to Kotaku, Insomniac Games will have the rights to whatever IP they develop under this new venture, as well as the reassurance to current PS3 owners that the “Ratchet and Clank” and “Resistance” will still continue to be developed by the studio for the time being.

The biggest thing I get out of this is what that one analyst has been talking about for a while about how many second-party developers will most likely be drifting towards multi-platform. First Bungie signing on with Activision and now Insomniac Games with EA, he may actually be onto something about this subject.

Of course while some second-party developers may start moving onto multi-platform development that doesn’t mean all of them are going to do the same now.

On another note still keeping in theme with the whole second-parties become independent studios for hire deal; it’s too bad that Rare wanted to be bought and owned rather than become a freelance developer like Bungie and Insomniac seem to be doing. I know they’re fine financially with Microsoft as their eternal sugar daddy, but many don’t seem to hold them with the same respect they used to garner in the last decade.

Meanwhile while Insomniac was acclaimed last generation with a constant stream of R&C games on the PS2, PS3 exclusivity and their new next IP’s have had trouble connecting with the mass market so far. Being open to any platform may help them out now in that regard. – The Ben

PlayStation 3 180.8K
PSP 65.5K
Xbox 360 185.4K
Wii 277.2K
Nintendo DS 440.8K

1. TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION* 360 UBISOFT Apr-10 486.1K
2. POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 242.9K
3. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 200.3K
4. POKEMON HEARTGOLD VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 192.6K
5. GOD OF WAR III* PS3 SONY Mar-10 180.3K
6. WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09
7. BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 166K
8. WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09
9. JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09
10. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV PS3 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 143K

*. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV 360 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 108K

Wow, those are some low numbers all around.

Also starting this month NPD is only giving out the exact numbers for the top five games instead of all ten, meaning gamers who really want to know how well a game at number 8 or 10 on the chart will have to beg people in the know for numbers at 6 and beyond; which is how the numbers for Street Fighter IV and Bad Company 2 came to light. Thanks to Microsoft for those tidbits.

The PS2 also is not being reported by the NPD anymore as well, though they’re still tracking it’s sales. If Sony wanted they could let gamers know every month how well the thing’s still doing. However the fact that the PS2 may very well have outsold the PSP this month in it’s ninth year on the U.S. market may not be something they’re that desperate to proclaim in their Press Release.

Those low PSP hardware numbers give the rumblings of a PSP2 being announced at Sony’s E3 presser next more strength, at least to me.

I just hope the PSP2 will have the ability to read UMDs, even if the games made for the device won’t come on them. The saddest part about the PSP situation is that there are actually some pretty high profile games coming out for the thing here in the U.S. this year. Peace Walker, that Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep game, heck even Ready at Dawn Studios is giving the system another gem with a second portable God of War title. There’s still life in the system, but what good is that if nobody is playing the last few hits for the thing? – The Ben

As if to make up for the past few years Microsoft has already gone ahead and made plans for not one but two seperate pre-E3 conferences. One will be the usual standard fare of showing off new hardcore games and most likely have Bill Gates appear near the end to hype up something but more interestingly this year is their Natal specific conference.

Excuse me, Natal EXPERIENCE. And just like the now five year old Xbox 360 special MTV did half a decade ago, the two are teaming up again to show off Natal to the world. Exclusively.

According to this Yahoo! Finance news tidbit they’ve gotten a heads up from Microsoft about how MTV Networks will be exclusively broadcasting every spectacle that Microsoft shows off at their briefings.

Via Geoff Keighley’s Twitter he states that “The Xbox E3 Media Briefing has a new home: It will air exclusively on Spike TV. Live to both coasts, HD, and commercial free.”

This is pretty interesting as the last few years gamers interested in watching most company’s E3 Briefings would have a nice selection of venues to choose from. You could simply just find a good stream from both the large and small game news outlets or you could even watch them live from your couch via G4. But, at least for the Xbox Media Briefing you’ll have to catch it on either GameTrailers.Com or Spike Tv.

The one thing I’m not fully sure about here is if any old blog with a webcam will still be able to stream or if this deal means that only his grace Lord Geoff of Keighley and his Spike TV Kingdom have control over all outgoing media while the briefings are going on. He says on his Twitter page “Correct the press conference won’t air on G4. It will also be online on GameTrailers” so I know they have full TV rights, but if GameTrailers is really going to be the only place to get a decent feed of the conference (and it’s not going to be decent if it’s the only feed available online) then this is something new to me. Exclusive press conference rights.

On a similar note Leo Laporte’s just mentioned today that, “We want to do live coverage of E3. We’ve got Brian Brushwood flying out. We’ve got a sponsor. But E3 says no – G4 has an exclusive. What what?”

I don’t know if E3 means floor coverage or what but I’m just as confused as Leo is at the moment.

Oh and one more thing going back to Microsoft’s Natal Experience. One thing they made sure to mention in their invitations to the event is that Cirque Du Soleil will be performing at the EXPERIENCE event. That’s going to be…very interesting at least. – The Ben

But anyway yeah via Edge today Nintendo announced that it’s annual profits for the financial year ending March 31, 2010 were down 18% from last year, with sales down 22 percent to $15.3 billion, operating income down 36% at $3.8 billion, and net profit down 18% coming to a total $2 billion dollars left to add to the war chest.

Nintendo expects Wii sales (now at 70 million sold worldwide) to fall to 18 million units sold in the coming year as opposed to the 20 million sold last year and 30 million DS sales (now at 128 million units sold when you combine the entire DS family) as opposed to 27 million DS units last year.

The increase in DS sales is most likely including the 3DS into the equation. Anyway a few final notes taken from Nintendo’s own PDF of the Report; Wii Sports Resort sold 16 million units, NSMBW sold 14 million units last year and Wii Fit Plus managed around 12 million units. – The Ben

Of the 38 employees involved in the suit the story says that 21 are former employees of Infinity Ward and that the remaining 17 are current IW employees.

Activision responded to the suit the story updated later in the day with this:

“Activision believes the action is without merit,” a company spokesman said in response to the suit. “Activision retains the discretion to determine the amount and the schedule of bonus payments for [Modern Warfare 2] and has acted consistent with its rights and the law at all times. We look forward to getting judicial confirmation that our position is right.”

What a bizarre saga this is becoming. The turmoil has gotten to the point where nobody knows at this point exactly what’s going to remain of Infinity Ward as a brand after all this settles. – The Ben

Of note is the tidbit of info that the 360 has finally passed the 40 million mark in terms of sold consoles. It’s hard to believe that the 360 will be nearing it’s fifth birthday this fall but there it is. Going by previous generations the 360′s passed not only it’s older sibling but legacy systems like the Genesis and the N64.

If this were any previous generation we’d be well into that time when the rumblings of what the “NEXT-GEN” will bring and every magazine and site’s E3 predictions would go wild as speculation over dubious news goes on for months until the show itself hits. But this generation of console gaming has changed the rules in more ways than one and this matter is no different. While different SKU’s and internal chips are announced and revisions to consoles will keep coming, the next-gen is nothing but a dream for most of the industry at this point it seems. – The Ben

PlayStation 2 118.3K
PlayStation 3 313.9K
PSP 119.9K
Xbox 360 338.4K
Wii 557.5K
Nintendo DS 700.8K

GOD OF WAR III* PS3 SONY Mar-10 1.10M
POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 1.02M
FINAL FANTASY XIII PS3 SQUARE ENIX Mar-10 828.2K
BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 825.5K
POKEMON HEARTGOLD VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 761.2K
FINAL FANTASY XIII 360 SQUARE ENIX Mar-10 493.9K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 457.4K
BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 451.2K
WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 429.6K
MLB 10: THE SHOW PS3 SONY Mar-10 349.2K

DS and Wii back on top after a shortage last month while the 360 stays ahead of the PS3 even with God of War 3 taking the Top Spot in software sales. Also of note is the fact that the 360 version of FF XIII didn’t quite reach the same level of sales as the PS3 one did, and that the Soul Silver version of the latest Pokemon game performed better than the Hear Gold version.

Oh and the PSP just barely outsold the PS2 for the month. There’s nothing more really you can say about that situation. But hey perhaps Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will give the system one more big push in sales before the PSP 2 shows up sometime in the near future? – The Ben

The map pack was priced at $15 dollars and only available on Xbox Live in comparison to the first World at War map pack that was available on both the PS3 and 360 last year which sold 1 million digital copies in the first week as well at $10 dollars according to IGN.

Everyone seems to have mixed feelings about this news. While it’s good that gamers are enjoying themselves with new content for a game that’s almost half a year old (showing that a franchise like Call of Duty is immune to that “DLC must happen in the first six weeks of a game’s launch or else the public won’t bite” rule) the fact that Infinity Ward’s achievements are currently still in the public eye for all the wrong reasons makes this victory bittersweet for some. – The Ben

March 23, 2010

To Whom It May Concern:
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch “Nintendo 3DS”(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

“Nintendo 3DS”(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed “Nintendo DS series”, whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.

We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.

I got nothing. – The Ben

According to Pachter the General Manager of Visceral Games stated the PLDC would be “essentially a very long demo, along the lines of 2009′s Battlefield 1943″ and that “A full-blown packaged game would follow shortly after the release of the PDLC, bearing a full retail price. Mr. Earl believes that the release of the PDLC first limits the risk of completing and marketing the full packaged version, and serves as a low-cost marketing tool.”

The article goes on to say that Pachter later told them that, “I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point.” also adding that he believes Battlefield 1943 would have been a bigger success had they released a full-blown version of the game a few months after release.

Interestingly, the article ends with these investor specific nuggets of info from Pachter:

“We’ve been wrong about this stock for almost five years. Either we’re stupid, stubborn, or unlucky, but we’ve been wrong. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time hoping for a different result,” Pachter wrote.

“This time, while we are again hoping for a different result, we see evidence that the company is not doing the same things over and over again: lower headcount, fewer facilities, fewer games, a greater use of outsourcing, innovative combinations of digital and packaged goods content, a better greenlight process and a growing digital business,” the analyst said. “This time, we think that EA is on the right path.”

He’s been wrong on EA for almost five years now but he’s got a good feeling this time around! – The Ben

Data care of NPD Group
Reporting Period: 1/31/2010 through 2/27/2010

PlayStation 2 101.9K
PlayStation 3 360.1K
PSP 133.4K
Xbox 360 422.0K
Wii 397.9K
Nintendo DS 613.2K

BIOSHOCK 2* 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE Feb-10 562.9K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 555.6K
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 314.3K
JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09 275.4K
SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 272.5K
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 252.8K
MASS EFFECT 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Jan-10 246.5K
DANTE’S INFERNO: DIVINE EDITION PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Feb-10 242.5K
DANTE’S INFERNO 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Feb-10 224.7K
HEAVY RAIN PS3 SONY Feb-10 219.3K

Analysis from NPD’s Anita Frazier:

Overall

“The industry realized another month of decreased sales as compared to last year. In fact, for most categories, unit sales declines were greater than dollar sales. Higher average retail prices on all categories except console hardware boosted dollar sales performance somewhat.”

“Honestly, I had expected the industry to perform somewhat better this month. Nonetheless, strong new releases, and Easter gift-buying bodes well for industry performance in March.”

Hardware

“Overall hardware unit sales were down, but certain platforms enjoyed an increase over last year. Xbox 360 nabbed the top-spot among the three console systems for the first time since September 2007 when Halo 3 as released. PS3 enjoyed a 30% increase over last year, even while retail supply is reported to remain constrained.”

“DS sales continue to remain quite strong, even leading up to the launch of the Dsi XL later this month on March 28th, which will have 7 days of sales during our March reporting month.”

Software

“The top 10 list this month is quite balanced between the three console platforms with three each for the PS3 and Wii platforms, and four for the 360.”

“Bioshock 2 was the best-selling game in February, selling over 750K units at retail across platforms. The 360 version was the top-selling SKU for the month.”

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the third-best-selling game of all-time, now at just under 10 million units life-to-date.”

Accessories

“Year-to-date, accessories is the only category to have eeked out a modest increase versus last year. Unit sales, however, are down so the increase is solely due to an increase in pricing, which is up 13%.”

Guess Sony and Nintendo weren’t kidding when they said that hardware supply would be constrained after the holidays. – The Ben

Edit: Wait I guess that title doesn’t really make sense if the DS still sold more than the 360….still was the highest selling console of the month though.

The key notes of interest:

– New Treyarch developed COD this fall that everyone already knew about.

– New “action-adventure”-esque Call of Duty game by newly formed developer Sledgehammer Games to be released in 2011.

– This corporate speak, straight from the PR:

Activision announced it will form a “dedicated [Call of Duty] business unit that will bring together its various new brand initiatives with focused, dedicated resources around the world.” It plans to expand the Call of Duty brand “with the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business unit” placing a focus on “high-margin digital online content and further the brand as the leading action entertainment franchise in new geographies, new genres and with new digital business models.”

New digital business models doesn’t quite mean “We wanna charge you all monthly now” but, there aren’t many other things it could mean.

Oh and they also officially confirmed the departure of former Infinity Ward studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella. – The Ben

The team is being described as “on edge” and according to G4′s source the relationship between Infinity Ward and Activision has been “tense” as of late.

While it seems like half of the internet currently reading this story as it breaks on sites everywhere are writing this off as a PR stunt, Forumopolis poster popemobile reminds us that, “Call of Duty is literally the last franchise in the world that needs a PR stunt”. – The Ben

Update: Two major updates from G4 on the story.

UPDATE 10:07 PM: More developments on the situation at Infinity Ward have come to light.

A screen shot surfaced from Infinity Ward CTO Jason West’s Facebook page at Kotaku with the status update “Jason West is drinking. Also, unemployed.” I can confirm from a source that’s friends with West that update did actually come from West’s account.

West also updated his Linkedin profile to appears to reflect a change in employment.

“President/Game Director/CCO/CTO Infinity Ward
January 2001 – March 2010 (9 years 3 months)”

While this doesn’t yet provide much insight into what actually happened at Infinity Ward, it confirms there are changes afoot at the Call of Duty developer. As soon as I know more, you’ll know more.

Read more: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702911/UPDATE-Security-Appears-At-Infinity-Ward-Studio-Heads-Missing-Activision-Investigating-Insubordination.html#ixzz0h1Eqp1dY

And the second major one:

UPDATE 11:20 PM: It turns out Activision may have showed their hand in this matter earlier today.

In an SEC filing made this morning, Activision cited a human resources investigation into “breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward.”

Based on the information we currently have, at least one of those employees may have included Infinity Ward CTO Jason West. It’s possible Vince Zampella is the other unmentioned employee.

“This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation,” read the filing. “At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.”

Read more: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702911/UPDATE-Security-Appears-At-Infinity-Ward-Studio-Heads-Missing-Activision-Investigating-Insubordination.html#ixzz0h1FB39Rx

This ain’t no ARG fellas, this is real.

Of course there’s nothing anybody can do to change this if it is indeed the final price for the game, 60 dollars a new game is as normal as anything else you’d find in a gamestore these days. The only good thing about the 60 dollar price tag is that while every next-gen game is priced at that level these days, a few months to half a year after release the game will almost always go down in price to around the 40 dollar level. Hell you could get “Legendary Editions” of old AAA next-gen releases for 50 dollars at most places that still couln’t get rid of those last few Halo 3 Helmets a few years back well after the release. – The Ben

As publishers look for new ways to add profitability to their games, DLC has become the new battlefront for deterring used game sales. In recent weeks both Electronic Arts and Sony Computer Entertainment America have begun using Free DLC for new purchasers to provide gamers with incentives to buy new and used game retailers are finally starting to speak out.

While Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz (Registration Required) retail representatives stated that consumers would bear the brunt of these changes. One such retailer Marc Day of SwapGame told GamesIndustry.biz:

“The move to DLC exclusive content is an interesting step, and this obviously provides the publisher with another revenue stream. This move will definitely make the game less valuable on the pre-owned market, so it will be sold cheaper, meaning customers will get less value when trading in.”

Others see this move as a compromise between Retailers, Gamers and Publishers on the hot button issue of used game sales, as stated Christopher Bowen Associate Editor of Diehard GameFAN in the comments:

“I don’t think Project Ten Dollar – which balances risk and reward – is going to alienate consumers. They see the tangible benefits of buying new before the game is sold. In the case of Mass Effect and other EA games, before it’s released. EA has been very upfront about what they’re doing, and while I don’t *LIKE* it – we got more complete packages in the last console generation than we do now, in terms of bang for our buck – I think it’s a nice compromise against the secondhand market and Gamestop.”

With this newest push to digital distribution, and incentives however it will seem only time will tell who is right.

PlayStation 2 41.6K
PlayStation 3 276.9K
PSP 100.1K
Xbox 360 332.8K
Wii 465.8K
Nintendo DS 422.2K

NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 656.7K
MASS EFFECT 2* 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Jan-10 572.1K
WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 555.7K
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 326.7K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Apr-08 310.9K
WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 297.6K
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 259.0K
ARMY OF TWO: THE 40TH DAY 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Jan-10 246.5K
JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09 191.9K
DARKSIDERS 360 THQ Jan-10 171.2k

A pretty normal post-holiday sales result all around.

Of note is Mass Effect making a great debut at number 2 while Mario continues his reign on the charts via NSMBW and Mario Kart Wii which I believe may very well outsell every pre-Mario Kart DS Mario Kart entry combined before the last copy of it is sold years from now.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is still on the charts as are Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus. The only really shocking inclusions and omissions are that Just Dance for Wii from Ubisoft made the Top Ten while Bayonetta didn’t manage to make the cut.

I didn’t expect much in the way of sales for Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom or No More Heroes 2 so seeing them bein outsold by Just Dance isn’t a shock to me, but I felt Bayonetta was one of those titles the entire hardcore set was pushing for. I know SEGA shipped a million copies of the game out to stores. – The Ben

Firstly their Quarter Three profits were down 41% as the DS entered it’s fifth year and the Wii with it’s third. The profits were estimated at 296.7 billion yen in contrast to 501.3 billion yen. So they’re still making profit, just a few hundred-billion yen less in profit.

So that’s the bad news, the good news lie mostly in the symbolic victories. Thanks to JoshuaJSlone on NeoGaf, by using the numbers given from Nintendo’s own numbers from the conference call PDF, give us a graphic look at where the Wii and DS stand in grand scheme of things chart-wise. The Wii has dashed past the NES in terms of worldwide hardware sales. The DS has managed to overcome the GameBoy and the GameBoy Colour’s sales combined worldwide. Finally, the three titles released this year that Iwata had hoped would sell 10 million copies each worldwide, have done just that with Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and NSMBW accomplishing that mission.

In fact, the reason the profit numbers aren’t any worse are probably due to those three titles saving the game for the company in the last few months of the year and re-igniting the casual gamer passion during the Holiday Sales rush. – The Ben

City building fans should feel a little saddened today. The Monte Cristo team announced today the ending of Cities XL’s online plans. Stating a low subscription base, making the model unsustainable, Monte Cristo will shut the servers down March 8, 2010.

Monte Cristo has however pledged to continue to support the single player content for the game and will be offering “the Bus” for free to solo players as early as this march.

This is an unfortunate event because while the game as a whole was not a “SimCity Killer” it was a decent game made for the genre fans that it served. By losing this component, one could argue the major differentiation, and innovation point for the game, Monte Cristo may have put a nail in the coffin of City building Sims in the future.

Official Release

Dear Mayors,

First of all we want to thank you for your support since Cities XL was released in October of last year, and as far back as October 2007 for some of you.

In early 2007 we decided to be those who would make a new offer to City Builder games fans. Right from the start Cities XL has always been an innovative project regarding its online dimension. Of course, trying something new always comes with a risk.

Three months after the launch we have to admit that the subscription rate is lower than what we expected and therefore the Planet Offer is no longer sustainable. Not enough players decided to subscribe.

Therefore, it is with deep regret that we decided to put an end to the Planet Offer on March 8th 2010. It will no longer be possible to subscribe to the game starting Monday February 1st 2010.

Nevertheless the Cities XL adventure goes on! Cities XL will evolve into a fully single player game. As soon as march the Bus will be added for free in the solo game. At the same time we also keep on working on new content and new features to keep on improving Cities XL.

We do realize that some of you were real fans of the Planet Offer, and loved to be able to visit other player’s cities and trade tokens between each other. There are simply not enough of us.

Thank you again for your understanding and support.

For more detailed information, you can read the FAQ here.

Here’s a game to keep your eye on:

Here’s the official press release:

“UBER REVEALS MONDAY NIGHT COMBAT

Kirkland, WA, January 15th, 2010 – Uber Entertainment, Inc. today
announced Monday Night Combat, their forthcoming game for Xbox Live
Arcade. Monday Night Combat is a class-based, third-person shooter…
and the most popular lethal sport of the future! It blends intense
combat, finishing moves, and gameshow-like challenges and rewards to
produce an action experience unlike any other. Why fight for “honor”
or “duty” when you can fight for the real American dream: cash, fame
and endorsements?!

Big Money! Big Prizes!
Players who drive the fans wild and catch the eye of corporate
sponsors will win cash and prizes that can be used to upgrade their
weapons and their defenses.

Blitz
Blitz allow players to defend their Money Ball against armies of
robots by themselves or with up to three of their closest friends over
XBOX Live

Crossfire
Crossfire pits teams of players against each other over Xbox Live.
Each team is supported by an endless stream of robots fighting on
their behalf; overwhelming your opponent’s stream will be the key to
your success!

Six Unique Character Classes
Each Pro caters to their unique style of play and comes with their own
set of upgradeable skills. Customize those skills and abilities even
further with a variety of unlockable products and “My Pro”
create-a-class feature.

Career
Extensive career meta-game gives players lots of room to enhance their
Pro and show off their gaming prowess.

Uber Entertainment, Inc. is a privately held video game development
company headquartered in beautiful downtown Kirkland, WA. Founded in
March of 2008 by veteran developers, Uber Entertainment is working on
an amazing blend of awesome technology and innovative gameplay. Team
members have worked on many platforms including PC, PS1, PS2, GCN,
Xbox, 360, PSP, Wii, and iPhone. Additional information about Uber can
be obtained through the Uber Entertainment Web site at
www.uberent.com. “

Data care of NPD Group

PlayStation 2 333.2K
PlayStation 3 1.36M
PSP 654.7K
Xbox 360 1.31M
Wii 3.81M
Nintendo DS 3.31M

NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 2.82M
WII FIT PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 2.41M
WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 1.79M
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 1.63M
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 1.12M
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Feb-07 1.01M
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Apr-08 936.1K
ASSASSIN’S CREED II 360 UBISOFT Nov-09 783.1K
LEFT 4 DEAD 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Nov-09 728.5K
MARIO & LUIGI: BOWSER’S INSIDE STORY NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Sep-09 656.7K

Thems some numbers alright. What can you say except that this is has been one crazy generation in terms of sales. Quality wise we’re still going to be debating that for years to come, but this generation has just exploded in terms of units purchased, both hardware-wise and software-wise.

More detailed info to come as they come to light.

Upate: Here’s the analysis from NPD’s Anita Frazier:

Overall

“The video game industry experienced its biggest sales month ever, besting last December by 4%. It wasn’t enough, though, to compensate for the sales decline throughout the year, and so full-year sales came in 8% below last year’s record-setting revenues.”

“The only category to see an increase over last year was portable hardware, which was up due to a 7% increase in the average retail price. The DS platform, across all categories, contributed 17% of total industry dollars in 2009, up three points from 2008.”

“Unit sales were down only 6% from last year. Average retail prices were down in all categories except for portable hardware and accessories, which led to the greater dollar sales decline.”

“December marks just the fourth month of the year where the industry saw an increase over last year. January and February were both up, and since the decline that began in March, only September experienced growth. The big sales this month, particularly on the hardware front, is a positive move for the industry headed into what will hopefully be a recovery year in 2010.”

Hardware

“There are a lot of hardware records this month. The PS3 realized it’s biggest month of sales ever, and the first time sales have exceeded 1 million units. The Wii and the DS also had their biggest sales months ever, and in fact the two platforms hold the top two spots in sales of any hardware device in a single month. Overall, it was the biggest month of sales for hardware on both a dollar and unit basis.”

“This current generation of console hardware has outsold the last by more than 9 million units during the first 50 months in the market.”

“Hopefully, the big increase in the overall install base of hardware systems will bring good things for software sales in 2010, especially with the incredible line-up of content coming out early in the year.”

Software

“The best-selling game of the month was New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which also captures the third spot on the annual top 10 list for 2009.”

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the fourth best-selling game of all time. In fact, 3 of the top 10 games of all time are Call of Duty games.”

“The music/dance genre was the best-selling genre for the month and second best for the year behind first-person shooters.”

“Madden NFL 10 had a big month selling 1.5 million units across all platforms, besting last December’s performance of the ’09 game. December’s sales made up some of the lost ground realized out the gate when the title came to market in August.”

“Software sales in December were more concentrated among the top games this year than last. This year, 20% of sales came from the top SKU’s, whereas last December it was just 12%.”

“6 of the top 10 games totaling 20.8 million units for the year were on the Wii platform as compared to 4 last year at 19 million units.”

Accessories

“7 of the top 10 accessories items in December were for the Wii platform, along with the Xbox Live Points card and wireless controllers for the Xbox 360 and PS3.”

Quite a month.

- The Ben

On the other hand you have both Capcom and SEGA saying how they’re probably going to be focusing more of their efforts on the HD twins due to the slow sales of their Mature-themed titles on the system. The fact that their recent Wii titles with actual effort put into them haven’t been met with the same success as Nintendo’s own titles have caused both companies to give a “Not really” line to the press when asked if they’re going to continue testing the Wii waters with Mature titles.

According to the link above from Industry Gamers, Sega of America studio director Constantine Hantzopoulos said that many used the Dead Space title made for Wii as a “litmus test” that EA put actual effort into and not just skimping on the details because it was a Wii title. The end result like most of these “tests” was less than flattering sales in the end, a “slow burner” that doesn’t give the team much satisfaction and hope for future prospects on the system.

So while we have the Wii breaking every monthly record the PS2 set during it’s prime we also have third party companies giving the Wii the same reaction they gave previous Nintendo consoles during the past decade. One of apathy and a general feeling of “Meh” with their tests with the Wii consumer market just not living up to their hopes. – The Ben

Data care of NPD Group
Reporting Period: 11/1 – 11/28/09

PlayStation 2 203.1K
PlayStation 3 710.4K
PSP 293.9K
Xbox 360 819.5K
Wii 1.26M
Nintendo DS 1.70M

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 4.20M (Ed. Note: Oh Infiinity Ward)
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 1.87M
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 1.39M
ASSASSIN’S CREED II 360 UBISOFT Nov-09 794.7K
LEFT 4 DEAD 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Nov-09 744.0K
WII SPORTS RESORT* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 720.2K
WII FIT PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09 679.0K
ASSASSIN’S CREED II PS3 UBISOFT Nov-09 448.4K
DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS* 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Nov-09 362.1K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Apr-08 315.0K

There’s really no way around those Call of Duty numbers, it’s the biggest franchise this gen, Activision’s already announced another COD for next fall, the games don’t even have to be good at this point, the franchise is gonna be sticking around for a long, long while.

On the Hardware front the usual unit sales flow of DS > Wii > 360 > PS3 > PSP has proven itself again, even though some were expecting the PS3 to have overtaken the 360 in the past month. The PS3′s been almost entirely relaunched and it still couldn’t beat the 360. Hell if you count LFD2 due to it being exclusive for the consoles on the 360, the PS3 is the only console without an exclusive title in the Top Ten. Uncharted 2 may get a shit-ton of GOTY awards in the next few weeks but like I said last month, it’s almost a Metroid Prime Situation with the series. The hardcore love for the title is hard like a rock, but the sales just haven’t resonated with most of the audience for the console it’s on.

And the PSP.

Oh the PSP.

Y’know most Gamestops still have fresh unopened UMD movies they try and get people to buy every year. They’re an interesting relic from a media that seemed so promising six…has it been over six years now since UMD was first revealed along with the PSP? At least the PSP outsold the PS2 last month. That counts for something right? – The Ben

Thanks to this post by NeoGaffer grandjedi 6 you can see the actual journey Ubisoft took from an interesting start with the system during it’s launch, and see the gradual downward spiral as more and more of those quality titles were coming out. Right around the time it seems when Ubisoft declared that they take the money from the Wii titles they were making money off of and use the money to fund games for the HD consoles. But they still came out with a lot of Wii titles since then! A….a lot of them. A lot of, crap.

Thanks to IGN, you can actually see the entire catalog of Ubisoft’s Wii efforts here.

Their efforts.

Wii
1701 A.D.
Academy of Champions Soccer
American Popstar: Road to Celebrity
Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard
Arthur and the Two Worlds War
Avatar: The Game
Avatar: The Game (Limited Edition)
Babysitting Party
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars — The Director’s Cut
Brothers in Arms: Double Time
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Deadly Intent
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Cook Wars
Cosmic Family
Cranium Kabookii
Dawn of Discovery
Dogz 2008
Driver: Parallel Lines
Eden
Emergency Heroes
Family Fest Presents Circus Games — 20 Big Top Classics!
Family Fest Presents Movie Games
Family Feud: 2010 Edition
Far Cry Vengeance
GT Pro Series
GT Pro Series (with Racing Wheel)
Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout
Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game
Hell’s Kitchen
Heroes
Imagine: Fashion Party
Imagine: Party Babyz
Just Dance
Killing Day
Monster 4X4 World Circuit (standard edition)
Monster 4X4 World Circuit (with Racing Wheel)
Monster 4×4: Stunt Racer
Monster 4×4: Stunt Racer (with Racing Wheel)
My Fitness Coach
My French Coach
My Spanish Coach
My Word Coach
Nitrobike
No More Heroes
No More Heroes / Red Steel — 2 Games, One Low Price
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
Open Season
Petz Rescue: Endangered Island
Petz Rescue: Wildlife Vet
Petz Sports
Petz: Catz 2
Petz: Crazy Monkeyz
Petz: Dogz 2
Petz: Horse Club
Petz: Horsez 2
Press Your Luck: 2010 Edition
Prince of Persia: Rival Swords
Protöthea
Rabbids Go Home
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
Red Steel
Red Steel 2
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip (Target Edition)
Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage
Spelling Spree!
Sports Party
Surf’s Up
TMNT
Team Elimination Games
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up
Tenchu: Shadow Assassins
The Adventures of TinTin
The Dog Island
The Price Is Right (2008)
The Price is Right: 2010 Edition
Tom Clancy’s HAWX
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas / Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter — 2 Games, One Low Price
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent
Vacation Sports
Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey
Wordfish
Your Shape

EFFORTS

Note that some of those titles were actually canceled and haven’t been removed from the above list.

However, yes Petz: Crazy Monkeyz is an actual title they released to market.

– The Ben

While not exactly an exciting piece of news, it is an interesting development in the growing development of the industry through the IGDA. While it’ll be a long time before the industry can officially state they have unions or have any sort of solidified industry that isn’t just trying to mimic the larger and more mainstream entertainment brethren, it is a positive step forward in the growth of at least this particular section of the gaming industry. – The Ben

PlayStation 2 117.8K
PlayStation 3 320.6K
PSP 174.6K
Xbox 360 249.7K
Wii 506.9K
Nintendo DS 457.6K

UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES (PS3; Oct-09) 537,000
WII FIT PLUS* (WII; Oct-09) 441,000
BORDERLANDS (360; Oct-09) 418,000
WII SPORTS RESORT* (WII; Jul-09) 314,000
NBA 2K10* (360; Oct-09) 311,000
HALO 3: ODST (360; Sep-09) 271,000
NBA 2K10* (PS3; Oct-09) 213,000
FORZA MOTORSPORT 3 (360; Oct-09) 175,000
KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 DAYS (NDS; Sep-09) 169,000
FIFA SOCCER 10 (360; Oct-09) 156,000

The PSP Go launched this month didn’t-…yeah it did didn’t it? Yeah October 1st. That’s….that’s some low PSP hardware numbers for a new hardware SKU launch. I think even the GBA Micro helped the GBA Brand more than the Go’s helping the PSP the month it came out, and by then the GBA was already being put to pasture. The Micro was like the “NES Top Loader” of the GBA Line.

Well looking at software for October we’ve got Uncharted 2 making a respectable debut. Almost seems like it’s this generation’s Metroid Prime as a slow burner of a series that doesn’t quite match the sales with the gigantic critical acclaim they garner. Hmmm Forza 3 numbers look okay nothing special. Kingdom Hearts from last month surprisingly showing up near the bottom an-…wait where’s Brutal Legend? Oh God it’s happening again! It’s happening again it’s the Schaferfuede we always think Tim’s next great title is going to make his studio and himself recognized finally after all these years and the games turn out to be slow sellers.

It’s Schaferfuede I tells ya.

Well as interesting as these numbers are, they won’t compare in the slightest to November’s Large Marge-Sized Numbers on all fronts. Sure we already know MW2 will lead the software pack, will the HD Console Numbers reflect the release of the newest “Biggest Entertainment Launch in History” ?- The Ben

Update: From Geoff Keighly:

FYI, Brutal Legend sold 215.4K across PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.

Ah, well that’s more respectable then. Schaferfuede confirmation delayed for now folks.

Now, we all knew this was going to happen. Activision knew it was going to happen. Grand Poobah Bobby Kotick knew the game was going to do this well. The question is, did they know skimping on the PC Version would have as much backlash at it did and if so, do they really care? They’ve got all the money in the world right now to make peace to the PC gamers, are they even going to bother fixing the bridges they burnt within the last two or three weeks with the disgruntled members of that community, or is it not even necessary at this point? – The Ben

Operating profit was 104.4 billion yen ($1.2 billion dollars) falling from last year’s 252.2 billion yen profit of H1 08.

The Wii has now outsold the SNES with lifetime sales of 56.14 million units while the DS is up to 113.48 million units. This is horrible as the SNES was a true gamer’s machine.

Last month’s price cut which took effect late in September, was still counted in the quarterly one report and eligible to be commented on by internet denizens as “Not good enough lol. Make some HARDCORE GAMES.”

So today all hardcore gaming journalists can rest easy knowing that they’re finally winning the battle between the plebeian casuals and their casual games. TRUE HARDCORE GAMERZ knew that the Wii’s success and failure hinged only on smoke and mirrors, and this news in no way, shape or form represents the Iwata-acknowledged fact that there was shit all to buy in the first quarter first-party-wise aside from Wii Sports Resort and Metroid Prime Trilogy.

Oh and I love how almost everyone reporting on this story includes a mention of Apple’s success with the iPod and iPhone. I mean yeah they’re successes but I don’t reeeeeaaaally think parents hold a game console (these articles are the same ones that rightfully mention sluggish Wii sales in their title as the reason for the drop in profit) in one hand and an iPhone in the other and it’s this big battle and OH MY GOD APPLE PLEASE MAKE A CONSOLE IN FACT I’M GONNA WRITE AN ARTICLE BASED ON CONJECTURE AND SPECULATION ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.

I mean, if they were talking about the iPhone being a competitor to the DS then yeah that’s a valid comparison they’re both portables. But just randomly inserting phrases like “Low Wii sales may also be related to the rise of the of the PSPGO and the iPhone” in these professional news stories (and these are professional online news outlets I’m seeing this at, not hobbyist gaming blogs) is…..GAH. -The Ben

Update: You think I was JOKING ABOUT THAT LAST PARAGRAPH? Goddamn FORBES just did it:

HONG KONG — Super Mario Brothers, Cooking Mama, Donkey Kong and all the other game characters Nintendo has conjured up weren’t powerful enough to fend off the challenges of a stronger yen and a new competitor called the iPhone.

Ha ha, I love a cheeky opening to a news story.

Demand for Wii, the bestselling videogame console produced by Nintendo, has been cooling down in the past few months as Apple’s iPhone has been growing in popularity as the platform of choice for handheld game players.

But…they’re two different…GAH.

Nintendo could announce its first drop in profits for six years, according to market watchers.

Income for the Japanese giant is likely to fall 11 per cent to JPY 249.3 billion, the first drop since the 12 months ended March 2004, according to Bloomberg.

“Nintendo may cut its profit projection about 30 per cent because of sluggish sales in the first half, the price cut for the Wii and currency-related impact,” said Satoru Kikuchi, of Deutsche Bank AG in Tokyo. “Investors are expecting the company to fully reflect its business environment in its forecast.”

The company will announce its results on October 29, and had originally forecast JPY 300 billion net income this year.

Sales of the Wii console have been falling, with the hardware outsold by Sony’s PlayStation 3 last month in the US.

Nintendo was the last of the big three hardware manufacturers to cut the price of its console in the US, Japan and Europe, although the street price remains the same in the UK.

Oh no, a foreseen drop in momentum could lead to a decrease in profit that will still be higher than most of the industry’s profits for the first half? Oh God NO! Only a total company overhaul in preparation for the Wii HD could possibly save them now. The mythical Wii HD as foretold by Michael Pachter that doesn’t actually exist so don’t get your hopes up and stop trying to get people to believe that one’s coming.

And people writing this month’s news that the PS3 outsold everything like it was a shock, a SHOCK. No it wasn’t a shock. It was expected by everyone. Everyone. EVERYONE. – The Ben

PlayStation 2 146.0K
PlayStation 3 491.8K
PSP 190.4K
Xbox 360 352.6K
Wii 462.8K
Nintendo DS 524.2K

HALO 3: ODST (360; Sep-09) 1.52M
WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS (WII; Jul-09) 442.9K
MADDEN NFL 10 (360; Aug-09) 289.6K
MARIO & LUIGI:BOWSER’S INSIDE STORY (NDS; Sep-09) 258.1K
THE BEATLES:ROCK BAND* (360; Sep-09) 254.0K
MADDEN NFL 10 (PS3; Aug-09) 246.5K
MARVEL:ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 2 (360; Sep-09) 236.0K
BATMAN:ARKHAM ASYLUM* (PS3; Aug-09) 212.5K
GUITAR HERO 5* (360; Sep-09) 210.8K
THE BEATLES:ROCK BAND* (WII; Sep-09) 208.6K

Right away we can see how effective the PS3 Slim has been in terms of giving the PS3 a new lease on life in terms of Hardware popularity. Expected by just about everybody out there, this is a performance we might not see again for a while from the PS3 until the Holiday Season, but maybe Uncharted 2 will keep the PS3 numbers from free falling as quickly as they rose up.

Other than that it’s a pretty standard September month, the usual bunch of gamers who waited until Madden drops in price one month after it’s release keep it on the charts. Halo 3: ODST did really well, but didn’t help the 360 to overtake a Wii that managed a last minute price drop in the latter half of September to try and get back to previous highs that the system experienced last year. PS3 SKU of Batman:AA is seeing continued success, the Joker helping the SKU staying in the Top 10.

And just for old times sake Mario pops in to say hi, the reign over the Top 10 Sales chart for almost this entire year all but gone now.

Hope the rest of the NPD reports for 2009 are this exciting. – The Ben

Look, nobody’s blaming Bobby Kotick for everything negative action that Activision has put forth for the last few years. Certainly one man can’t be the direct cause for dropping games that can’t be “exploited”, trying to make the removal of features for games such as LAN for StarCraft 2 look like a good idea, and now this business with no dedicated servers for the PC version of a highly-anticipated multiplayer-focused FPS title that they know is going to sell more copies of itself than a few game consoles have sold more hardware in their entire lifespan. Money’s not the problem here.

But I can see how one might think the entire company is influenced by the face of Activision.

Actually, most of these descisions this year have seemingly been targeted towards PC gamers more than anything else. No, I’m not saying Bobby Kotick is trying to systematically dismantle PC Gaming or anything of that sort. I mean even if he’s the guy who “joked” about creating a work environment that purposefully depresses it’s employees he’s….he’s….

Alright yeah it looks like he’s somehow single-handily taken Activision from it’s “Plucky Tony Hawk and Spider-Man developing underdog development company” of the early years of this decade to “The New EA” and all the spoils that that title comes with. – The Ben

The statement isn’t so strange in it’s meaning, both the 32X and Natal were/are supposed to prolong the life cycle of their respective consoles with new and unique ways of gaming you couldn’t previously get on those systems. It’s strange in the fact that the 32X, along with SEGA’s other notable console add-on the SEGA-CD, weren’t all that successful in keeping the Genesis alive in the long run.

Matt ends the update with his own opinion of believing Natal to end up costing around $150 at launch. Everyone knew this add-on wouldn’t be cheap, but that does seem reasonable when you consider it as a full fledged add-on instead of looking at it as a mere accessory like an Eye Toy or Motion Plus. – The Ben

He brings up the fact that every major entertainment industry has guilds of their own, and that having a GDG would bring stabilization and opportunities to the free agent game development world.

It would seem that a Guild for the Gaming Developers would be a worthwhile venture, maybe not for the Cliffy B’s of the world who already have it made but for the up and coming new talent that, by the time they’ve climbed the corporate ladder high enough and are in a position to see their dream project come to fruition, the passion just isn’t there anymore. That or the project was green-lighted yet twisted so out of shape during development that it hardly resembles the project first visualized by the fresh up-and-coming game developer.

Maybe Double Fine wouldn’t have had to take so long with their games if there was a sturdy Developer’s Guild already there to back their projects so that Schafer wouldn’t have had to keep shopping his game around to publishers he hoped would see his point of view?

Hell, maybe the saga of Too Human wouldn’t have ended the way it did if the title had been backed by this hypothetical GDG, helping the project get out on time and in a state that didn’t seem like the title was constantly falling apart after being worked on for over a decade. Guild funded time and money could have turned that project into something more than decent, maybe even up to a standard resembling that of greatness? Maybe? No? Not even a guild would have been able to-? Well, the industry has been young for decades now, and the onset of game developer guilds may be the next big step in it’s evolution as a unique entertainment medium. – The Ben

There are a few roadblocks this technology has that the site acknowledges on. One is that with this technology, usually you can’t capture the emotions of the player as quick as it would like, simply because of how fast the person might change their stance during gameplay, which is why the latest revision in this genre of facial recognition technology relies on having the person input specific facial commands ahead of time before putting the technology to work so that it has the previously mentioned library of expressions to recognize and employ.

Second, as noted in the comments of the story is that any sort of generated facial avatar would still look pretty damn cartoony and uncanny. Technology is still trying to find a way to eliminate that uncanny valley look that the faces generated would mostly be finding themselves in. One such solution put forth by Daniel Floyd is to stay on the stylization side of the uncanny valley for all it’s worth and the benefits that not taking the jump into photo-realism entails. Because seriously when I first looked at the photos of sample faces on the site I was like “GAH!” Either that one on the far right is trying to be stylized and succeeding, or trying to be photo-realistic and ending up looking like the love child of a Shrek Character and a wrestler. – The Ben

One such idea stemming from blog Law of the Game’s Editor in Chief Mark Methenitis is that of conscious parallelism, wherein he describes a scenario where one developer believes it’s game is so good that it should rightly charge more for it, considering the hefty development costs the game entailed. Other developers, believing their product is just as good as the first developer’s game, see no reason not to charge more for their titles as well, bringing the industry standard to that sixty dollars we know today.

One thing I hate is when people bring up the “Well the N64 and SNES had 70 dollar games last decade!” during these kinds of arguments. Yes, 70 dollar games weren’t uncommon back then, but even though many gamers remember the N64 and SNES as these great systems of old, they weren’t exactly as mainstream as many gamers might remember. The Playstation got a lot of traction for a variety of reasons, one of them being cheaper formats for both the developers and the consumers to work with. Developers didn’t have to charge seventy dollars for a PSX game to recoup the cost of ordering cartridges to put their games on.

This argument will probably get brought up again over the fall period as many of the new releases, while a lot of effort is put into them, might not resonate with the consumer concerning their sixty dollar price tags. Most notably gamers who aren’t that into Halo multiplayer for whatever reasons they have are taking issue with Halo 3: ODST at the moment. The game that was originally supposed to be a reasonably priced side story to the main Halo games ended up becoming a package of things that the majority of potential ODST customers weren’t exactly looking for. So when the credits roll for the first time after completing the single player portion of the game, some gamers might feel slighted by having this experience set them back more than half a Ben Franklin. – The Ben

So yeah that’s, really all there is for this news story. Wii’s fifty dollars cheaper, the NPD’s getting another Mario entry in it’s Top Ten on November 15th the PR also states.

Oh, and while it’s not related to the story in the least, today is the 120th birthday of Nintendo. Nice to see the whole video game venture worked out for them, after successful ventures like card games and toys could only bring them so far into the modern commerce mindset while other ventures like Taxi Businesses and…Love Hotels…weren’t as successful for them in the long run.

Of course the Wii now, for better and worse defines the company now a days, and it’s a wee bit cheaper as well, just in time for that all important Holiday Shopping Season. – The Ben

Of the interesting bits of into (note that none of these are confirmed to be in development in anyway) is that Sony is still quietly working on a solution to PS2 backwards compatibility with the PS3 of the downloadable variety, with the notes stating that Sony is trying to figure out ways to sell all (and the note does state all) PS2 games on the Playstation Network.

Other SEGA related info suggests that SEGA does in fact believe that money can be made off of old Dreamcast titles and would be interested in selling them digitally on the PSN if an agreement could be reached. A little late on capitalizing on the DC’s 10th Anniversary celebration but later is better than never right?

Speaking of downloadable titles, the leaked notes also suggest that SEGA is also interested in putting import-only titles onto the PSN such as Yakuza 3 directly. That means no need to spend money on having to come up with a good English Dub. Though the notes do state that the menus at least will have to be translated in order for the title to not be completely lost on us who do not speak the native tongue of the Yakuza.

Most of the notes aside from those are simply ones concerning game releases and development notes about hypothetical games. One such game being a collection of every Sonic the Hedgehog game for 99 US dollars. Now they state every Sonic game on the Blu-Ray disc would be on the collection but does that include the ones from the last decade? Do those have to be on a compilation disc? They do? Or else it isn’t a full complete compilation? Dang. – The Ben.

Data care of NPD Group

PlayStation 2 105.9K
PlayStation 3 210.0K
PSP 140.3K
Xbox 360 215.4K
Wii 277.4K
Nintendo DS 552.9K

MADDEN NFL 10 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Aug-09 928,000
WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 754,000
MADDEN NFL 10 PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Aug-09 665,000
BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM* 360 SQUARE ENIX INC Aug-09 303,000
BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM* PS3 SQUARE ENIX INC Aug-09 290,000
MADDEN NFL 10 PS2 ELECTRONIC ARTS Aug-09 160,000
DISSIDIA: FINAL FANTASY PSP SQUARE ENIX INC Aug-09 130,000
WII FIT* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-08 128,000
MARIO KART W/WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Apr-08 120,000 9
FOSSIL FIGHTERS NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Aug-09 92,000

And…everything’s doing okay. Not great, not horrible, not bad or anything just, okay. Like all three are on the level it’s a pretty okay month all things considered. Madden’s still a big selling franchise, Sports Resort is still up near the top, almost everything in the Top Ten is above 100K.

I mean the numbers are nothing compared to what we’ll get this fall starting with the Sept NPD and the PS3 Slim, but for August the numbers are…fine really. – The Ben

On the subject of how many games are available and the buying experience via Phil Schiller:

“Games are expensive — $25-35 per title. Worse isn’t the price, it’s the buying experience, going to a store is just not a lot of fun. Built into every iPod touch is the App Store… you’ll see a big difference.” Chart time. PSP: 607 titles. DS: 3680. iPhone OS: 21,178 titles.

Okay, the buying experience isn’t exactly perfect, but that’s no reason to stop buying games that come on physical media. Having a store on your device is great and will eventually be the standard for all devices but again, that’s not going to put the brick and mortar stores or the physical media out of existence.

Phil again, on the iPod Touch in general:

“It’s a great portable game player as well. … when the PSP and DS came out, they seemed so cool. But once you play on the iPod touch, they don’t stack up anymore!”

I don’t know, they’re both still cool to me. I know most of what he’s saying is just standard press conference chest beating that every company does when they’re on stage, but while I’ve seen the Apple App store become successful, at the same time I haven’t seen the PSP and DS suffer as a result. I know there have been people who only play portable games exclusively on their iPod Touches and iPhones but I haven’t seen the other platforms drop in notoriety. Both are still coming out with games all year round and have both been successes in their own right. It’s been pretty balanced in terms of success for all the portable platforms this gen, each with their ups and downs and revivals again.

And regarding what Phil said about the tribulations and horrors of shopping for games at stores;about the stores, fuck it I’m just going to go ahead and say it I like shopping for used games (both portable and console) at places like Gamestop. It’s fun. It’s cheap and it’s fun. I like digging through the used games, seeing the crap and the gems that span almost an entire decade now. Stores might get smaller, hobbyist shops might get put on the chopping block, but just like how music and books have managed to survive for the last decade or so as physical media, so will video games as long as there’s a market that still wants to buy their products that way. – The Ben

In a PR statement today Flirement’s CEO Robert Murray announced that their iPhone game Flight Control has reached over 1.5 million in sales on the Apple App store. The Press Release goes on to note the growing popularity in the “Control” genre, one that’s not exactly new if you’ve been playing games for a while now, but has been given new life thanks to the renaissance of portable gaming that we’ve seen in the later half of this decade.

Interesting how as simulation games become more complex and advanced both technically and graphically the interest in them from the gaming public dropped, but when a new type of simulation game that didn’t rely on being top of the line, just intuitive and fun was released, that interest in that brand of simulation game has grown so much in such a short time period.

Most of the buyers of Flight Control probably didn’t even know there was a flight sim genre, but they’re most certainly aware of the flight control sim genre now. – The Ben

Bloomberg states that the FCC will perform an inquiry to decide whether or not devices should be able to accommodate more than one rating system, and hopes to give parents more control “to pick and choose” what their child sees and hears according to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in the article.

This of course is being picked up by gaming sites due to the fact that, well for the past two decades or so the gaming industry has been trying to construct it’s own rating system to the best of their abilities. We’ve gone from self imposed ratings from Sega to forced censorship by Nintendo before the ESRB was formed and all games released in the U.S. could have a standardized rating system to let parents know how appropriate the game they were buying for their child was.

The ESRB rating system though hasn’t been perfect. An M-rated game can easily be bought by a kid clever enough to goad their parents through sheer force of will. It’s not like an R-rated movie where the ushers can deny a kid entry because their parents don’t accompany them to the movies. Games are more often than not played at home without anybody to enforce any standards once the game’s out of the disk and in the machine. And the industry has taken steps to help confront that in recent years as well with parental controls on almost all consoles this generation and companies like Microsoft enthusiastically promoting the parental control features of the 360 in order to make the online component of the 360 seem less intimidating to parents who feel hesitant to let their child play along with the rest of the 360-owning world.

This issue will never have an easy answer, but at least the industry hasn’t simply forgone doing anything about parental controls or the ratings system as the industry itself changes and matured. – The Ben

Most companies have learned from these early experiments as a result of those unlawful early days of the current gen. DLC now are usually regulated to have their achievements available as separate achievements for a game, rather than the game not letting you get to 100% because you didn’t pay for that DLC.

The article praises DLC as the next big thing that’s already here, and while I agree DLC can give old games (old being nary a few months to a year) new life, there’s no reason every game needs DLC. DLC is nice, it’s nice to revisit old worlds and see what’s changed thanks to whatever new thing the DLC installed and built into those worlds. Sometimes a piece of DLC might seem unneeded and more of an afterthought, but the ratio of well planned and executed DLC in comparison to those early days of Horse Armour and 384kb unlock keys for content already pressed onto the game disk. They still exist, and for any game with constantly changing features with a heavy online component (Little Big Planet for example) are in fact necessary whenever a new patch for the game rolls around and the next batch of content that you can hold with your system, but not see on your screen. – The Ben

What I mean is that, well while E3 had returned to the larger, more big production sort of ordeal that it was known for back at the turn of the century this past June, most of the “fluff” that the gaming media loved the most about the show while reported on, just wasn’t that much interesting to the actual gamers reading their show reports and podcasts. I’m mostly talking about the fluff of the booth-babe variety. The giant set pieces that companies refer to as booths. Sure many sites had a “LOOK AT DEM BOOTH BABES!” feature and I’m sure those articles got a lot of hits, but gamers just didn’t seem to care anymore about the actual booth babes.

Most of the fluff that would be remembered from this past E3 would be those moments where the people advertising the game actually meant something. Would you rather have a booth babe, busty and voluptuous she may be stand at your side while you demo Shadow Complex or the next Epic Games….epic. Or would you rather be able to have the developers, the Cliffy B’s or the Will Wrights walk you through the game.

Even when celebrities hock games these days, more often than not they’re at least involved with games on a level beyond that of “Just gimme that paycheck”. Most journalists and gamers who read the articles about Spore during development probably remember Robin Williams actually having fun creating creatures for the audience rather than being paid to simply come up with jokes about gamers that fall flat on their face. He was paid to have fun, it was win-win for him!

PAX seems to be the kid of place that both the gamers and the presenters look forward to. Panels ranging from charities within the gaming industry to showcasing the newest and best independent games; there’s a multitude of different panels beyond developers simply showing off their latest games.

PAX has already sold out this year and stands to keep getting bigger every year. Not because it’ll have the latest and greatest new games to show off and demo (although it’s a good incentive to go), but because it’s a celebration of gaming as a whole, for anyone who has a love of gaming. – The Ben

There’s speculation over the exact reason of the layoffs. While Spore and the third Sims game were million sellers in their own right, much like how Iwata viewed the success of a few potential long-term sellers that ended up floundering (though million sellers as well) because they were intended to be the hits, rather than just hits.

I wrote about this a while back, but now we’re seeing exactly how wide the spectrum of long-term games not performing as well as hoped are factoring into the rest of the industry. All titles, not just the casual titles not just the hardcore titles, are expected to perform to the best of their abilities now. Even though Spore’s inability to set the world on fire hasn’t been confirmed as the main reason for cutbacks at Maxis, has Spore become the hit you and the rest of gamers everywhere thought it would be roughly one year ago from now? – The Ben

One such expo of the gone by generations is the Retro Gaming Expo in Portland, Oregon. While not the only retro gaming expo out there, it’s design and events are what you’d expect from this genre of convention, with each expo having it’s own unique events and twists that make them worth checking out.

The Retro Gaming Expo for instance may not have a tournament featuring the first person shooters you see at most game-related conventions, but instead offers a ten-man Saturn Bomberman tournament and a Nintendo World Championship competition as well. The competition may not have the same glitz as Video Game Armageddon had in The Wizard, but the same concept of competing through three different NES games for points against other gamers is still intact.

These expos are always interesting to see just how far gaming has come in the last half century, not just to see how technology has progressed, but how things can still keep their “fun value” years, even decades after release. The next modern gaming convention may have Gears of War 2 or the next Call of Duty competition going on. But there’s a chance that ten years from now the only game you’ll constantly see appearing in retro gaming tournaments won’t be titles such as those, but Saturn Bomberman getting the most attention from attendees when it’s a ten-man bomb-fest. – The Ben

The debate is mainly due to the fact that through buying the game, the gamer is not only giving money to the developers, but Card as well, which doesn’t sit well with some people who boycott any of his works due to conflicting views on matters such as marriage for any and all genders.

Gay Gamer.net has an article about this ordeal as well, and while the game itself is getting rave reviews from gamers all around the world at the moment, if this debate starts getting traction and picked up by more than just a few hobbyist gaming news sites, then the controversy could end up garnering more fame for the game than the merits of the game itself. – The Ben

Kaz Hirai: “Today is the day we introduce the PS3 Slim, available in stores from the first week of September.”

32% smaller, 36% lighter, 34% less power consumption, it will be available for 299 euros, 299 dollars and 29,980 yen.

120GB HDD

That’s the basic info that Kaz gave out about the machine, but it should be enough to define it.

Going by the history of Sony’s Console life cycles, it would be only natural that a revised PS3 would be announced for this time frame. The Slim PS2 was released in 2004 right? That was only around four years after the release of the system. Of course, by that point in the PS2′s life cycle it had already handily beat the competition and was THE console to develop for, make exclusives for, and generally for most of the mainstream audience at the time gaming WAS the PS2, just as gaming was the NES and the Atari in their respective reigning times.

It’ll be interesting to see how this sells, not only because Sony’s not in first place this generation, but that it’s not even the lead platform in comparison to the 360. The Slim PS2 was a success because the mass market was already accepting of the platform and made the console even more accessible. The next step on our journey through this gaming generation be an interesting ride at least. – The Ben

Data care of NPD Group

PlayStation 2 108K
PlayStation 3 121.8K
PSP 122.8K
Xbox 360 202.9K
Wii 252.5K
Nintendo DS 538.9K

Wii SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA July-09 508.2K
NCAA FOOTBALL 10 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS July-09 376.5K
NCAA FOOTBALL 10 PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS July-09 237.4K
WII FIT W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-08 164.3K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA April-08 156.6K
MARIO KART DS NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA November-05 132.2K
POKEMON PLATINUM VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA March-09 116.4K
FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 4 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS June-09 116.4K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-06 101.8K
EA SPORTS ACTIVE BUNDLE WII ELECTRONIC ARTS May-09 96.8K

Now of course everyone’s going to start off their take on the news with “PRICE CUT ALREADY NINTENDO GAWD!” and at this point a price could would do wonders. But in all honesty what the Wii needs from the past few years of results would appear to be nothing more than a hefty helping of MORE MARIO.

I’m not even saying that sarcastically, look at the legs on those Mario titles mutha LOOK AT DEM LEGS ON DAT MUSTACHED DAME. Ever since New Super Mario Bros. first came out and proved to be a success gaming journalists started a “Give us Super Mario Bros. 2″ rallying cry. As the years went by and the game managed to outsell it’s console brethren such as Galaxy the journalists still wondered why there was no sequel. When the sequel (yes, it is a new entry, not an enhanced remake some thought it would be) was announced for the Wii the rallying cry became a rallying whine. Even though the game probably won’t be critically acclaimed by any means, if it does everything those three on the chart are doing right, chances are it’ll stay there right along with them for a while. Which is more than you can say about Super Mario Galaxy 2, much as it pains me to admit that.

So yeah those NPD sales results, drops for everyone in certain areas. Oh and before I end this I’ll just post this little quote from NPD’s Anita Frazier concerning one specific genre:

Of all genres, the music/dance genre has suffered the greatest declines this year, with nearly $390 million less revenues than the same time period last year.

What do you think, is that statement destined to become more accurate than not as we enter the upcoming Big Spending Months, or will The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 soften that decline for the music genre? – The Ben

The cause of the development studio’s closure is of course monetary related, as they say that at more than one publisher has been delaying their payments to the team, causing a financial situation fatal to the company’s vitality. None of those publishers have been identified, but considering that Capcom had expected sales of Bionic Commando to be around one million by the time it’s hype died down (the real number of units in the hands of gamers was well under that pipe-dream number), they would probably be one of the few at the top of the list responsible for withholding payments more likely than not. – The Ben

But this is something the whole industry is dealing with this generation, the phenomenon of gaming being at it’s peak for so many, that the games that do surprisingly well at retail seem worse now by comparison.

Lemme move away from Nintendo and focus on some third party examples on other consoles just to show that this isn’t unique to any specific area. Call of Duty: World at War sold eleven million copies by this past June. That’s eleven million copies of what some would call just a “yearly sequel” in the grand scheme of things, gamers bought the last iteration, they’ll buy the next iteration, just another entry for the books. Look back to just a a generation or two ago and see how different things were when it came to defining a title’s success through sales. A lot of the games we remember these days as classics everybody had to have played seem like mere “semi-successes” if you don’t take into account that the market was smaller back in the early 90′s.

But then even when the Playstation came to bring genres like RPGs to the masses it was a phenomenon when Final Fantasy VII sold as much as it did. FF7 just broke the 10 million mark in copies of the original game sold thanks to the PSN release and the constant 10th year anniversary marketing Square keeps up with. Just 10 million copies. It was finally able to reach a milestone that certain games these days, the ones that find themselves in the right place, at the right time, with all the right qualifications, can pass in just under a year.

So I guess where I’m getting with this is, in the end, what’s going to happen to those games currently in development that we’re all waiting for if they only sell two or three million copies? Psychonauts is remembered for being a slow cooker on the sales spectrum, never even getting to the one million mark. Here Tim Schafer says as of 2007 Psychonauts managed to sell 700,000 units. Even last generation you could make a good case for the title not being a total flop sales wise, 700,000 is a hella lotta people when you think about it.

But this gen, where games are expected to sell in the millions like parents expect their kids to at least get higher than a “C” on their report cards, what’s gonna happen to the games that can’t even cross that milestone, let alone being able to sit at the big kid’s table with Call of Duty 5, Guitar Hero 4, Mario Kart 5, and all the other big fish? – The Ben

“Personally, I’m one of those guys who, even if I have all the songs from iTunes, I want the CD as well. I feel more reassured with that physical media. Entertainment is something that will not just become digital. If I look at Wii MotionPlus, this is something that you’re not doing via digital distribution. The thing for us is we really don’t see the future of video games being merely confined to digital distribution or moving solely or even to a majority of our products being distributed that way.”

So what are some of the news sites doing with this fact? giving their own interpretations of course. What was that word in the title in the news story I just posted? Denounces digital distribution? No he didn’t denounce digital distribution damn it. Denouncing it would be him totally poo-pooing the concept and saying “The only kind of people who embrace digital downloading are basement dwelling Role Playing Gamers” but that’s not what he said. He gave his opinion, and chose the more neutral answer to the question. I understand the title of the news article is more eye catching to the gamer searching for a good bit of news to read on the weekend but it’s a gross exaggeration of his answer! – The Ben

Hell it’s not even the HARDCORE GAMING JOURNALISTS and their disdain of the Wii’s success that’s the biggest interest to me today but the Apple Fans rejoicing over the dip in DS hardware sales and attributing that to their glorious iPhone.

I mean sure the iPhone’s been great for small developers getting their games to a wider audience since it’s launch, but I haven’t exactly seen it catch on with the younger audience that portable gaming sustains itself on. Young adults and older have latched onto the iPhone gravy boat yeah but not so much with the kids. – The Ben

Well no that previous statement’s wrong. In a twist of irony concerning Sony still celebrating the PS2′s longevity, the PS2 managed the one increase in today’s report, from 1.5 million to 1.6 million. I’m sure Sony is still happy to have the longest and best selling console in history still going, but if the PS3 is supposed to follow the ten year life cycle of it’s forefathers, shouldn’t it have started to gain the crazy traction the PS2 did once the BIG games started coming out?

In any case it’s not good news for anybody, but at least things aren’t dire all around the industry. The barrage of third party studio closings the industry saw over the past year has seemingly slowed, and hopefully everyone’s taken precautions so that this generation doesn’t become the one known for the death of the plucky and independent third part studio. – The Ben

The press seems more worried about this prospect than the gamers but why? Aren’t these the same gaming journalists that complain that the holiday season is too packed with games and there’s “Too much to play!” every Christmas? Weren’t they also the ones delighted that this past spring was chock full of meaty and polished hardcore titles like Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5 and a load of other titles with merit?

Why such a panic over this? Many gaming podcasts seem to have “Whatchu been playing?” segments in which the hosts go on about playing games in their backlog and going back to old favorites longer than they discuss the current new hot game of the month. So what’s the problem if not every year can be “BEST YEAR FOR GAMES EVER AAA” in your end of the year writeup? – The Ben

This isn’t the first time a company has tried out something like this, 2K games has something similar with NBA2K10. It seems the next big experiment in microtransactions is going to be this new “Pay for pro-servers” feature. But at only five dollars, how many of these players are really going to “pro” players? – The Ben

While the developers of Take Two produced series such as Bioshock and most importantly Grand Theft Auto have always been outspoken, they’ve always had their work in the product to back it up. More notably however are Take Two’s business department, almost just as notorious in their ways with words and actions within the industry. Strauss Zelnick from reading this report, appears to be one of the main causes of Take Two’s recent appearance in the industry towards potential suitors such as EA when it comes to buyouts.

The report goes into detail about how Zelnick benefited from resisting EA’s offer by claiming there were other potential parties that never emerged. The article claims that, “…in a two year period, Mr Zelnick managed to, on three occasions, make vital statements that were within a matter of weeks proven to be either fabricated or just incredibly incompetent (or worse). Mr. Zelnick managed to resist and reject a buyout offer that was triple the company’s current share price while claiming other interested parties who never emerged. And Mr. Zelnick, meanwhile, tripled his management company’s compensation for these efforts because, after all, he does not engage in regrets and does not “take responsibility for the market.”

The Market Rap article gives the impression that Zelnick is more interested in his own profitable future than that of the company he’s head of, and ends the article with this note:

These statements and others strongly suggest that investors should proceed with extreme caution with any investment that involves Strauss Zelnick. His performance so far as an executive manager of a publicly traded company is one of the worst I have ever seen in my professional investment experience.

Take Two’s always been a maverick in the games industry both in development and marketing, and with Zelnick at the helm it seems like that reputation isn’t likely to soften any time soon. – The Ben

Having been absent from HOME since, well since I first checked it out months ago, I went to check out Namco’s new digital hangout and see what it was like. I have to give it to them, it’s an arcade. A bit too pristine to recall the authentic arcades of decades past but it sets the mood right with dim lighting, game posters adorning the walls and….anime girl soda machines? Yes, in bringing the entire arcade space over to the states Namco even kept these bizarre Idol M@ster soda machines that let you play a chance mini-game to win various Idol M@aster related things to adorn your own personal Home space and/or avatar.

So I chose one of these soda machines to see what it was all about, why so many Helghast Helmet adorned persons were crowded about it, and played the little mini-game for kicks. My first try, I won a mask of a girl’s face from the game for my HOME Avatar. I’m talking creepy, unsettling mask of anime big-eyed horror.

Actually in the expressionless avatar world of HOME, it’s not as creepy as it would be in real life. In fact it fits right in with the Street Fighter IV costumed people running around the HOME Mall dancing in synchronicity. i’ll give the HOME service one thing, it’s definitely unique in that sense. – The Ben.

PlayStation 2 152.7K
PlayStation 3 164.7K
PSP 163.5K
Xbox 360 240.6K
Wii 361.7K
Nintendo DS 766.5K

PROTOTYPE (360) 419.9K
UFC 2009:UNDISPUTED (360) 338.3K
EA SPORTS ACTIVE BUNDLE (Wii) 289.1K
TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR 10* (Wii) 272.4K
WII FIT (Wii) 271.6K
FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 4 (360) 260.8K
FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 4 (PS3) 210.3K
MARIO KART W/WHEEL (WII) 202.1K
RED FACTION:GUERRILLA (360) 199.4K
INFAMOUS (PS3) 192.7K

Nothing really shocking, the biggest thing last year had over this year was the PS3 doing it’s best since launch with MGS4 releasing worldwide. Since then it’s pretty much hovered around the 200K mark. Seeing it sell on par with the PS2, PSP and 360 shows that people are slowly migrating to the “Next-Generation”, but at a pace slower than we saw last generation.

Hell, if most industry analysts from 2004 saw the industry as it is today they’d wonder why whisperings of the “NEXT-Generation” haven’t started yet. After all it was what, 2003 or so when Sony first started talking about the cell-processor? 2004 was our first look at Next-Generation Console Graphics with Oblivion running on a 360 engine? Times have certainly changed when every console maker is looking to make their current system new and interesting to potential consumers than starting the hype machine for a new console cycle. – The Ben

Anyway, in the Article among a few “safe” bets such as Wii Sports Resort and Modern Warfare 2 being the top sellers of 2009, Pachter again sheds light on a prediction he’s been increasingly certain about lately in interviews. That which is according to him, a gaming console by Apple is inevitable. He states that Apple would enter the console gaming industry mostly due to the fact that Microsoft is already there, much like how one of the biggest reasons Microsoft entered the gaming industry was simply because Sony was there taking control of the living room.

It’s a good theory, but like any theory there’s always a few holes to spot. There’s the fact that even if Apple could bleed as much money as Microsoft did to simply “get their foot in the living room door”, would they want to bleed that much money? The console gaming industry and it’s audience is vastly different from the PC industry as Microsoft learned. Console Gamers aren’t as willing to take the company line when something breaks or there’s a new “Gotta Have it! SKU” when consoles are concerned. note that I said consoles it works more successfully with handhelds than with consoles.

In the article Pachter states that, “What Apple cares about is getting into the living room, and an Apple TV with games has a higher likelihood of succeeding than an Apple TV without.” So going by his logic, Apple just wants to follow what Microsoft did a decade ago. It took Microsoft almost ten years to effectively “beat” Sony and at the end of the day is the ideal living room entirely owned by Microsoft? No, because a lot of people like to have a little bit of something from different brands. The entire “All in one box” dream is tempting for some, but if that box breaks (and as we’ve learned this generation ALL TYPES OF BOXES, no matter how advanced or how many functions they perform can and will break) you’re stuck unless you get it repaired or buy a new one.

Owning the living room isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Owning a small section of the living room can be profitable enough and in Apple’s case, owning the pockets of the people in the living room has been more successful to them than any other living room takeover.

Besides, they already tried with the Pippin, no do-overs Apple.

Okay well, Microsoft did try it with the MSX before the Xbox. That’s right, Metal Gear was a Microsoft franchise first! – The Ben.

While it is interesting to see these games get a release on a system that can actually emulate many of their original dual screen designs perfectly, it is pretty lame that seven years ago you could buy one Game Boy Advance game for thirty dollars (or four dollars used these days, that’s what I got my copy last month for) that had twenty G&W titles included. These days it seems like the entire Game and Watch Gallery series was a part of a dying breed of Nintendo Compilation titles. To those who stuck with the original Gamecube release of Animal Crossing building a library of NES titles, seeing the Virtual Console offer each of those NES games for five bucks a title seems outrageous.

But then again, aside from the titles that you may have missed the first time around, the Virtual Console is meant more for the types of gamers that don’t scour every inch of a game and know the ins and outs of every compilation. Buying Super Mario Bros. and just Super Mario Bros. for the GBA for twenty dollars in 2004 seemed like a scam to hardcore gamers who had both Super Mario All Stars on the SNES and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Remake for the Game Boy Color, but the quick GBA port didn’t need hardcore gamers. Sales for it were monstrously higher than most new titles that came out during that time period.

So while the G&W releases for the DSi are lame to gamers such as I who already have most of the G&W series via the GBA and GBC iterations, potential consumers who don’t know and care about the fact that there’s been better deals for the titles, they don’t give a damn. – The Ben

There’s nothing redone in the game as it’s being released “as is” according to the developers on the developers’ blog. That means everything people loved and hated about Daggerfall back when it was released more than ten years ago is still intact. There’s installation instructions available on the site and if you feel lost, there’s always the bevy of handy Elder Scrolls related wikis for all your questions and needs.

Also of note, Arena is still available to download for free if you want to go all the way back to where the series started. Of course, Arena was considered primitive back when Daggerfall was out. Try either or and see how they hold up today. – The Ben

Media Molecule’s own support of LBP post launch can be looked at two ways. On one hand they have been creating new DLC month after month, but the problem lies with what the DLC actually consists of. Most of the time all the DLC is are costume parts for your Sackboy, various stickers relating to the theme of the DLC pack, and if you’re lucky actual objects or sounds to use when creating your own personal levels. The first DLC pack consisting of Metal Gear Solid-themed bits and bobbles may have seemed a bit lacking when it was first released, but only now do I realize how much was in that one pack compared to what MM has been cranking out recently. Not only did the pack come with stickers and the like, but they even put in an actual level pack with a little story for you and your friends to play through, along with an entirely new gun object (The Paintinator) that brought totally new level ideas into play for users to kick around with.

The worst part about this though, is how MM not only seems content with continuing their trend of anemic DLC, but that they hype these DLC announcements. That’s where the news section of this article comes into play. This morning the official Playstation Blog posted a little teaser for the next DLC pack for Little Big Planet, a Ghostbusters themed one by the looks of it. Now it’s well within their rights to keep producing these DLC packs, but hyping them up like they’re a substantial piece of DLC like the MGS pack was is kind of lame at this point. But, the game is still fun after nine months personally, just wish there was more to do in the Little Big Planet World. You can only play a roller-coaster level so many times. – The Ben.

Complaining about in-game ads was already getting tiresome at the beginning of this generation, but at least you didn’t notice them if you weren’t playing that specific game. Ads on the 360 Dashboard however, have been increasingly…lame. It’s bad enough that the new Dashboard takes a long time to load everything (though in it’s defense it’s faster than the first era 360 dashboard was) and now the ‘board loads up ads every time you navigate your 360 trying to see what’s new. I understand why there are ads on the dashboard…wait I’m a LIVE Gold Member why AM I still seeing intrusive ads on my dashboard that’s pretty stingy Microsoft.

But yeah I understand why advertising on the dashboard alone is a enticing to potential partners, but for the gamer just trying to navigate their dashboard, it’s still just…lame to have to make it such a big part of the NXE rather than a small diversion of the 360 dashboard experience. – The Ben

Gamestop’s reluctance might have something to do with all the UMD Movies most stores across the country are still stuck with years after the last UMD Movie made a profit for anybody involved. Next time you go to a Gamestop, particularly during any advertised sales period, look around and most likely you’ll find a small section where they have UMD Movies still shrink wrapped on sale for a few dollars each, a far cry from the twenty to thirty dollars they were going for back in 2005 during UMD’s glory days.

I know there’s an article from back then somewhere on the net…lemme see if I can find…AHA! Found it! A vintage N’Gai Croal Sony article from 2005 on how the UMD Format would give the movie industry a helping hand. And here, here’s a quote that helps what I’ve been talking about for two paragraphs come together. N’Gai states in that vintage article that, “Studio heads love the fact that the PSP reaches a younger, mostly male audience that spends more on games than it does on movies; since even specialty retailers like GameStop carry UMD movies, their titles are on an equal footing.”

Look what happened in just over two years or so. Gamestop can’t even give their stock of UMD Movies away. The only UMD movie I can recall never dropping in price was Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and the reason that one kept getting purchased is right there in the title of the damn thing! It’s easy to see why Gamestop would be hesitant to keep offering movies along with games if the vast, vast majority of their patrons only see the store as a place to get one specific kind of product. Not only that, but a good number of Gamestop customers probably have some form of Netflix in their home entertainment ensemble somewhere. They don’t want to have to deal with yet another movie format when they can legally view “good-enough” quality movies without ever having to leave the house. – The Ben

Well, Industry Gamers reports that Wedbush Morgan Securities has recently released a gargantuan 210-page report on the video game industry headlined by none other than Wedbush Morgan’s own Michael Pachter. The major talking points that most of the news outlets are reporting on center around Pachter still holding onto that dream that the PS3 will become the HIGH-DEFINITION console of choice due to the fact that Blu-Ray (and Sony by being the driving force behind Blu-Ray) won the High Definition War that seems so long ago now. Honestly it would seem that people would care more about trying to find the best deals on watching movies rather than finding the HIGHEST QUALITY OF DEFINITION for their movie of choice.

Even after faced with the fact that while it’s not a dead format like the VHS or the UMD are in today’s market Blu-Ray and High-Definition Disk Formats in general just weren’t the REVOLUTION that analysts were making them out to be, Pachter still believes that because of Sony “Winning” the high-def war, that it’s reward are the hypothetical spoils of people’s living rooms.

But even Pachter himself admits that the biggest underrated announcements at E3 were the Facebook/Twitter Apps that Microsoft announced for the 360. And look at the PSP, where the biggest advantage it had was software applications, rather than what most analysts believed to be the main selling point of the PSP, high definition movies on UMD.

Pachter also makes note of how he believes Japan is still a major territory in the “Console War” and how he still expects a Wii HD to be released by 2010. This hasn’t been the first time he’s talked about an HD Wii and it won’t be the last, but he’ll keep talking. – The Ben

Information Weekly (via 1up) is reporting on the Chinese Government’s most recent crack down on the digital world. This time Virtual Currency exchanges.

“The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services,”

Many media outlets are calling this the end of Gold Farming, if this is the case it paints an interesting new landscape for MMO’s as the article quotes and estimated 80-85% of gold farmers are located in China.

However the wording of the the release doesn’t necessarily ban the trade of virtual currency into real money, only Real Goods and Services an example of which would be EVE online’s game time cards program.

While a sign for the better a wait and see approach is in order for this new announcement. Not just for what China means, but also how strict they will really be for a multi-billion Yuan a year industry.

Of those without a movie to give them a boost are Ghostbusters and Godfather II, banking more on the nostalgia of the fans and their love for the movies that came out decades ago by now instead of banking on the hype only available when a movie release is still fresh in the public’s mindset.

However for some franchises it’s not enough just to have a cult following of fans or have a new movie released at the same time as the game. For a franchise like…oh let’s say Harry Potter, that franchise gets to have the best of both sides, hardcore fans and people buying the game because it’s come out alongside the hot new movie of the same name. Whether or not the games are good is another thing, but for some franchises, that doesn’t even matter at this point, more so if it’s a long running movie franchise. Even the crappy James Bond games sell as well as the good ones most of the time. – The Ben

You know how conspiracy theories always have this cabal of old men trying to keep their traditional ways the ones that rule the world? That’s how Sony’s been run for a long time. It was their kind of mindset didn’t even want Kutaragi to go ahead with developing the Playstation more than fifteen years ago because that wasn’t what Sony was about. Sony wasn’t about games.

Among the reforms Stringer’s been trying to get going is the whole conglomeration thing going on. The Fortune Article asks the usual questions concerning this topic. Ones such as “Why hasn’t Sony made a PSP that’s a games machine and a phone?” and “Why didn’t Sony lead the music game genre revolution with Sony Music Entertainment?”. These questions have been asked for years and the answers given have always been “Yeah they’re all part of the Sony family, but each of them is like an adult sibling who doesn’t care about how well the other is doing.” So it looks like it’s going to take the parent company to get sick before the siblings all come together and work with one another. That’s the type of change Stringer’s been trying to put into place for years, and it may just come together soon.

I only wonder how things would have gone in a parallel universe where Ken Kutaragi was given the CEO seat and full reign over the Sony Empire. – The Ben

The PR quotes Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software as saying that, “This was a unique opportunity to team with a smart, sophisticated publisher like Bethesda Softworks where the interests of the studio and the publisher will be fully aligned in the development and marketing of our titles. In addition, we will now have financial and business resources to support the future growth of id Software, a huge advantage which will result in more and even better games for our fans.”

Is this the start of another “Merger Mania” the games industry finds itself doing every few years? – The Ben

Most interestingly is that the game is supposedly “Specifically built for the PSP platform with upscaled widescreen graphics, enhanced lighting and animation; and including all-new story missions; this version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will take full advantage of the power of the PSP system.” according to CVG.Com. So does this entail that this version of Chinatown Wars was being worked on before Chinatown’s “Meh” retail performance? Or are Rockstar just that fast when it comes to developing titles? I mean they got Vice City Stories out in just under a year after Liberty City Stories came out.

Now if Chinatown Wars takes place in Liberty City, but there already was a Liberty Stories. So this is the second of the portable trips to LC, with no venture to San Andreas planned yet. Why haven’t they announced a San Andreas Stories yet anyway? – The Ben

We saw this type of douchery in a non-harmful form when he was just yanking peoples’ chains about how the next Guitar hero game will be the first to have whatever feature was already clearly in Rock Band or whatever. We saw the Douche Level rise to a harmful degree when Activision didn’t like it that Brutal Legend actually looked like it could be a hit after they dropped the publishing rights to it.

And now because Activision is riding high on the success of the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero franchises, Bobby thinks he can make these statements like he’s giving a king’s decree here. Yes, Activision has managed to become widely successful in the last few years, but don’t let it go to your head Bobby. You know what happens when you do that you know that the inevitable always happens to companies that do that. – The Ben

The report reveals that Steve Ballmer of Microsoft has announced a new Xbox 360 for release sometime next year that will be “‘really, really, close’ to an actuality” and described as having a “natural interface.” Along with a built in camera, this new 360 seems to be at least one way Microsoft plans on getting Natal out there to market next year. Hopefully it’ll be priced favorably to the consumers. – The Ben

It’s no surprise at the top with Nintendo, Blizzard, Rockstar North and Valve showing off. Of interest though is that since the ranks went by development houses and not publishing ones, many of the second and third parties that are cited with making the top publisher’s big games also make the list. So while you won’t see Activision’s name on this list, houses like Treyarch For instance you’ve got both HAL Labs (Smash Bros) and Intelligent Systems (Advance Wars, Fire Emblem) on the list, meaning that Nintendo got the top spot by basically Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii alone. You have three distinct EA dev houses (including Digital Illusions) on the list, and the various studious that make up the majority of Sony and Microsoft’s first and second party offerings.

If you’re wondering where Infinity Ward is, remember that this is the list of developers that were active in 2008. IW didn’t release anything last year, giving Treyarch a go at Call of Duty series again in their stead. The opposite of course, will probably show up on next year’s list. – The Ben

One of the best qualities about gamers is their capacity for kindness and giving. Some of the nicest and most caring people I’ve known are also some the most hard core gamers around.

So it doesn’t surprise me to see life long gamer Matthew Badalucco stepping up and spreading the joy with a new charity Pixel Equity.

Pixel Equity is a non profit group designed to put your used games into the hands of under privileged children who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them.

In their own words:

We’re a not-for-profit organization that is working with youth centers that serve children from households that can’t afford video games. We’ve talked with the administrators, who in turn have talked with the children, to determine the games and consoles that these kids want. But how do we get the games to them?

for more information about how you can help spread the gaming love visit the Pixel Equity site.

There’s really nothing to comment on here except for the fact that…well eleven million is a hell of a lot of units of the game.

The only downside to how many record breaking games we’re seeing this gen is that the ones that don’t do anywhere nearly as well as the Call of Duty and Wii _____ titles are looked at with disdain from the publisher. This is most likely the main reason Bobby dropped Brutal Legend from his warm embrace. The game could be a critical hit and a good seller, but even selling a million copies doesn’t mean success for a NEXT-GEN GAME HURRRRR anymore. Dead Rising was lucky to sell as many copies as it did. If it had only broken the 500,000 mark that might have been acceptable back in 2000 and still warrant a sequel, but not these days. The whole definition of “success” when concerning video games can be taken in so many different directions.

For instance, for all the hype Final Fantasy XII had, it only sold just over five million copies world wide. Again, five million is a grand number, but small potatoes when compared to what was merely yearly sequel done by the series’ off-year team. [blippr]Metal Gear Solid 4[/blippr], only sold just under five million disks since it’s launch. Hell let’s go back a few gens and look at some legacy titles. [blippr]Final Fantasy VII[/blippr] at last count was just under ten million copies sold in the ten years it’s been available. And one game, one yearly iteration just flew by it like it wasn’t no thang. – The Ben

One new example is a World of Warcraft art exhibit hosted by Laguna Art Museum. According to the news story in the link the exhibit will be a showcase of both official art, fan art, and art done by professional artists all over the world. The exhibit seems to be an interesting showcase for the brand’s mythos. Maybe if this exhibit takes off more of it’s kind will start showing up at art museums everywhere. – The Ben

Gamasutra (via Joystiq) is reporting the Bionic Commando next generation sequel performed poorly during it’s first two weeks. Garnering only 27k sales and not even scratching the surface of the top 10.

What makes this news sad is that it will serve as an indictment of classic franchise remakes, instead of a sign that the game (which only garners an average review score at time of writing of 7 out of 10) was mediocre at best. While it is disingenuous to compare it’s sales numbers to that of the sister Grin studios release last month “Terminator Salvation” due to it’s movie tie ins, a more apt comparison is that of the Downloadable remake Bionic Commando: Rearmed that sold remarkably well because it was a good game that stayed true to the franchise.

Along with the standard “Whatchu think bout dat competition?” questions, there was an interesting section dealing with Mario games and story:

Wired.com: Super Mario Galaxy was also the first time where we saw a story in a Mario game that was more than just window dressing, that was a really interesting narrative. Are we going to see more of that?

Miyamoto: I’ve talked to (Galaxy director Yoshiaki) Koizumi about that a lot, but this time I’d like to go with as little story as possible. I’ve always felt that the Mario games themselves aren’t particularly suited to having a very heavy story, whereas the Zelda series is something that lends itself more naturally to that idea. We’ve differentiated a little bit between those two, because the Zelda games have had an in-depth story whereas the Mario games have not. Mr. Koizumi is the type of person who, whenever we’re working on a new Mario game, he always wants to bring more story elements into it, as he did with Super Mario Galaxy. But in talking with him this time, he agrees and feels that with Galaxy 2, there won’t be a need for as deep of a story.

I think you did see a person carved out of a tree stump in the trailer. That person has a bit of a story.

Wired.com: When I talked to Mr. Koizumi, he said that he would try to sneak in story elements without you knowing.

Miyamoto: Well, I put a stop to that at the beginning, this time (laughs).

Wired.com: Why do you think that Mario games aren’t served by having a story?

Miyamoto: I just feel that the Mario games are something that should be a much more bright and active experience. The games are much more of a physical action type of game. My feeling is that with the Mario games, you don’t need to have such a complicated setting where you have these particular characters with complicated backstories that can weigh down the bright and fun feel of the game. So in that sense, I feel that even if all that you have is that the villain is just simply a villain and you fight them, and you throw them down, and you find out, well, that wasn’t such a bad villain after all, that’s enough story for ultimately what is just about a very fun experience.

I think what’s really the most ideal thing is for the player themselves, within their own imagination, to carve out what they view as being the essence of the character. With New Super Mario Bros. Wii as well, we’ve had some battles over the story elements. They always want to have these dramatic scenes where Princess Peach gets kidnapped, but I always tell them, no, it’s fine — Princess Peach likes cake, so you can just have them use cake as bait to kidnap Princess Peach, and that’s enough. I was thinking they could have these big ships come in, and they’ve got these big chains all over them, and they drop a plate down with cake on it (laughs).

While this will only give more fodder to the “Mario’s the same thing every time”, it’s assuring to know that Mario games won’t have memorable moments like this one any time soon. – The Ben

PlayStation 2 117K
PlayStation 3 131K
PSP 100.4K
Xbox 360 175K
Wii 289.5K
Nintendo DS 633.5K

UFC 2009 UNDISPUTED THQ Xbox 360 679.6K
Wii FIT W/ BALANCE BOARD NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 352.8K
EA SPORTS ACTIVE BUNDLE ELECTRONIC ARTS Wii 345.8K
UFC 2009 UNDISPUTED THQ PS3 334.4K
INFAMOUS SONY PS3 175.9K
POKEMON PLATINUM VERSION NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 168.9K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 158.3K
PUNCH OUT!! NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 156.9K
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE UNCAGED ED ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Xbox 360 120.7K
Wii PLAY W/ REMOTE NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 109.8K

This must be the only generation where all three consoles are selling “well” yet all three are selling “poorly” at the same time through various reasons given by analysts. Whatever, it’s May, a month in which the Gamecube sold around some fifty thousand units in 2005 and was generally assumed that that was as good it was going to get for a Nintendo console.

Well, without any heavy hitting software I assume the Wii is only going to continue it’s decli-oh…wait. Wii Sports Resort is out next month.

Eh.

– The Ben

Reggie. Reggie Reggie Reggie. Why did you give everyone more bait? Bait, as in more message board fodder for those laughing smilies. Bait for those “BEST AND WORST QUOTES OF 2009″ fluff articles sites always put up at the end of the year. That kind of bait.

Honestly though, he shouldn’t have said anything if he couldn’t say it any different. And also honestly, at least he didn’t let loose something even worse like “We already have the hardcore audience” or “We don’t need third parties to make hardcore games”. The gaming tabloids would be all over those gaffes if he did. – The Ben

Of course since no photography is allowed at this round table we can’t actually see it, but according to IGN Link looks “More NOT GHEY CELDA than ever” in their words. I imagine this piece of artwork is in fact the same one Nintendo gave us at E3 2004 of the TP-style Link, but with a beard drawn on it. – The Ben

And it also had Final Fantasy Eleven-Two. No that’s not Fourteen that’s Eleven-Two I don’t care if numbers don’t work that way it’s got Taru-Taru and those giant guys with neck beards.

Honestly, I thought all the conferences were good, but now we have to suffer through gaming nerds arguing over who won E3, why Nintendo’s conference totally sucked and Nintendo is stupid and should have gone third party and they smell because they’re stupid butts and everything else along those lines.

Oh and BIG BOSS OUTER HEAVEN METAL GEAR!!!! – The Ben

At least one of my dream predictions came true.

That being a Metroid Prequel that features a younger Samus during her service in the Galactic Federation and the rising tension between her and Commander Adam Malkovich, who’s consciousness eventually gets transplanted into her new ship by Metroid Fusion.

Having it 2D was a bonus, I was worried Metroid would never go back to a 2D plane.

– The Ben

The main theme I got from Ubisoft was that games are not only bigger than movies, but should be as important as movies themselves. Well…okay that’s an interesting position but how are you going to go about putting this idea into motio-oh God James Cameron is talking. Ubisoft partnered up with James Cameron with his pet project of fourteen years AVATAR, and boy was Cameron excited to talk about this partnership. He was so excited that he talked about it for TWENTY GOD DAMN MINUTES. He ended up going over the whole plotline and why the world of Pandora is so spectacular with it’s 100ft tall trees, yet there wasn’t one ounce of gameplay shown (by the way, here’s the first screens of the AVATAR game if you’re curious) off during this magnum opus of a talk.

You can say that Kojima and Wada’s games go on forever in the cutscene department, but at least when they’re at E3 they let the game do the talking even if it’s just a pre-recorded trailer. There was NOTHING on the projection behind Cameron during his talk about how the natives of Pandora have tails and dislike human expansion and all that jazz. I can tell the guy is passionate about the project, you can tell they didn’t have to pay him one cent to come on stage, the guy could have probably talked longer about how the natives conduct politics with the animals of the planet. But really, Ubi should have given him his own little event during E3 where he just talks AVATAR for an hour and a half.

Other things of note were the new Splinter Cell shown off for a second time, a new trailer for Assassin’s Creed 2, more fitness games from Ubisoft, and Red Steel 2 being demoed by a MAD MAN.

Jason Vandenbergh certainly has a passion. What that passion is exactly I cannot say, but I’d have to position it somewhere around MADNESS. I mean, the man’s website is www.darklord.Com. He’s like an Allen Moore from a parallel universe where he got into Video Game Design instead of comics. He’s already got the beard and in lieu of finger armor he was carrying around a pointing stick while on stage. Brian if you are reading this you MUST try and get an interview with this man. He is the kind of developer the industry is lacking these days.

So yeah that was Ubisoft’s Pre-E3 press conference. There were Rabbids and Pele and the usual Ubisoft staples. We had some laughs, not from the guy they got to host it certainly and I think we all learned something from the presser.

Don’t make your press conference last two hours, especially if one fifth of that time is taken up by James Cameron talking about the 100ft tall tree universes he created. – The Ben

LOS ANGELES — Microsoft revealed a motion-sensing gadget for the Xbox 360 that it said will change the future of entertainment — and not just play catch-up with Nintendo’s Wii.

If it works as promised, the device could dramatically raise the ante in the competition between the Xbox, Wii and PlayStation and usher in a new era of immersive entertainment.

Code-named Project Natal, the device is a horizontal bar about nine inches wide and stuffed with cameras, depth sensors and array microphones.

It can detect the voices and motions of people nearby, so they can interact with an Xbox and games just by talking and moving their bodies.

Prices and timing weren’t available, but it won’t be available until 2010 at the earliest and will probably cost around $200. Microsoft has already given game developers tools to start building games that uses the device.

At first it sounds like a challenger to Nintendo’s Wii, which uses motion-sensitive controllers. but Natal recognizes gestures and motions made by the entire body without any sort of controller in the hand, Microsoft Vice President Shane Kim said.

“This goes way beyond the Wii,” he said.

Natal will also add voice control, so users could walk up to an Xbox and use their voice to start a movie or check messages.

Kim said the device is intended to remove “barriers,” making the Xbox more accessible to people who are intimidated by all the buttons and controls on a traditional game controller.

There’s the short and quick of the Project. Hopefully it’ll be on the show floor and be available to a variety of different people to try out this week. – The Ben

– Cliffy B. showed off a new game from Epic from XBLA called Shadow Complex that according to them draws upon the Metroidvania/Castletroid genre but with a touch of Epic Games flavor.

– Then Bungie showed off Halo: ODST which drops this September, followed by the first look at Halo: Reach, which drops in Spring of next year but will have a multiplayer beta available in the fall if you buy ODST. Along with the last of the new Halo 3 maps, that’s like three different Halo games connected to one package.

Once most of the hardcore games were shown off, the next part of the conference started. The “Social” part. The biggest announcements from this section included the fact that Last.FM will be available to Xbox Live Gold members for free, and that you can now watch movies on your 360 with your friends online at the same time in a new Avatar Movie Theater all MST3k style.

And then, Facebook and Twitter apps. It’s no secret that the Xbox wasn’t created to be simply a game delivery platform but the eventual “All-In-One” box that Microsoft wanted to use to fight off Sony’s gambit on controlling the living room space. Another shot in that war was fired as Microsoft announced that both Facebook and Twitter will be available to use on the 360, each with their own special 360 Dashboard Flavor.

After the social segment began the final third which I like to ca-METAL GEAR to 360?!?!____RAIDEN?!?!?!-ll the “Creepy Unholy Matrimony of the Wii Remote and Eye Toy” segment. It was during this segment that the gaming world was publicly introduced to Project Natal, the secret motion control-experiment that everyone knew by now was being developed by Microsoft. To show off Natal Microsoft first demoed some Eye Toy style games. They were…interesting.

And then OH SHIT PETER MOLYNEUX IS ON STAGE AND HE’S GOING TO SAY SOMETHING EVERYBODY RUN!

Peter Molyneux was invited on stage to show off his new game using Project Natal called…well I don’t think he actually named the game. But what he did name was the boy you interact with in the game. Milo. Milo is the young boy who recognizes your face, speech, everything about you as one of the touted features of Project Natal. (Auto-Sign In to your 360 using your body is pretty cool) But this demo seemed to me more of something that Molyneux is fascinated by instead of everybody else. But hey, he did the same thing with the dog in Fable 2 and I liked that scamp. So I’ll give it a go.

These are just my first thoughts after the press conference concluded. If you want a structured break down of some sort with time marks and everything, Wired’s Chris Kohler kept a blog handy if you wanna check it out.

– The Ben

…

Did I really just write that hokey line? Oh Lord I really am turning into a gaming journalist. Well whatever, last night Activision had their big “We’re not attending E3 this year but we’ll still have a call conference for the press to show off how much money we’re going to make this year” event near the Los Angeles Convention Center. Gamespot was there live blogging the whole thing, which was good for most of us as I’m sure most gamers didn’t even know Activision was even having a press conference last night.

Some of the highlights from the event?

– Starcraft 2 is set to be released by the end of 2009, however Diablo 3 isn’t looking likely to be coming out this year.

– Tony Hawk is over 40 and as a result the new peripheral-based Tony Hawk game is actually the best way for him to skate now as he’s getting up there in years. Yet the new Tony Hawk game was hyped with lines like “Now you can skate just like Tony Hawk!”, are they saying you’ll be feeling like Hawk was in his prime, or that the only way he can skate without looking like an “old” man is with this new game?

– Call of Duty is the new Mario. It’s not the new Hoth, not the new Halo, the franchise is the new Mario. The conference was lauding the franchise with each new entry being able to outsell the previous one regardless of quality, and that they’re looking forward to expanding the franchise into new genres. Now every gaming site that thinks they’re so smart immediately thought of “Lol Call of Duty Kart Racing” but I’d rather much see of all possible genres, a take on the dating sim. Crazy? You think that’s crazy? C’mon! You’re an American soldier with your buddies fighting in Europe, your sweet hart is all the way back in the states helping on the home front in anyway she can. And in-between the combat sections the franchise is known for, you’ve got NPC interaction once the firefights die down and have to choose between staying true to your girl, or letting war work it’s own strange magic on you as you see just how much of the world there is out there.

– ….Okay, there was also a lot of Guitar Hero talk. With all the self-back patting on how the Guitar Hero series is clearly the leader in the Music Game Genre, there was talk about how Band Hero and DJ Hero would be just as innovative and mesmerizing to all audiences. Now Activision can congratulate yourself on a lot of things. They’ve managed to become a powerhouse rivaling the biggest third-party companies. They’ve been able to keep most of their franchises from becoming stale. But don’t outright lie, don’t pretend that Band Hero is the first game of it’s kind don’t say that DJ Hero is the first game that “truly lets you mix like a master” because those are lies. You know they’re lies, the audience knows they’re lies. Even if someone on the Band Hero team had the idea for it years before the Guitar Hero team did, don’t try and rewrite history.

That was Activision’s big presser. Next up we have Microsoft, who is actually starting their conference five minutes earlier today due to an “Unforeseen Last Minute Announcement Addition” of some sort. – The Ben

And to everyone else out there stung by the E3 bug, try not to let the hype swallow you whole. – The Ben

By now the Qore Issue is probably down but luckily the internet keeps a record of everything and there’s already a Youtube Video of the Qore Interview. Among the interesting facts given in the interview is that there’s going to be new Jak and Daxter and Metal Gear entries for the system, along with the long awaited Gran Turismo Mobile and some footage of the Portable version of Little Big Planet.

The PSP Go! is intended to work much like the GBA SP did with the GBA so many years back. Although the GBA SP all but replaced the GBA in the mindset of both the consumers and developers, there weren’t any SP only games that you couldn’t also play on your GBA. That’s probably one of the reasons Nintendo didn’t add extra Y and X buttons the SP, one of the major complaints surrounding the GBA line and it’s SNES ports.

That’s also why the PSP Go! doesn’t have a second analog nub. Sony wants their two handhelds to sell well together and won’t give the developers an incentive to make their games Go! only.

The most interesting thing about the PSP Go! announcement though, is that it’s almost confirmed that PS3 Slim rumor by showing off the packaging of the Go! in the leaked pictures. The style of the packaging for the PSP Go! is parallel to the leaked packaging pics of the PS3 Slim. The Go! box has a Blue style while the previously leaked Slim box had a Red style.

Leaks are a way of life, and the E3 dam is just getting started to break. – The Ben

So what the heck does this have to do with a Neon Genesis Evangelion application for the PS3 wherein a digital Misato reads you real life news in a digitized voice? Well according to Kotaku that app in question is being developed by Cellius, a joint venture by Sony and Namco-Bandai with the sole intent of bringing Sony back to it’s glory days with Ken Kutaragi as the CEO himself. It seems Sony found the best possible solution to the Kutaragi problem in their eyes, rather than force him away from the company entirely they found a nice little company of his own to oversee where he can toil away on things that wouldn’t be the norm for another five to ten years.

This app seems to draw upon the same sense of zeitgeist that surrounds Kutaragi’s dreams. Ones of having your Playstation not only play games, movies, and the like. In addition Kutaragi’s Ideal Playstation would control everything you interact with. Everything in your living room, everything in your bed room, everything in your pants… Kutaragi was able to get Sony to see the threat of Microsoft attempting the living room takeover, but surprisingly enough wasn’t able to get them to counter Apple ushering in the new era in portable music. The PSP as advanced as it was at the time of it’s release was already too late in stopping Apple from becoming the Sony of the late 80′s.

Is this PS3 App only the beginning of more “Jack into the Matrix” style pipe-dreams of Kutaragi to finally see the light of day and commercial release? Will Crazy Ken have the last laugh after all? – The Ben

I’m sure at first the world record was “Biggest Game of All Time” when suddenly a PC Gaming Ninja immediately broke into their offices and relayed to them all of the PC games that have easily beaten that record. So they just added in “Console” and that was that.

OR WAS IT?

Because honestly are you really telling me that in the almost thirty years console gaming as we’ve known it has never produced a game that large? How did the measure the in-game distance compared to other games? Hell let’s take Wind Waker, how big was that damn Great Sea? There’s 49 ‘cells’ that make up the Great Sea in Wind Waker that you sail too. If there’s sixty-five unique islands and we use Toon Link as a unit of measurement and every five Toon Link’s is one King of Red Lions….shit, can we use cubits here? And we haven’t even started to take Hammerfall’s generated world but oh that’s on the PC so it doesn’t count.

Anyway the point is is that everything in games is subjective when talking about measurement and this is just another one of the PR stunts that Guinness does to hype up their Gamer Edition Guinness Records Book.

To end this, I’ll just quickly post one of my personal favorite Guinness Gamer Edition PR Events. A while back they hosted an event in which the largest number of video game-related cosplayers would gather together. The record was the…well it was the largest gathering of video game-related cosplayers. You can see video footage of the results here in which they boastfully claim that “There’s probably over 80 people here dressed up as video game characters alone!” to the world.

Oh wow there have been more video game character cosplayers gathered together in an anime convention hall bathroom. But the real ironic thing about this record is how many of the cosplayers there aren’t even cosplayers, they’re corporate mascots showing up for a PR event! Because Boogie became such a big hit that some hardcore fan of the game just had to make it out there to the event to show off his painstakingly recreated Boogie Costume. Then you have the Crash and Spyro suits there as well…wait is that the same Crash outfit that’s been worn for the past nine years? I’m not saying it’s the first one, the one where Crash called Mario out. The one they’ve been using ever since Crash stopped becoming a mainstream game mascot. That one.

And the best thing about it, the best thing? Mario’s not even there. I guess whichever branch had the Mario Suit that day didn’t care about the potential exposure the PR WORLD RECORD EVENT would bring. And they didn’t need to, there were a SHIT-TON of Mario there. That’s the plural for Mario right? Just, Mario? Marios, Marii? Anyway, these events are such desperate grabs for attention that when the guy who’s appeared in more games than God did in the Bible doesn’t bother to make an official appearance that you’re not doing this to show off how far man has come and his achievements….through….cosplay….

– The Ben.

Speaking of not making to the show, thanks to the Swine Flu outbreak, the Japanese branches of Capcom, Square-Enix and Koei are going to be staying home according to Kombo. While the companies themselves will still be represented at the show via their US branch counterparts, the people at the companies who make the big decisions will be sitting this one out for health reasons.

Satoru Iwata hasn’t mentioned anything about missing the expo on his twitter, so hopefully he’s still on for next month. – The Ben

But what’s most interesting of course is the “Special Edition” moniker attached to the title. Will it simply get a new coat of HD paint like so many XBLA Ports have gotten, or will it be something more grandiose, an entire reworking of the game with voice acting and the like?

To top this off, it seems like the XBLA now has representatives from every PC gaming genre from the 90′s. You have Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Wolfenstein on the way representing the FPS stable. Now we’ll have on the defining PC Adventure games on the Arcade as well. What 90′s PC gaming genres can the XBLA look towards representing next? – The Ben

It’s not all bad news for Killzone 2, the game has become a pretty sizable hit in European territories and had sold a million worldwide by the end of March according to Sony. But it’s still short of the lofty dreams Sony had for it back in 2005 when every single press outlet was citing Killzone 2 as the game that defined Next-Generation, much like they did back in 2000 when the first MGS2 trailer was shown to the world and became the Killzone 2 of it’s era. It became the top talking point in favor of the PS2′s potential against other systems.

Of course MGS2 managed to sell over seven million copies worldwide since it’s release. Killzone 2 has a bit of a journey ahead of itself if it wants to reach that goal. – The Ben

Sean Brennan, managing director for Bethesda in Europe is quoted as saying that “We are going to make an announcement on a really big Wii game this year, we’ve got a couple of other things in the pipeline, and it’s a format we’re really looking at with the right approach.”

He goes on to say, “I’ve got consoles at home but I wouldn’t sit and play an 18-rated game with my family on the Wii. Is there space in the Wii market for that? I think there is, but again, it’s all about finding out how big that is. Is it 5 per cent? If it’s five per cent of the market and you can own that space it’s worth doing because you can achieve volume. If you can’t own it at five per cent, it’s not worth doing, quite frankly.”

So, interestingly it sounds like they’re making a game for themselves that they want to play instead of just making the game for the potential of money. As E3 draws closer game announcements for all the systems will be coming at us at the usual pace we used to get them back when E3 was in it’s prime. It’s an exciting feeling to be honest. I only hope E3 delivers on this promise of the return of it’s glory days and game announcements coming out of the woodworks. – The Ben

Take-Two is being quoted in the article saying that, “Apogee continually delayed the completion date for the Duke Nukem Forever. Apogee repeatedly assured Take-Two and the video-gaming community that it was diligently working toward competing development of the PC Version of the Duke Nukem Forever.”

Looks like all those “When it’s done” message board posts aren’t going to satisfy Take-Two now that it’s time to pay up. – The Ben

PlayStation 2 172K
PlayStation 3 127K
PSP 116K
Xbox 360 175K
Wii 340K
Nintendo DS 1.04M

FIT W/ BALANCE BOARD NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 471K
POKEMON PLATINUM VERSION NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 433K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 210K
PLAY W/ REMOTE NINTENDO OF AMERICA Wii 170K
THE GODFATHER II ELECTRONIC ARTS 360 155K
RESIDENT EVIL 5* CAPCOM USA 360 122K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 119K
MARIO KART DS NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 112K
GUITAR HERO AEROSMITH* ACTIVISION BLIZZARD (CORP) 360 110K
THE GODFATHER II ELECTRONIC ARTS PS3 91K

No real surprises given everything that’s going on. The economy is still weak, but people still wanna game.

- The Ben

Update: A little leak on this blog shows us the Top 20 last month for all platforms. Interesting things from a quick glance are Halo 3 outselling Halo Wars thanks to the map pack, the DS and PSP lists both made up of evergreen titles. Well, the DS has long selling titles, the PSP just has whatever Gamestop put on sale that month plus the Final Fantasy games and the two GTA Stories. And another factoid I’ve noted before, Link’s Crossbow Training is selling well for a game that came out almost two years ago and was comprised entirely of the shooting segments lifted from Twilight Princess. I don’t even want to see if it’s true but there’s a chance it could actually catch up to the sales of Twilight Princess if it keeps up selling at this rate.

I mean hell, why not release a fishing rod attachment and sell “Link’s Fishing Training” with both the Twilight and Ocarina versions of Zelda Fishing Fun?

The main reason given for the closure of the studio lies mainly with the bankruptcy of Brash Entertainment according to the site. That coupled with the current economic situation brought a bad wind into the small company who once believed so hard in the HD Generation, only to have their first project of the seventh console generation plagued by ghosts.

A more in depth look on the troubled journey Factor 5 took from the technical underdogs of the N64 and GCN to their final stand on the PS3 can be found on this blog. The one point you can spot Factor 5 jumping into their final blaze of glory can be seen when Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5 is constantly pushing then BFF Nintendo into helping them get started on the next-gen train of gaming, and shocked when Nintendo decides to go a completely different route. Factor 5 could only see one future, a Future in High-Def. Unfortunately for Factor 5, history had other plans for the gaming industry. -The Ben

While this shouldn’t worry everyone who wants to see the old E3 back, it is telling how one of the biggest companies in the “Spend all our budget on everything that’s not game development” department (how much do you think that giant convention wall sized entrance banner cost them back in 2004?) is cutting back on seemingly frivolous costs.

I wonder if EA’s going to bring back their 360 degree video screen next month at the expo? – The Ben

The article also talks to 2D Boy, the company that came out with last year’s World of Goo, who not only released the game without any sort of DRM at all, but also states that about 90% of the versions of WoG played on the PC were pirated versions. His reasoning for not being at all discontent with that figure is that he sees the future of PC gaming having more to do with companies making their money on the consumers spending in the game and because of the game, not just for the game. An interesting idea that might grow as developers look for ways to bring the prices of games down to a more reasonable level for the consumer, without DRM spoiling the fun as well to boot. – The Ben

He gives the acceptable reason of why sales will be down a sizable amount with the fact that last year’s GTA IV/Mario Kart one two sales punch helped out software sales dramatically. You might remember though that while GTA IV was the top software seller for that month, it didn’t do much in the end to light a fire under the next-gen systems.

In fact, if we go by Pachter’s estimates, all the consoles will have sold MORE now than they did last year with all that spring software we had coming out.

That’s….that’s some pretty funky estimating when you look at it that way Pachter. – The Ben

There’s DJ Hero which comes with according to the PR “an all-new innovative turntable controller”. There’s Guitar Hero 5 of course, no surprise there. To top things off there’s also the newly announced Band Hero. At least they don’t even try and hide the fact that they’re copying Rock Band with Band Hero. No “INNOVATIVE NEW BAND MECHANICS” here. Bobby knows he’s milking the cash cow for all it’s worth and he DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. – The Ben

Update: Via Shacknews again, “Apogee Software and Deep Silver have issued a statement to Shacknews, confirming that the situation at 3D Realms has not affected the development of Frontline Games’ upcoming handheld Duke Nukem Trilogy.” Looks like this could be the real deal folks.

It’s just a rumor as of this moment but according to Shacknews a reliable source close to 3D Realms has confirmed to the site that due to budgetary woes, the development company might be shutting down, leaving Duke to go on an extended sabbatical.

Remember it’s just a rumor as of now, hopefully George will clear things up soon. – The Ben

It’s always interesting to see what happens when the individuals of game creation step away from a company and become more of an individual. And in the case of Lord British, he’s quite the eccentric individual as far as gaming personalities go. – The Ben

According to Eurogamer SCE has seemingly snatched up the publishing rights to the Ghostbusters video game that was set to release on every current console and portable known to man.

Well now it seems come June 19th only the PS3 and PS2 are getting the title. All those copies for the 360 and Wii that were probably already sent to the printers and are in warehouses somewhere? Well they get to stay right there for now. Now there are reports that Atari will get the other versions out later on this year but, the game was supposed to be out in a month for everybody. Everybody man!

This would have actually been fine if SCE had done this almost half a year ago when Ghostbusters was without a publisher, but to do this a month from release when every retailer’s had every edition listed in their “Coming Soon!” section? Man, this is cold.

Note that this deal also comes just weeks after that “We’re not desperate like Microsoft is to pay for third-party exclusives” line from Sony Head of Marketing John Koller. – The Ben

So yeah there were rumblings today that Apple was interesting in EA but c’mon Apple is interested in everybody. Every year there’s a story saying how Apple is so serious about getting into gaming that they’re going to buy all the best companies and that it’s SO GOING TO HAPPEN.

Of course if they do buy EA, the above proclamation will probably be remembered as the greatest gaffe of Pachter. – The Ben

Among the rumors include a guesstimate launch date of September in Japan and Fall in the U.S. with no mention of a date for a European release. Also of note is that the system is seemingly ditching all traces of the UMD format, with ‘Classic’ PSP titles available to buy on the PSN at launch if you missed out on Chains of Olympus or Patapon. The most interesting tidbit to me is that they cite Gran Turismo Portable as a rumored launch title for the next PSP. Gran Turismo Portable, you know the game that was shown on every PSP render when it was first unveiled in 2004? The one Sony promised was absolutely real, so much so that they also produced a mock box art of the game and a mock UMD to show off to everyone just how REAL the game was? Could we finally see it done and ready at this years’ E3?

At least the twin confirmations of Tekken Six and a new Soul Calibur for the PSP are already officially confirmed, so we won’t have to guess about those, but damn, you can already taste the hype the gaming journalists are building for the return of the TRUE E3 this year. – The Ben

The first novel, titled ‘The Infernal City’ is said to take place after the events of Oblivion (you know that epic apocolyptic battle where you were never in much trouble at all depending on how you leveled up and ultimately watch the main villain of the title become destroyed via an interactive cut scene) and hopefully begin to build a bridge that connects to Elder Scrolls V.

I hope every few pages the author slips in a minor character just casually saying things like ‘You’ve got nimble fingers, what have you been getting yourself into?’ to the protagonist of the tale. Y’know, just to add to the authenticity of the world the novel’s trying to visualize to the reader. – The Ben

Will the game still see release under a different publisher now that Konami has decided to put the title out to pasture? It does seem like the game had a lot of research done in order to authenticate it. The news article ends with a few notes from Wall Street Journalist Jamin Brophy-Warren about how about 40 U.S. Soldiers helped the developers by offering their own experiences with the event through their journals diaries. Following that is the fact that the developers used thousands of photos along with the discloser of the actual soldiers working there to construct as accurate of a recreation of the battles in Fallujah as they could get.

– The Ben

Rajan Zed explains in a press release that, “”Controlling and manipulating Lord Hanuman with a joystick/button/keyboard/mouse was denigration. Lord Hanuman was not meant to be reduced to just a ‘character’ in a video game to solidify company/products base in the growing economy of India.”

Mike Smith ends the article by quoting an actual review of the game by reviewer Sameer Desai which proclaims the game as “…without a doubt, the worst console game I’ve ever played, and I’m pretty sure the worst game ever to be published by Sony Computer Entertainment.”

At least Lord Hanuman can take heed in knowing he’s not the only mythological character from a religion to be exploited in video game form. Hey at least the game managed to spell his name right, the same of which can’t be said about fellow Hindu mythology figure Curl-er Kali. What a fate to befall the Hindu goddess of destruction. Reduced to serving more recent fictional monsters and having her name butchered beyond recognition. – The Ben

Does this mean one more set of DLC for Oblivion before they begin work on Elder Scrolls V? Could that hypothetical DLC help serve as a bridge between the IV and V story wise? Or is that probably too much to ask?

Even if they aren’t going to make any new Oblivion content, no doubt they’ve already begun brainstorming ideas for V. It has already been three years since Oblivion was released already. It’s nigh time to begin looking back to Tamriel and wonder what we’ll get to do this time. – The Ben

As if XBLA, DS, iPod, iPhone, the internet, and PC versions were not not enough casual games superpower PopCap is now announcing a Peggle addon for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Now you have some choice of things to do after a wipe in das uber raids.

Now, I gotta point something out here. Last year in 2008 Sony had a banner year. Maybe not financially or even quality wise for some people. But what they did excel at last year was keeping their trap shut. Or more specifically not spurting out PR gaffes that seem to have been said for the sole reason of message boards going into a frenzy over them. Even if you don’t remember much about what Sony said in 2008, at least you don’t remember them making the talking point list of every gaming podcast and magazine known to man.

But now we’re here in the Spring of 2009, almost four years since that E3 where everybody was hailing Sony as the once and future king. Watch that video in the link I just posted, go on watch it and see just how the mainstream perception of Sony has changed over the years. E3 was still getting prime time TV coverage, PS3 was going to do everything including walking the dog, and Fox News was more concerned with ads in gaming than the actual console they were talking about.

Back to the Gamasutra interview though, Peter Dille is quoted at one point in the article saying that, “”Microsoft owns the office; Sony owns the living room; and Wii owns the closet.” He even makes sure to mention that it was a quip he heard from Mr. (Find me a PS3 on store shelves and I’ll give you six-thousand bucks) Jack Tretton himself. It’s like Sony gave it their all last year, saw that it wasn’t giving them anything good, and decided to screw their short-lived “Actions instead of words” style go back to attack mode.

With the old fashioned E3 coming back in little over a month from now, it probably won’t be long before all the gaming companies start console warrior-esque quip wars when they get on stage for their big conferences in June.

– The Ben

I could make another “Lara Croft gonna get JRGG’d” joke that basically every outlet has made by now, but I’d much rather go with the more sinister “Deus Ex gonna be a JRPG” route. If that series was out there on a psychological level before, man Square has people hired for the sole purpose of creating confusing plot points.

The weekend has come around and it’s time to play, so here’s your weekly guide to what’s on sale at your favorite downloadable services.

Impulse - This week’s Impulse buys:
[blippr]Restaurant Empire[/blippr] $9.99
[blippr]Nemesis of the Roman Empire[/blippr] $9.99
[blippr]Galciv II – Ultimate Edition[/blippr] $39.95
[blippr]Warlords Battlecry III[/blippr] $9.99
[blippr]Capitalism II[/blippr] $9.99

Steam - Weekend Deals:
[blippr]Dawn of War 2[/blippr] $37.49 (Our Review)
[blippr]Worldwide Soccer Manager™ 2009[/blippr] $14.99

Good Old Games –
Stronghold Bundle Pack $11.98
Including:
[blippr]Stronghold[/blippr]
[blippr]Stronghold Crusader[/blippr]

XBLA
[blippr]GRAW 2[/blippr] Co-op Collection 2 320 msp (Gold Members Only)