US hardware sales have, in line with software sales, seen another year-on-year decline in February, down by 20 per cent to a total of $426.4 million.

The latest NPD Group data does show an increase from January 2010 though, with much of the decline attributable to hardware shortages for both the Wii and PlayStation 3.

This gifted the Xbox 360 its best February result in its history and saw it become the best-selling home console in the US for the first time since September 2007 and the release of Halo 3.

Ultimately though the Nintendo DS remained, as usual, the best-selling console of the month with 613,200 combined sales for the DS Lite and DSi.

Xbox 360 sales came in at 422,000, with the Wii on 397,900 despite the widely reported stock problems and continued media suggestions of declining demand.

PlayStation 3 sales overcame their own stock problem to post a total of 360,100 units sold. This represents a 30 per cent increase on the same time last year.

There were no such excuses for the PSP though, which is now in real danger of being overtaken by the PlayStation 2, at 133,400 unit sales to 101,900.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...nt-in-february ...

US software sales saw another double figure year-on-year decline in February, with revenues down 15 per cent to $624.4 million.

The games market as a whole also fell by 15 per cent, to $1.26 billion. Hardware revenues were down 20 per cent to $426.4 million, while accessories were down 1 per cent to $204.7 million.

The latest figures from the NPD Group are in line with expectations, with analysts from both Wedbush Morgan and Cowan and Company having both suggested that a genuine recovery would not been seen untill at least March.

In terms of individual titles the Xbox 360 version of Take-Two's BioShock 2 was the number one selling game, with sales of 562,900 units. However, despite this success the PlayStation 3 version did not chart in the top ten at all, meaning sales of less than 219,000 units.

Although the first title was initially a 360 console exclusive a subsequent PS3 port was released and the franchise was not until now thought to be especially synonymous with the Xbox brand.

The second highest new entry is EA's Dante's Inferno at number eight and nine, where sales were almost identical across the two formats. The Sony exclusive Divine Edition allowed the PS3 version to just beat out the 360 though, at 242,500 sales to 224,700.

The final new entry of the month was PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain at number ten, with 219,300 unit sales. Quantic Dreams' title was only released on the 23rd of the month, making it difficult to compete with the other new entries.

The rest of the chart is composed of the usual Christmas hits, with New Super Mario Bros. Wii falling only one place to number two, with 555,600 sales. Many other evergreens actually saw a rise in position with the 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 up one to number three with 314,400 sales and the PS3 version up one to number six with 252,800 sales.

After a slow start Ubisoft's Just Dance on Wii continued to perform strongly, up five places to number four with 275,400 units sales. Wii Sports Resort was up one place to number five on 272,500, while Mass Effect 2 fell five places to number seven with 246,500 unit sales.

The full US top ten for February follows:

01 BioShock 2 (360)
02 New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
03 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (360)
04 Just Dance (Wii)
05 Wii Sports Resort (Wii)
06 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
07 Mass Effect 2 (360)
08 Dante's Inferno (PS3)
09 Dante's Inferno (360)
10 Heavy Rain (PS3)

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...nt-in-february ...

Kiss frontman Gene Simmons has let the cat out of the bag: Guitar Hero 6 is on its way.

Okay, so it's not the biggest shock in the world - but it hasn't yet been officially confirmed by Activision.

Simmons told ITN's Game On programme he was "the voice of Guitar Hero 6", as you can see below.

The Game On programme contacted CVG a few moments ago to let us know. Cheers, chaps.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Rally driving game DiRT 3 has been announced by Codemasters and likely hit UK stores in 2011.
In an interview with Edge, Codemasters VP Gavin Cheshire said: “It’s all about letting the teams just innovate. There’s some great stuff coming from Birmingham that’s going into DiRT 3, and obviously you’ve seen Bodycount.”
He also suggested the developer may focus more on the British side of rallying in the sequel to Colin McRae: DiRT 2.
“DiRT 2 is a brilliant game but it’s all American accents, so maybe we’re a little over the top with those. Maybe we should fly the flag a bit more.”
“In DiRT 3, I’m not saying we’re throwing all the codebase away, but we’re throwing the thoughts away and coming out with something fresh and new. Because if you don’t innovate, you’re dead.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/37989/DiRT...by-Codemasters ...

via Gizmodo


Sony has just confirmed with us that PlayStation Move cannot support 4 players in its full configuration.

The complete experience of PlayStation Move requires two controllers per person, either two PlayStation Move wands or one wand and one sub (nunchuk-like) controller.

In a four-player game, that arrangement would equate to eight total controllers. But there's a problem that arose when we were pricing the Move peripherals. The PlayStation 3's Bluetooth support is limited to only seven connections. That would put Sony one controller short. Sports Champions, for instance, is a PS3 title in which you can wield a motion-controlled sword and shield. In a theoretical four-person configuration, such wouldn't be possible with fewer than eight connections.

So we contacted the company, and they clarified:
So the total is actually quite a bit less than seven.

Does this mean that four players can't enjoy PlayStation Move titles at once? Absolutely not. Each player could use a single Move controller, much like some Wii titles need only the Wiimote. However, it does mean that designers are severely limited in what they can offer.

The good news is, absolutely none of this is confusing at all. ...

I bring to all the updated figures of console shifts in Japan.

• Playstation Portable: 64,808
• Nintendo Wii: 33,880
• Playstation 3: 28,824
• Nintendo DSi LL: 23,611
• Nintendo DSi: 15,017
• NintendoDS Lite: 4,316
• Xbox 360: 2,764
• Playstation 2: 1,839
• Playstation Portable Go: 1,275

As usual in rough figures: PSP tops the list once more, up 27,500. Wii is 2nd, down 2,400. Playstation 3 follows, up 1,050. DSi LL (XL) is 4th, down 1,000. DSi follows, down 500. DS lite come 6th, down 700. Xbox is 7th, up 200. PS2 is down 70 and last in line again is the PSP Go, down 21.

Figures from Media Create. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Early purchasers of the western version of Yakuza 3 are discovering that a huge amount of content that was in the Japanese version has been cut.

It was previously known that the Japanese original's hostess bars would be chopped, as Kotaku reports, but it seems reams of other content, including several sub-quests and mini games, are missing from the western version.

It's reported that the cuts were due restricted development time, despite the game arriving here over a year after the Japanese release with no English-language voicing (subtitles only).

Posters on the game's official forums have put together a list of stuff they've notice missing:
It still looks great though. CVG sister mag PSM3 slapped a 9/10 on the end of their praising Yakuza 3 review. Check it out through the link. ...

via Eurogamer


Peter Molyneux has told Eurogamer that he doesn't think PlayStation Move is the same kind of step forward as Microsoft's Project Natal, but admits he fancies a crack on Sony's new magic wand controller.
Check out the full Eurogamer interview with Peter Molyneux at GDC 2010 for details on this week's Fable III revelations and what we can expect Molyneux to be speaking about at E3. ...

Palm just showed us the Unreal Engine 3 running on webOS, which apparently took a couple weeks to port over to the platform using that fancy new PDK. It runs at a pretty smooth clip, with just a tiny bit of artifacting in our enemy's death animation. As an added bit of wow factor, Palm has it currently setup to demonstrate the game at 1 fps when in card view. Like most touchscreen shooters, this doesn't really solve the problem of simulating dual analog sticks, but it's still a fun and good looking engine for a mobile device. We're still unaware of any games that have been built for the mobile engine, which has now been shown for iPhone, Tegra 2, and will be headed to the iPad as well, but we have to assume we'll be seeing some before too long.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/u...eve-got-video/ ...