Nokia has announced plans to phase out the N-Gage platform as it moves its mobile games services under the Ovi umbrella.
“We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform," the company said. "N-Gage games can be purchased until the end of September 2010… The Ovi Store will be the new central place for all the mobile games that Nokia and other publishers offer from this point forward.”
US movie streaming service Netflix will be made available on Wii in the near future, according to StreamingMedia’s Dan Rayburn.
The analyst said in a blog post that he recently received a series of photos showing that the service is in the “testing stages” for Nintendo’s console. Rayburn added that he had confirmed the legitimacy of the images with “someone involved in the project”.
Sky's director of On Demand has said that the company would be interested in bringing Sky Player, its online TV offering, to PS3.
"I can talk generally about our desire to extend to any device that supports a good quality experience to project the content,” Griff Parry told VideoGamer. “The PS3 is clearly a device where that is possible. And so it may very well happen in the future.”
As part of the work that the Consolarium has done in the field of game based learning and more importantly the significance of the reference to games design in the CfE Technology outcomes LTS is in the early stages of an initiative that aims to develop the capacity for the development of a games design community via Glow. As part of this work are carrying out this survey that we hope will help us outline the current landscape about the use and spread of games based learning in Scottish schools. To this end we have worked with Scottish Screen and the Abertay University to create two questionnaires: one for teachers and one for pupils. We are hoping that responses from both questionnaires will give us a clearer picture of the spread of games based learning and some attitudes to it.
Teacher questionnaire
Closing date for this questionnaire is Friday 20th November. It should not take more than 5-10 mins to complete.
Pupil questionnaire
Closing date for this questionnaire is Friday 11th December. It should not take more than 5-10 mins to complete.
There is the added incentive for pupils to participate by the possibility of winning a Nintendo DSi. The following link also contains text that addresses the issue of safety in relation to children’s participation with this survey.
We fully appreciate that GBL in schools is hapening in many places outside of Scotland but this survey is aimed only at Scottish pupils and Scottish schools. We would greatly appreciate as many responses as possible to so please share it with as many people as you can.
Our results will be shared with the wider community once we have had time to collate and analyse them.
Thanking you in advance for your participation and support with this.
Format: 360, PS2, PS3 (version tested), Wii
Release: Out now
Publisher: Activision
Developer: FreeStyleGames
DSi comfortably topped Japanese software sales during the week ended October 25.
Weekly sales of Nintendo’s latest handheld fell by around 7,000 units, but it still managed to outsell Sony’s PSP by over 9,000.
PSP and PS3 sales were roughly flat, while Wii slipped further behind the pair as sales declined by 4,000 units.
DS Lite leaped ahead of Xbox 360 with a 4,000 unit jump in sales. Microsoft’s console also saw a rise in weekly sales, while PS2 recorded a marginal decline.
DSi comfortably topped Japanese software sales during the week ended October 25.
Weekly sales of Nintendo’s latest handheld fell by around 7,000 units, but it still managed to outsell Sony’s PSP by over 9,000.
PSP and PS3 sales were roughly flat, while Wii slipped further behind the pair as sales declined by 4,000 units.
DS Lite leaped ahead of Xbox 360 with a 4,000 unit jump in sales. Microsoft’s console also saw a rise in weekly sales, while PS2 recorded a marginal decline.
Capcom has reported impressive year-on-year sales and profit growth for the first half of the business year ended September 30, 2009.
Net sales increased 24.5 per cent to 38.9 billion yen ($426.5m/£258.2m), while profits jumped 58.4 per cent to 2.97 billion yen ($32.6m/£19.7m).
Format: PC
Developer: ?
"The strangest part about this game is that no-one is really sure where it came from," says Jaybird, on his Crazygame.exe fan-page. "It just seems to circle through people by word of mouth and sending it from friend to friends via AIM."
Fallout 3 and developer Jagex have taken home two of the most prized awards at the 27th Annual Golden Joystick Awards, with help from a massive 1,223,646 votes cast by the public.
Bethesda's Fallout 3 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC was named Ultimate Game Of The Year ahead of Call Of Duty World At War, Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
Scotland’s development community backed trade association TIGA’s demand for government tax relief during a forum held at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on Wednesday.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said that a lack of strong software was behind stalling Wii sales in the first half of the company's business year, but that he sees the console’s “momentum returning” following September’s price cut.
The patform holder sold 5.75 million Wii units in the six months ended September 30, down from ten million during the same period last year.
Sony's Networked Services Division, which houses the company’s PlayStation and VAIO businesses, recorded falling sales and increased losses in the second quarter ended September 30.
Sales decreased 24.2 per cent year-on-year to 352.6 billion yen ($3.9b/£2.3b), while the division made an operating loss of 58.8 billion yen ($646m/£390m), a deterioration of 18.2 billion ($200m/£121m) compared to the second quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Held during the 80th anniversary of the stock market crash —ironically, in the Toronto stock exchange building, one of the worldwide markets that weathered the crash — this year’s edition of the GameOn Finance conference concentrated heavily on the topic of funding game production in a similarly uncertain economic climate. Most commentators dwelt on the changes sweeping the industry, speculating that new business models fuelled by the success of Facebook games, iPhone and episodic content are likely to change the face of it entirely.
Introduced to the audience of the GameOn Finance conference in the Toronto Stock Exchange building as “the new kid on the block”, Yannis Mallat may be a new member of the game development community in Ontario as the head of the newly formed Ubisoft Toronto, but he brings with him a long history of success leading Ubisoft Montreal.
"Someone compared the Apple App Store to the warehouse at the end of The Raiders of the Lost Ark - full of magnificent treasures but impossible to find anything - and with the App Store, it's like looking at it through a letterbox."
Oliver Birch, the founder of new marketing agency PlayReplay, is clearly sceptical of online communities discovering and promoting the best games to their peers. "Build it and they will come?" he asks. "I'd love that to be true."
Square Enix has slashed its net income forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010, from 15 billion yen to ten billion yen ($109.5m/£66m).
The firm said that its revised forecast was the result of “special factors” that arose in the first quarter. The company cited “an extraordinary loss caused by premium severance payments associated with career change support programmes” in Square Enix and subsidiary Taito, as well as acquisition and APA expenses of approximately two billion yen.
Every Thursday, the Edge Games Index, produced in association with Brandwatch, rates games according to the volume of positive and negative buzz they're inspiring on the web.
Colin Macdonald, studio manager at Crackdown and APB developer Realtime Worlds, has called on the government to back the Scottish games industry in the face of “intense international competition”.
"Tiga has been working hard to raise the profile of the industry in the UK and this is the first time we as an industry in Scotland have joined forces to approach government in this way,” he said at the Tiga/NESTA Scotland In Focus event.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter expects annual US and European game sales to decline by four per cent this year.
Having forecast in May that combined US and European software sales would grow four per cent in 2009, Pachter attributed his downward revision to lower than expected Wii hardware and game sales.
The two creators of one of the most revered games of all time spoke at Nottingham’s GameCity festival yesterday, putting aside disputes of the past to celebrate 25 years since the release of Elite for the BBC Micro.
Unity Technologies has dropped the $200 fee for its Unity Indie platform and replaced it with a free license named Unity.
“Unity Technologies has always believed that the best technology and products should be made available to all developers. We want to accelerate the availability of high quality interactive content,” said CEO David Helgason.
Microsoft has again apologised for pulling Sky Player on Xbox 360, blaming “unprecedented levels of simultaneous demand” for the service’s suspension.
Nintendo has reduced its profit forecast from 300 billion yen to 230 billion yen ($2.54b/£1.54b) for the business year ending March 2010.
The annual drop in profits would mark the company’s first in six years and comes on the back of a disappointing first half of fiscal 2009.
Net income fell 52 per cent to 69.5 billion yen ($766.4m/£466.6m) in the six months ended September 30, while sales declined 34.5 per cent to 548 billion yen ($6b/£3.7b).
Nintendo of Japan has revealed the Nintendo DSi LL, a DSi sporting larger 4.2 inch screens.
Designed to meet requests from older consumers wanting a larger screen and pen, the company said that the new model will offer no improvement in terms of resolution.
The DS LL measures 161 x 91.4 x 21.1mm and weights 314g. In comparison, the DSi measures 137 x 74.9 x 18.9mm and weighs 214g.