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by Published on June 14th, 2011 13:11- Categories:
- PSP News,
- PS3 News,
- PS2 News,
- Nintendo DS News,
- Nintendo Wii News,
- PC News,
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US boxed video game sales in May 2011 totalled $743.1 million, a 14 per cent decline on the same period in 2010 and the lowest since October 2006.
That's according to data released by the NPD Group, which reported that software sales were down 19 per cent to $375.8 million and hardware down 5 per cent to $228.9 million. Accessories was also down 6 per cent to $114 million.
"Keeping in mind that these sales figures represent just the new physical portion of the market for video game hardware, software, and accessories and not the growing portion of the industry that is comprised of digital format content distribution, May 2011 was the lowest month of sales for the industry since October 2006," said the company. "A light slate of new releases is at the heart of this month's performance."
Sales of the PlayStation 3, PSP and Xbox 360 were all up over May 2010, with 360 seeing the highest increase.
NPD noted that "sales of the 3DS were light, but with next Sunday's release of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, we will begin to see a slate of strong content come to market for the 3DS, which should help to significantly boost sales of hardware during the remainder of 2011."
"Combined sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360 (HD hardware) are up 28 per cent for the month and 21 per cent year to date. Although the declines in console hardware sales in 2011 are attributable to the Wii, the platform remains the best-selling of this generation at nearly 36 million installed in the US."
NPD suggested that at the current rate of growth and decline, the Wii will still maintain the lead in the console space, although the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will have closed the gap. "Of course, new details on hardware introduction could certainly change the picture," added the company.
During May there were 42 new software SKUs released compared to 58 last year and 72 for May 2009.
"Keep in mind that purchases of content are increasingly occurring in digital format, and May saw a notable digital release in the second map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops which was titled Escalation. Undoubtedly, this shifted some dollars that might have been spent on new physical content at retail," noted NPD.
The biggest release of the month was Team Bondi's L.A. Noire, followed by Brink, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat.
The top ten best sellers for May follow:
01 L.A. Noire (360, PS3)
02 Brink (360, PS3, PC)
03 LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean (Wii, 360, DS, 3DS, PS3, PSP, PC)
04 Portal 2 (360, PS3, PC)
05 Mortal Kombat (PS3, 360)
06 Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, DS, PC)
07 Zumba Fitness: Join the Party (Wii, 360, PS3)
08 NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC)
09 Just Dance 2 (Wii)
10 LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (Wii, DS, 360, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...e-october-2006 ...by Published on June 13th, 2011 15:26- Categories:
- PSP News,
- PS3 News,
- PS2 News,
- Nintendo DS News,
- Nintendo 3DS News,
- Nintendo Wii News,
- PC News,
- Xbox 360 News
Duke Nukem Forever, the FPS which began development fifteen years ago and seemed to have stalled irrevocably several times during development, has debuted at number one in the UK charts despite a Metacritic rating of just 50 per cent on Xbox 360 - its leading platform by sales.
The game sold 56 per cent of its copies for the 360, six per cent of which were the £64.99 special edition version. It pushes L.A. Noire, also from publisher Take-Two down into second place for the first time since its release. Sales of L.A. Noire dropped by 54 per cent from last week.
505 Games' multi-platform workout game, Zumba Fitness, climbs a place to third, putting PS3 exclusive Infamous 2 in fourth place on its debut week. LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean drops to fifth place from second, with DiRT 3 slipping to sixth from third.
THQ's Red Faction Armageddon debuts at eighth, with seventy per cent of sales on Microsoft's console.
This Week Last Week Title
1 New Entry Duke Nukem Forever
2 1 L.A. Noire
3 4 Zumba Fitness
4 New Entry Infamous 2
5 2 LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean
6 3 DiRT 3
7 5 Brink
8 New Entry Red Faction Armageddon
9 7 Call of Duty: Black Ops
10 9 Portal 2
11 8 FIFA 11
12 6 Wii Sports Resort
13 13 Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
14 12 Art Academy
15 10 The Sims 3: Generations
16 14 Hunted: The Demon's Forge
17 15 Just Dance 2
18 11 Mario Kart
19 17 Crysis 2
20 18 Wii Fit 2
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...from-l-a-noire ...by Published on June 13th, 2011 15:19
Sony has said that the cost of the PlayStation Network hack - currently expected to be $170 million for this financial year - won't have an impact on hardware or software development budgets in the PlayStation business.
The bill comes at a time when Sony's PlayStation division had reported a profit of $435 million for the last financial year, off the back of falling hardware costs and better games sales - although the entire Sony Corporation suffered a $3.14 billion loss.
"It's a cost for which we'll have to make provisions and that I think we, ironically, were also at the same time talking about very, very strong profitability for our division overall," European president Andrew House told GamesIndustry.biz last week at E3.
There's a very good and sensible reason why we haven't clarified exact timing in regions and geographies - we were significantly impacted by the events of March 11
"I'm hoping that profitability will allow us to just sustain our business at the operational level in much the same way as we would have done without any of this happening."
The PSN hack isn't the only disaster to affect Sony this year. The Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March had a devastating effect on manufacturing, and it's this disruption that has left the PlayStation division unable to define a solid release date in any regions for the new PlayStation Vita handheld.
"There's a very good and sensible reason why we haven't clarified exact timing in regions and geographies - we were significantly impacted by the events of March 11 in Japan," said House.
"We've undertaken, across Sony but also SCEE, a significant assessment of impact on our supply chain and what we think the long or medium term impact is going to be. Once we've completed that assessment and have a full understanding of what our supply chain looks like then we'll be in a position to be more specific about launch in specific regions."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...o-game-budgets ...by Published on June 13th, 2011 15:11- Categories:
- PS3 News
The Spanish national police force's website was knocked offline for about an hour yesterday by hacker collective Anonymous.
The group claimed in a statement that the distributed denial of service attack launched on the site was "an act of peaceful protest" in direct response to the arrest of three Spanish men linked to the recent PSN hack.
Spanish authorities said the cause of the outage has not yet been determined.
But Anonymous said: "It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary to arrest three of our fellow anons, ... which you claim to be the leaders of Anonymous and for their participation in DDoS attacks against various websites...
"First and foremost, DDoSing is an act of peaceful protest on the Internet. The activity is no different than sitting peacefully in front of a shop denying entry. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest...
"Regardless of how many times you are told, you refuse to understand. There are no leaders of Anonymous. Anonymous is not based on personal distinction...
"Arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest is one of the fundamental pillars of any democracy...
"You have not detained three participants of Anonymous. We have no members and we are not a group of any kind. You have, however, detained three civilians expressing themselves...
"You are providing us with the fuel, but now you must expect the fire."
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...by Published on June 13th, 2011 15:09- Categories:
- PS3 News,
- Playstation Vita News
Sony Computer Entertainment is "always open" to third-party exclusives, European boss Andrew House has told CVG.
Speaking to our E3 team in Los Angeles last week, House pointed to new PS3 exclusive Dust 514 as "a great example of having an approach from a developer".
Asked if Sony's in the market for more deals like Dust, the SCEE boss replied: "Absolutely. I think there are clearly opportunities where developers or publishers want to focus their resources on a single platform - usually the one they think delivers the best experience for their vision around the game. That was the case with Dust and the guys from CCP.
"So yes, we're always open to those sorts of approaches," he added. "I think you're right... we're not going to see as much exclusive focus because the increased cost of development does preclude that to a degree. But clearly there are opportunities out there and we'd love to explore them.
"I think you've got a few opportunities in the year when you want to attract some attention and make some news. E3 is one of those. Hopefully we've got some more interesting things up our sleeves for later on this year."
Two high profile PS3 exclusives notable in their E3 absence were Sony's Last Guardian and Rockstar's elusive Agent.
On the latter, House said he's "not brave enough to talk about Sam [Houser]'s creations on his behalf", while he blamed Last Guardian's no-show on the team being "hard at work". See his full answer in video form above.
In the same interview, House said £229 retailer listings for Vita are "where I would have predicted" and that Sony feels the price point needs to be "aggressive" in order to build momentum for the impressive portable.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...by Published on June 10th, 2011 21:13
Spanish police are reporting the arrest of three members of the Anonymous hacktivist collective after an extensive operation in the country. The investigations were in retaliation to the hacking of government websites last year.
The report, carried by Meristation, and translated by VG247, says that members were arrested in Barcelona, Valencia and Almeria. One of those members operated a server from her home in Gijon, Northern Spain, which was used to perpetrate denial of service attacks against websites and agencies all over the world, apparently including Sony's.
The report quotes the domains compromised in attacks involving the server as "Sony Playstation Store, BBVA, Bankia, ENEL and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand."
Spain's Technological Investigation Brigade of the National Police reportedly tracked through 200,000 lines of chatlogs to narrow down potential suspects and locations before making the arrests after almost nine months of investigation. Police claim to have found software at the site of the arrests "specifically designed for the creation of malware."
The suspects will be charged with criminal damage, discovery and disclosure of secrets and conspiracy in Spanish courts. It has not yet been revealed whether any of the detainees could face extradition charges.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...nymous-members ...by Published on June 10th, 2011 21:04- Categories:
- PS3 News
Sony's said it has nothing to announce regarding cross-game chat for PlayStation 3, despite the feature being confirmed for its new portable, PlayStation Vita this weekend.
At its E3 press conference this week Sony showed off the PSP successor's online features, which include the ability to talk to friends no matter which game they're playing.
However, when the CVG E3 team caught up with SCE Europe boss Andrew House at the show, he said there's still no update on when or if the long-requested feature will be coming to its home console.
"No, [there are] really not any new announcements to put on that," he said. "We know that it's a huge thing out there. We have continued to do much R&D in the area, but we don't have anything to announce right now."
In the same interview House said £229 retailer listings for Vita are "where I would have predicted" and that Sony feels the price point needs to be "aggressive" in order to build momentum for the impressive portable.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...by Published on June 10th, 2011 09:50
PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai has admitted that Sony "may never know" exactly what data hackers stole during the PSN security breach in April.
Speaking to BBC Click, Hirai said the company knew "information was accessed" for up to 100m accounts, but could not be certain "what part... [was] actually taken from our servers."
He added: "The people that intruded our systems are very good in hiding their tracks as they left our systems, so we might not know for a very long time or we may never know."
Hirai also revealed that Sony did not know if "any credit card information was taken", explaining that the company "shared that as a potential possibility" in the interests of consumer safety.
Despite the media focus on Sony, he insisted: "It's certainly not just a Sony issue, but more of a corporate issue for everybody. As you probably know, even in this past week or so there have been other organisations and companies where a similar sort of intrusion has occurred."
Asked what Sony had learned from the experience, he replied: "Whether we're talking about a large corporation like Sony as well as smaller organisations, whoever deals with personal information as well as credit card information needs to be very vigilant about how that data is being secured.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...r-know-details ...by Published on June 10th, 2011 09:32
Sony deputy president and PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai has claimed that online hacks pose a risk to society itself.
In an interview with the Guardian, Hirai said of the recent PSN security crisis that: "this isn't something that is a Microsoft issue or a Sony issue or limited to one or two companies. This is actually a lot bigger than that."
Observing that the likes of the FBI had also seen recent online security breaches, he felt that "It's large enough to the extent that we're talking about any and all companies, organisations and entities that deal in the online space – which is pretty much everyone at this stage, isn't it?
"It's a threat, not just to Sony or a couple of other companies, but to the very fabric of society. Therefore it requires individuals and companies to be very vigilant, which goes without saying, and we need help from various government, various enforcement agencies and legislation in certain instances as well. And this needs to be a worldwide effort."
Hirai also disputed that Sony had unnecessarily bided its timed before revealing the nature of the PSN outage to its users. "You can't just go out there and drop a statement like that without being able to answer some fundamental questions... So I don't think we "waited" a week. I think it took a week to make sure that we had, at least what we thought was enough information that was credible at the time before we made any announcements."
He claimed that the person or persons behind the PSN hack had not yet been identified, but that Sony was working with the FBI and other law organisations in the hope of tracking down the culprit.
In response to whether he believed smartphones and tablets posed a threat to the upcoming PSVita, Hirai argued that "We're catering to a completely different market," and that the PlayStation Suite for Android was Sony's answer to the rise of phone-based gaming.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ric-of-society ...by Published on June 10th, 2011 00:15- Categories:
- PS3 News
Sony's got some wonderful ideas here at E3 2011, but the company's left quite a few threads for journalists to sew up -- what's the battery life like? How much will continuous client gameplay cost? Just how does that split-screen 3D monitor work? Sony's 3D gaming czar Mick Hocking flew in from Liverpool to talk stereoscopy with the press, and we've got some answers for that last one. What you see above is an LCD panel that refreshes at 240Hz, and delivering 3D at 60 frames per second to each eye, by using the typical active shutter glasses technique of blocking light to your left eye when the "right" image is displayed, and vice versa for the right eye. However, the glasses have a special button that makes both lenses of one player's glasses display images for the left eye, and both lenses of another player display images for the right, allowing each to have their own 60fps feed all the time for private split-screen gaming.
While that potentially means you could use these glasses on non-Sony 3DTVs too and get the same effect (or, you know, just pick up a Sharp Quattron 3D or Vizio Versus, which do much the same thing). Hocking told us that this particular unit also does additional software processing to reduce ghosting. But what of games? The 3D guru said there'll be a number of titles supporting the feature when the monitor hits this fall, and that other 3D titles could potentially (and easily) be patched if they also support split-screen to begin with. Hocking says developer enthusiasm's been particularly intense for split-screen, even more so than the holographic and head-mounted display technologies that Sony's working on, and we may see the feature integrated in Bravia televisions should the idea take off.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/09/s...-heres-how-it/ ...- Search DCEmu
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