British Call of Duty fans are spending the tail-end of this weekend playing monster FPS Call Of Duty: Black Ops early - as reports of broken street dates trickle in.


Several independent retailers in London have confirmed to CVG that they're selling the FPS ahead of the official Tuesday street date - forum users also having claimed to have purchased legit copies.

It's hardly a surprise with such a huge release - especially one with such tight security from its publisher. But what we'd like to know is... are any of you lot blasting away on an early retail copy?

If you've managed to get your favourite indie shop - or indeed a High Street brand - to sell you Black Ops early e-mail us a picture of your receipt and we'll give you a nod.

Happy hunting...

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Microsoft's Kinect system is, as anticipated, selling like gangbusters, with some of the biggest retail chains in the US all out of stock.

According to a report in USA Today, the new motion control gizmo is sold out at Best Buy, Target and GameStop's online stores. Amazon.com isn't taking any more orders either, though you can still grab it bundled with a console.

WalMart apparently has a few left, but a spokesperson warned, "there is going to be very high demand for these products. We will continue to restock throughout the season."

Best Buy's Chris Homeister aded "We've seen a tremendous amount of excitement and demand for [Kinect] and saw lines at our midnight openings around the country. We are currently sold out online, but we continue to work with Microsoft to obtain product shipments now and throughout the holiday season."

Earlier this week, Microsoft changed its sales expectations to five million shifted before Christmas, up from three million.

Sony has a similar goal for its Move controller and has got off to a solid start. It's sold around 2.5 million units since it arrived on the scene last month.

Kinect launches in Europe on 10th November. A spokesperson for HMV told Eurogamer it expected stock to be "tight".

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When Hideo Kojima releases a Metal Gear Solid game, Konami's bank balance explodes. That didn't happen with PSP game Peace Walker, but Konami takes solace in the fact it was at least "well received by hardcore Metal Gear fans".

Was it? Eurogamer's Oli Welsh awarded the stealth game 8/10.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker commands an enviable 89 per cent on Metacritic.

Sales weren't awful, mind you: Metal Gear notched up 1.47 million between April and the end of September. Not specifically for Peace Walker - Konami didn't name names - but as there were no other MGS games released during those six months, such an assumption is logical.

Peace Walker sales, Konami did say, "progressed favourably".

Meanwhile, in the US, sales of DanceDanceRevolution "progressed steadily". That was partly because the game, which supports PlayStation Move, is part of a campaign to "fight obesity". Obviously gamers are the fattest.

"Steady" was also a word used to describe sales of the the Japanese World Cup PES game. Amusingly, Konami referred to the global competition not by its name but as "once-every-four-years festivities that excite soccer fans worldwide". Perhaps it doesn't have licensing rights. Oh yes he did.

Konami was far more enthusiastic about LovePlusPlus, its "romance communication game". This had record first week sales and a "highly positive" response from Japanese punters. Konami describes LovePlus as a "social phenomenon" in Japan - there's even a festival there for it. Taking that into account, the existence of a 3DS Project LovePlus game shouldn't surprise.

Other performers of note - but for Japan only - were Jikkyo Pawafuru Puroyakyu (on PS3 for the first time); Puroyakyu Spirits 2010; "academy romance simulation game for women" Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3rd Story; Fairy Tail Portable Guild and Busou Shinki Battle Masters.

In total, Konami sold 10.05 million units between the start of April and end of September. Japan snapped up 4.34 million of those, Europe 3.42 million, the US 2.18 million and Asia 120,000.

Of those 10.5 million sales, 3.44 million were for football/soccer games, 3.14 million for "Other" (a large amount not specified), 1.47 million for Metal Gear games, 740,000 for baseball games, 670 for animated television games and 590,000 for music games.

The money made from all those game sales was $327 million - roughly half of the Digital Entertainment sector of Konami Corporation.

More importantly, those numbers don't involve new games Castlevania: Lords of Shadow or PES 2011, as both were released on 8th October in Europe.

Konami also has Glee TV show spin-off Karaoke Revolution Glee poised as well as streetwise karaoke game Def Jam Rapstar.

As mentioned, Digital Entertainment (videogames, amusements, card games, online) is just one limb of the Konami company body. Let's call it a leg; a leg worth $655 million to Konami in the last six months. The other leg holding Konami up is Health & Fitness (worth $541 million). The wobbly arms are Gaming & System ($114 million) and Other & Eliminations ($117 million).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ed-by-hardcore ...

Kinect Joy Ride heads up a fresh batch of demos available on Xbox Live today.

You can also sample Harmonix's Rock Band 3 and Activision's chopper sim Apache: Air Assault.

You shouldn't need a demo to convince you to open your wallet for Rock Band 3. Johnny Minkley's perfect 10/10 review should be all the impetus you need.

Kinect Joy Ride, on the other hand, only managed 5/10 earlier this week, so you might want to find out what you're letting yourself in for there.

However, the Joy Ride demo also comes built into Kinect Adventures, which is bundled with the hardware, so an Xbox Live release seems rather redundant.

Either way, unless you're an American you'll need to wait to 10th November to try it, when Kinect launches in Europe.

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Wii game Worms Battle Islands will launch on 26th November, THQ has confirmed.

"Reasons to pay attention to yet another rehash of Team17's turn-based warhorse might seem elusive, but how's this: Battle Islands is that rare beast, an online multiplayer game for the Wii with a proper, contemporary feature-set," wrote Eurogamer's Oli Welsh when he previewed the game as a WiiWare title late last year.

Somewhere along the food chain Battle Islands was upgraded to a retail release.

"It's not hard to believe this was originally planned as a boxed release," he added, as if predicting the future, "although there's a danger that it might overcomplicate the devastatingly simple formula that has kept Worms running all these years."

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Activision's recent conference call wasn't all facts and figures, you know. The company also outlined the future of some of its biggest franchises over the course of the next calendar year. According to CEO Eric Hirshberg, the publisher will launch titles from "proven franchises including the Hero brand, Spider-Man, X-Men and Transformers, which will be supported by what is expected to be another major blockbuster movie from Michael Bay." Sounds like they're kinda putting the cart in front of the giant, shapeshifting robot-car with that one.

Hirshberg also made the unsurprising announcement that 2011 would also see the release of a new Call of Duty, explaining "in the back half of 2011, we are launching a new, large-scale Call of Duty FPS title." Considering the last installment in the franchise had like, ten different scenes where nukes went off, we don't know how much "larger" the proceedings could become.

Unless, of course, Hirshberg was referring to Activision's oft-rumored plans to monetize the series' multiplayer component. Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who previously predicted Activision would subscriptionalize the franchise this year, released a statement shortly after the conference call, stating, "We expect Activision to announce plans to monetize multiplayer online some time in 2011, and expect greater visibility into the release schedule throughout the year."

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The quest to uncover the North American and European release dates for the Nintendo 3DS became a little bit easier earlier this week, when the megapublisher confirmed that the eye-popping handheld would visit itself upon our store shelves in March. However, the exact date of its arrival is still up in the air -- though scans of the latest issue of Official Nintendo Magazine obtained by VGTribune might just clear up the confusion. According to the mag, the U.S. and European 3DS release date is March 11, 2011.

There's no way of knowing if the magazine's report is on the money until Nintendo makes an official announcement -- after all, it's possible the article's mistaken, due entirely to the fact that March '11 looks a whole heck of a lot like March 11 on paper. Also, though Nintendo is accustomed to launching new gaming hardware in European territories on Fridays, those kinds of releases usually come stateside on Sundays. We've contacted Nintendo for a comment on this supposed due date but, as is the case with these things, we're not likely to get anything official until the Big N puts it into a press release.

Update: Some of the magazine's readers are reporting that the scan obtained by VGTribune was photoshopped, and that it did indeed read "March 2011." Another scan on GoNintendo shows the release timetable in its unaltered glory.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/06/re...-2011-release/ ...

Digital Foundry has taken its mathematical approach to examining the deep inner workings of games to whole new heights with is recent lag analysis of the Killzone 3 multiplayer beta. Using a special controller (designed by modder extraordinaire Ben Heck), the DF team measured the exact amount of time that passed between pressing R1 and the in-game gun actually firing a bullet: 116ms. According to the blog, that's about 33ms shorter than the lag present in Killzone 2, which apparently makes a world of difference in twitchy shooters of this ilk.

Check out a video of the group's study, as well as a few other odds and ends about the technical side of the beta, over on Eurogamer.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/06/ki...s-predecessor/ ...

Another year, another Splitfish FragFX controller, determined to bring the accuracy of a PC mouse to your frag sessions on PlayStation 3. This one, the FragFX Shark, boasts a thumb wheel to manually set your mouse sensor's dead zone, improved emulation algorithms and 50 hours of solid gameplay (and 500 hours standby) on a pair of AA batteries. As you might imagine, we weren't able to test the latter due to a little thing called work, but we spent a good number of hours putting the peripheral through Call of Duty, Dead Space, Killzone 2, The Club and more, and came away fairly disappointed. Find out exactly why after the break, and check out our gallery below.

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