A new Dead Space game for the iPad will launch in December, EA has revealed.

The publisher announced the game at a press event in Tokyo's Apple Store, according to TouchArcade.

The game will bridge the story gap between the first two Dead Space titles and feature motion-based dismemberment, letting you lop of necromorph limbs with the swipe of a finger.

A slideshow presentation at the event promised, "Third person shooter - no rails, no mode switching."

The slide made no mention of an iPhone version.

Hopefully the game will fare better than EA's other recent spin-off, Dead Space Ignition. Eurogamer's Chris Schilling deemed the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade download only worthy of 3/10.

EA also showed off a number of other games in the works for Apple's device at the event, including Reckless Racing, Monopoly, NBA Elite 11, EA Sports Active and Pictureka!

EA's mobile division has been very busy of late. It recently unveiled its first slate of titles for Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 OS, including versions of Need For Speed: Underground, Tetris and The Sims 3.

Dead Space 2 launches on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 25th January 2010.,

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...eading-to-ipad ...

Concern over Kinect's ability to detect players sat down on sofas has been eradicated after Microsoft updated the software behind the tech, Eurogamer can reveal.

Kinect's much-discussed difficulty detecting sitting and lying down players was caused by it setting the base node used to create skeletal models at the bottom of the spine.

When players were sat down with their knees raised in front of their pelvis, Kinect encountered problems.

In July Microsoft insisted that Kinect could recognise players who were sitting down, despite a recent developer comment to the contrary.

This evening Eurogamer can reveal how Microsoft has made this possible.

The console manufacturer updated the software used by developers to make sense of the information gathered by the Kinect sensor so that the base node was switched from the bottom of the spine to the back of the neck, according to a developer with more experience working with the technology than most.

"It means that should the bottom of your torso get confused with the sofa, because your bum and your legs are enveloped inside the sofa, it doesn't matter because your hands and arms are still working," Blitz Games Studios co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Andrew Oliver told Eurogamer. "You can do most actions."

"A few months ago they changed stuff around. A lot of developers were like, 'Oh my God! Everything's broken,' because all the nodes were moved.

"But then it was like, 'Oh, actually, this is more logical.'"

While the changes made to Kinect's software libraries have come too late to be used in the motion-sensing add-on's launch line-up, "games going forward won't have a problem," Oliver reassured.

Before the update, developers who wanted to create a game in which players sit or lie down would have had to create the software to do it internally. Blitz was one such developer.

"It was one of those ones where it was probably borderline whether Microsoft would have fixed it for you or not," Oliver revealed.

"We were talking to them last February saying, 'Are you ever going to fix the libraries so it will work on the floor?' And they went, 'Oh come on, that's lying on the floor. That's so rare. We've got other issues we're dealing with.' We said, 'Okay, we'll go write it ourselves.'"

Blitz has two Kinect-enabled games ready to launch: fitness title The Biggest Loser and karaoke movie game Yoostar 2.

Blitz created its own solution for Kinect to detect players lying on the floor because The Biggest Loser asks players to perform sit-ups and push-ups.

Blitz has "several" Kinect-enabled games in development.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-finally-over ...

Nintendo's dated the Wii Remote/Motion Plus combo controller leaked last month.

The Wii Remote Plus will release in Europe on 5th November in four colours: white, black, pink and blue. We've asked Nintendo how much it costs.

It has the same physical dimensions of the standard Wii Remote and all compatible peripherals, including the Nunchuk and Classic Controller, can be plugged into its base. It works in exactly the same was as the Wii Remote with a Wii Motion Plus plugged in.

Meanwhile, Nintendo announced that FlingSmash, which comes bundled with a Wii Remote Plus, will release in Europe on 19th November.

The Artoon motion-controlled side-scrolling platformer sees players fling ball-shaped character Zip at angles to smash objects.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...us-combo-dated ...

The full Android version of Angry Birds has been downloaded more than one million times from GetJar in the last 24 hours.
Developer Rovio Mobile tweeted the milestone this afternoon:
"Over 1 million Angry Birds downloads on GetJar in a day, no wonder the servers were down."
The figure was also confirmed by GetJar CMO Patrick Mork on Twitter, with the additional information that this is a new record for the independent app store.
GetJar's servers struggled to cope when the game went live yesterday, and more than 90,000 people downloaded it in a matter of seconds.

Rovio has also been using Twitter to respond to complaints from Android users about the performance of the game on their handsets.
"The experience on the Hero is not great, best we can do with that graphics hardware," says one tweet in response to a query.
Meanwhile, the developer also confirmed that the challenges of selling games on Android was one of the key reasons for going with GetJar and an ad-supported model.
"Yes, right now it's not easy to make money with paid content on Android. Hoping that ads will cover costs if nothing else," tweeted Rovio in response to another query.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/39088...id-Angry-Birds ...

PlayStation 3 motion controller Move has sold around 1.5 million units in Europe, according to Sony's Andrew House.

Speaking to Bloomberg, the head of Sony Europe said the company was looking to increase production of the controller, which launched in the region on September 19.

Move has seen "very significant sales in the first month since launch, somewhere in the region of 1.5 million units for the new controller across just Europe," according to House.

"The initial sales response has been so far in excess of our initial plan that we'll probably be looking at accelerating production."

He also said that Sony is expecting to beat worldwide sales targets of 15 million PlayStation 3 units for the full year, despite the slow down in the overall market.

"Sales have been significantly up year-on-year in a market that has been overall slightly down," offered House.

"We have lots of confidence in our ability to hit our profitability target this year," he added. "But currency movements present significant challenges" he said, referring to the appreciation of the yen.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...1-5m-in-europe ...

The NPD Group has released details of physical sales in the US for the month of September, showing an overall decline in sales of packaged goods, hardware and accessories of 8 per cent over the same month in 2009.

That's despite the high profile launches of Halo: Reach and Dead Rising 2 - which claimed first and third places in the month's sales chart, while Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock missed out on a top ten spot.

Total US sales hit $1.22 billion, down from $1.32 billion last year, while hardware was particularly weak, showing a 19 per cent fall from $472 million to $383 million.

The Xbox 360 was the only console to buck that trend, seeing its best month for unit sales so far, up 34 per cent on last year - although Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg later Tweeted the figure as 37 per cent, and detailing total units sold as 483,989.

In a note to investors, analyst firm Wedbush Morgan revealed that sales of Nintendo's Wii were down 45 per cent year-on-year with 254,000 units sold, while Sony shifted 312,000 PlayStation 3 units, down 37 per cent.

It also added that Xbox 360 software sales were up 33 per cent to $85 million off the back of Halo: Reach, while Wii software sales fell 38 per cent to $55 million and PlayStation 3 sales dropped 14 per cent to $17 million. DS games sales were down 37 per cent to $31 million and PSP sales down 2 per cent.

Accessories was the only segment to show any growth - thanks to the release of PlayStation Move and the continuing popularity of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network points cards. Sales rose by 13 per cent to $180 million.


Halo: Reach topped software sales for the month, selling 3.3. million units.
Software accounted for $655 million, down 5 per cent year-on-year, with Microsoft's Halo title selling 3.3 million - although with NPD changing its media release patterns there's no way to tell how the rest of the top ten fared.

"While industry sales of new physical retail sales show a decline versus year ago, it's important to remember that there is a growing volume of content being sold digitally, or otherwise outside the traditional retail channel," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. "These numbers reflect the largest channel for hardware, software and accessories sales, but there are content sales happening elsewhere."

Meanwhile Microsoft confirmed reports that Kinect was selling-out at retailers nationwide ahead of its November 4 launch.

The software all-formats top ten was as follows:

1. Halo: Reach (360) - Microsoft
2. Madden NFL 11 (360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP) - Electronic Arts
3. Dead Rising 2 (360, PS3, PC) - Capcom
4. NHL 11 (360, PS3) - Electronic Arts
5. FIFA Soccer 11 (360, PS3, PS2, PSP, NDS) - Electronic Arts
6. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP) - Square Enix
7. Mafia II (360, PS3, PC) - Take-Two Interactive
8. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (PS3, 360, NDS, Wii) - Activision Blizzard
9. Metroid: Other M (Wii) - Nintendo
10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (360, PS3, PC) - Activision Blizzard
Update: Added NPD hardware sales numbers as released by Wedbush Morgan, and percentage change year-on-year for software sales, in paragraphs five and six.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...e-in-september ...

Microsoft's Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live services will be made available for nine new countries from November 10, 2010, offering localised content and support.

Residents of Russia, Poland, South Africa, Greece, Czech Republic, Hungary, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile will all be able to access the services from their home countries, without having to register an account in a foreign country. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese language options will be available.

Customers with existing accounts registered from elsewhere will be able to migrate territories, keeping all avatar items, Microsoft Points, downloads, DLC and games saves. Existing accounts will have their subscriptions rounded up to the nearest month when they migrate.

Certain services, such as Twitter, Facebook and Zune, are as yet unavailable in the new territories, so any associated content will not function with migrated accounts. All purchased content can be re-downloaded prior to the migration, but once it has taken place only content purchased under the new details will be available to re-download.

No specific pricing has yet been given for the subscription or Microsoft Points in the nine new countries, but Microsoft says that it hopes to "offer consistent pricing for Xbox LIVE around the world".

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-new-countries ...

New software releases in September have not met expectations in the US, according to Cowan & Company's Doug Creutz.

Microsoft's Halo: Reach sold 3.3 million units during the month, below Cowan's 3.75 million estimate, while Activision's Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, only managed "a fairly dreadful" 86,000 units in its first five days.

He also singled out Nintendo's Metroid: Other M as missing expectations, in the first month that The NPD Group stopped releasing detailed data on individual sales.

Released in August, EA's Madden NFL 11 slowed down in its second month on the market, with unit sales down 11 per cent, with Creutz adding "we continue to expect cumulatively flat year-on-year performance for the franchise through December."

There were "few major surprises at the publishers" during September, said Cowan & Company - including PC software, Activision Blizzard sales were down 41 per cent, EA down 42 per cent, Take-Two down 170 per cent and THQ down 25 per cent compared to the same month last year.

While October is expected to be a stronger month, Creutz lowered full calendar year expectations to be down 5 per cent on 2009.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...oint-in-the-us ...

A total of nine new entries in the Japanese software chart this week have failed to shift Pokemon Black and White from the top spot, as the latest in the series almost reaches four million unit sales to date.

Slots two, three, four and five were taken by fresh titles, with Macross F, Kingdom Hearts and Class of Heroes 3 all hitting the top five. Straight in at number four was the PS3 version of Rockstar's Red Dead Redemtion, with the 360 SKU trailing behind it in 7th.

In the hardware charts, sales dipped for the top three consoles, with PSP still on top in terms of individual unit sales. But DSi and DSi LL were second and third, with a combined total which easily eclipses that of PSP.

Full charts follow below. For software, figures in brackets are sales to date. In the hardware chart, last weeks figures are shown in brackets.

1. Pokemon Black & White (DS): 231,638 (3,992,855)
2. Macross F Itsuwari no Utahime (PS3): 152,699 - New Entry
3. Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded (DS): 95,505 - New Entry
4. Red Dead Redemption (PS3): 70,599 - New Entry
5. Class of Heroes 3 (PSP): 30,572 - New Entry
6. Wii Party (Wii): 26,259 (1,099,428)
7. Red Dead Redemption (X360): 25,673 - New Entry
8. F1 2010 (PS3): 25,273 - New Entry
9. Dead Rising 2 (PS3): 24,416 (104,111)
10. K-On! After School Live (PSP): 21,454 (192,303)
11. Black Panther Yakuza New Chapter PSP): 19,109 (236,485)
12. Class of Heroes 3 (PS3): 14,892 - New Entry
13. Okamiden (DS): 12,829 (97,300)
14. Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki (PSP): 11,147 (95,507)
15. Tenkaichi Sengoku Lovers DS (DS): 9,510 - New Entry
16. H.A.W.X.2 (PS3): 8,921 - New Entry
17. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii): 6,991 (849,567)
18. Dragon Ball Tag Versus (PSP): 6,734 (25,814)
19. Dead Rising 2 (X360): 6,279 (50,097)
20. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G PSP the Best Reprint (PSP): 6,261 (443,365)
1. PSP: 33,683 (37,088)
2. DSi: 22,301 (24,937)
3. DSi LL: 21,777 (24,246)
4. PS3: 19,948 (20,363)
5. Wii: 12,158 (13,360)
6. DS Lite: 5,960 (5,707)
7. X360: 2,746 (2,769)
8. PS2: 1,373 (1,247)
9. PSP go: 1,191 (754)

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...n-in-jap-chart ...