Ubisoft has reported sales of €161 million (£136m / $208m) for its fiscal first quarter ended June 30, 2010.
The figure is in line with recently announced forecasts, and represents a 94 per cent increase (or 81 per cent at constant exchange rates) on the €83 million (£70.1m / $107m) generated during the same period in 2009.
Electronic Arts has formally opened its new development studio in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The company had operated a development studio in Bountiful, Utah since 2006. That has now closed, with all staff moving across to the new 20,000 square foot facility. EA Salt Lake Studio houses 100 employees across a range of disciplines, including the Nerf and Littlest Pet Shop development teams.
Fire Emblem: Mystery Of The Emblem and Dragon Quest Monsters Battle Road Victory both sold around 136,000 copies in their first four days on sale in Japan to storm the software chart during the week ended July 18.
The former, a remake of the 1994 SNES title Fire Emblem: Monshou No Nazo, was listed atop the chart by both Enterbrain and Media Create, which rounds sales up to the nearest 1,000. The latter is a Wii port of the arcade card battle game Dragon Quest Monsters Battle Road II Legend.
UK chancellor George Osborne has said that the government will review the taxation of intellectual property and the support R&D tax credits provide for innovation later this year.
His comments were made in a letter of response to Dundee West MSP Joe FitzPatrick, who has expressed concern that a failure to implement tax breaks for the UK games industry could see city lose 200 jobs over the next five years.
Social networking site Facebook now has over 500 million active users, according to its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The site celebrated its sixth birthday in February, at which point it had 400 million users. Zuckerberg has said he thinks there’s a good chance that Facebook’s membership will exceed one billion users.
Autodesk has acquired game lighting technology maker Illuminate Labs, adding the Beast middleware solution and Turtle plug-in for Autodesk Maya to its tools line-up.
Autodesk said it plans to develop and sell Illuminate Labs’ technology and support Illuminate Labs customers, which include Sony, Nintendo EA, Square Enix and THQ.
It anticipates that Beast will continue to be licensed as a standalone product. Turtle won’t, but will be incorporated into future offerings.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Square Enix has appointed industry veteran Mike Fischer president and CEO of its US operations.
Fischer has worked in the industry for 20 years. He previously held positions at Namco, Sega and most recently Microsoft as consumer and online marketing officer in the UK. In his new role he’ll oversee operations such as publishing and distribution of Square Enix brands in the States.
Two Worlds publisher SouthPeak has taken legal action against Majesco in a bid to retain publishing rights to the successful My Baby franchise.
Cooking Mama publisher Majesco said in June that it is to publish My Baby 3 & Friends in the US this October. The IP is owned by series developer Nobilis and SouthPeak claims it has the rights to publish the franchise in the States.
EA has revealed a number of new titles at its annual studio showcase media event on its Redwood City campus.
Maxis is developing Darkspore, an online, science-fiction action RPG. Set for release in February 2011, the PC game “is inspired in part by the award-winning creature editor tech of Spore”, according to Maxis GM Lucy Bradshaw.
The Hague District Court has convicted 11 retailers of acting unlawfully by trading in DS R4 cards and Wii mod chips.
The retailers unsuccessfully argued that Nintendo was attempting to stifle competition, MCV reports.
“Nintendo protects its intellectual property rights globally and takes action to prevent the distribution of pirated software and devices that allow illegally downloaded software to be played,” the platform holder said in a statement.
A new report from the NPD Group has found that digital downloads represented 48 per cent of total PC game sales in the US last year, accounting for 36 per cent of dollar sales.
According to the firm’s 'PC Games Digital Downloads: Analyst Report', 21.3 million full-games were purchased digitally in the US in 2009, compared to 23.5 million physical copies bought at retail.
Sean Murray Cliffski is a jerk. He’s not really. He’s lovely - the Barry Manilow of games, in fact. I just wanted to get your attention. Apparently, this is the only way to do so.
Microsoft has suggested that Kinect offers greater value for money than Sony’s Move or Nintendo’s Wii.
“We researched it heavily,” Chris Lewis, VP of Microsoft Europe’s Interactive Entertainment Business, told MCV. “As with most things, we do massive amounts of consumer research. Not only did we consult with people like yourselves, but also the analyst community. We think this is great value.
The NPD Group has distributed a list of the bestselling console games in the US marketplace during the first half of 2010.
Red Dead Redemption leads the combined platform sales chart with almost 2.5 million copies shifted, ahead of 2009 releases New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, IGN reports.
Apple has posted an impressive set of financial results for its third quarter ended June 26.
The company generated record third quarter revenue of $15.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, up 78 per cent year-over-year.
It sold 3.47 million Macs during the three month period, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 per cent jump over the third quarter of last year.
Microsoft has said that Xbox 360 sales rocketed 1000 per cent last weekend following the launch of the slim version and price discounts to older models.
The new Xbox 360 costs £199 in the UK, while the Elite now sells for £149 and the Arcade for £119.
Retailers have been offering comment on Microsoft’s and Sony’s upcoming motion control gaming solutions, Kinect and Move.
Martyn Gibbs, managing director at UK-based Game Group, expects Kinect to appeal to gamers across the board.
As the ninth entry in the fabled Dragon Quest series is finally released outside Japan, we talk to two of its principal originators, designer and writer Yuji Horii and composer Koichi Sugiyama (middle and right, above), and Square Enix's producer of Dragon Quest IX Ryutaro Ichimura (right, above).
Special edition packages line the shelves and counter cabinets of retail stores, promising bonus content and exclusivity. But the most exclusive packaging is usually reserved for journalists - along with the lucky few who acquire one on eBay - in the form of press kits. The publicity of a release is serious business, publishers seeking to ensure their title stands out on the shelves or among the pile of review submissions magazines receive each month.
After reaching the heady heights of the high score/performance domain in Just Dance we have now moved on the the more theatrical dance world of Dance on Broadway. This dancing game for the NIntendo Wii is set in the world of musical theatre and requires that you perform routines as perfect as possible....
For those of you that might wish to emulate John Barrowman, Denise van Outen or even Michael Ball then this game might be right up your street.
Still thinking about it's educational application but already I have managed to make my young daughters aware of a range of muscial theatre shows and their underpinning storylines as a result of their developing interest in some of the songs that they enjoy playing/performing.
Only problem with this game is that the proper jazz hand technique is compromised when holding the Wiimote ;-)
Microsoft's record breaking interactive game show cancelled after two seasons.
Microsoft has confirmed that 1 vs 100, the Xbox Live game based on the TV show, will not be returning for a third series, despite early success. The show has run for two seasons, the beta series attracting a record breaking 114,000 simultaneous players - the most contestants to have competed in the same game show.
Nintendo platforms dominated hardware sales in Japan during the week ended June 11.
Despite a weekly sales decline DSi LL remained the clear frontrunner, while Wii jumped ahead of PSP, no doubt aided by Wii Party's chart topping opening week performance.
Hardware sales week ended July 11 (previous week):
DSi LL - 28,916 (32,661)
Wii - 24,604 (21,964)
PSP - 24,421 (24,685)
PS3 – 18,345 (20,077)
When a man videogame and a woman videogame love each other very much, sometimes they lie down together in a special way, and nine months later a new videogame comes into the world! Usually it doesn’t happen that way, though.
Nintendo UK general manager David Yarnton has acknowledged that demand for current generation consoles has "declined" after a few “very good years”
While the company isn’t happy about the situation, the executive told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there are still “plenty of opportunity” to reach new audiences, and said that innovations like 3DS will drive consumer interest.
Crackdown 2 debuts in top spot ending two week run for Harry Potter: Years 1-4.
Crackdown 2 enters the charts at number one this week, knocking Harry Potter: Years 1-4 from the top spot. Red Dead Redemption dropped one position to third, while Modern Warfare 2 steadfastly refuses to leave the top ten, staying put at number eight. Dance On Broadway moved up two places to fourth.