After spending six of the last seven weeks at number one, FIFA 11 has finally been unseated at the top of the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. And it's another EA game, The Sims 3, that replaces it.
The Sims is clearly a popular series in the Nordic territories: expansion Town Life Stuff is at number five and another, Generations, is at number 15. Looking at the charts for individual formats, the entire top four, and seven of the top ten PC games, are Sims titles.
In the run up to the 2009 public beta for Quake Live, I met with the game’s executive producer, Marty Stratton. One topic of discussion was the tremendous sense of ownership that longtime Quake III Arena players felt towards the game, and what a challenge it could be to deal with some of those fans when they were up in arms. For a variety of reasons, tweaks and changes were made to maps and weapons, but there was a contingent that simply wouldn’t be satisfied unless Quake Live was exactly like Quake III Arena had been.
Gabe Newell has for the first time spoken about the recent removal of EA games from Valve's download service, Steam, saying: "We want EA's games on Steam and we have to show them that’s a smart thing to do."
Winning a game of Solitaire is as much about luck as it is skill but, just like Peggle and Drop7, it’s highly compulsive even armed with that knowledge. You could always make your own luck, of course, which is exactly what Lars, Marcus and Theo of near-unpronounceable design collective Skrekkogle did when they set about rending Solitaire’s win screen from the restrictive confines of the monitor.
The sight of a PSP Monster Hunter at the top of the all-formats chart may suggest that it's business as usual in Japan. Further down the list, however, are the first green shoots of 3DS's recovery.
Xenoblade Chronicles begins in much the same way as its spiritual grandfather, the seminal Japanese RPG Xenogears, did some 13 years ago. No sooner have you settled into the shoes of your protagonist, learned the layout of his pastoral neighbourhood and met the friendly faces that comprise his community in Colony 9, than everything around you is destroyed in a gigantic robot attack.
Driver’s story sounds daft: series hero Tanner gets a bonk on the head and ends up in a coma. The game takes place in his dream, and so explains the game’s principle novelty: the ability to leave Tanner’s body and possess that of any other driver in the city. Two things subsequently surprise you.
Driver’s story sounds daft: series hero Tanner gets a bonk on the head and ends up in a coma. The game takes place in his dream, and so explains the game’s principle novelty: the ability to leave Tanner’s body and possess that of any other driver in the city. Two things subsequently surprise you.
Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, has condemned EA's combative attitude in the run-up to the release later this year of Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3, saying: "This kind of rhetoric is bad for our industry."