Toy Story 3 reclaims the number one spot from StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty in a week that sees no new top ten entries.
Despite last week's confident number one debut from StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty, ToyStory 3 has reclaimed the top spot it lost to Blizzard's RTS sequel. StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty falls to fourth place, while second and third positions go to Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Dance On Broadway. The top ten saw no new entries.
Google Ventures has reportedly made a $3-5 million investment in ngmoco as part of a new round of funding for the San Francisco-based iPhone/iPad publisher and developer.
ngmoco, which secured £25 million in funding in February and is now rumoured to be worth over $100 million, is perhaps best known for pet simulation hit Touch Pets Dogs. Another of its titles, We Farm, is currently the second most popular game on the iPad.
Sony Ericsson is reportedly planning to launch a PSPgo-like smartphone running Google's Android 3.0 operating system.
According to Engadget sources, the device is said to be in the late stages of planning and could be introduced as early as October 2010.
While the growth of the social gaming market continues to garner headlines, a new report from Strategy Analytics suggests that the MMORPG segment remains “a steadily growing segment” and one that’s “not replaceable” for serious gamers.
The company's ‘The World of MMORPG: a Tale of Two Regions’ report predicts that the genre will generate $6 billion in 2010 and $8 billion in 2014, following 17 per cent annual growth to $5 billion in 2009.
Rising Star Games has secured PAL publishing rights to Marvelous Entertainment's survival horror game Deadly Premonition.
Developed by Access Games and already released in Japan and the US, the third-person title puts players in the role of an FBI agent “in charge of investigating the brutal killing of a local beauty and solving the mystery of the Red Seed Murders”.
Publisher trade body ELSPA has announced plans to launch a UK download chart for PC games.
The association has formed a working group of members who sell PC games digitally, including Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, NCsoft, Mastertronic, Square Enix and three other “major publishers” due to be announced shortly.
All stakeholders have committed that sales data from third party resellers will be included, allaying fears that data from Steam will be missing from the chart.
Yesterday the publisher Random House announced that it had sacked Lee Child, author of the enormously successful Jack Reacher series of ultraviolent detective thrillers. In an act of what a Random House SEC filing has described as ‘gross insubordination’, Child was planning that the next in the series would be an erotic space opera. The job of composing the official Jack Reacher texts will now be delegated to a group of scriveners more sensitive to the publisher’s desires.
Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian believes that web giant Google’s increased focus on the games market is regarded within the company as a “strategic necessity”.
Writing in an investor note following the recent Google’s Think Gaming summit, he said that Facebook represented the elephant in the room.
Publisher Take-Two has reportedly enlisted Borderlands maker Gearbox Software to finish work on 3D Realms’ long in development Duke Nukem Forever.
Sources told Kotaku that the Brothers In Arms and Aliens: Colonial Marines studio picked up Duke Nukem Forever development where former maker 3D Realms left off, and that a playable demo may be available before the end of the year.
Format: DS
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release: 2011
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Microsoft has said that Kinect for Xbox 360 won’t support sign language upon launch this November.
While a recently uncovered patent indicated that the motion sensing peripheral was capable of reading American sign language, the device releasing this holiday won’t be able to do so.
The Walt Disney Company posted strong financial results for its third fiscal quarter ended July 3, 2010, including increased revenue and slimmed losses at its games business.
The firm’s interactive media division cut its losses from $75 million (£47.7m) during the same period last year to $65 million (£41.3m), while revenue jumped 74 per cent to $197 million (£125.3m), driven by sales of Toy Story 3 and Split Second.
US Wii sales have topped 30 million since launching in November 2006, making it “the fastest-selling console in the history of the industry”, according to Nintendo.
The platform holder said that the milestone was reached in 45 months, 15 months quicker than the next bestselling console.
Activision is confident that shaken Call Of Duty creator Infinity Ward “will rise from the ashes”.
Format: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Release: Q1 2011
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Crytek
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The videogames industry contributed $5 billion to the US economy in 2009, according to a new study released today by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
‘Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 Report’, which was conducted by Economists Incorporated on behalf of the trade association, also found that the entertainment software industry's real annual growth rate from 2005 to 2009 exceeded 10 per cent, more than seven times the growth rate of the US economy as a whole.
The Korean online games market could surpass $2 billion in revenues in 2011, according to a new study from Pearl Research.
Three of the top five game operators in Korea grew their revenues more than 50 per cent in 2009, thanks in part to rapidly growing contributions from overseas operations. MapleStory maker Nexon’s non-Korean contributions accounted for the majority of its global revenue for the first time in 2009, while online publisher Neowiz’s overseas revenues jumped 526 per cent.
The decision to slim its product release slate paid dividends for No More Heroes publisher Marvelous Entertainment during the financial quarter ended June 30, 2010.
Citing reduced overhead and advertising spend, the company swung from a loss of 131 million yen ($1.5 million) during the same period last year to a profit of 71 million yen ($830,000), according to Silicon Era.
Social networking giant Facebook will attempt to improve its game offerings and links with developers by appointing a head of game partnerships.
With more than 200 million people playing games on Facebook every month the company recognises the importance of the medium to its business, but it acknowledges that it still has work to do to make the platform more welcoming to game makers.
Web giant Google will reportedly acquire Jambool and the company’s in-game virtual currency payments product Social Gold.
According to TechCrunch the buyout could be worth as much as $75 million, and represents the latest effort by Google to amass the resources required to take on Facebook in the social networking space.
THQ CEO Brian Farrell has said that the publisher is considering a longer development cycle for its UFC franchise after the second release in the series failed to meet internal expectations.
THQ has reported a loss and a decline in revenues for its first fiscal quarter ended June 30.
The company swung from a profit of $6.4 million (£4m) during the same period last year to a $30.1 loss (£19m), while revenue declined from $243.5 million (£154m) to $149.4 million (£94.5m).
Format: PC, Mac
Release: Out now
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: In-house
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A number of new sessions and speakers have been added to the GDC Europe 2010 line-up ahead of next week’s event.
Mark DeLoura and Michael Mahemoff, developer advocates at Google, will deliver a session titled ‘Games on the Chrome Web Store’. The pair will aim to give developers a better understanding of the upcoming Chrome Web Store and the web-based applications it will house. They’ll also discuss making games using HTML5 and Native Client, and how developers can get involved in the launch.
So I was trying to suss out the one thing that makes me love games - the quality that keeps me playing a title for fifty hours, instead of ditching it after five minutes. Was it the visual style? The story? The reload mechanic? Could I pin it down to something as simple as fun? I thought it over, and I figured it out: the thing I want most from a game is a really good world.