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Dead Rising 2 team looking for open-world & FPS devs
Once Blue Castle Games wraps up work on the highly-anticipated Dead Rising 2, it's become very clear that they won't be going back to another baseball game. Destructoid recently discovered that a job posting for a "Lead Level Designer" on Gamasutra indicates that the company will be shifting over to "an exciting new action project."
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Panasonic adds bonus Wii to Christmas TV purchases
Panasonic has expanded its Christmas bonus deals for televisions, offering a Nintendo Wii and two games with the purchase of a high-definition Viera plasma television.
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Video games to help STEM learning in the United States
In support of President Obama's call for a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) have teamed up with Sony Computer Entertainment America, Microsoft, and the MacArthur Foundation and announced a number of efforts to motivate students. The organizations are aiming to leverage the interest that kids have in video games and inspire them through a series of STEM-related design competitions. This is part of the administration's extensive "Educate to Innovate" program, outlined today.
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NPD: Uncharted 2 leads October sales, Wii outsells PS3
We've just received the NPD sales results for October 2009, and it looks the new releases and price drops have brought about some big changes on the charts. On the hardware side, in the Wii's first full month at US$200, Nintendo's console managed to outsell every other system, including the DS. The PlayStation 3's sales cooled significantly in its second price-dropped month, as the system went from selling almost 500,000 consoles to a little over 300,000. That's almost a 40 percent drop. Meanwhile, the PSP Go did little to change Sony's fortune for October, as PSP sales actually dropped compared to September. The Xbox 360 also saw a lull in sales, as the system sold around 100,000 less units than it did in September. Here is the entire hardware rankings for October.
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Nintendo to release its first 'mature rating' game for Wii
Nintendo announced a new game today at a retailer conference in Japan, releasing box art and the first details on what fans can expect in 2010.
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Men dressed as Mario & Luigi wanted on assault charges
The New York Daily News has a story (found on Kotaku) of two criminals who have besmirched the Mario Brothers' name more than anything before.
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Activision donates $1 million to help U.S. veterans
Activision Blizzard will make a $1 million donation to unemployed military vets through their Call of Duty Endowment (CODE,) a charity foundation intended to help veterans find gainful employment.
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EA cutting back on new IP, increasing franchise frequency
A new article posted on Develop seems to indicate that losses and layoffs from the last financial quarter will cause EA to revert to its old publishing mindset of sustaining its most profitable franchises, and eschewing non-licenced new titles (like Mirror's Edge and Brutal Legend). In the article, EA CEO John Riccitello is quoted as saying the kinds of series that will continue to thrive under EA's banner in the future "are selling or have sold in their most recent edition 2 million units or more."
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Game Boy admitted to Toy Hall of Fame
In a statement from the Strong National Museum of Play, a representative stated that the Game Boy was admitted to its "National Toy Hall of Fame" because of its role as a major industry innovator. "Nintendo Game Boy transformed the electronic-games market by popularizing handheld gaming. No video-game platform did more to put gamers "on the go" than this invention. And go they did, bringing their gaming experience to school, to summer camp, and to the back seat of the family automobile. Over the past two decades, Game Boy has become synonymous with hand-held gaming fun. Its portability and efficient design, ability to allow simultaneous multiplayer gaming, and scores of intriguing games (like Tetris and Super Mario Land, featuring Nintendo's already-iconic character Mario) make it a true innovator."
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No Doubt suing Activision over Band Hero
It wasn't even two months ago that Courtney Love led a tirade against Activision for including her late husband, Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5. It seems as though the company hasn't learned its lesson as the LA Times reports (found via NeoGAF) that Hero, released this week, has earned the ire (and a lawsuit) from the members of No Doubt, who are angered by the fact that the band members can be used to play songs that the band never performed, saying the game allows for performances that are "wholly inappropriate and out of character for No Doubt".
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eGames Expo 2009: Interview with Peter Barlow
Yesterday PC World attended the eGames Expo 2009 at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. Although it was a slightly quieter affair compared to previous years, there were still plenty of games, gadgets and exhibits vying for punters' attention, including playable previews of Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction and Avatar in 3D.
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U.K. government endorses Wii Fit Plus
The Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association (ELSPA) dropped a press release yesterday trumpeting a decision by the United Kingdom's Department of Health to endorse Wii Fit Plus as part of an active and healthy lifestyle.
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New Excitebike game coming to WiiWare next month
The addition of Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Golden Axe to the Virtual Console wasn't the only treat today for those of you nostalgic for Nintendo's cartridge days. On the latest episode of the Wii console's streaming show Nintendo Week, a trailer for Excitebike: World Rally, Nintendo's latest retro revival was debuted. Unlike the torturous months we had to wait to play Punch-Out, Excitebike World Rally will be coming to WiiWare on November 9.
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30 percent of Guitar Hero players are girls
In anticipation of this week's release of DJ Hero, and in response to questions about the viability of the music genre as a whole, Fortune posted an interview with Guitar Hero CEO and president Dan Rosensweig today to press him on the future of the genre, and the competitive situation with Rock Band. After deftly dodging nearly all of Fortune's more pressing questions about the prospects of the business, he did divulge some details on the label's strategy for expansion beyond Guitar Hero 5.
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Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Golden Axe, in Wii Shop this week
Well, that didn't take long. Two months after Lucasarts pledged to bring the best of their back catalog, along comes one of the greatest SNES games of all time. This week, in accordance with All Hallow's Eve, Lucasarts is unleashing the horror-comedy game Zombies Ate My Neighbors on the Virtual console. ZAMN joins a whopping five games headed to the Wii Shop Channel this week, including Golden Axe for the Sega Genesis wing of the Virtual Console, Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 3 and Ghost Mansion Party for WiiWare, as well as Sudoku and PictureBook Games: The Royal Bluff for DSiWare.
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Financial report: Rock Band still unprofitable
A recent post on gaming community site The Kartel has revealed that a recent report from Credit Suisse has projected that the Rock Band series is still currently unprofitable, currently having lost parent company Viacom over $90 million.
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Need for Speed franchise has sold 100 million copies
Electronic Arts proudly announces that its 15 year-old racing franchise has now sold over 100 million units across 15 different titles.
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November's best mustache to appear in Red Dead Redemption
Rockstar Games is celebrating the growing "Movember" movement in a very unique way. The practice of growing a mustache throughout the month of November is celebrating its tenth year, and its fifth tied into the cause of furthering knowledge of men's health issues like prostate cancer. For this year's event, Rockstar is attempting to get gamers to join the cause, as the company has announced that the person who grows the best mustache for the cause will be immortalized in their most mustache-friendly title, next year's Red Dead Redemption.
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Miyamoto: next console 'likely' to keep motion controls
Here's a revelation that should surprise absolutely no one. While chatting with Popular Mechanics (via IGN), Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto surmised that the company's next home console would probably utilize motion controls, when he stated "[...]while we don't have any concrete plans for what we'll be doing with hardware in the future, what I can say is that, my guess is that because we found this interface to be so interesting, I think it would be likely that we would try to make that same functionality perhaps more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient."
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Black Wii controllers, MotionPlus bundle coming 11/17
Nintendo has just announced a release date for the black-colored Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers. On November 17th, American gamers will now be able to pick up another colour for their extra Wii controllers. Additionally, the new Wii Remote will now come bundled with a MotionPlus add-on for US$50, which is only US$10 more than the non-enhanced white Wii Remote. The release date of these controllers comes only two days after Nintendo unleashes New Super Mario Bros. Wii onto the world, which will undoubtedly drive many gamers to purchase more Wii Remotes for their systems.
