Ahead of its release in the UK this Friday (October 7^th) Namco Bandai’s famously hard RPG Dark Souls has debuted at No.1 in the weekly Japanese software charts.
The game, which is a PS3 exclusive in Japan, sold 279,567 units according to MediaCreate figures.
Sony’s Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD re-release debuted in second place with sales of nearly 92k. Individually each game also made the Top 20, with Colossus claiming 14^th and Ico 20^th.
Microsoft’s Gears of War 3 managed a highly respectable fourth place debut.
The 3DS was once again the best selling hardware of the week with 70,159 unit sales. This was followed by PS3 (39k), PSP (29k), Wii (14k) and Xbox 360 (4k).

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/dark-...n-japan/085738
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The Battlefield 3 Worldwide Conquest Tournament helps EA compete with Call of Duty Elite, Activision’s social service which also includes a competitive gaming element with prizes up for grabs, according to Virgin Gaming.
“We don’t view Elite as a threat,” Virgin co-founder Zachary Zeldin told MCV.
“We view it as one of the top industry leaders taking notice of what Virgin Gaming is doing and trying to implement it themselves. Which is great. We wish them nothing but success. I wouldn’t be surprised if Activision was a part of Virgin Gaming next year.
"We are very excited to see how Elite is going to do and how the community is going to receive it, are they going to view it as too hardcore? Or too expensive? It is going to be trial and error for Activision in the first year and I am excited to see it.”
The compnay says it has hit the jackpot with its official $1.6m Battlefield 3 gaming tournament.
The online competitive games specialist claims its EA deal has opened doors for them, helping the outfit score major clients such as 2K Games, THQ and Codemasters.
The company will give away some £2.6m in prizes to its members over the next 12 months. And it promised that its service can help sell DLC and keep developers’ games out of the pre-owned bins.
“When a company like EA trusts you with their $1bn IP, people see that and say ‘If EA is willing to do this then they must know something we don’t,’” said Virgin Gaming co-founder Zachary Zeldin.
“We have been teaching developers about how we can be beneficial to their game, how we are going to keep users engaged in their product more, how we can roll out DLC for them and help sell more of this extra content, or how we can keep their games out of the second-hand shelves for six months longer.
“If Battlefield has a map pack that EA wants to release, we can run a $50,000 or a $100,000 tournament specific to that map pack. So now they have to buy that map pack.
“We are helping that community evolve.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/virgi...-threat/085742
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Pundits will have you believe the next generation of games hardware won’t arrive until 2013 or later. However last week, at 12.01am on September 22nd, a fifth home gaming format was activated: cloud gaming service OnLive.
At its most basic form this one needs no hardware, no discs, no physical retail element. That alone is enough to prove the potential revolution OnLive can herald. But OnLive is more than just being a clever innovation for today. OnLive is posing questions about the future of the games business – about the way it sells content, distributes content, promotes content… even how content is created and owned.
IT’S A LIVE
The launch feature set of OnLive available today and in the near future is certainly impressive. Built around a bespoke video streaming technology, OnLive runs all games from dedicated data centres. At its simplest, you can log on from a PC or Mac and play games with a click of a button. The dedicated ‘microconsole’ (a cheap but polished box smaller than a 3DS containing a handful of memory chips, video processor, plus ethernet, USB and HDMI ports) is available for piping it straight into your TV. Soon, an app will launch letting you stream games to iPad or Android tablets. It’s even being built into TVs and Blu-ray players.
The games themselves are games in the ‘traditional’ sense to most of us – expensive-to-make stuff from big boys such as THQ, Ubisoft and 2K, down to mid-tier publishers and smaller developers. A mix of the triple-A, glossy family and indie titles.
But OnLive’s video-centric approach adds unique features including an Arena mode so you can spectate and watch people play, while gamers can save Brag Clips (the last 10 seconds of play) with a press of a button to show off to other users.
PRICE IS RIGHT
OnLive is wrapped in a fairly flexible pricing structure, too. Actually signing up and browsing the library of games is free, as are 30-minute demos of most titles, plus multiplayer for those supporting it. In the UK, an inaugural offer means first time customers get any game for £1.
The RRP for most games on the service is in-line with retail RRPs, at £34.99. Older titles are £19.99, and some games can be rented starting at £3.99 for three days.
However, a special PlayPack, available at £6.99 a month provides unlimited access to over 100 games on the service. This doesn’t include new ones – but new games are 30 per cent cheaper to PlayPack subscribers, bringing prices closer to the bargains on the High Street.
BT, which bought a stake in OnLive last year, is hoping to make the service even more attractive – its customers get the PlayPack free for three months, no contract. BT is promoting the service alongside its others such as high-speed Infinity broadband and Vision video on-demand. Over here, OnLive is very much a BT product: it’s using the brand to sponsor consumer events and more. It’s an added push that something like Xbox Live and PSN have never really had.
READY TO SERVE
But the immediate innovation of the cloud isn’t OnLive’s real talking point.
Cloud gaming is an inevitable part of games’ future, and it has been for ages. Most of us are used to having data or digital possessions stored on a remote server somewhere. Email, music, video; these mediums have had cloud counterparts for ages. Gmail, Spotify, YouTube. Amazon has been selling cloud storage to businesses for years; Social networks are based in the cloud; PSN and Steam are just two games services already offering cloud storage for save files.
For OnLive the obvious next step is widening out the service to include music and movies. That’s a given, and only a matter of time, either through partnerships with things like Netflix or LoveFilm, or simple viable alternatives.
But think about the foundation OnLive’s growing network of servers is laying. The collective might of them servers can run content much more detailed than that on a ‘normal’ home console. Technology from sister firm Mova, which helped animate CG faces in movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Incredible Hulk, is already built into OnLive, promising ‘a level of realism that is indistinguishable from live action’.
In that sense OnLive is building up, in plain sight, what could amount to the next-generation of gaming – high-end visuals rendered in real time, but created on data centres. No console needed, except maybe a cheap box to stream the data to, or a pre-existing device. Who needs 2013’s next-generation when it arguably already exists, and won’t require the manufacture of expensive consoles?
RIGHTS & OWNERSHIP
Another issue OnLive is challenging isn’t technical – it is emotional and conceptual: the issue of ownership. When you buy a cloud game, what do you own? Nothing physical, not even the centimetre of space the gigabytes are etched onto. But you are buying the right to access them.
In the US, OnLive and Square Enix tested this with free codes for the OnLive version of Deus Ex in the boxed PC game. It famously upset ...

A selection of "rare classic games" will be made available on the US PlayStation Store this week, according to Industry Gamers.
The move is part of Only On PlayStation Network, Sony's bid to draw attention to the range of exclusive games available from its PlayStation 3 download store. On October 4, PS2 classics including Capcom's high-camp brawler God Hand and hack-and-slash titleMaximo: Ghosts To Glory, Konami's strategy game Ring Of Red, and Vanillaware titles Odin Sphere and GrimGrimoire will be released.
As well as the old classics, October will also see the release of a host of PSN exclusives, starting on October 4 with Eufloria andRochard. Sideway: New York follows next week, with Sodium Collection due on October 13. Okabu and Rocketbirds launch on October 18 and, the following week, InFamous 2 expansion Festival Of Blood and Pixeljunk Sidescroller will be released.
PlayStation Plus subscribers will get a 20 per cent discount on all games released in the promotion, and those that spend $60 on the store during October will receive $10 credit for purchases in November.
We've contacted SCEE to ascertain whether the promotion only applies to the United States or will be rolled out worldwide, and are waiting to hear back from Capcom whether the PS2 games will be in original form or upscaled to HD.
UPDATE: We've had the following statement from Sony: "The Only On PlayStation Network programme is for the SCEA region only. However, we will be bringing the majority of the content to the SCEE audience, including classic PS2 titles. We have numerous exciting offers that we will be introducing to PSN users throughout our region in the lead up to Christmas and look forward to sharing these with you."

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/ps2-classics-hit-psn-week
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Oh, iFaithful, your newest Apple phone(s) are only a day away. Which is even more reason to hunker down into this latest chunk of pre-announcement gossip. According to information obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Sprint's betting the farm on a 30 million-plus order of next-generation iPhones to put it on an even battle ground with heavyweight rivals AT&T and Verizon. The cost of this loss-absorbing gamble? That would be about $20 billion, with the Hesse-led co. subsidizing the $500 cost of each handset. For the third place operator it's matter of do-or-die, as there really isn't an alternative to the critically-praised, Jony Ive-designed handset that set off this smartphone race. Hesse's purported admission to the company's board that customer churn is directly linked to its iPhone omission only serves to underscore the uncomfortable plight his company faces. It remains to be seen if Sprint can convert its base of 52 million subscribers (mostly pre-paid) into the contracted customers it needs to stay financially afloat. While an iPhone on Sprint certainly seems a given, it's unclear whether this next device will opt for a WiMAX or LTE radio.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/03/s...inges-company/ ...

Almost four years after first police raids, Parisian appeals court awards Nintendo €4.8 million in damages.


The sale of flash cards used for playing pirated games on Nintendo's DS handheld has finally been ruled illegal in France.

The decision last week by the Court Of Appeals in Paris, the second-highest tier of the French legal system, brings down the curtain on a legal battle stretching back for almost four years.

Divineo Sarl and five other companies were found guilty of the import, sale and distribution of flash cards - known in France as linkers - fined over €460,000 (£398,658) and told to pay damages in excess of €4.8 million (£4.2 million) to Nintendo.

Stephan Bole, managing director of Nintendo France, said: "Nintendo supported this criminal action not only for the company's sake, but for the interests of its game developer partners who expect the highest standards and integrity from products bearing the Nintendo name."

The case began in December 2007 when French police raided premises across the country and seized several thousand DS flash cards. In December 2009, a French court backed Divineo, ruling that Nintendo was "illegally" protecting its system by locking out would-be developers who should be allowed to create their own homebrew applications for the console without censure.

Nintendo appealed the decision, citing a Hong Kong court in 2008 which ruled against Divineo and ordered it to pay Nintendo €44.6 million in damages. That appeal has finally succeeded, and Nintendo notes that it brings France into line with the likes of Germany, Italy, the UK, Netherlands and Belgium, which have also declared the devices illegal.

Divineo was also found guilty of trafficking mod chips and software that enabled piracy on PlayStation 2, and was fined $9.5 million by a California court in 2006.

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/french-...-cards-illegal

Not good for the Homebrew Community ...

Nokia's announcement that it was developing a Linux distro for low-end smartphones, shortly after abandoning the Linux-based Meego OS for Windows Phone 7, was a little puzzling. But it actually makes good business sense in the smartphone world. While WP7 aims for the high end, there's a market for cheaper and less complex phones that still beat boring old feature phones, especially in emerging economies. And, unlike Symbian and the heavily tweaked Meego, Linux can be quickly and cheaply brought to market as a low-end smartphone OS

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/...nd-smartphones ...

suraj.sun sends word that a recent Facebook patent application details specific methods for tracking its users while they're using other websites. Michael Arrington pointed out over the weekend that this follows explicit statements from Facebook employees that the social networking giant has "no interest in tracking people." Quoting the Patent Application:"In one embodiment, a method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain. The method includes maintaining a profile for each of one or more users of the social networking system, each profile identifying a connection to one or more other users of the social networking system and including information about the user. The method additionally includes receiving one or more communications from a third-party website having a different domain than the social network system, each message communicating an action taken by a user of the social networking system on the third-party website. The method additionally includes logging the actions taken on the third-party website in the social networking system, each logged action including information about the action."

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/...on-other-sites ...

The Australian Privacy Commissioner has declared that Sony Australia broke no privacy laws in its handling of the PSN breach earlier this year.
Although the Commissioner made clear that Sony should have communicated the extent of the breach to its customers more quickly, the legal investigation into culpability for the data loss has concluded that the loss occurred as a: "result of a sophisticated security cyber attack on the Network Platform's systems."
The office, which only has jurisdiction over Sony's Australian branch, also pointed out that the information itself was actually held by a different division of the company in California, reportsGamasutra.
The office judged Sony Australia to have responded to the crisis with due diligence in order to protect any further theft of its customers' information.
"The Privacy Commissioner was also satisfied with how the incident was dealt with following the breach in terms of the extra security measures that have been implemented to help protect personal information," reads the commissioners report.
However, some criticism was reserved for the speed with which Sony informed customers about the security breach.
"Given his concerns over the period that elapsed before Sony notified its customers, the Privacy Commissioner strongly recommended that Sony review how it applies the OIAC's Guide to handling personal information security breaches."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...rivacy-charges
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