The Japanese games market finally has a new number one, although sales for both software and hardware remain in the doldrums.

Acquire's self-published Akiba's Trip involves defeating vampire-like creatures by ripping off their clothes and exposing their body parts to sunlight. Set in Akihabara's busy shopping district the PSP game seems unlikely to enjoy a Western release and sold only 58,150 units to get to number one.

Tecmo's Dead or Alive Dimensions is the highest-charting 3DS game since the system's launch, but it sold only a meagre 23,078 units at number two.

Strategy game Gungnir at number four sold just 16,355 units and while Valve's Portal 2 on PlayStation 3 is a surprise entry at number six it registered only 8,942 unit sales.

The lowest ranked title in the top 10, 3DS title Steel Diver, sold only 4,583 units to ensure its appearance in the chart.

Hardware sales, obtained by website Andriasang, were similarly unimpressive, although the now familiar hierarchy was undisturbed as most formats saw sales decrease by a similar proportion.

The PSP led with 30,463 unit sales, followed by the 3DS on 17,240. The PlayStation 3 was down to 12,935, while the Wii was almost unchanged at 6,269.

Last Week This Week Title Format
New Entry 1 Akiba's Trip PSP
New Entry 2 Dead or Alive Dimensions 3DS
1 3 Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 Professional DS
New Entry 4 Gungnir PSP
5 5 Patapon 3 PSP
New Entry 6 Portal 2 PS3
6 7 Pro Baseball Spirits 2011 PSP
11 8 Wii Party Wii
14 9 Pokémon Black/White DS
3 10 Steel Diver 3DS
Platform This Week Last Week
PSP 30,463 34,655
3DS 17,240 18,324
PlayStation 3 12,935 13,789
Wii 6,269 6,336
Nintendo DSi XL 5,176 5,358
Nintendo DSi 4,938 5,292
Xbox 360 2,186 2,763
PlayStation 2 1,129 1,319
Nintendo DS Lite 158 208
PSPgo 65 171

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...slump-in-japan ...

Sony's Networked Products and Services division, which includes the PlayStation business, recorded an operating profit of ¥35.6 billion ($435.3m / £266.9m) for the 2010 financial year, up from the ¥83.3 billion loss for the previous year.

The company highlighted improved software sales for the system, as well as reduced costs on PlayStation 3 hardware for the increase. Sales in the division only increased marginally to ¥1,572 billion ($19.2 bn / £11.7 bn).

During the year, Sony sold 14.3 million PlayStation 3 units compared to 13 million, 8 million PSPs compared to 9.9 million, and 6.4 million PlayStation 2 consoles, compared to 7.3 million for the 2009 financial year.

Software sales for the PlayStation 3 was up significantly from 115.6 million to 147.9 million, with PSP game sales also up from 44.4 million to 46.6 million. PlayStation 2 game sales dropped from 35.7 million units to 16.4 million.

As warned earlier in the week, the Sony Corporation as a whole made a significant loss during the full financial year of ¥256.9 billion ($3.14bn / £1.92bn) primarily due to deferred tax assets.

Sales were ¥7,181 billion ($87.7bn / £53.8bn) for the full financial year, a drop of 0.5 per cent compared to 2009, with operating income of ¥199.8 billion ($2.4bn / £1.4bn).

The company has warned that in the current fiscal year, it expects the cost of the PSN breach to hit approximately $170 million.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...USD435m-profit ...

Sony Corporation has warned that the PlayStation Network breach is to cost the company approximately ¥14 billion ($171.2m / £106.1m) by the end of the 2012 fiscal year.

The company was forced to close down its PSN online service last month after hackers compromised data of over 77 million user accounts. Later, Sony Online Entertainment's website was also hacked, bring the total number of breached gamer accounts to over 100 million.

"Based on information currently available to Sony, our current known costs associated with the unauthorised network access are estimated to be approximately 14 billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012," the company told investors today.

Furthermore, Sony predicted a net loss for the entire 2011 financial year of ¥260 billion ($3.1 bn / £1.9bn) - compared to expectations in February that the company was on track to record a profit of ¥70 billion, blaming a write-off due to deferred tax assets.

For the full 2011 financial year Sony expects the Japanese earthquake and tsunami to wipe ¥17 billion from operating profits, and a further ¥150 billion from the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012.

Despite that, Sony said it anticipates a return to profitability in the 2012 financial year.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...mately-USD170m ...

Rockstar Games' L.A. Noire has become the fastest-selling new intellectual property ever in the UK, as it debuts at number one in the weekly sales chart.

Although as usual no specific sales data has been released, chart creators Chart-Track indicate that L.A. Noire sold on par with Rockstar's previous hit Red Dead Redemption, released at the same time in 2010.

Sales of the game, which started life as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, were fairly evenly split at 58 per cent for the Xbox 360 version and 42 per cent for the PlayStation 3. As a result L.A. Noire becomes the 13th fastest-selling Xbox 360 of all time in the UK and the 11th fastest on the PlayStation 3.

The other major new entry of the week, released on Tuesday rather than the Friday of L.A. Noire and most other new games, is PC exclusive The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. The game debuted at number five in the all format charts and sold three times more than the original game in its launch week.

There was little other movement in the chart, with Lego Pirates of the Caribbean down only 6 per cent at number two, but Brink dropping by 48 per cent to number three.

Retail promotions saw an increase in sales of 71 per cent for Crysis 2 at number six. There was also a 266 per cent increase in sales for Mario Kart Wii thanks to the launch of the new lower priced Wii hardware bundle. The game remained just outside the top 20 though, at number 23.

This Week Last Week Title
1 New Entry L.A. Noire
2 2 Lego Pirates of the Caribbean
3 1 Brink
4 3 Zumba Fitness
5 New Entry The Witcher 2
6 9 Crysis 2
7 4 Portal 2
8 8 FIFA 11
9 6 Mortal Kombat
10 5 Call of Duty: Black Ops
11 11 Just Dance 2
12 7 Lego Star Wars III
13 Re-entry Wii Sports Resort
14 18 Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
15 15 Red Dead Redemption
16 12 Operation Flashpoint: Red River
17 10 MX vs. ATV Alive
18 13 Wii Fit Plus
19 Re-entry Homefront
20 16 Pokémon Black

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-ip-ever-in-uk ...

There were no new entries in the UK multiformat top 20 last week, as Valve's Portal 2 remains the number one selling game in the country, followed by Warner's Mortal Kombat.
Although the double bank holiday meant only three normal working days for the week ending April 30th there were new releases to be had - most notably Sega's Thor move tie-in and the heavily advertised Virtua Tennis 4.
In the end though neither title appeared in the new top 20, with Virtua Tennis 4 debuting only at number 23.
Given the unusual nature of the week the 51 per cent fall in sales for Portal 2 and 42 per cent drop for Mortal Kombat cannot be directly compared to the previous week, but the drops are more than other lower-placed titles.
Codemasters' Operation Flashpoint: Red River saw only a 21 per cent decrease in sales at number four, despite a mixed critical reception.
It was denied the number three spot though by Zumba Fitness, which also saw a decline in sales of 21 per cent. The title was boosted by the delayed release of the PlayStation 3 version though, which accounted for 10 per cent of this week's sales.
According to Chart-Track the Xbox 360 version accounted for 10 per cent and the Wii version 81 per cent.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lead-uk-charts ...

News via AEP
More than two years have passed since the last official and stable release of the Playstation 2 emulator PCSX2. Now, a new version has been finally released.

Quote:
GUI:
New, threaded GUI using wxWidgets.
New menus, for improved usability and faster configuration.
Convenient Memory Card editor.
On the fly pause and resume, perfectly stable, safe and fast.
On the fly setting switching and even plugin switching.
Powerful new configuration that is more user friendly with its first time wizard, reset to default buttons and a global presets system.
A plethora of new options that make playing games more fun!
All options have tooltips explaining what each of them do.
Comes translated, with many languages to select from.
Compatible with Aero Glass and Windows eye candy.
Looks and works great on Linux, too!
Core:
Entire emulation core has been overhauled. Many components are rewritten.
Countless code generation and runtime execution bugs fixed.
Added microVU, an improved VU0/VU1/COP2 recompiler.
New VIF recompiler
Multi-threaded GS rewrite: Faster and more stable than in 0.9.6.
Better BIOS splash screen skip method, better ELF support, host fs support.
New Game database detects the game you run, displays compatibility info, and auto applies special game fixes/patches if needed.
Plugins:
GSdx is faster, more stable and has more configuration options than ever before.
SPU2-X is the preferred SPU2 plugin now.
It has matured into almost completely emulating all the SPU2 quirks, making many more games work!

Download Here
:: Homepage ...

After only one week of trailing the 3DS the PSP is once again the best-selling hardware platform in Japan, as Nintendo DS titles take the number one and two spots in the software charts.
The PSP has been the only major format affected by supply problems since the Japanese earthquake disaster, with websiteAndriasang suggesting that the system is still selling out quickly as new stock arrives.
As a result this week sales more than doubled to 49,427 - including 265 sales for the PSPgo. The 3DS though continued its slow decent, shedding another 5,000 unit sales for a total of 23,038.
The PlayStation 3 also saw a drop in sales, of around 3,000 units, to 22,265. Combined sales for the Nintendo DS family of consoles stood at 13,561, while the Wii slipped a few hundred to 7,866.
The top-selling software title of the week was DS hardware bundle Battle & Get! Pokémon Typing DS, which comes packaged with a full QWERTY keyboard. The game includes a number of Pokémon themed mini-games aimed at teaching typing skills - a surprisingly common spin-off concept in Japan that has previous encompassed franchises such as Street Fighter and The House of the Dead.
Battle & Get! sold 59,363 units on its debut, below the 100,000 minimum usually expected for a number one title in Japan - although the higher unit price will have compensated for this to a degree.
The second-highest new entry of the week was a new DS tie-in to anime Detective Conan at number six, with the Namco Bandai title selling 19,786 units over the course of the week.
Spike's new action title GachiTora! Sold 13,560 units at number seven, while Zipper Interactive's SOCOM 4 (aka SOCOM: Special Forces) debuted at number eight with 12,613 units sold. This is a much higher initial chart position than the game earned in its recent UK release.
Rounding out the charts is hardcore 2D shooter Otomedius Excellent from Konami on the Xbox 360, with 10,502 units sold.


http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...again-in-japan ...

Portal 2 has emerged as the best-selling video game in the UK last week, with fellow new release Mortal Kombat taking the number two spot.
Despite the PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 featuring exclusive cross-format support with the PC it accounted for only 35 per cent of sales, with the Xbox 360 on 54 per cent and the PC on 10 per cent. The latter though does not account for digital sales.
The addition of Sony-exclusive character Kratos, from God Of War proved to have more impact on sale of Mortal Kombat though - with the PlayStation 3 version selling 54 per cent compared to the Xbox 360's 46 per cent.
As a result the Xbox 360 version of Portal 2 was the best-selling individual format title of the week, followed by Mortal Kombat on PlayStation 3, Mortal Kombat on Xbox 360 and Portal 2 on PlayStation 3. Previous number one Zumba Fitness ranked number five.
The other major release of the week was Operation Flashpoint: Red River, which made its debut at number six. Codemasters' team-based shooter saw 70 per cent of sales on the Xbox 360 and 30 per cent on the PlayStation 3.
The only major new release not to break into the top 20 this week was Sony's SOCOM: Special Forces (aka SOCOM 4) at number 28, although a number of older titles did continue to move up the charts thanks to retailer promotions.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops rose six places to number three, while Wii Fit Plus was up 11 places to number nine. Wii Sports Resort also re-entered the charts at number 14.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...k-sales-charts ...

News via http://www.scummvm.org/news/20110422/

The ScummVM team is announcing another round of release testing in preparation for our next release: 1.3.0!
Since our last release, we've been very busy working on adding support for more of your favorite games. Backyard Baseball. Backyard Baseball 2001, Hugo's House of Horrors, Hugo 2: Whodunit?, Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom, Playtoons: Bambou le Sauveur de la Jungle, Toonstruck, and Urban Runner are all ready for our loyal fans to play through to their hearts' content. Several Living Books games are also supported now: Aesop's Fables: The Tortoise and the Hare, Arthur's Birthday (v1), Arthur's Teacher Trouble, Dr. Seuss's ABC, Green Eggs and Ham, Harry and the Haunted House, Just Grandma and Me (v1), Little Monster at School, Ruff's Bone, Sheila Rae, the Brave, Stellaluna, The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight, The Berenstain Bears in the Dark, The New Kid on the Block. You can see more info on the bugs we fixed and the features we added over here.
Like with our last release testing, not all games will be tested; only games that have had significant changes to their codebase since the last release are up for testing. As usual, the list of games to be tested is on the wiki.
Those games aren't going to test themselves! Download a daily build and report any bugs you find to the bug tracker. If you complete a game, please let us know on the forums so we can throw the results up on the wiki page. Be sure to provide the version, language, and platform of your game when reporting a completion. Any other questions? Go check out the release testing guidelines. ...