Games Cheats and Reviews

Following a brief surge by the PlayStation 3 thanks to last month’s release of Yakuza 4, the Nintendo DS is back on top in Japan. Nintendo’s handheld managed to move a total of 36,459 units across its three SKUs compared to the PS3’s 28,973 (via GamesIndustry.biz).

In a week where hardware sales were generally down, the PSP-3000 managed to outperform the individual Nintendo DS SKUs with a total of 29,766 units sold. The PlayStation 2 and the PSP Go brought up the rear with 1,425 and 1,826 units respectively.

In the wake of last month’s major releases, the major competitors all recorded a sizable drop this month. PSP sales dropped by nearly 6000 units, while PlayStation 3 fell by 10,000 units and the Wii and DS both fell by around 5000 units. By comparison, the Xbox 360 actually managed to buck that trend with a small increase of around 500 units sold.

As part of his monthly NPD review, Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews takes a wider lens view of the past few years — and finds "the industry is actually fairly stable."

Gamasutra: During 2009, we repeatedly looked back not to 2008 but to 2007 for a more reasonable comparison of the monthly revenue figures. The video game buying spree that consumers embarked upon in 2008 carried over at least through January 2009. In fact, February 2009 is the last month in which the industry had reported strong growth.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Jamie MacDonald, former Vice President of Sony Worldwide Studios (the company responsible for EyeToy), gave out a few pointers to Sony and Microsoft regarding their respective motion controllers. MacDonald warned that gamers are expecting more from the 360 and PS3’s motion gaming than they do from the Wii, due to both consoles’ beefier hardware. However, he also warned about implementing "traditional long-form gameplay," lengthy sessions of which would leave players "completely knackered."

GI.Biz writes: "HanbitSoft has acquired the worldwide publishing rights to Flagship Studios’ and Namco Bandai’s cult RPG Hellgate: London and plans to bring the game back to Europe and the US this year.

The servers for the game were closed down in the West in January last year, after developer Flagship Studios went bust. Legal issues had prevented the game from being published outside of Korea until now."

Dene Carter is one of an increasing number of developers that has moved from making traditional games with a renowned studio to setting up a small casual-focused developer. Having served at Lionhead, and having played an integral role in the creation of the first two Fable games, Carter brings vast experience to his Fluttermind studio, which recently released Flaboo! on the iPhone.

As the leading platform in digital distribution, Steam is the benchmark by which all others are judged. It’s the platform all PC games want to be on, and although Valve won’t reveal official market share numbers, it’s clearly leading, growing and inspiring the online game sales market more than any other service.

Here, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, business development director Jason Holtman throws light on how Steam has evolved over the past five years, and addresses some concerns about the size of Steam, it’s relationship with Valve’s own games and the recent boycotts of Modern Warfare 2 by rival online service.

Posted via web from gre2’s posterous

Sony has told GamesIndustry.biz that sales of PSP hardware are up 100 per cent in the UK, following the launch of the PSPgo.

Sales of the PSP-3000 have also grown, as the hardware benefits from the release of the long-awaited Gran Turismo for PSP on UMD and EA’s FIFA 10, which this weekend broke records for the franchise.

Chart-Track has told GamesIndustry.biz that sales of the PlayStation 3 have rocketed 999 per cent over the past week.

Sony introduced the new, slimmer SKU last Tuesday, and although Chart-Track does not reveal actual sales numbers, Dorian Bloch, director of the firm called the growth "a huge increase".

Amidst the buzz of the annual MI6 marketing conference in San Francisco, Bethesda Softworks’ Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing, sat down with GamesIndustry.biz for this exclusive interview to discuss targeting broader demographics, The Pitt downloadable content debacle, and whether Jerry Bruckheimer will make an Oblivion movie.