Over two thirds of Japanese consumers say they aren’t planning to buy a 3D TV for their home, according to a recent survey of 8,957 punters.
The 67.4 per cent in question said they were turned off by 3D glasses, the high cost of televisions and a lack of content, Kakaku.com found (via Reuters).
Modern Warfare 2 takes the lead back from Red Dead Redemption, but Lego Harry Potter holds its own.
Whilst Lego Harry Potter may have usurped Red Dead Redemption in this week's sales chart, it's Modern Warfare 2 that's getting all the mentions.
UK Sales Chart June 28
Xbox 360 enjoyed a significant sales boost in Japan during the week ended June 27 on the back of new hardware and software releases.
The launch of the slim Xbox 360 model, price cuts to older ones, and the release of the chart topping Monster Hunter Frontier Online helped lift 360 sales from 2,060 units the previous week to 17,370.
The Walt Disney Company has acquired Palo Alto-based iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch developer Tapulous.
The studio specialises in music titles and is best know for Tap Tap Revenge, which Disney says has been installed by more than 30 per cent of iPhone/iPod touch users.
Tapulous is now a part of Disney Interactive Media Group’s mobile games arm, with company founders, Bart Decrem and Andrew Lacy, taking leadership of the division and reporting to DIMG president Steve Wadsworth.
North American console business revenues declined five per cent year-over-year in May to $823.5 million, according to the NPD Group.
Red Dead Redemption was the bestselling title in North America in May, clearing 1.5 million sales, according to data from the NPD Group.
The Xbox 360 version was the clear frontrunner with 945,900 units sold, ahead of the PS3 edition in second place and Super Mario Galaxy 2 in third with 563,900.
The Xbox 360 version of UFC 2010: Undisputed placed fourth with 221,100 sales, one place ahead of the PS3 edition with 192,300 sales.
Nintendo platforms continued to dominate North American hardware sales in May, according to data from the NPD Group.
As in April, DS came out on top, shifting 383,700 units versus Wii’s 334,800.
Xbox 360 remained ahead of PS3, Microsoft’s console moving 194,600 units compared to Sony’s 154,500.
Delegates hoping to walk away from this year's conference – which took place within the gleaming steel and glass domes of The Sage, Gatehead – with a clearer sense of where the industry was headed were in for a disappointment. Its overarching message was that, while the industry is in transition, no one can agree exactly what it’s transitioning into.
PlayStation Home is quite a profitable business for Sony, and one the company’s very satisfied with, according to Jack Buser, director of the 3D virtual space.
Buser told Gamasutra that console gamers have been very receptive to the virtual goods business model since Home launched in beta form in December 2008.
Xbox 360 title Monster Hunter Frontier Online debuted atop the Japanese software chart during the week ended June 27.
A port of 2007's PC MMO, the subscription-based game moved 93,000 units in its first week, according to sales data from Media Create (via Andriasang).
With the European, north American and Japanese game industries so prominent in people's minds, it’s easy to forget that there are other flourishing markets.
DFC Intelligence has issued a pessimistic outlook on Xbox 360’s prospects of cracking the mass market in the analysis firm’s most recent monthly brief.
While the platform holder hopes that upcoming motion and voice sensing device Kinect will extend Xbox 360’s lifecycle by an additional five years and greatly broaden its appeal beyond the core gamer demographic, DFC is sceptical of the peripheral’s chances of achieving these goals.
In a recent Edge column, I returned to three topics that are perennial favourites of mine – challenge, difficulty and progression – with regard to the Japanese RPG Demon’s Souls. Now, as I continue to work my way through Sony’s Heavy Rain, I think that I may have to isolate a fourth topic to add to this list: failure. To be clear, it’s not that I haven’t discussed failure before.
Fable III will receive a digital episodic release in addition to a traditional boxed one, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has said.
Leading Indian game services provider Gameshastra has signalled its global ambitions by expanding to Europe with the opening of a new facility in London, UK.
The new location will be headed by industry veteran Martin Ogden, who joins Gameshastra from mobile publisher Player One, which he founded. Ogden has played a key role in developing and publishing over 100 games, including Michael Vaughan Cricket, Ronnie O’Sullivan Snooker and RBS 6 Nations Rugby.
Blizzard believes it could make sense to drop World Of Warcraft’s existing subscription model at some point in the future.
Speaking to PC Gamer (via CVG), WOW lead designer Tom Chilton said that the company is aware of the growing popularity of free-to-play MMOs.
id Software's Rage has picked up five nominations for the Game Critics Awards Best Of E3 2010, followed by Dance Central, Epic Mickey and Portal 2 with four apiece.
Retailer Play.com has listed detailed technical specifications of Microsoft's upcoming motion sensing camera Kinect, as provided by “manufacturers”.
Play.com suggests the device will be able to track up to six people at a time and "map players to Live Avatars". However, it also says Kinect can only track two "active players" at any one time, monitoring 20 joints per player.
Questions about Kinect's ability to track players while seated have also been raised in recent weeks but remain unanswered.
Lionhead boss and creative director of Microsoft Game Studios Europe, Peter Molyneux, has moved to clear up the confusion over the status of Kinect project Milo And Kate.
Hulu has confirmed rumours that it will offer a new $9.99 per month TV subscription service, Hulu Plus, on multiple devices in the US.
It will be made available on iPhone and iPad and is planned to launch on PS3 in July, but Xbox 360 owners will have to wait until “early 2011” to access the service.
The UK government’s decision to scrap plans to introduce tax breaks for domestic game development studios has led a number of major publishers to think twice about continuing to invest in the market.
Speaking as part of a question and answer session at the Gamehorizon conference in Newcastle, Epic vice president and co-founder Mark Rein suggested that paid-for, and not free-to-play, content was the future of the industry.
[Update: Microsoft backtracks, saying Milo is still in development but won’t launch this holiday]
Aaron Greenberg, director of Xbox product management, says Lionhead’s Milo And Kate is a tech demo that’s unlikely to make it to market.
Speaking in a keynote speech today at the GameHorizon conference in Gateshead, game designer, CEO of Schell Games and one-time Disney theme park attraction creator Jesse Schell continued to show how the world of gaming is merging with the 'real' one.
Sony is making money on PS3 hardware sales for the first time since the console launched in Japan in November 2006.
"This year is the first time that we are able to cover the cost of the PlayStation 3," Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide Studios, told IGN. "We aren't making huge money from hardware, but we aren't bleeding like we used to."