The platform holders have responded to April’s US hardware and software sales results.
According to Nintendo, the DSi posted record sales for a single platform during the month of April. The company revealed that, of the 1.04 million DS units sold during the month, 827,000 were DSis, taking the system's US life-to-date sales past 30 million.
DS sales topped one million units in the US during April, driven by the release of the DSi early in the month.
Nintendo’s handheld hit 1.04 million sales, achieving greater unit sales than all of the other gaming platforms combined.
Despite the success of the portable, which accounted for 31 percent of the month’s total industry unit sales, monthly hardware revenues fell eight percent to $391.63 million.
Nintendo’s Wii Fit was April’s bestselling console game in the US, selling 471,000 copies to top the monthly chart.
The title was the first of six first party Nintendo games to make the top ten in a month when software sales declined 23 percent to $510.74 million. Notably, Pokémon Platinum took second place, with Mario Kart Wii and Wii Play following in third and fourth.
Activision Blizzard releases took seven of the top 20 places on the NPD Group’s April PC chart.
World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King took top spot, WOW: Battle Chest placed third, WOW sixth and Diablo Battle Chest ninth.
Six Electronic Arts titles also charted, with three making the top ten. Including second placed The Sims 2 Double Deluxe.
Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian says Sony will likely drop the price of the PS3 some time between next month’s E3 event and the end of the summer.
Konami has posted record sales of 309,771 million yen ($3.25b/£2.15b) for the year ended March 31, 2009, up 4.2 percent year on year.
Operating income was up 19.1 percent to 27,361 million yen ($286.7m/£189.9m), but net income saw a sharp decline, down 40.7 percent year on year to 10,874 million yen ($114m/£75.5m).
Konami's Digital Entertainment segment sales were up 4.9 percent to 187,628 million yen ($1.96b/£1.23b).
Lair developer Factor 5 has shut following the collapse of Brash Entertainment, with whom the developer had a multi-game contract.
“We are sorry to announce the closure of the San-Rafael based Factor 5, Inc. studio, but the obstacles created by the sudden bankruptcy of Brash Entertainment for the continuation of operations have turned out too great to overcome in the current economic climate,” said Achim Moller, CEO of Factor 5, GmbH.
How you spread the word about a game like Free Realms, an ambitious, casually orientated free-to-play MMOG designed for anyone from children to adults? Sony Online Entertainment's answer lies in Facebook and Twitter and distributing it through a vast array of web gaming portals. It adds up to what is, according to SOE, the biggest-ever launch in online distribution, and a new frontier for videogame marketing.
Sega Sammy has reported a net loss of 22,882 million yen ($239.8m/£158.4m) for the year ended March 31, 2009, down from 52,470 million yen ($549.8/£364.2 million) the previous year.
During the same period sales declined 6.5 percent to 429,194 million yen ($4.5b/£3b).
Sony has denied that it’s planning to unveil a slim PS3 at next month’s E3 event.
"We currently don't have any plans for a redesigned PS3," the company told Edge’s sister site CVG yesterday, following internet rumours to the contrary.
Shortly afterwards 1UP posted a series of photos that surfaced on a Chinese gaming site purporting to be leaked factory images of a redesigned PS3.
Sony has confirmed that SCE Worldwide Studios VP and London Studios boss Jamie MacDonald is to leave the firm at the end of the month.
As reported by Develop, MacDonald previously headed up Criterion Games before joining Sony and overseeing the launch of franchises including EyeToy, SingStar and The Getaway.
Sony confirmed the news to Edge today but chose not to comment further on MacDonald’s impending departure.
Technology research and analysis firm iSuppli expects shipments of handheld consoles to grow to 63.5 million units by 2013, generating revenues of $8.1 billion.
That compares to 49.4 million units shipped in 2008 and revenues of $5.9 billion, the company said in a recent report.
Atari Europe will officially become Namco Bandai in the next few weeks.
Japanese publisher Namco Bandai, which bought a 34 percent stake in Atari Europe last March, is expected to acquire the remaining portion of the business from parent Infogrames in the next month.
Atari Europe’s sales and marketing staff will be transferred to the newly formed Distribution Partners, which will handle all Namco Bandai games in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, reports the latest issue of trade magazine MCV.
Sony says it expects to report increased PS3 and PSP sales for the current fiscal year.
During the year ended March 31, 2009, the company sold 10.06 million PS3s and 14.11 million PSPs.
For the current business year, those figures are expected to increase to 13 million and 15 million units respectively.
However, PS2 sales are forecast to decrease from 7.91 million to five million units during the same period.
Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey believes that North American DS sales came in just short of 1.15 million units during the month of April.
In a note distributed ahead of tomorrow’s release of official NPD sales data, Hickey forecast year over year DS sales growth of 175 percent, driven by the early April release of Nintendo’s DSi.
Ex-Sucker Punch staffers Matthew Scott and Dev Madan, along with former Vivendi Games creative director Ricci Rukavina, have officially announced the formation of Loose Cannon Studios.
Scott and Madan serve as technical and creative directors respectively, while Rukavina is studio president, reports Cinema Blend.
Activision Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King has topped the US PC chart for the fourth week running.
The WOW expansion again placed ahead of The Sims 2 Double Deluxe, while Left 4 Dead moved up one spot to third, swapping positions with World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest during the week ended May 2.
In hindsight, I should have known that the comments that I made to MTV News would set off a firestorm. But at the time, I was seated across from the reporter in what was then my office at Newsweek, answering question after question for her series on black people in and around the videogame industry as honestly and as thoughtfully as I could.
In part two of our interview with Dan Connors, founder of episodic games specialist Telltale Games, he explains how he has steered his company towards producing games with TV production companies, and his goal of creating the Telltale Channel, a place for interactive storytelling that's as natural to visit as watching CNN for news.
PlayStation Home’s community manager says that the European service is currently lacking the feature set found in other regions because of a lack of resources, but that SCEE is committed to boosting its range of content offerings over the coming months.
Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian says DS and Xbox 360 sales grew in the US during April, while sales of all other systems and software declined.
“Following two years of shortages, demand for the Wii has settled to more typical mid-cycle trends, i.e., driven increasingly by the quality of new software releases,” Sebastian wrote in a preview note ahead of the expected release of official NPD sales data on Thursday.
Microsoft is developing a new Xbox 360 motion sensing camera that allows players to control games with full body and hand gestures, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The paper’s sources claim that the peripheral uses proprietary 3D technology that gives players more accurate control over games than previous cameras like EyeToy.
Midway Games creditors have sued Sumner Redstone and his National Amusements holding company, claiming that Redstone’s sale of his 87 percent stake in the publisher last year for $100,000 hurt the company.
The creditors allege that the sale of the publisher generated more than $700 million in tax losses for ex-boss Redstone, enabling him to obtain a “massive” tax refund, reports Bloomberg.
Naughty Dog co-founders Jason Rubin and Andrew Gavin, along with former HBO consultant Jason Kay, have established a new social-focused development studio called Monkey Gods.
According to the company, the studio will primarily develop games for social networks, the iPhone and consoles including Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.