lost in games

I have a stiff neck since Monday which has prevented me from doing my runs this week. But the flood of releases did not prevent some major announcements being made at this time.

Bioware and Lucasarts have revealed that they are working on the mmo Star Wars: Old Republic. EA’s acquisition of Bioware has been all about entering the highly profitable mmo business to compete head on with Blizzard’s WoW. With Lucasarts massive intellectual property and Bioware’s talent this game has the promise to be a big player in the mmo marker.

link

I have not been following the Tokyo Game Show this year but there are some announcements worth mentioning:

1. PSP direct store access in Japan from 15th of October. Hopefully the European launch will follow and there won’t be any restrictions if you are in Cyprus - Eurogamer
2. Halo 3: Recon - Wired
3. Xbox 360 dashboard update on 19th November - Wired
4. New Res 5 trailer (haven’t watched it as i want as many suprises as possible when the game finally comes out) - Gametrailers

If there is a blue light coming out of your Wii today its not because of it supporting Greece in Euro 2008. Well not yet anyway. It’s because the Nintendo Channel was launched today in Europe. This is the channel where you can watch video trailers of Wii and DS games and also play download demos on your DS. The channel allows people to also recommend games to other Wii owners.

I was not able to find any demos to download this morning though. Just a few videos. The ability to play demos is a step in the right direction for Nintendo and i have to admit that the Wii menu is starting to fill up with some useful channels.

Yeap, it is being launched today and we have the following games to choose from for 500 Wii points each. I have my eye on Lost Winds but here is the full list of WiiWare titles released:

• 1. Dr. Mario & Germ Buster (Nintendo)
• 2. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Square Enix)
• 3. Lost Winds (Frontier)
• 4. Pirates: The Key of Dreams (Oxygen Interactive)
• 5. Pop from Australian (Nnooo)
• 6. Star Soldier R (Hudson Soft)
• 7. Toki Tori (Two Tribes B.V.)
• 8. TV Show King (Gameloft)

This is not an absolute list as there are sites missing from this list but the most well known ones are here. The numbers represent total unique visitors per month. To be honest i never realised that IGN and Gamespot were so ahead of the rest of the sites.

Company Dec. 2007 Dec. 2006

ign.com 8,502,000 8,738,000

gamespot.com 7,524,000 7,206,000

gamespy.com 1,595,000 1,568,000

1up.com 1,415,000 1,257,000

kotaku.com 982,000 1,134,000

joystiq.com 721,000 790,000

gamepro.com 518,000 721,000

It’s no secret that Music has been facing a crisis with declining song and album sales in the past few years due to the advent of piracy. As the record companies are continuously searching for a solution to their problems through itunes type of services it seems that the answer lies elsewhere.

The videogames industry has been booming in contrast with the US expanding by 43% in revenues last year alone. MTV has spotted this trend and also that its own viewers are regular gamers. That is why they collaborated with Harmonix and Electronic Arts to develop Rock Band to rival Red Octane’s Guitar Hero which is published by Activision.

The latest figures show that as both Rock Band and Guitar Hero made more songs available to play via download gamers have been actively purchasing them. In two months Rock Band sold 2.5million additional songs via download. What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that the game has only been released in the US so far with a European release in spring. The Metallica three-pack of “Ride the Lightning”, “Blackened” and “And Justice for All” is the best selling “Rock Band” download. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock on the other hand which was a worldwide release has sold 5million songs since it began adding downloadable content in early November.

There is no reason to restrict the music-games link to just Rock Band and Guitar Hero and it is very likely that record companies will try to include downloadable music in games such as FIFA, GTA or Skate.

Games may just be the Hero of music,

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

I need a hero
I’m holding out for at hero ’till the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’till the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
Larger than life

Hardware Sales (in units sold)

Nintendo DS: 8.50 million (17.65 million LTD)
Wii: 6.29 million (7.38 million LTD)
Xbox 360: 4.62 million (9.15 million LTD)
PlayStation 2: 3.97 million (41.12 million LTD)
PlayStation Portable: 3.82 million (10.47 million LTD)
PlayStation 3: 2.56 million (3.25 million LTD)

 PSP

The PSP might not be the juggernaut of sales that the Nintendo DS is but it still managed to establish itself in the handheld world with a respectable market share and a very solid games lineup. This despite Sony’s blunders with the UMD format and controls design. In fact it is my favourite handheld console and with games like Patapon and God of War coming this year it will only get better.

The PSP community showed Sony that with regards to movie playback no-one was willing to purchase titles on a UMD format, which is slowly becoming obsolete as everyone predicted. Instead they were being downloaded or copied on the console’s memory stick. In the CES 2008 which is taking place since Sunday Sony demoed how Blue-ray discs can be copied first on the PS3 and then on to the PSP for playback on the go (PC World article). This comes just after the announcements regarding the use of Skype by the slim version of PSPs and also a new 16GB memory stick.

Sony is slowly giving consumers useful applications and also appears to be doing it in a logical and a more consumer friendly manner. Not to mention the realisation of the hard fact that the PSP’s future also depends a lot on its interactivity with its big brother the PS3.

Do all these, plus a great game lineup, mean that Sony is finally getting it right with the PSP? I really hope so.

Blu-ray Vs HD DVD

After Warner Bros decision to side with the Sony camp and release movies exclusively on Blu-ray it appears that Paramount may be about to abandon the HD-DVD sinking ship according to the Financial Times:

“Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, is understood to have a clause in its contract with the HD-DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation.”

This means that the end of the format war is very near unless HD-DVD has some wild card up its sleeve. Although i don’t think that the blu-ray is the future (downloadable content is) it is good to have this thing over with for the benefit of the consumer.

Last week i posted about some big announcements in this year’s CES coming from Microsoft regarding the 360. Well, no announcements. Just more video content will be available this year (Of couse this does not affect the island of Cyprus….)

As for the Skype feature on PSPs it is now official with a possible firmware update in January. But guess what. Only for PSP Slim. What about the gamers who chose the PSP from the start?

A big thank you for nothing to Sony and Microsoft.

Blu-ray winning the war

After Warner Bros announced that it will now only release its titles in Blu-ray (previously it was both formats) the Sony camp seems to have made the decisive step to end this pointless war. With the majority of movies now released exclusively only on Sony’s format it seems that the HD-DVD format will slowly die.

Sony move deals blow to Microsoft - Financial Times

Microsoft

Rumours are circulating aroung the world of internet and gaming relating to a big announcement coming from Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show which is held on January 7th-10th. What could be so big that Mr Gates himself will make this announcement?

For one, that a new 360 SKU will now also incorpotate internal HD-DVD playback. There is also the suggestion that Microsoft will license the Xbox platform to consumer electronics manufacturers such as Toshiba. This will mean having a digital video recorder, with a hard drive, high definition HD-DVD and Xbox gaming capabilities. That’s taking the PS3’s blu ray capabilities head on.

Of course for now these are just rumours so we will have to wait few days to see what actually will be announced.

Sony

The Sony rumour already appears closer to being an actual fact. It seems that the Skype service is heading to the PSP. On Sony’s CES 2008 web site one of the PSP’s features is the ability to use Skype. Sony also recently released a microphone for the console and there is a microphone-equipped camera on the way.