Cowen & Company industry watcher believes brawler the only new release to sell more than 250k units in April; industry expected to turn positive beginning in August with Madden.
NetherRealm's DC Comics brawler Injustice: Gods Among Us sold around 424,000 units in the United States last month, according to research firm Cowen & Company. The financial services company believes the game was April's only new release to sell more than 250,000 units.
Research firm NPD Group will release April US industry sales after market close Thursday and it's expected to be another month of declines, according to Cowen & Company.
The firm believes year-over-year software sales will slide 14 percent, due in part to a negative impact by Easter falling in March this year. Overall, total packaged game sales are expected to fall 13 percent, Cowen & Company believes.
The major publishers will all see declines, with the exception of take-Two Interactive, Cowen & Company said. Activision (-25 percent) and Electronic Arts (-32 percent) will suffer, while Take-Two is expected to be up 51 percent year-over-year thanks to "continued solid sales" of BioShock Infinite, which released in March.
The industry may be hurting right now, but Cowen & Company believes the trend will turn positive beginning in August with Madden NFL 25. Growth will then began to balloon in September and October thanks to high-profile blockbusters Grand Theft Auto V and Battlefield 4.
Irrational Games cofounder getting to work on BioShock Infinite follow-up, is inspired by Mad Men and Ocean's 11, Full Metal Jacket directors.
BioShock designer and Irrational Games cofounder Ken Levine is writing a new game.
"Game writing this afternoon. This is something else," Levine said on Twitter today.
Asked by a Twitter user what he looks to for inspiration, Levine called out period drama Mad Men, as well as the work of film directors Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood,) the Coen brothers (No Country for Old Men) Stanley Kubrick (Full Metal Jacket), and Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's 11).
Levine also said he is inspired by the work of British playwright and film writer Tom Stoppard (Brazil), as well as composer Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd).
"I don't have a thought for our next game, so it's kind of hard to even think about that," he said at the time.
Irrational Games currently lists 17 open positions on its website running the gamut of development. However, some appear to be outdated, as a requisition for level designer states the studio's current project is BioShock Infinite.
An image accompanying the listing shows the text "Steam Trading Card beta access" in a style similar to the other community tools currently available on the PC, Mac, and Linux digital distribution platform. The Steam Trading Card entry was previously filed in the Steam database as CookiesTestApp20352.
Users can already trade in-game items and Steam gifts with each other, as well as sell certain items for Steam Wallet money using the Steam Marketplace.
One popular theory on the Steam Forums is that Valve is making an easy-to-use method of identifying reputable traders across its various community marketplaces.
Another common idea is that Valve might be working to introduce support for trading card games into the Steam framework. Blizzard is currently working on a trading card game of its own with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and other TCG's like Magic the Gathering are already available in some form on Steam.
Executive producer Casey Hudson teases it would be "cool to do something completely unrelated to the larger storyline."
BioWare has offered a new tease concerning possible spin-offs to the Mass Effect series. Executive producer Casey Hudson, who is leading development on the next Mass Effect, told OXM it would be "cool" for an upcoming game to tell an entirely new story, separate from the main arc.
"There's so much that could be told in the Mass Effect universe," Hudson said. "It'd be cool to do something completely unrelated to the larger storyline, like a story about a private investigator on the Citadel. Or maybe something detailing Garrus' time in C-Sec."
Other BioWare staffers like Mac Walters (lead writer), Dusty Everman (level designer), Mike Gamble (producer), and Preston Watamaniuk (lead designer) said characters like Aria, The Illusive Man, Kai Leng, and Javik would all be deserving of their own spin-offs.
Destiny developer says "We don't speak to NASA, they speak to us" to consult on upcoming game.
Bungie's relationship with NASA has been a "constant source of inspiration" during the development of upcoming shared-world shooter Destiny. As part of the studio's latest Mail Sack feature, Bungie said it is in awe of the aerospace agency.
"We don't speak to NASA, they speak to us," Bungie said. "We’re pretty star struck, and they continue to be a constant source of inspiration for us."
Dr. Craig Hardgrove, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, visited Bungie's offices in January. Hardgrove has worked in planetary space exploration since 2004, assisting on the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. He is also a self-professed gamer.
Writing on Twitter this weekend, Hardgrove said, "Just saw the Mail Sack. Here's 1/2 of your wish," with an accompanying link showing a sunset on Mars.
It is not clear what Hardgrove and Bungie discussed during his trip to the developer or what the other half of the developer's wish may be. A Bungie representative was not immediately available to comment on the nature of the NASA-Bungie relationship.
Wii-exclusive follow-up Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World also rumoured to be included.
GameCube RPG Tales of Symphonia could be getting an HD re-release on PlayStation 3, a new report claims.
Its Wii-exclusive follow up Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is also reported to be included, with the PlayStation 3 game being packaged as the Tales of Symphonia: Perfect Edition.
Hideo Baba, manager of the Tales series, told Spanish website Koi-Nya the two-game collection would be "a representation of the dreams and hopes of the fans, who have long been wanting it" but would offer no addional details.
GameSpot awarded Tales of Symphonia an 8.8 upon its original release in 2004. "Fans of Japanese role-playing games will take to its style and the depth of its battle system, and those curious about the genre and who loathe the idea of turn-based battle and scads of random encounters will appreciate the quick fighting pace. While the story may rely a bit too much on cliché, the ride is still worthwhile. If you have a GameCube and like RPGs, you definitely need to check out Tales of Symphonia," said the GameSpot review.
Black Ops II rises to second, The Walking Dead charts at ninth, and Persona 4 Arena fails to make the top 10.
Dead Island: Riptide has managed a third week atop the UK charts, albeit with a 55 percent drop in sales.
It is the second game of the year to manage three weeks at number one, following BioShock Infinite back in March.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II jumps to second place thanks to cut-price promotions, followed by Tomb Raider in third and Injustice: Gods Among Us in fourth.
FIFA 13 is fifth, BioShock Infinite sixth, Assassin's Creed III seventh, and Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins eighth.
The highest new entry of the week came from The Walking Dead in ninth, a disc-based version of Telltale's episodic game based on the comic series that was previously available digitally.
Luigi's Mansion 2 landed in tenth, denying new release Persona 4 Arena a top 10 finish in its first week on sale.
The Top 20 UK chart for the week ending May 11:
1. Dead Island: Riptide 2. Call of Duty: Black Ops II 3. Tomb Raider 4. Injustice: Gods Among Us 5. FIFA 13 6. BioShock Infinite 7. Assassin's Creed III 8. Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins 9. The Walking Dead 10. Luigi's Mansion 2 11. Persona 4 Arena 12. Far Cry 3 13. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen 14. God of War: Ascension 15. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes 16. Defiance 17. The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim 18. Need for Speed: Most Wanted 19. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City 20. Grand Theft Auto IV
Latest company earnings report highlights sales increase compared to same period last year; Guild Wars 2 accounts for 21 percent of sales.
Publisher NCsoft has released its latest earnings report, which shows that sales for the company were down in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the fourth quarter of 2012.
The report said that company sales were down 35 percent and net income was down 49 percent compared to the previous quarter. However, when compared to the same period in 2012, sales were actually up 31 percent and net income was up 322 percent due to strong showings from Guild Wars 2, Lineage 1, and Aion.
Guild Wars 2 accounted for 21 percent of sales in the first quarter, while Blade and Soul accounted for 9 percent and Aion with 16 percent. 13 percent of NCsoft's sales total worldwide were from North America, while 8 percent of it was from Europe. 64 percent of its sales were from its home country, Korea.
NCsoft managing director Seong Chan Nah added that the publisher was planning on a Guild Wars 2 expansion pack, though its release date had yet to be finalized. For more information, check out the full report here.
Proceeds from real money auction house glitch to go to Children's Miracle network hospitals.
Diablo III production director John Hight announced on the Battle.net forums that all profits made by Diablo III players who exploited last week's gold-multiplying bug will be donated to charity.
The proceeds made through the game's real money auction house by the suspended or banned players will be given to the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. This includes the player's sale proceeds and Blizzard's transaction fees.
As reported previously, the bug allowed players to duplicate gold from stacks of a million to 10 million via the game's real money auction house. This in turn made Blizzard shut down the auction house temporarily from May 7 until late last Friday on May 10. According to the forum post, only a few players had the funds to take advantage of the bug, with 415 of those players using the bug for personal gain. Players who were caught exploiting the bug were either been banned or had their account rolled back.
About 85 percent of the duplicate gold had been removed, according to Hight. Efforts to remove more duplicate gold from the economy are currently underway, as doing a complete rollback will bring the game's servers down and delete all player progress.
SMITE tournaments are being hosted by Hi-Rez Studios in the North American and European regions; $1000 prize pool per tournament is up for grabs each week.
Hi-Rez Studios have announced a weekly tournament series for battleground game SMITE. The tournaments will be hosted separately in North America and Europe, with a $1000 prize pool up for grabs each week per tournament.
Teams who are interested in participating can register for a single region and compete on a weekly basis. Games are streamed live on Twitch, and kick off at 12pm EST on Saturdays in North America, and 9am EST on Sundays in Europe.
A list of team brackets, live-stream details, and additional information can be found on the SMITE website.
SMITE is a third-person multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game. Players control a character inspired by mythical deities alongside their team. Each team fights to control the arena, and works toward defeating the opposing team's NPC boss.
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