Sony's confirmed the rather short list of films to hit the PS3 video store this week.

Adam Sandler fans can get stuck into Funny People which is up for rent, along with more laughs from the comedy Band Slam, starring Aly Michalka and Vanessa Hudgens.

Look to permanent purchases and you'll find 500 Days of Summer, Hardwired, Sority Row, Whiteout, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Smokin' Aces 2: Assassin's Ball.

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

Mobile analytics firm dishes the dirt; says most apps are games
Mobile analytics firm Flurry says it's already tracking more than 200 apps being used by 50 tablet devices on Apple's Cupertino campus.
The company has been able to measure the activity because its technology is being used to provide analytics for the apps.
"Because Flurry could reliably 'place' these devices geographically on Apple's Cupertino campus, we have a fair level of confidence that we are observing a group of pre-release tablets in testing," the company claims.
Develop reported in August last year that Apple was working on a tablet device that would run as a game platform.
The company is expected to unveil the device on Jan 27 at a special press event.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...y-being-played ...

Worldwide sales of New Super Mario Bros Wii have now topped 10 million units, according to the latest figures.

Nikkei Net (translated by Kotaku) says the game sold over 10 million in eight weeks, with over 3 million copies sold in Japan, 4.5 million in the US and 3 million in Europe.

The numbers put it way ahead of Mario Galaxy's total sales to date - as of March last year the Wii title had sold just over 8 million.

Upon its release in Japan, New Super Mario Bros immediately became the fastest-selling Wii game to date in the country with over just over 930,000 units sold in the first week.

It has been awarded ELSPA's Double Platinum sales award indicating sales of over 600,000 in the UK.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lls-10-million ...

Ubisoft's Just Dance has taken the top spot in the UK all-formats chart for a second week running, keeping former number one heavyweight Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at number two.

Elsewhere in the top ten, there was little change from last week, with Wii Fit Plus dropping just one place to number three and Army of Two: The 40th Day and Wii Sports Resort hanging onto their former week positions of four and five respectively.

FIFA 10 climbed two places to six and James Cameron's Avatar: The Game climbed one place to eight.

Assassin's Creed II stepped up one place to nine and Mario Kart Wii re-entered the top ten at number ten, from 12. Meanwhile, SEGA's acclaimed Bayonetta slipped from 7 to 14.

The only new entry to the top 40 was from Capcom's Dark Void, which made its debut at number 33.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame climbed three places to number 16 in the chart. Warner Bros announced earlier today the title has now sold over a million units in the UK since its release at the end of 2008.

The full top 20 for the week ending January 23 is as follows:

01 Just Dance
02 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
03 Wii Fit Plus
04 Army of Two: The 40th Day
05 Wii Sports Resort
06 FIFA 10
07 New Super Mario Bros Wii
08 James Cameron's Avatar: The Game
09 Assassin's Creed II
10 Mario Kart Wii
11 Darksiders
12 Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
13 Forza Motorsport 3
14 Bayonetta
15 Football Manager 2010
16 LEGO Batman: The Videogame
17 Borderlands
18 Wii Play
19 Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
20 Grand Theft Auto IV

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...or-second-week ...

Motion control technologies and stereoscopic 3D are set to combine for brand new gameplaying experiences, according to Sony Europe's senior development manager Simon Benson.

Sony is already pumping a lot of resources into 3D gaming, with titles such as LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, Killzone 2 and Gran Tursimo 5 already being retro fitted with 3D technology. And with the launch of its motion control system due later this year, combining the two technologies is an obvious direction for future videogames.

"The idea of stereoscopic 3D marrying up with the motion controller is a bit of a no-brainer and you can certainly see applications there that open up plenty of opportunities for gameplay," Benson told Eurogamer's Digital Foundry blog. "There are a lot of other things we can achieve too. We're just at the tip of the iceberg with what 3D is going to enable. Once the technology's out there, it'll be interesting to see the things that follow.

According to Benson 3D can also help games designers in the creation of content, making tasks easier than traditional methods.

"Building something with stereoscopic vision... you're putting the thing together in front of you," he said. "Traditionally you have to rely a lot more on grids and revolving cameras to help people understand where they've actually put something.

"In the same way, when we're making 3D models for games, making a building or something... our artists need to spin it around, manipulate it on-screen to know how to build it properly. When you've got stereoscopic vision, that becomes far easier - you just see it before you. You can see how big something is relative to something else. It's not a little thing really close, or a big thing far away. I can understand where it is spatially because I can perceive that with stereoscopic vision. It helps the creation process."

Before joining Sony, Benson worked for British Aerospace and has been working with stereoscopic 3D for 12 years. He added that lessons and practises from industrial design can be incorporated into videogame creation as they have already been proven effective in other areas.

"A lot of cars these days - they don't bother going to all the trouble of making a clay model... they do it in 3D and they all wear 3D glasses to view it that way. It's far more efficient. It's already been proven to be a good creation mechanic."

Ian Bickerstaff, senior programmer at Sony Europe added: "Anything that's out there in the simulation or visualisation industry that's sort of cool and you can imagine the public liking, then you can imagine that rippling through at some point in the future."

"In car design there are immersive walls and there are these things called 'caves' where you have a 3D image on the walls of a cube around you," he continued. "It's typically 120Hz shutter glasses with a head-tracking system and a 120Hz projection screen that you can move around and it's constantly adjusting the image based on your viewing position.

"From a viewing point of view you don't notice that you're in a cube at all. It's constantly recalculating the perspective. So that's been done for many, many years now and it's something we've been familiar with in the simulation industry. It's almost bread and butter really. We can't comment on future R&D but you could imagine the way it could go."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...l-a-no-brainer ...

LEGO Batman: The Videogame has now sold in excess of a million copies in the UK since its release at the end of 2008, Warner Bros has confirmed.

The TT Games-developed title was released following the successes of LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones and subsequently awarded a Children's BAFTA award for best videogame.

"The team at TT Games worked incredibly hard to make LEGO Batman: The Videogame a very fun experience for players," said Tom Stone, managing director for TT Games. "We are delighted to know that so many people are enjoying the game."

"Selling one million units of LEGO Batman: The Videogame in the UK marks a great milestone for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment," said Spencer Crossley, UK sales and marketing director at Warner Bros. "The fact that the title continues to remain on the best-selling charts more than a year after its release is a testament to the best-in-class gameplay TT Games continues to deliver."

The game - available on all of the current generation formats and PC - climbed three places in the all-formats chart this week, from 19 to 16.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-million-in-uk ...

The professor quoted by last week's national newspaper headlines linking video games to rickets is a hero. Why? Because he's now said this: "We do not [suggest] that gaming causes rickets"

You see, no amount of tabloid manipulation can alter those words. They are clean, crisp... true.

Dr Timothy Cheetham, Consultant/Senior Lecturer, at Newcastle University and at the Royal Victoria Infirmary helped write the report from which those headlines were born.

The study found that many kids were not getting enough Vitamin D from sunlight. And a lack of vitamin D can cause rickets.

However, talking to video games analyst Nicholas Lovell (doing a national newspaper journalist's job in his spare time, it seems), Cheetham said:

"I understand METRO has said that we have linked computers to rickets, whereas we are actually saying lack of outdoor activity in childhood is a risk for poor D nutritional state...

"We do not say that gaming causes rickets...

"The average age of a child with rickets is around 20 months old: too young to use a keyboard and mouse!"

In a similar email to games-supporting MP (yes, they exist) Tom Watson, Cheetham's fellow professor, Simon Pearce, who also contributed to the report, went one further.

He said: "No we really didn't do a study to show that, or say that Gaming causes rickets. It was a classic piece of dodgy lazy journalism, taking three words out of PA's hyped-up version of our press release."

Sweet music, hey readers?

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

Gently introducing you to the working week, here's yet another embarrassing Modern Warfare 2 knife kill. We still randomly lob blades into the sky with the hope of landing one of these.

Admittedly it's not quite as good as our last embarrassing kill, but we hope you enjoy it anyway.



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

Sony hopes new shooter MAG can establish the publisher in the competitive FPS sector
Sony believes it can grow its presence in the FPS market, with the arrival of online multiplayer blaster MAG.
The ambitious title is due for release on PS3 next week, and allows 256 players to battle it out online at the same time. It joins Sony’s other big-name first-person shooters Killzone and Resistance.
UK product manager Phil Lynch told MCV: “MAG is a very important IP for us and definitely a key exclusive for PlayStation 3.
“It’s a real statement of intent from us to engage fans of first person shooters everywhere. With the successful Resistance franchise along with Killzone 2 and now MAG, we feel we are a viable choice for gamers looking to get that and much more from their games console.”
The first-person shooter genre boasts some of the bestselling titles of all time and Sony is confident that MAG can match its rivals, as well as building on the success of previous PS3 FPS hits.

“Our sales expectations for MAG are high,” said Lynch.
“Thanks to the massive success of titles like Modern Warfare, Killzone 2 and Resistance, the FPS is more accessible to everyone.”
Lynch added that Sony is working hard to maintain the standard of first party PS3 titles, which has been raised by the likes of Uncharted 2.
He said: “Our first-party games portfolio is getting stronger and stronger with every release, with extremely positive Metacritic scores across the board and various awards honours.
“So our community has justifiably high expectations for everything we take to market, but MAG will definitely be one of the many tipping points for those who haven’t got a PS3.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/37285/PS3-...thold-with-MAG ...