Monthly Archives: July 2009

Nintendo’s just released a nasty set of Q1 financials, showing a 40.1 percent drop in overall sales and a 60.6 percent drop in profits for the three months ending June 30.

Net income was down to ¥42 billion compared to ¥107 billion in Q1 2009. Sales fell to ¥253 billion from ¥423 billion a year ago.

Wii sales crashed from 5.17 million units in the first quarter last year to 2.23 million this year.

DS sales fell from 6.94 million to 5.97 million year-on-year. DSi made up 3.65 million of the total figure.

Get the full release here.

Don’t blame us if these are old. CVG’s posted up 45 screens and two videos of FFXIII. We’re lost now. All we see is a man with an afro and Lightning pouting. Everywhere. In our dreams.

Look at them anyway.

Sony’s just-released first quarter figures have shown significant sales drops for both PS3 and PSP in the period.

The company said today that 1.1 million PS3s and 1.3 million PSPs were sold in the three months ending June 30, compared to 1.6 milion PS3s and 3.6 million PSPs in Q1 last year.

While not detailed, the company said that software had also see a reduction in the quarter.

On a bright note, PS2 sales were actually up, from 1.5 million a year ago to 1.6 million. Price-cutting for you, there.

PS business revenues were down 18 percent year-on-year. Sony put an appreciating yen as partially to blame for the drop. See here: look at page four.

How about that price cut, Sony? Bring on Cologne.

Sony’s Q1 results – for the three months ending June 30 – have revealed “game business sales and operating revenue” down “18.0 percent year on year, to ¥1,053.1 billion.”

The newly-formed Networked Product and Services division – which includes PlayStation family products as well as Walkman and the like – saw sales down 37.4 percent year-over-year.

Get the full release here.

Revolution’s announced a new division, Revolution Pocket, that’ll focus on, unsurprisingly, handheld games.

Point and click classic Beneath a Steel Sky is the outfit’s first project, to be released to the App Store this autumn.

iPhone, iPod touch, Android, PSP Go and DSi will all be furnished by the new studio.

Eurogamer’s got a Beneath a Steel Sky preview up. PR’s after the break.

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Capcom’s confirmed that Monster Hunter Tri, the latest in the unstoppable co-op RPG series, has now shipped more than 1 million units for Wii.

The IP in total has now shipped more than 10 million units.

Expect to see a Monster Hunter-Dragon Quest face-off in the Japanese charts in the next few weeks. Looks as though the former’s going straight in at the top.

There’s a video of a canned Pandemic Wii racer thing after the break called Next Big Thing.

Looks OK. Clearly wasn’t. Thanks, Kotaku.

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Sega reckons Sonic the Hedgehog is on the up. All you’ve got to do is wait for the little blue man’s return to the glory days.

“The quality is something that will be fixed over time,” SoA marketing man Sean Ratcliffe told IndustryGamers.

“It’s not something where you wake up one morning and say, ‘You know what, we’re going to improve our quality on this franchise,’ and it magically happens. A lot of hard work goes into striving for quality.”

Phew. We’d almost given up hope. Loads more through there.

They’re all starting to blur into one a bit now, but Game Watch has posted up some new FFXIII screens. As ever, they’re very pretty.

There’s a bunch of old stuff there, but the field shots are fresh, apparently.

The hugely anticipated RPG’s out for PS3 this winter in Japan. Everyone else gets it for PS3 and 360 at some point next year.

Via Kotaku.

Splinter Cell: Conviction may have been pushed back into 2010, but that doesn’t mean it’s been cut awash in the great sea of next year. No sir. The dev team’s getting places.

“Right now we’re about to hit alpha — literally this week,” lead designer Steve Masters told Joystiq.

“So that means the levels are largely complete, and now it’s just time to polish them up and get them looking really great, and playing really well.”

The word “polish” has now been used several times in relation to the slip.

It’s not out in the first quarter of 2010.

EA’s announced the first three fighters for its upcoming UFC-facing MMA title, namely Fedor Emelianenko, Gegard Mousasi and Renato Sobral.

Emelianenko is the cover star. Apparently he’s a mixed martial arts “big cheese”. He may as well be called “Bingo the Great” for all that means to us, but he looks very violent, so we’re not going to take the piss out of him.

PR here. The game’s out next year for 360 and PS3.

PC players will get neither the Prestige or Hardened Modern Warfare packs, according to BigDownload.

The Prestige effort is the night goggles box, while the Hardened edition includes a behind-the-scenes DVD, an art book and a code to download the first Call of Duty game.

No reason’s been given. Hit the link for more. It’s out in November.

Seeking Alpha’s posted the entire transcript of THQ’s Q1 earnings call from earlier this week.

Have a dig. You won’t get the full “80 Marlboro a day” effect from actually listening to Brian Farrell, but there should be enough there to fill up your morning.

Codies has posted an Ashes 2009 demo on Live, as the Major confirms.

Blurb:

The Ashes, the most exciting and thrilling confrontation in international cricket, is brought to you in the official game of this summer’s tournament; Ashes Cricket 2009 … download the demo now to get the most authentic cricket experience possible, without having to don your whites!

You can only have it if you’re in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand or the UK.

It’s out for Wii, PC, PS3 and 360 on August 7.

Another tick on the sheet. Sega’s said Yakuza 3 won’t be locallised for the US. Try not to be too shocked.

The US arm of the publisher revealed the awful truth to Examiner.

Considering Yakuza 2 sold 40,000 copies in the US, this isn’t the greatest shock in the world.

Want to us to ask Sega Europe? For a laugh?

Shane Kim’s said that Xbox Live won’t be offering full games via Xbox Live simultaneously to their retail release any time soon.

“When it comes to us saying we want Games on Demand to enable day-and-date release of new titles, then there’s certainly a lot of work we would need to go through,” the exec told Fast Company.

“We’re not anywhere close to that world today. We have great relationships with the retail channel — they’re important partners. We sell a lot of hardware and software through retail channels.

“We have to be smart about how we approach this business.”

Full games are about to be offered for download through Live as part of 360′s summer dashboard update.

The roster seen so far consists of historic games, such as Mass Effect.

There’s a full interview through there.

WipEout HD Fury has five new videos for it.

Each is very speedy, colorful, and loaded with music and sound effects.

Looks grand.

Gamespot has em posted here, here, here, here and here.

Monolith has revealed that F.E.A.R. 2 will get nice bit of single-player content in August.

Called Reborn, the campaign was revealed through a chat associate producer Lucas Myers has with IGN.

The DLC features four single-player levels with the player controlling Foxtrot 813 through its own storyline and each mission was designed to offer approximately the same play-time as the retail counterparts.

Player can expect it to land next month on PSN and XBL with new Trophies and Achievements.

No word yet on a PC release, but it is expected.

There’s a video for it posted after the jump.

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Avatar: The Game will support 3D effects on televisions that have the technology.

Good for you if you have the TV, but if you want to play it on Xbox 360 you will need one that has an HDMI-out.

According to the game’s brand manager Luc Duchaine, the game will require 1080p resolution to see the 3D effects, and on 360 this is through the HDMI port.

Wii users will just have to be content with 2D, because 3D is not an option for it. Duchaine said that the only way 3D would have been accomplished on the Nintendo console was with anaglyph 3D combined with those lovely red and blue glasses.

However, Duchaine said that “anaglyph doesn’t offer a quality image, and quality is synonymous with the James Cameron name.”

Well, yeah. Cameron’s king of the world ya know.

Via MTV Multiplayer.

The largest patch to Dawn of War 2 called There Is Only War goes live tomorrow.

Relic has added eight new maps, made changes to the balance system, and included a new “observer” feature for matching.

Patch notes can be found through here.

Thanks, Shack.