Sony has clarified PlayStation Move pricing and launch offerings for the UK market.
Nintendo will announce 3DS launch details in two months’ time.
The platform holder told Bloomberg that Nintendo of Japan will reveal the upcoming handheld’s price and release date on September 29.
Capcom has reported “sluggish financial results” for its first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2010.
Company-wide sales dropped 2.4 per cent to 19,037 million yen ($217.7m / £139.7m), operating income decreased 72.6 per cent to 1,005 million yen ($11.5m / £7.4m), and net income dived 90.4 per cent to 213 million yen ($2.4m / £1.6m).
Google is recruiting leading social game developers to make titles for a new social networking service it is building to rival Facebook.
That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, which says Microsoft has already held discussions with Zynga, Playdom and Playfish.
Sources told the WSJ that Google’s new gaming offering would be part of broader social networking initiative - rumored to be called Google Me - currently under development.
When it comes to console transitions, the rule of thumb is that they should arrive, like clockwork, every five to six years. Yet here we are, heading towards the fifth anniversary of the Xbox 360’s release, and March’s Game Developer’s Conference came and went without any mention of new hardware. Instead, the platform holders appear to be focused on new peripherals (Microsoft’s Kinect, Sony’s Move and Nintendo’s Vitality Sensor) and new handhelds (Nintendo’s hastily announced 3DS and Sony’s long-rumoured PSP2).
Nintendo has posted a loss of 25.2 billion yen ($288.4m / £184.3m) for its fiscal first quarter ended June 30, compared to a profit of 42.3 billion yen a year earlier.
Sales fell 25.6 per cent year-over-year to 188.6 billion yen ($2.16b / £1.4b), while operating income declined 42.2 per cent to 23.3 billion yen ($266.5m / £171m).
“Appreciation of the yen and the lowering of the price of Nintendo DS hardware in Japan and Europe adversely impacted net sales and operating income,” the company said in a statement.
Sony’s networked products and services division, which houses the company’s PlayStation and PC businesses, increased sales and reduced its operating loss in the company’s first fiscal quarter ended June 30.
Sales were up 32.4 per cent year-on-year to 325.9 billion yen ($3.66 billion), while the division slimmed its operating loss from 36.7 billion yen a year earlier to 3.8 billion yen ($43 million), with PS3 hardware cost cutting cited as a contributing factor.
The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) has welcomed a London High Court ruling outlawing the importing, advertising or sale of the R4 device that lets users play illegally pirated software on DS.
The court said that, because the R4 and similar devices allow users to play pirated or copied games by circumventing security measures, they constitute a breach of copyright.
Disney’s agreement to acquire social games developer Playdom for up to $763 million appears “very expensive”, according to Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz.
In an investor note he pointed out that EA purchased Playfish – a company with a significantly higher number of monthly active players – for far less last November.
The London High Court has outlawed the importing, advertising or sale of the R4 device that lets users play illegally pirated software on DS.
The ruling was made against toy and gadget seller Playables Ltd and defendant Wai Dat Chan, who had argued that the R4 is legal because it enables the use of homebrew applications.
Developers the world over aren’t envious of Farmville because of the way it looks. They aren’t envious of how it plays, either, as it casts its mundane spells in a muddle of stuttering loading bars and cluttered menus. No, developers are envious of Farmville’s player base. Zynga’s little agriculture sim took just three months to hit a staggering 60 million monthly active users (MAUs), and the figure now fluctuates around the 70 million mark.
38 Studios is to relocate from Massachusetts to Rhode Island after officials in Providence agreed to provide the developer with $75 million in a loan guarantee.
Skillset and Abertay University have teamed up to stage a new conference about “best practice in games education” next month in Edinburgh.
Dubbed ProtoTeach, it will examine teaching issues with academics such as exploring ways to make courses more industry-facing and brokering innovative projects.
As well as speakers from Skillset-accredited courses, a panel of representatives from industry and academia will debate education and the future of the games industry.
The US government has relaxed regulations surrounding the circumvention of security measures on game software and mobile handsets like iPhone.
Over the last couple of weeks we have followed a bitter, though thankfully short-lived, spat between two much-respected members of the game industry: Epic Games’ Mark Rein and Positech’s Cliff Harris. The details of the feud can be found pretty much everywhere so there is no need to revisit them here, other than to say that it stemmed from a disagreement between the two men on how indie developers should handle emails from fans and how actively they should manage their own PR.
Leading US games retailer GameStop has entered into an agreement to acquire popular social gaming hub Kongregate.
Launched in 2007, Kongregate’s website is home to thousands of free-to-play games with community features like profiles, leaderboards, achievements, multiplayer and a site-wide levelling system. It currently hosts ten million monthly players who spend approximately 23 million hours per month on the site.
Sony has expanded its official PlayStation licensing program to cover a variety of lifestyle products, from clothing to everyday items.
Approved licensees can design products using the PS3, PSP, PSPgo, PS2 and PlayStation logos, as well as the iconic triangle, circle, x and square marks. They can also use the Official Licensed Product logo on product packaging and other promotional tools.
Capcom aims to combat falling sales and earnings by increasing its development capabilities and releasing major games on a more regular basis.
Format: XBLA
Release: July 28
Publisher: MGS
Developer: Vector Unit
There are many good things to be said about Vector Unit’s debut game, but let the first be this: it handles like butter. Hydro Thunder Hurricane's a comeback for a much-loved series, a breezy and cheesy powerboat racer with an arcade heart, and a winning one. It's a great combination of polish and funfair sensation, but everything works for one reason: the controls are right.
Highlights from our community-written blogs, featuring e-sports and a call to arms.
Codemasters VP of studios Gavin Cheshire has dismissed speculation that recent investment from abroad will lead to a dilution of the publisher’s UK-based workforce.
To the contrary, he says that Indian multimedia company Reliance Big Entertainment’s recent acquisition of a 50 per cent stake in the Dirt maker will help assist UK expansion plans.
StarCraft is in rude health, outliving all of its peers and setting a precedent for pro-gaming (which we explored in our two part feature on the state of e-sports in South Korea). A large part of its enduring appeal is the delicate balancing of the three playable races - tinkering with such a successful formula is not a task to be taken lightly, but one that Blizzard Entertainment has embraced nonetheless.
Valve has apologised to about 12,000 gamers wrongfully banned from playing Modern Warfare 2 on Steam.
President Gabe Newell said in a statement that Valve’s anti-cheat software was to blame for the bans, which have now been reversed, and offered those affected two free copies of Left 4 Dead 2.
EA has partnered with microtransactions firm Live Gamer to better monetise its projects and develop its online gaming strategy.
The publisher will adopt the Elements microtransactions platform, which offers access to payment gateways, virtual goods merchandising functionality, analytics capabilities, virtual item gifting, support for in-game currencies and more. Existing users include THQ, Sony Online Entertainment and Acclaim.
Nobilis has accused SouthPeak of failing to make development payments for the My Baby series, leading the French studio to grant Majesco publishing rights to the million selling franchise.
Majesco said in June that it is to publish My Baby 3 & Friends in the US this October, but SouthPeak is contesting the move with legal action, claiming it still holds rights to Nobilis’ franchise.