THQ has announced its financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2009, showing a drop in sales but also reduced losses.
For its second quarter the publisher reported net sales of $101.3 million, compared with $164.8 million in the prior-year period, but its losses were heavily reduced from $115.3 million to $5.6 million.
Ubisoft has reported its financial results for the six months ended September 30, with sales during the period down 52 per cent year-on-year to €166 million.
Due to the sharp decrease in sales, the company expects to report an operating loss of around €80 million for the first half, compared with an operating income of €33 million during the first six months of 2008-09.
EA Sports boss Peter Moore has expressed his delight with FIFA 10’s critical and commercial reception in Japan, at the same time noting that foreign titles “have an extremely difficult time breaking through” in the country and that EA still has work to do to understand the market.
In the time it’s taken many to simply suss out the hardware, Burbank’s Insomniac Games has made more triple-A titles for PS3 than any other developer. Say what you like about the solemn and scrappy Resistance series, but its ongoing work with Ratchet & Clank has been exemplary. The gambolling Future series – which comes to a close with this month’s Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time – shows just what you can do when you know your market, nail down your philosophy and, above all, have just as much fun as you intend for your audience.
MTV and Harmonix parent company Viacom has said that the economics of its Rock Band franchise “are improving, though not as quickly as we’d like”.
Speaking in a financial results call, CFO Tom Dooley said that the franchise made a negative contribution to margins in the third quarter.
Age Of Conan developer Funcom has been awarded a NOK 1.5 million ($262,000) grant from the Norwegian Film Fund to aid its development of a new extreme sports game.
“Funcom is working on a new project called Board With The World,” Erling Ellingsen, the company’s director of communications told us. “This will be a free-to-play social MMO focusing on the world of extreme sports."
Activision has launched a ratings awareness programme designed to educate parents about the Entertainment Software Rating Board's classification system.
For the initiative, dubbed Ratings Are Not A Game, the publisher has partnered with Dr. Cheryl Olson, co-director for the Centre for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The pair have produced seven videos to help parents make informed decisions about the games their children play.
French publisher Gameloft has reported €90.2 million in sales for the first nine months of 2009, up 18 per cent year-on-year.
Mobile games generated 95 per cent of sales and console games the remainder. Europe was the firm’s biggest market, accounting for 38 per cent of sales. North America and the rest of the world both generated 31 per cent of revenues.
Atlus has acquired a majority stake in Japanese online publisher Gonzo Rosso in a bid to expand its business into the wider Asian markets.
Gonzo Rosso focuses on massively multiplayer online games, distributing titles including SONOV's Shaiya: Light And Darkness and Izumi Project's Pandora Saga, reports Gamasutra. Its games are available in numerous Asian territories and there are plans to bring them to North America.
Nintendo will offer demos of WiiWare games beginning later this month in a bid to stimulate sales of downloadable titles.
The test programme was confirmed by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata during a financial results briefing, reports IGN. Initially it will cover only a few select titles and it’s currently unclear whether it will run outside of Japan.
Playing Demon’s Souls makes me a boring person.
I've been playing the game. A lot. And I love it. A lot. The other night I spent hours with it, and in those hours, all I did was farm the same sections again and again, futz around with my gear, gain a few soul levels, and kill one Vanguard demon - and I killed him by shooting about fifty arrows into his forehead while he just stood there scratching himself.
One of my favourite things about Out Of The Game, the biweekly podcast that I record with three other former journalists and one current journo, is when a seemingly ordinary discussion of a recently released game veers into topics that are more provocative. Take the September releases of The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 along with the August release of the movie Inglorious Basterds, for instance.
Microsoft has launched its previously rumoured Xbox Live Rewards programme in the US.
Designed to encourage use of Xbox Live services, the pilot scheme rewards active users selected to participate with free Microsoft Points.
Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced a number of new content partners for its PS3 and PSP video on demand service.
Lucasfilm, Cinetic FilmBuff, ContentFilm International, Image Entertainment, MPI Media Group and New Video have all signed up to provide content.
New offerings include films The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Powder Blue and Management, and TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Leverage.
The 8bit era is usually viewed with dewy-eyed affection, but as EvilRedEye discusses, it also produced some games that are probably best left there. Reacting to Arkedo’s Jump, made for Xbox Indie Games, he questions its lack of a save system – for if you run out of lives, you have to start over from level one. Making a game hard as a nod to nostalgia doesn’t seem to be the right approach.
China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has terminated NetEase's application seeking approval to operate Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft.
The government agency said that NetEase should suspend charging users to play the game and not allow new account registrations.
The UK’s first rehab centre for gaming addiction has opened in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
Broadway Lodge treats around 400 patients annually for issues including, drink, drug and gambling addiction, and has adapted its Minnesota Method Twelve-Step abstinence programme for gamers.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has voiced his interest in the business model Amazon has adopted for its Kindle electronic reader, which offers consumers a free connection to a 3G mobile phone network to download new books.
The service doesn't have a monthly fee as it’s included in the device's upfront cost.
While the UK games industry trade body TIGA continues to lobby hard for videogame tax relief, a government-backed organisation is actively courting the development community. Originally established in 2004 and funded by the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) has a remit to promote innovation within UK industry.
SCE Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has said that it is a challenge trying to balance software support for multiple platforms, acknowledging that Sony’s previously PS3-heavy focus lead to a dearth of PSP software.
Italian developer Twelve Interactive has announced that it has reached “an amicable compromise” with UK distribution firm OG International over the rights to the CID The Dummy franchise.
PSPgo sold 28,275 units during its first day of availability in Japan, according to data from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain.
The new Sony handheld went on sale in the country yesterday, a month after launching in Europe and the US.
Nintendo has revealed global lifetime sales figures for first party Wii and DS titles that shifted over a million copies between April and September.
Topping the list is Wii Sports with over 50 million copies sold, including those bundled with hardware.
Wii Play stands at 24.4 million lifetime sales, Wii Fit at 22.5 million and Mario Kart Wii at 18.4 million.
Football Manager 2010 has debuted atop the UK all formats chart during the week ended October 31.
The latest edition to the football franchise held off competition from Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus, which entered in second place.
Sony’s games division has reportedly suffered almost $5 billion in losses since the company launched the PS3 in November 2006.
According to VG247, figures from Sony’s investor relations website show that total PlayStation division losses since the console’s release stand at $4.7 billion.