Japanese console sales fell from 203,484 to 133,798 units during the week ended August 23.
Sales of all consoles were down week-on-week, with Sony’s PS3 notably suffering ahead of the PS3 Slim’s September 3 launch. The existing model sold just over 2,000 units, down from 5,944, placing it firmly at the bottom of the hardware rankings.
DSi - 59,578
PSP - 27,187
Nintendo Wii - 26,972
Xbox 360 – 8,979
DS Lite - 5,735
Update: The listing has now been pulled from the website.
Amazon Germany is carrying a listing for an Xbox 360 Elite with a 250GB hard drive.
The console will launch later this year bundled with two wireless controllers and Forza Motorsport 3 for €279.99 ($400), according to the online retailer.
Venezuela is moving to ban the sale of violent games and toys in a bid to tackle widespread crime in the country.
While there’s little evidence to show that violent games are a cause of real violence, that hasn’t stopped the Venezuelan National Assembly from approving a bill on the ban of such games in an initial round of voting.
The bill must now pass another round of voting and be signed by President Hugo Chavez to become law, according to Reuters.
Analysts have been weighing in on Microsoft’s decision to cut the price of the Xbox 360 Elite, with some predicting a less than stellar sales boost based on the console’s new $299 price point.
More than a decade ago, old-school game coders urged their peers to reject the one true way of a fixed graphics pipeline, as embodied by the combination of Microsoft’s emerging DirectX API and the first wave of bolt-on PC graphical processing units (GPUs). The old school lost, which was initially good news for gamers. The semi-standardisation of the graphics pipeline underwrote a leap forward in the visual quality of first PC games and then consoles, from Xbox to PlayStation 3.
Sony Computer Entertainment America is aiming to reposition the PS3 as the “total entertainment solution,” according to Peter Dille, the company’s senior vice president of marketing.
A giant fall and Christmas season ad campaign will place less of an emphasis on games and more focus on the PS3’s Blu-ray and movie download capabilities.
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach developer Turbine has sued Atari for in excess of $30 million after the publisher allegedly failed “to meet its publishing and distribution obligations.”
According to Turbine, Atari breached a licensing agreement by failing to devote the necessary resources to effectively promote and distribute DDO: Stormreach, forcing the developer to “step up and assume” what should have been Atari’s role.
Microsoft has explained the reasoning behind its decision to raise the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade by £30 to £159.99.
Activision has confirmed that it has made a number of layoffs at subsidiary Raven Software, the developer of Wolfenstein and Singularity.
According to unconfirmed reports, the job cuts number between 30 and 56 out of a previous total of 180 staff. However, in a prepared statement, Activision played down the severity of the cutbacks.
Electronic Arts has confirmed that it reducing the workforce at Spore developer Maxis.
"Often in the videogame industry, the size of a studio fluctuates in response to business conditions. In this case, EA has taken action to reduce the workforce at Maxis as we focus the business and focus Maxis,” EA said in a statement.
Also see: Microsoft Explains Xbox 360 Arcade Price Increase
Analysts Weigh In On Xbox 360 Price Cut
Microsoft has confirmed that the price of the Xbox 360 Elite will be cut by £30 to £199.99 and by $100 to $299 from Friday, August 28.
Microsoft is expected to make an Xbox 360 price cut announcement tomorrow.
The announcement will include a price drop for the Xbox 360 Elite model, the discontinuation of the Pro unit and changes to the Arcade SKU, according to MCV.
The move would come shortly after Sony announced a new PS3 model and a reduced price point for the system.
We’ve contacted Microsoft for comment.
Namco Bandai has released the “first true digital 3D console game,” Blitz Arcade’s Invincible Tiger: The Legend Of Han Tao, via Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.
Available for 1200 MS points/$15, the downloadable kung-fu fighter is a retro-style arcade beat ‘em up designed to work as a 2D experience, as well as with all 3D Ready TVs and a selection of PC 3D gaming displays.
Square Enix president Yoichi Wada believes the recent PS3 price cut will have a significant impact on the company’s financial results in the new fiscal year beginning April 2010.
Square Enix currently has three announced PS3 titles in the works, including Final Fantasy XIII, which is due to launch in Japan this winter, but feels the price cut will only offer the company a limited boost in the short term.
As part of the ongoing remit to explore emerging technologies and their potential application within teaching and learning contexts Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium has been exploring Virtual Worlds. Virtual Worlds present players/learners with a computer-based simulated environment intended for its players/learners to inhabit and interact via avatars. The most famous virtual worlds would include World of Warcraft and Second Life. Although World of Warcraft is of great interest to us we are not yet looking at this due to reasons that include the time required to spend ‘in-world’ and the unprotected nature of the environment in terms of knowing who is engaging with young learners. However, the world of Second Life has been of interest to us and this is an area that we have been considering. Our ongoing discussions with various industry partners led to a meeting with an Aberdeen based company called Second Places. They make bespoke virtual worlds for clients and have worked with organisations as varied as BP, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and even the comedian Jimmy Carr! Discussions between us led to the germ of an idea that would make the concept of the virtual world in relation to teaching and learning something that would be attainable, accessible and relevant in the modern Scottish classroom. This idea is CANVAS. (Full presentation of CANVAS’ design and planned implementation will be available at a seminar at SLF’09 & HHL’09)
What is CANVAS?
In essence CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland) is a virtual art space where Scottish pupils can exhibit their still or moving image art. Access to CANVAS will be through Glow (full Shibboleth Authentication) and with this comes the opportunity to exhibit pupils’ work, in a safer and securer environment, to the huge audience of pupils and teachers throughout Scotland. Not only will pupils be able to exhibit their work but they also will be able to appear in-world, represented by a virtual character called an avatar, so that they can talk via a chat facility to gallery visitors who come to visit and view the art works on show in CANVAS. We believe that the participative nature of the design will offer a context in which young learners experiences, thoughts and understanding of their own work and development can be enriched and enhanced by the proposed opportunity for dialogue and discussion that the world offers. The exhibiting pupils will not be able to appear in world all the time so we have also built in the functionality that would allow the artist to record and embed a short video that can be played by gallery visitors when learners/artists are not in-world. This in itself is also another rich learning experience in terms of ICT but also in relation to the drafting and recording of a focused and succinct piece that would tell the viewer all about the artist’s work. To further add to this collaborative environment is the function that enables gallery visitors to leave formative comment about their experience and what they have thought about the art that is on show. Each separate artist will have their own forum where comments can be left for them to consider and reflect on.
What is the technology that is used?
Although the world looks and feels like Second Life it is actually made using an application called Open Sim. This has allowed us to create our own bespoke virtual world that can be hosted on our servers so that we have full control over whom we allow in to view and interact in the world. In order to view the world there are some technical issues that need to addressed. These include
• some ports require to be opened in firewalls before schools can access the world. Local Authority partners have been very helpful in addressing this issue so that the integrity of their networks is not compromised
• A CANVAS client will require to be installed locally to any machine that will be used to view the world. Again, we are working with Local Authority partners in order to find solutions for the delivery of this resource across managed networks
• Quicktime must be installed on any machine to be used to view CANVAS (in order to view videos within the world)
It seems that innovation does not come without its challenges and this project has certainly not found itself short on challenges. We would like to comment on the dedication and ‘stickability’ of Second Places and in particular Mark Duffy who has faced a series of what appeared to be never-ending hilltops! We are almost at the top!
What is the role of local Authorities in making CANVAS work?
Initially the idea behind CANVAS involved the use of only one exhibition space. This space would allow a local authority to exhibit pupils’ work for a three-week period. However, this would have meant that some local authorities would need to wait almost three years before they could participate and showcase pupils’ work from their schools. This was not acceptable to us. Further discussions led to the extension of the world so that there were 32 separate rooms so that all local authorities can choose to maintain and refresh their own gallery in a manageable way. The refresh timescale of the exhibition is down to each local authority. There is also some discussion still to be had in relation to what each gallery would exhibit. We are leaving this open to local authorities so that they may choose to have something along the lines of:
• an exhibition that focuses on a particular theme
• a focus on a school to showcase their pupil’s work
• best of Secondary
• best of Primary/Nursery
• a moving image special
• a focus on a particular style such as Impressionism, modern art, portraiture
We still have the main exhibition space but we are currently in discussion about the role that this will play in the future. Should we make this somewhere that displays the work from a selected local authority as first envisaged or should it exhibit a monthly selection of art from the 32 local authority galleries? Might this main exhibition space showcase art of a particular theme from schools across Scotland or can it also show art from galleries not connected with school or maybe even art teachers work? These are questions that we are currently discussing but at this stage we still envisage using this main space to showcase pupil art from selected local authorities.
Management of the CANVAS environment has been made as accessible as possible for users. We aim to give ‘god’ accounts to the people within each local authority who would be willing/responsible to manage the collation of the artwork and the subsequent uploading of this to CANVAS. They will also need to work with the exhibiting schools/pupils in order to arrange times when the pupil will be available to be ‘in-world’ so that they can interact and engage with visitors to the gallery. LTS are more than willing to support local authorities in the use of CANVAS so that they can take ownership of it at as early a stage as possible.
There will also be some requirement to moderate the comments that are submitted to the formative forum. We do hope that this will not be too onerous a task and as we know the identity of everyone in the world is (via the Shibboleth authentication) then we can trace any inappropriate comment, delete it and then, if appropriate, suspend the offending person from the world. This is an issue that may cause us the occasional headache but we believe that we have the mechanisms in place to address it if it does arise.
Taking this forward
We understand that there are have been some unfortunate stories linked with Second Life over the past year or so. We wish to stress that we are not using Second Life but an application called Open Sim that has enabled us to create out own world that we have complete control over in terms of who can access it. We would also like to stress that this project has been carefully considered with CfE and AifL clearly in mind and has been developed in conjunction with a range of ICT, Expressive Arts, AifL and school partners. It has the potential to be a significant resource and is another example of how we are exploring emerging technologies that have become embedded, for good or bad in contemporary culture, but with a clear focus on teaching and learning. Finally, CANVAS has such a low technology skills threshold that we believe that it will enable the vast majority of teachers to use it without any fear of its technical aspect.
We believe that CANVAS has the potential to be a transformational resource and that it will enrich learning in art & design for Scottish pupils
If you are thinking of getting your schools pupils involved in the LTS does Dragons’ Den event at SLF’09 this year then maybe this promotional poster will help promote interest in the exciting opportunity and challenge faced by pupils and encourage them to get their creative juices flowing.
We are very lucky this year to have three Dragons from the Scottish Games Industry to sit on the panel . These are:
Chris van Der Kuyl of Brightsolid
Colin Macdonald of Realtime Worlds
Denki have kindly offered a visit to their games design studios in Dundee as a prize for the winning entry/presentation.
Full details of the competition can be accessed from this post from the summer term.
Get the guitars and the drums of Guitar Hero World Tour at the ready and get those scores in for this year’s Guitar Hero Challenge SLF’09! Full details of the competition can be accessed from this blog post from the summer term and as you can see we now have our leaderboard ready and waiting to be filled with the highest scores possible.
There is a choice of songs this year and each song has its own icon to identify it:
Teacher validated scores should be sent to the consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk and these scores will be added to the leaderboard as soon as they come in.
Make sure your band name is something to behold and good luck. Your GH band might make it to the stage in Glasgow for the final showdown.
There are still a couple of kits available for any schools that may want to participate. Again, drop a line to consolarium@ltscotland.org.uk if you think your pupils have what it takes…
Please remember that the closing date for the competition is Friday 11th September.
Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz has questioned whether expected upcoming hardware price cuts can rescue flagging console and software sales.
According to Creutz, investors are anticipating a $100 cut on the PS3, a $50 cut on the Wii, and the Xbox 360 Elite to receive a new price point of $300. The analyst forecasts hardware price cuts “on all platforms by September, with announcements possibly as early as next week’s Gamescom in Leipzig.”
Screen Digest believes that the online console market won’t be commercially exploited to its full potential until the next generation of hardware comes along.
While current generation console manufacturers Microsoft and Sony - and to a lesser extent Nintendo - have released online-enabled platforms, the research firm believes that “key members of the traditional games value chain… are acting as bottlenecks to the overall development of the online console market.”
Speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival about how EA Sports had escaped what he described as "the burning platform" of their old business model, Peter Moore said that the publisher’s bid to expand the game playing audience wouldn’t lead the company to neglect core consumers.
The first braw bricht morning of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival kicked off with Peter Moore’s keynote on how EA Sports had escaped what he described as "the burning platform" of their old business model - games on a disc, bought in a shop once a year. "Our game had become stale, it had become predictable," he told attendees. There was a perception that EA Sports was "big, monolithic, huge, we were using large marketing vehicles to talk to our consumers." What's a smooth executive to do?
Sega president Mike Hayes says the publisher will continue to take risks on the Wii by releasing core titles for the platform.
Realtime Worlds founder and creative director Dave Jones says that the release of PC MMOG APB will usher in a number of cultural changes at the Scotland-based developer.
Speaking in the second part of our recent interview, he explained how the growing independent studio will no longer simply be just a game developer following the title's launch.
