Activision titles again took seven of the top 20 positions on the NPD Group’s monthly PC chart, while EA games scooped five.
The former’s World Of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King was the bestseller during May, while the latter’s The Sims 2 Double Deluxe held second place.
Electronic Arts’ chief operating officer John Pleasants says the publisher is evolving from a software company to a live services company.
Sony is reportedly pushing developers to create smaller, “non-retail” games and applications for PSP.
According to Destructoid sources, these games and non-game apps will have a 100MB file size limit. They'll retail for considerably less than existing PlayStation Store titles - most likely somewhere between two and six dollars - and Sony's also said to be welcoming free-to-download apps.
UK developer body Tiga and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) have teamed up to launch Play Together, a series of initiatives designed to promote innovation and collaboration between UK videogame companies and with other creative industries.
Among the initiatives, Tiga-NESTA have proposed the formation of a new service that enables UK developers to share employees, allowing studios to quickly upsize or downscale their teams - a common industry difficulty - using local area or national talent.
The Sims 3 has retained the top spot on the UK all formats chart, despite a 48 percent drop in weekly sales.
The PC title held off competition from PS3, 360 and PC release Prototype, which debuted at number two, pushing Red Faction: Guerrilla down a place to third.
Wii Fit jumped a spot to fourth, while rival EA Sports Active slipped two to number six. UFC 2009: Undisputed was sandwiched between the two exercise titles.
Microsoft is reportedly planning to release a new Xbox console packaged with Project Natal in autumn 2010.
Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey believes Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 will likely be the biggest videogame release of 2009.
The Infinity Ward developed FPS, which is due for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in November, is the direct sequel to 2007’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, which has sold over 13 million copies.
Hickey said he expects the game to sell 11.1 million units by the end of 2009, generating $803 million at retail.
More than three million unique users have registered for Sony Online Entertainment’s free-to-play MMO Free Realms.
The family-friendly title passed the milestone in less than seven weeks.
“SOE worked diligently over the past four years to ensure that Free Realms would take the online space by storm,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. “We are pleased to be able to provide such a vast, in-depth and, most importantly, fun world to an average of 500,000 new gamers per week.”
Format: PlayStation
Release: 1998
Publisher: Infogames
Developer: Reflections
Towards the end of its life, it became fashionable to denigrate the PlayStation. To claim its incredible success owed more to the Sony publicity machine than the quality of the software. To bemoan the wannabe-cinematic formula of cutscenes, glitchy 3D and poorly selected camera angles that characterised so many mediocre titles released in the console’s latter years.
