Napalm Riot

2 of 7

As the front-runner in the current generation's console battle, Nintendo's never had any need to reduce Wii prices. Now that the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU has undercut the Wii and broken the $200 barrier, though, Nintendo has received increased scrutiny from those who wonder if a compensatory price reduction is forthcoming.

Apparently not, according to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. "This is my personal thinking, but when the model's price-tag drops over time, manufacturers are telling consumers . . . Read more

Straight from WeLikeToWii.com:

Last week, when MTV Networks announced they had struck a deal with Apple Corps to create a "dedicated, custom" music game based on the music of the Beatles, many considered it to be the biggest blow yet to major music game competitor Activision. Now Reuters is reporting (via Gamasutra) that Activision and MTV were courting rights holders Apple Corps, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and EMI Music Group for almost a year, but Activision's desire to pay less in royaltie . . . Read more

Straight from Gamespot.com:

If September's sales numbers are any indication, the gaming industry on the whole is weathering the current global economic crisis well enough. However, not everyone within the industry is feasting at the table. Swedish developer Avalanche Studios confirmed today that it will be laying off 77 of the approximately 160 employees at its office in Stockholm, as reported by Game Reactor.

According to the report, Avalanche had two contracts valued at $34 million for u . . . Read more

Straight from Wii News:

Eight games were left rolling with the tumbleweeds after Activision Blizzard dropped them to make way for its merger.

Now we can all heave a collective sigh of relief for at least two of them. Atari has officially picked up the publishing rights to Ghostbusters (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS) and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3). While Riddick has been officially confirmed, Atari wouldn’t officially comment on Ghostbus . . . Read more

SocialTECH.com has posted an interview with Raph Koster about Metaplace, their new round of funding and what they have in store for the future.

Read here: http://www.socaltech.com/…_metaplace/s-0018007.html

Things haven't been so easy for EA Games this past year. Last Halloween, the company, which is headquartered in Redwood City, California, had a share price of $61.12 and was doing well thanks to an acquisition of BioWare/Pandemic. However, now the share price has declined to $27.73, thanks in no small part to the economic troubles of the country as well as it's own internal troubles.

As a result of these troubles, many employees of EA Games are about to find themselves without a job. Six perc . . . Read more

Game Developer Research has revealed the results of its second ever Game Developer Census, surveying all companies working within video game development and publishing in North America.

The census has revealed a 12 percent year on year increase in U.S. employees, with 44,400 now working in the industry in America, up significantly from 39,700 in 2007.

Canadian companies also saw an increase in staffing and number of studios, with total employees up around 17 percent -- to 9,500 from 8,100. . . . Read more

The games industry, for all that it relies on cutting-edge technology, media and communications, isn’t very good at talking to people. Specifically, it’s got a rather odd attitude to communicating with its consumers - a rather stunted and unproductive approach to public events and product demonstrations that can leave the business looking socially awkward at best.

In fact, what the games industry is best at is talking to itself. A glance at the events calendar for any given year reveals a . . . Read more

"LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time," according to Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, who criticised the decision not to release Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the PC.

Stude slammed LucasArts for the "uneducated" comments made by its producer Cameron Suey, who said there wouldn't be a PC port of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed due to the difficulty in developing for the range of PC models and capabilities in the market.

"That's not an educated answer," Stu . . . Read more

Quote:

Activision is expected to ship a skateboard peripheral alongside the next Tony Hawk titles, due for release in 2009.

That's according to analyst Doug Creutz of Cowan and Company, who believes the addition of new products will help the series improve sales after a year away from the market.

"We believe that the extra year of development time and the opportunity for consumers to shake off franchise fatigue could contribute to better unit sales than the franchise has enjoyed in recent

. . . Read more

Feast your greedy eyes on these reports on the big game houses showing at this year's Tokyo Game Show.

Microsoft: At Tokyo Game Show Thursday morning, Microsoft and Bungie pulled back the veil on a new Halo 3 entry. (This is one of those stories we won't get enough about until our eyes and ears are bleeding from the onslaught. You know you want it.)

Konami: A . . . Read more

I must admit, I've always been a bit confused by the Tokyo Game Show. It has seemed, to me, that they were simply trying to take what we've been doing in America and Europe...and doing it a day late and a dollar short. A game conference in OCTOBER?! What are those kooky Japanese poeple thinking?! Still, one cannot deny that the Japanese game houses and hardware companies (Sony and Nintendo are STILL two of the big three, people) are doing SOMETHING right. Sales numbers alone tell us that . . . Read more

Ubisoft Shanghai's creative director Michael de Plater has said that piracy is killing the PC gaming market.

The reason the studio's latest title, Tom Clancy's EndWar, isn't being released for the PC on the same day as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions is because users will steal the pirated PC copy, rather than pay for a console version, according to de Plater.

Read the rest on GamesIndustry.biz: http://www.gamesindustry.…nnibalising-console-sales

YouTube is set to start selling videogames and experiment with new advertising formats to grow revenue, according to Reuters.

The Google-owned video streaming website already allows viewers to buy songs from music videos they watch with links to either Amazon's MP3 store or the Apple iTunes store. However, now YouTube users will also be able to buy videogames, such as EA's Spore through the Amazon link.

This is part of an ongoing effort to monetise the site, which Google paid USD 1.65 bill . . . Read more

The epic half-assery on display in the Tokyo Game Show slogan ("Saa, ikou! GAME no jikan desu," or "Let's go! It's GAME time") is tangential evidence of a certain half-heartedness in the Japanese games industry as of late.

With Nintendo's stock price dropping and the biggest title announced so far this year being Wii Music, with Metal Gear Solid 4 failing to sell a trillion copies -- and winding up in bargain bins all around Tokyo -- the game developers of Japan are torn between several quest . . . Read more

NCsoft has promoted Tim Cain to Design Director for the unannounced MMO under development at Carbine Studios.

Cain has 25 years of experience in the games industry. He’s probably best known for his work as a producer and designer of Fallout and Fallout 2 before leaving Interplay to become a co-founder of Troika. The industry vet has several classic PC RPGs his credit including Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines which is still patched regularly by its fa . . . Read more

Shares in Nintendo fell by a further 8.7 per cent today (Friday, October 3rd, 2008) following the news that the company was to release a new iteration of the DS handheld hardware, the DSi.

The new model, which will feature slightly larger screens, a camera and a built-in web browser will retail in Japan for JPY 18,900 (USD 179) from November 1, but the move has left investors cold.

"Nintendo's announcement on the DS didn't exceed investors' expectations,'' said Yoku Ihara, head of equity r . . . Read more

When EA canned its offer to buy Take-Two for $2 billion in September, Take-Two said that it was still in discussions with other parties about "strategic alternatives."

But on Thursday, Take-Two said that has officially ended all discussions with "various interested parties," opting to remain an independent publisher.

The news comes after EA withdrew its $2 billion bid for the Grand Theft Auto publisher in September.

Take-Two chair Strauss Zelnick stated that his company is "strongly pos . . . Read more

LATimes.com states the following concerning the "protections" on the game Spore and others:

"Despite Electronic Arts' good-faith effort last week to relax copyright restrictions in Spore, gamers aren't buying it — the digital constraint tactic, that is. The game, on the other hand, is selling faster than you can evolve a virtual amoeba."

"Spore has already sold a million copies since hitting stores earlier this month, but critics of the game's digital rights management have been vehement . . . Read more

Video game publisher, Codemasters, Inc., has named Liquid Advertising their agency of record for online, broadcast and print media buying assignments in North America. The agreement begins with the fall and winter releases of ‘Damnation’ and ‘Bella Sara.’ Billings were not disclosed.

“We’re very excited to be partnering with Liquid for our media planning and buying,” said Dave Miller, Vice President of Global Brand Management. “Liquid’s unmatched experience and expert . . . Read more

2 of 7