The M-rated grindhouse film-inspired gore fest House of the Dead: Overkill has managed to make a modest bit of headway on the typically family-friendly Wii.
The light gun game from Sega and U.K.-based Headstrong Games sold 45K units during the month of February, NPD told Edge. The game launched February 10.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier said it landed around the 50th spot in the top-100 SKUs for the month in unit sales.
Leading brick-and-mortar game retailer GameStop has typically brushed off the threat of digital distribution, but one analyst says pressure from direct-to-consumer sales is mounting.
Doug Creutz with Signal Hill said in a Friday research note, "Digital remains [the] biggest threat [to GameStop]."
Nintendo claims that the sales figures of Wii Play and Wii Remotes demonstrate the console’s strength as a “social hub”.
The platform holder, responding to February’s NPD data, states that sales of Wii Play have passed ten million units. Yet Cammie Dunaway, NOA executive vice president of Sales & Marketing, also commented on what is accepted as the main reason why Wii Play sells so consistently well:
The Game Developers’ Association of Australia are claiming that record numbers of the nation’s game developers will attend the upcoming Game Developer’s Conference.
GDAA claims that over 30 developers will be attending the event. “There is no question the current economic crisis has had an adverse effect on our industry, but it has put Australian developers in a unique and enviable position,” said Tom Crago, President of the Game Developers’ Association of Australia.
UK-based independent developer Monumental Games has picked up an award for Innovative Business of the Year at the Fast Growth Business Awards.
The MMO developer was among unfamiliar competition for the prize, competing against recruitment group iProfile, flight search service skyscanner, as well as a substance misuse testing company known as TrimegaLabs.
Hideo Kojima has been promoted to a new role within the Konami subsidiary group Kojima Productions.
From April 1, the MGS creator will be promoted to Managing Director Operating Officer and Studio Head of Kojima Productions.
Once a company vice president for Konami, in 2005 Kojima founded Kojima Productions, where his team would go on to develop a number of handheld Metal Gear titles as well as last year’s PS3-exclusive, Metal Gear Solid 4.
Sony's PSP and PS3 have both outsold the competition in Japan for a second week running, according to data provided by Media Create.
Total handheld and home console sales for the week ending March 15, however, had fallen sharply; down 21 percent to reach 141,775 combined unit sales.
The PSP sits ahead of the pack with 43,463 sales; a sharp fall from last week's performance which saw the handheld move nearly 60,000 units. The same story is true for the PS3; it holds second and still manages to outsell the DSi, yet sales fell by nearly 12,000 units.
Videogames again showed their resilience in the face of a wretched U.S. economy, generating $1.47 billion for February, a 10 percent year-on-year increase over the prior year, according to research firm NPD Group.
Software was up 9 percent, even on a tough comp, generating $733.5 million. There were a couple interesting data points on the software front.
The videogame industry in February showed again its ability to be recession proof.
Ahead of official NPD Group industry sales data, Microsoft has claimed to have sold 391K Xbox 360 hardware units during February, an increase of 53 percent over the same month a year ago.
The figure is also up from January 2009, which saw sales of 309K units.
A September 2008 price cut that brought the entry-level Xbox 360's price to $199 spurred the sales momentum that reached a peak during the holidays.
Graphics firm Nvidia is now a third-party tools provider for the Nintendo Wii, a deal that makes the PhysX SDK real-time physics engine available to all registered Wii developers.
PhysX is used in over 150 games and is also supported on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.
Games that use PhysX can create more realistic explosions, character motions, weapon effects, cloth and smoke.
Ensemble Studio’s final game, Halo Wars, has sold over one million units worldwide, according to Microsoft.
The platform holder states that this feat makes it the “best selling real-time strategy game on any current generation console”. Last month Microsoft reported that total downloads for the Halo Wars demo were numbered at around two million.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game developer Terminal Reality has teamed up with outsourcing and development house Streamline Studios to help establish the Infernal Engine middleware.
As part of the deal, Streamline Studios will become "the content creation partner of choice for developers making games on the Infernal Engine."
Streamline, which has worked on games including Gears of War, Saints Row and Ghost Recon 2, is also using the engine for internal projects and is making Infernal available to production partners.
Ubisoft has appointed Murray Pannell as its new UK marketing director, who joins the company after six years at Microsoft.
Pannell replaces Ubisoft’s Jon Rosenblatt, who is now leaving the company after three years. Rosenblatt will now work for Electronic Arts as the firm’s European marketing director for its sports titles, a role which Pannell once undertook before joining Microsoft.
"...Tired of online games filled with depressing predictions of post apocalyptic destruction? ... Have you had your fill of dank cellars and dark caves? Well so have we!" reads the website of Windstorm Studios, a new dev house from ex-Ensemble Studios employee Dusty Monk.
