via Games Industry


Grand Theft Auto IV remains on top of the sales charts in Germany and Spain according to data released by Media-Control GfK International.

The PlayStation 3 version topped the charts in both countries. The Xbox 360 version came in second place in Germany and fourth place in Spain.

Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii were near the top of the charts as well, with Nintendo Wii and DS titles accounting for six out of the top ten in both countries.

The Top Ten best-selling games for the week ended May 11 were:

Germany:
1. Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3)
2. Grand Theft Auto IV (360)
3. Wii Fit (Wii)
4. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
5. Assassin's Creed Director's Cut (PC)
6. Brain Training (DS)
7. More Brain Training (DS)
8. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)
9. Mario Kart DS (DS)
10. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for MiddleEarth 2 (PC)

Spain:
1. Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3)
2. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
3. Wii Fit (Wii)
4. Grand Theft Auto IV (360)
5. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PSP)
6. Wii Play (Wii)
7. 42 All-Time Classics (DS)
8. More Brain Training (DS)
9. Brain Training (DS)
10. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (PS3) ...

via Computer and Video Games


Ripping people's hearts out, cutting blokes in half with a chainsaw - that's what's going down in these gory new MadWorld screens, and we like it (sadistic, maybe?).

That pretty much sets the tone for the game, it seems. You play as Jack, the man with the chainsaw arm, and you brutalise people in the most horrific ways. Sega called it "comical violence" in its presentation, so that makes it okay.

The black and white graphical style looks brilliant in motion, and with blood being the only thing on screen with colour, it makes the gore even more prominent.

MadWorld was one of three games from developer Platinum Games that Sega showed off at a presentation last week and you can read more about that here.


Screenshots ...

via IGN


Nintendo's new Wii Fit, launching today, combines fun and fitness in ways that will have people getting up off their couches, moving around, having fun and maybe even breaking a sweat. Wii Fit gets everyone pumped up about making enjoyable physical activities a part of their daily routines. Wii Fit even tracks users' progress, which lets people see how they have improved while challenging them to better their scores and stay motivated to keep going.

At an MSRP of $89.99, Wii Fit comes packaged with the Wii Balance Board™ accessory, a precisely engineered platform that senses both weight and shifts in movement and balance. The Wii Balance Board connects wirelessly to the Wii console and serves as the centerpiece for more than 40 fun activities that challenge users in areas like yoga, aerobics, strength training and balance. Helpful virtual trainers in the game talk users through the different activities and make suggestions for improvement.

"Wii Fit will get you moving whether you've been playing video games for years or this is your first time," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales & marketing. "Wii Fit is easy for anyone to try and is yet another example of how Nintendo continues to expand the world of video games to new audiences."

To celebrate the launch of Wii Fit, Nintendo is holding an interactive release party today for the public in the southwest corner of New York's Central Park, near the Merchants' Gate. "We're looking for everyone to 'get on board' and get excited about their fitness," said celebrity trainer Ashley Borden, who will be on hand to do personal Wii Fit demos and training.

Wii Fit, which has sold more than two million copies in Japan, starts with a simple measurement that calculates an adult user's Body Mass Index, or BMI. From there, the Wii Balance Board accessory can be used as a platform for twirling a virtual Hula Hoop, shredding on a virtual snowboard, performing leg extensions or doing a downward-facing dog yoga pose. Wii Fit contains a wide variety of fun games and physical activities that target the body's core.

Different people in the same household can use Wii Fit and track their progress separately. Users' Mii caricatures even reflect their fitness levels and change as people become more proficient at the activities.

Wii is the first video game system ever included in the President's Challenge, a program of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports that encourages all Americans to make physical activity a part of their daily lives. Wii Fit builds on that honor by encouraging people to keep their bodies moving.

Wii Fit is available today exclusively at the Nintendo World store in New York, and will be at retail stores across the country May 21.

Remember that Wii features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. ...

via Eurogamer


Writer Frank O'Connor has said he is quitting Bungie to continue working on the Halo brand at Microsoft.

"I am leaving you. I am off to work more closely with Microsoft on the Halo franchise, so I shan't be too far away, but I wanted to take this last chance, appropriately enough in a Weekly Update, to tell you a very fond thanks," wrote a teary-eyed "Frankie" on the official Bungie website.

"It was very hard for me to make the decision to move on, but one thing that made it just a bit easier was seeing the amazing work that's coming down the pipe. I was busy working on a story for one of our next games, an experience that is destined to surprise, amaze and entertain like nothing we've ever made before. That game has an amazing team invested in it, and one that will be tasked with building the Next Big Thing. You should see what they've already achieved, you truly should.

"And there are other things rumbling at Bungie, just as secret, just as epic and just as incredible. And the thing that turns all that rumbling into incredible gameplay experiences is, has always been and will always continue to be, the people. The brilliant, talented, industrious gang of geniuses who brought you everything from a monochrome Pong clone to the staggering vistas and vision of Halo 3," added O'Connor.

Frank O'Connor was lead writer at Bungie and oversaw everything from character and combat dialogue to board game scripts to weekly community updates.

He joined the developer after a background in games journalist, writing for Amstrad Action, Total! and Computer and Video Games, the paper one.

Bungie decided to break away from Microsoft and become independent last October, after the third Halo game and conclusion to the sci-fi trilogy had been released.

Microsoft will still retain an equity interest in the developer and continue create titles based on the Halo brand, such as Halo Wars from Ensemble and the Peter Jackson projects. ...

via Computer and Video Games


The transition to its own engine after ditching Epic's "inadequate" Unreal Engine 3 has been "fantastic", says Too Human mastermind Dennis Dyack.

"We completely threw out the Unreal Engine and focused on something that would work for what we're doing, and it's been fantastic," said Dyack, speaking to CVG at Microsoft's spring showcase last week.

In case you missed the commotion, Too Human dev Silicon Knights served Epic with a lawsuit, claiming it was "misled" over how complete the Unreal Engine 3 code actually was, thus putting a pretty big kink in its development schedule for the game.

The developer's now using its own in-house engine work, and thankfully everything's looking good again for the 360 exclusive brawler, which has finally been dated for August 19.

"Co-op is awesome, the number of enemies on screen, the responsiveness, the framerate... everything we're really happy with," said Dyack.

When asked if he felt uncomfortable sharing a room with the Epic team, who were showcasing Gears of War 2 just metres away, Dyack said: "I haven't seen them today, so I can't comment."

Fight! Fight! Fight! etc ...

via Computer and Video Games


Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude developer High Voltage Software has released the first footage of Conduit, its upcoming Wii game that it hopes will 'look like a 360 title.

Speaking last April, High Voltage CEO Kerry Ganofsky said: "Most of the games on the Wii look like crap. We want to change that, so we've invested heavily in our Wii tech over the past year.

"Of course [Wii owners] care about gameplay," he continued, "but we believe if given the choice, they would want great graphics as well. It's just a cop out. With Conduit, we are trying to make a Wii game that looks like a 360 title."

High Voltage claimed that the game would contain real-time shadows, projected lights and interactive water. Based on the trailer posted on IGN, we can confirm that at least of those claims were true - the water does look nice for a Wii game.

Unfortunately, we couldn't really make out any evidence of any of the other stuff. Whilst it does look technically better than a lot of games on Wii, its colour palette makes extensive use of the same metallic gray that we've seen in the research labs and underground corridors of a dozen other generic first person shooters. It all seems a bit too familiar.

Still, graphics aren't everything, right? There still might be a decent first person shooter underneath it all, a genre severely lacking a crowning title on Wii. Maybe High Voltage can still pull this out of the bag yet. ...

via Computer and Video Games


SCE Australia managing director Michael Ephraim says that the PlayStation 3 far outsold Microsoft's Xbox 360 in Australia during the first quarter of 2008.

Ephraim told PALGN that the PS3 outsold Xbox 360 by 45 percent in Australia during Q1 2008, and that he expects the console's domestic installed base to top that of Microsoft's 360 by the end of the year.

"I can tell you in the first quarter of 2008 we have outsold Xbox 360 by around 45 percent," he said. "That is not including the Bravia deal, which moved through around 30,000 units, so if you add the Bravia deal to our global sales we have now, in the first quarter of 2008 we have outsold the Xbox 360 by two to one.

"We think it's a matter of time before we surpass the [Xbox 360] install base... We're just guessing somewhere around the end of the year, if not sooner if the trend keeps going the way it is."

Earlier this month Sony Computer Entertainment Australia announced that the PS3 had reached an installed base of 238,000 during its first year on the market, eclipsing the year one performance of the PS2.

The figure, which came directly from Sony and not official industry sales monitor GfK Australia, may also have included more than 28,000 consoles given away as part of a Sony Bravia LCD holiday promotion. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Sega has yet again released a bunch of screenshots from Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood on DS. Y'know, the RPG title from BioWare.

All twenty-five screenshots look good, but we think we've got all we can from in-game screenshots now. How about some video now, Sega? Preferably some demonstrating the dialogue system, which is top of our list of worries.

Either that or at least some levels overlaid with some vintage Sonic music, like the score from Chemical Plant Zone. Not that we're putting all of our fanboy hopes on this one title or anything.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood will be out sometime this autumn.


Screenshots ...

via Computer and Video Games


Free Radical's creative lead, Derek Littlewood has shunned internet hissy-fits over the revelation that Haze on PS3 doesn't run in native 720p.

Haze is the latest of a number of games to run in a lower frame rate than the HD standard 720p, for the benefit of a smoother frame rate.

Littlewood confirmed that the final game will run in a resolution of 1024 x 576, essentially shaving 144 horizontal lines off of a typical 1024 x 720 picture, but he dismisses critics' "it's not true HD" cries.


In case you're not up on this techy babble, developers occasionally reduce the pixels on screen to help free up some processing power for a smoother frame rate - as did FPS big wigs Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.

Did you notice? Do you care? ...