Games Industry Wire

John Riccitello will be rejoining EA as CEO on April 2nd according to published reports. Riccitello is a former COO and President of the massive organization (at least when it comes to gaming organizations).
With the company since the early 1990s, he left the company in 2004 to form Elevation Partners, a private equity firm who invests in media and entertainment companies. Other members of the firm include the former CFO of Apple Computer and U2 lead singer Bono. The company made headlines in 2005 when they bought and merged BioWare and Pandemic Studios. Wikipedia has more on the group.
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Ubisoft whould be thanking it’s lucky stars that the Wii has done so well. It has reported a 78% increase in its January sales according to Joystiq. For those who remember pre-Wii video game announcements, Ubisoft was one of only a handful of publishers who felt the Wii would succeed and adopted its technology early on.
Wii owners know that the market is pretty sparse when in comes to new or unique games for the console. The games it has are for the most part really good. The problem is there aren’t that many of them. Ubisoft answered this by pumping …read more

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Next week the Game Developers Conference will begin and there are expected to be some new announcements. GamePro has some solid news on what will and won’t be happening at the conference.
Topping the list of what I call “almost locks” is Microsoft officially unveiling the Black Xbox 360 (prior coverage here). Halo 3 multiplayer details are also expected to be announced in anticipation of a late spring/early summer launch and an official Halo 3 launch date could also be announced.
In non-microsoft, non-xbox news, Activision may announced their plans for Guitar Hero for the Nintendo Wii. This might be the …read more

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This week it was announced that Gamecube production had ceased. I haven’t shelled out the money for any new system, yet, and this came as a shock to me. a person wwho absolutely adores their Gamecube. Well as it turns out there is not so much to worry about after all. Here is the quote about the rumor:
“I can confirm that globally, Nintendo is still continuing production of GameCube hardware and GameCube software.”
This means that likely the misinterpreted quote from last week was meant that the U.S. would likely be cut off from Gamecube production to better push the Wii …read more

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When talking consoles there are apparently two strategies: The first is to give the end consumer a lower price. The second is to charge them a seemingly insane amount of money and then “reward” their purchase with small freebies. Given the option most consumers would without a doubt go for option one but when deciding what price to charge in Japan Sony went with route number two.
Such freebies range from free movies, to Gran Turismo, and most recently what amounts to a demo of the new Hot Shots Golf. Now these are fine and all but give people some …read more

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The PlayStation 3 is going to launch on March 23rd in Australia with a price tag of nearly $1000…Australian. In U.S. dollars this price is $788 which still astonishes me for a video game console. The price is nearly identical to the price which all of Europe will be paying when the console launches there in March as well.
The reason for the price hike has been explained as a smaller market size = bigger prices with the U.S. getting a deal because we have 300 potential customers. Sure if every newborn and their great grandparents buy one. If this is …read more

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If it seems like this news from Sony is echoing something previously announced it is, for the most part. Sony has now gone on the record to tell Europe that not PS2 game will be able to play on the PS3. This is the same news Sony delivered to the U.S. just before pushing the U.S. launch date back and setting the media on fire with pieces on how poor the PS3 is.
Since then the PS3 now supports 98% of PS2 games which is decent but not quite as nice as 100% backwards compatability. Does this affect sony and …read more

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Joystiq is reporting more news from the liquidation of Clover and the reformation of Seeds. Their VP of marketing addressed questions about Clover by saying that they were integrated into priorly existing portions of Capcom and continue to work on some of their major upcoming titles. Here is a quote from the interview when asked about the employees status:
“”So, for example, some of the team that worked on Clover titles are now helping Takeuchi-san on Resident Evil 5, helping Inafune-san on a new title for the Wii, so I think it’s very much the skill set still stays in the …read more

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Since I already blogged about this topic at my other blog about medical news, Web Medical News, why rewrite the story. Here is is in its entirety:
In an interesting and quirky study, researchers have found that Surgeons who play video games are more skilled and dexterous at performing a specific type of surgery. The study will be published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery and confirms previous reports that playing video games helps hand eye coordination and precision skills. The study focused on the fine laparoscopic surgery.
Perhaps most surprising was that the scores on the test showed video …read more

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GameFly is a service much like Netflix which sends video games to your doorstep for a set monthly fee. The service rates the most requested games by system and can show a good perspective of whats hot and what isn’t:
XBox 360

Crackdown
NBA Street Homecourt
Lost Planet

Wii

Sonic and the Secret Rings
Mario Party 8
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

PlayStation 3

Virtua Fighter 5
Sonic the Hedgehog
Major League Baseball 2k7

PlayStation 2

God of War II
Rogue Galaxy
Ghost Rider

(List via Gamasutra and PS3 Fanboy)

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