Monthly Archives: February 2009

The European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee said this morning that parents need a “red button” to shut down online gamesthey feel are inappropriate for their children.

“Parents should have a ‘red button’ to disable a game they feel is inappropriate for their child,” said the body in a report.

“Until PEGI on-line is up and running, the report proposes fitting consoles, computers or other game devices with a ‘red button’ to give parents the chance to disable a game or control access at certain times.”

GamePolitics noted that the EP did acknowledge that games can be great sources of recreation for children as well as a learning tool, but want parents to have more control over what their kids are playing, including the ability to terminate it.

The EP also supports the PEGI rating system, and said further that, “Different approaches to strengthening control of video games should be explored,” but that it does not propose specific EU legislation.

Many kids out there probably wish their parents had a “red button” as well.

More through the link.

It seems CVG liked playing around with The Lost and the Damneds multiplayer an awful lot.

The site’s preview’s broken into seven online play additions. The favorite by far though was one titled Own the City, which pits two teams of four against one another as they strive to take over various territories.

“It’s all very similar to San Andreas own turf feature; once either team has eliminated an area’s AI gang members it’ll change to their colour, spawning your own tooled-up AI mates in the process. A frantic, city-sprawling turf war ensues with team members gearing up to assault enemy turf, while scrambling back to their own to defend opposing attacks.”

Read the rest of the preview here.

Loads of new themes, movie trailers, game trailers and the usual other stuff is available this week.

Mostly, the only things worth noting are Flower, the free NBA Live 09 All Star Weekend add-on, the Lumines skins pack, and the Guitar Hero and Rock Band tracks Xbox 360 users got earlier in the week.

The full list is on the PS Blog.

There’s a MotorStorm Pacific Rift demo there. Which is nice. The biggie’s Flower, obviously, which is apparently well worth your £6.29.

List courtesy of Joystiq.

Playable Content

• Flower (£6.29)
• Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars (£7.99)
• Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Poweres Battle Cars demo (free)
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift demo (free)

Add-on Content

• LittleBigPlanet “Ape Escape” costume (£1.59)
• LittleBigPlanet “Toro” costume (£1.59)
• NBA All Star Weekend pack (free)
• Rock Band DLC (continued)
• Guitar Hero World Tour DLC (continued)

Videos

• Tekken 6 trailer
• Fifa 09 trailer
• Flower trailer

Rock Band DLC

The Fratellis Pack (£2.49)

• “Flathead” (£0.99)
• “Henrietta” (£0.99)
• “Creeping Up The Back Stairs” (£0.99)

Guitar Hero World Tour DLC

“Dig Out Your Soul” – Oasis (£13.99)

• “Aint Got Nothing” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “Falling Down” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “(Get Off Your) High Horse” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “I’m Outta Time” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “Soldier On” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “The Nature Of Reality” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “The Turning” – Oasis (£1.59)
• “To Be Where There Is Life” – Oasis (£1.59)

Accoustic Track Pack (£4.39)

• “Drive” – Incubus (£1.59)
• “New Slang” – The Shins (£1.59)
• “Wonderwall” – Ryan Adams (£1.59)

Southern Rock Track Pack (£4.39)

Themes

• Need For Speed Undercover theme (free)
• PAIN Hasselhoff theme (free)

PSP Content

• Resistance Retribution demo (free)

The January NPD has shown astonishing sales for Wii Fit, Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii, the three leading the software top ten for the month.

In addition, despite hell freezing over in the financial sector, January software sales have seen a ten percent increase Y-o-Y.

“Software sales still increased 10 percent over last January, indicating that continued strong hardware sales are not occurring at the expense of software sales,” said Anita Frazier, NPD analyst.

“Only two of the top 10 games this month were new releases.

“The continued strength of games that have been in the market for some time clues us into just how many new consumers are coming into the industry,” she went on.

“This broadening of the audience for gaming will help buoy the industry through these tough economic times, provided they have enough compelling content to keep them interested.”

The full January NPD software sales are as follows:

1. Wii Fit (Nintendo, Wii) – 777K
2. Wii Play (Nintendo, Wii) – 415K
3. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo, Wii) – 292K
4. Left 4 Dead (EA, 360) – 243K
5. Call of Duty: World at War (Activision Blizzard, 360) – 235K
6. SKATE 2 (EA, 360) – 199K
7. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Activision Blizzard, Wii) – 155K
8. New Super Mario Bros (Nintendo DS) 135K
9. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo, DS) 132K
10. Lord of the Rings Conquest (EA, 360) – 113K

The US games industry grew 13 percent year-on-year to $1.33 billion, just-released January NPD figures have shown.

Hardware sales were up 17 percent for the month compared to the previous period, hitting $445.4 million.

Software sales rose less steeply, but showed a solid 10 percent increase. $676.6 million worth of games were sold in the US last month.

Peripherals sales were up 11 percent compared to January 2007, breaking the $200 million mark at $209.8 million.

The January 2009 NPD hardware results have just been released, and, surprising no one, Nintendo is the definitive winner of the lot.

The results are as follows:

• Wii – 679,000
• DS – 510,000
• Xbox 360 – 309,000
• PS3 – 203,000
• PS2 – 101,000
• PSP – 172,000

The run down on all the January numbers can be found here.

Hardware Unit Sales
Jan-09
PlayStation 2 101.2K
PlayStation 3 203.2K
PSP 172.3K
Xbox 360 309K
Wii 679.2K
Nintendo DS 510.8K

Top 10 SKU’s January 2009
Title Publisher Platform Rank # Units
WII FIT NINTENDO OF AMERICA WII 1 777K
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE NINTENDO OF AMERICA WII 2 415K
MARIO KART W/WHEEL NINTENDO OF AMERICA WII 3 292K
LEFT 4 DEAD ELECTRONIC ARTS 360 4 243K
CALL OF DUTY: WORLD AT WAR* ACTIVISION BLIZZARD  360 5 235K
SKATE 2 ELECTRONIC ARTS 360 6 199K
GUITAR HERO WORLD TOUR* ACTIVISION BLIZZARD WII 7 155K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 8 135K
MARIO KART DS NINTENDO OF AMERICA 360 9 132K
LORD OF THE RINGS: CONQUEST ELECTRONIC ARTS PS3 10 113K

Dollar Sales Jan-09 Jan-08 CHG
Video Games $1.33 Billion $1.18 Billion 13%
Video Games Hardware $445.4 Million $380.3 Million 17%
Video Games Software $676.6 Million $614.7 Million 10%
Video Game Accessories $209.8 Million $188.3 Million 11%

Viacom said this morning during its Q4 earnings call that Rock Band 2 sold close to two million units across all platforms since its September release.

As nice as these numbers sound, they were lower than Viacom was expecting.

“While we remain enthusiastic about the future franchise potential for Rock Band, the impact of a slowing economy dampened consumer purchases of videogames in the quarter, resulting in lower sales of Rock Band than we had originally hoped,” said CFO Tom Dooley.

International sales for the game were $462 million, and the Rock Band franchise as a whole has shipped over 10 million units since its November 2007 release.

Edge reports that Viacom showed an overall 69 percent drop in net earnings to $173 million for Q4, with $454 million being spent on restructuring charges.

Quarterly revenues were $4.2 billion.

Kotaku is reporting that Ubisoft may have picked up Vin Diesel racer Wheelman.

The news comes after it was reported today that Midway’s files for Chapter 11. Rumors at present have the game release on hold.

Wheelman was expected to be released on March 16 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

According to a post over on the World of Warcraft forums, lead designer Jeffery Kaplan will no longer be working on Blizzard’s behemoth, but will instead shift all his focus to the company’s “unannounced MMO”.

Jeffery states that he will still be involved in the future progression of WoW, but that day-to-day work on the game will no longer be part of his schedule.

“I still plan to be very involved with the future course of World of Warcraft, but will leave the day to day operations of World of Warcraft to my partners in crime, Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack,” he said.

“When all is said and done, WoW is still my favorite game. I play it every day. None of that passion is gone. If anything, it fuels the challenge of making our next MMO even better. We know we have some big shoes to fill.”

If Blizzard is pulling Jeffery off of WoW, that can only mean one of two things: the new MMO is not progressing as they had hoped it, or it’s going to be huge. More than likely the latter.

You can read his full post over on the forums.

Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, Rockstar’s PSP GTA games, may soon become available on the PlayStation Store.

As Joystiq points out, a digital re-release would be a grand idea considering the biggest flaw for both games was the loading times.

That would, hopefully, be a thing of the past should these go up on PSN.

Via PlayStation Lifestyle.

There’s a demo video after the break of Dead Space running on Xbox. Yep, the first one. Apparently EA’s horror du jour has been knocking around behind the scenes for some time.

Does it look good? It does. See for yourself. Well, sort of see for yourself: the vid’s off-screen and pretty dark.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

More »

The Interactive Achievement Awards are to be broadcast live by IGN, taking place at DICE in Las Vegas next week.

The annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards are pretty much “hot shit,” self-styled as they are as gaming’s Oscars.

The magic happens at on Thursday, February 19 and 10.00pm EST, 7.00pm PST.

For the UK crowd, that’s 3.00am GMT. See you there, right?

IGN’s posted the first Street Fighter IV review. It’s a whopping 9.3/10.

Snip:

Street Fighter IV is a fantastic game overall and Capcom should be commended for designing a game that can work on so many levels by appealing to both casual and hardcore players. I’ll admit that when I first heard I was reviewing Street Fighter IV, I wasn’t terribly excited. I suppose I just didn’t think much of it. But as I played and experimented with each character, fighting a variety of the IGN folks and learning something new with every match, I realized just how irrevocably deep fighting games — and Street Fighter games in particular — really are. I encourage everyone to give Street Fighter IV a try, even if you’re relatively new to the fighting game scene. There’s so much depth to the gameplay that you’ll be rewarded long after your purchase.

IGN UK’s gone with 9.5.

Video review after the break. Game’s out February 20.

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BioWare’s posted up a bunch of information on the starting races in Dragon Age: Origins, explaining the “origins” concept.

Basically, the story’s going to be different depending on how you start. Clever, those BioWare chaps.

You get a choice of Human Noble, a City Elf, a Dwarf Commoner, a Dwarf Noble, a Mage and a Dalish Elf.

Chances of the RPG massive going beserk when it ships? Likely. Take a look. It’s out in the back half of this year.

Get all the descriptions after the break.

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What do you get when you reserve your copy of Guitar Hero: Metallica? You get this:

• GameStop – An exclusive second kick pedal
• GameCrazy – Guitar Hero: Metallica-themed drumsticks
• Best Buy – Some free tattoo sleeves to help freak out the establishment

The 49 songs on the game disc were revealed in their entirety this past January, and feature such notables as Alice in Chains, Queen, and Thin Lizzy.

Game’s out March 20 for PS3, Wii and Xbox 360. The PS2 version is expected to land May 1.

Press release after the jump.

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Q’s confirmed the PSN release of a Classic Pack of Lumines skins to celebrate the puzzler’s fourth birthday.

The DLC includes 20 backgrounds from the original game through which to bust blocks and groove through musical puzzles.

Go get it, Lumines junkies.

Namco Bandai slipped out its financial results while the Acti Blizz Q4 call was in full swing last night, revealing Soul Calibur IV as its best seller in its fourth quarter.

The company closed out Q4 with a net income of ¥9,019,000,000 ($100 million), with global sales figures for the following games being posted:

• Soul Calibur IV – 2.26 million copies
• Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit – 730,000
• WE SKI – 590,000
• Gundam Musou 2 – 590,000
• Active Life Outdoor Challenge – 550,000
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 – 530,000
• Super Robot Wars Z – 510,000
• Taiko Drum Master for DS 2 – 500,000
• Mobile Suit Gundam Gundam VS. Gundam – 440,000
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 – 420,000

Maybe now Soul Calibur IV fans will get some good DLC. Looks as though Namco can afford it.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Capcom’s announced that Monster Hunter Freedom 2G and Monster Hunter Freedom 2G PSP the Best have shipped three million units between them in Japan since last March.

Last year, Monster Hunter Freedom 2G sold more than any other game in the Japanese market, the now infamous adhoc “Party for PlayStation Portable” pushing the game hard.

March 11, 2009 is the fifth anniversary of the release of the first game in the Monster Hunter series, which to has sold a cumulative 8.5 million units.

The game will be heading Stateside this spring, retitled Monster Hunter Freedom Unite.

Press release after the jump.

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