Microsoft said this evening that its full year profit soared on record revenue, thanks in part to the strong performance of its Xbox business.
For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, Microsoft reported record company-wide revenue of $69.94 billion, up 12 per cent year on year, while fourth quarter revenue was up eight per cent to a record $17.37 billion. Net income for the year rose 23 per cent to $23.15 billion, with $5.87 billion generated in the fourth quarter.
LA Noire has reclaimed the number one spot on the weekly Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
The title jumped four places to take the top spot ahead of FIFA 11, which had led the chart for the previous two weeks.
Duke Nukem Forever, Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean and The Sims 3: Generations rounded off the top five in a quiet week for new releases.
In part two of our interview with Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines, we discuss why bolt-on multiplayer isn’t part of the Bethesda formula, and how its games will stack up against the Call Of Duty behemoth.
Check back to part one for his account of the company’s unique structure and its recent studio acquisition spree.
Laura Fryer, general manager of the three studios that comprise Warner Bros Seattle, has said that studios should be built around creatives rather than producers, who "don't always know what they're doing."
Following their Develop conference keynote on pitching the original LittleBigPlanet idea to Sony, we sat down with Media Molecule technical director Alex Evans and art director Kareem Ettouney to find out how the Move Pack will make being creative even easier and where the studio is heading
Gareth Wilson, former design manager of Bizarre Creations, has said that the Liverpool studio's final game, futuristic racer Blur, was like having "bacon with cornflakes."
Demonstrated at E3 last month, Fable: The Journey sees the series embrace Kinect while for the first time straying from the familiar 'bloodline' theme that characterises the previous three games. Despite branching into brave new territory, however, its lineage remains instantly recognisable.
Pete Hines, vice president of marketing at Bethesda Softworks, has issued a stern warning to developers who are contemplating adding multiplayer to games that simply don't need it, saying: "Just drop it, don't bother…it'll make for a worse game."
Mark Healey, co-founder and creative director of LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule, has hit out at developers who are motivated by profit, arguing that those who view their audience solely as a potential source of revenue risk wasting their lives.
From a collaborative drawing exercise that spawned a monstrous pipe-smoking skeletal pilot to a video of a film concepts and CGI trials that never went into production, concept artist Iain McCaig’s session mirrored his evident personality - theatrical and charismatic. McCaig designed Darth Maul, but more importantly also drew the covers of several early Fighting Fantasy books, cutscene portraits for Secret Of Monkey Island and is now working with Respawn Entertainment.
From a collaborative drawing exercise that spawned a monstrous pipe-smoking skeletal pilot to a video of a film concepts and CGI trials that never went into production, concept artist Iain McCaig’s session mirrored his evident personality - theatrical and charismatic. McCaig designed Darth Maul, but more importantly also drew the covers of several early Fighting Fantasy books, cutscene portraits for Secret Of Monkey Island and is now working with Respawn Entertainment.
Ubisoft has posted sales of €103 million for its fiscal first quarter ended June 30, down 36.3 per cent year-over-year but ahead of company expectations of €90 million.
New Xbox 360 games Child Of Eden and Michael Jackson: The Experience seemingly failed to live up to multiplatform releases like Splinter Cell Conviction and Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands which launched during the same quarter a year ago, but the company highlighted “solid” performances in other areas of its business.
3DS sales doubled in Japan during the week ended July 17, propelling the portable to the top of the hardware rankings.
Nintendo’s latest handheld shifted 46,637 units compared to second-placed PSP’s 26,551 sales, a figure that was flat week-over-week, Andriasang reports.
In his keynote address at Develop In Brighton today, development legend David Braben insisted that Disneyland Adventures, his Kinect-powered Xbox 360 game unveiled at E3 last month, is no kid-friendly cash-in based on an enormously popular licence. Instead, he said, it's a "top-notch game for a broad audience."
Bastion is a game about rebuilding a world, a game in which every step you take sees a lost landscape flinging itself back together around you, as fragments of paving tile and shards of scenery spin upwards to meet your passing feet. It feels like a magic trick, but it’s not. The real magic trick lies with the other defining feature: narration.