Games Industry Wire

Blizzard Entertainment has earlier reports confirmed that the Diablo III art director, Brian Morrisroe, has left the World of Warcraft developer to form a startup technology company.
Morrisroe’s departure to a company outside of the games industry “won’t impact” Diablo III’s art design, says a Blizzard representative, according to MTV. This news comes after reports of Blizzard listing a job opening for Morrisroe’s vacated position. This also means that they may or may not chnage the look of the game as some disgruntled fans want.

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Blizzard has announced the launch of World of Warcraft in Russia, with five new localised realms for the game and its expansion, The Burning Crusade.
Gamers in the region will be able to play the MMO in a fully regionalised form, including Russian language support and payment options for roubles. Russian players using a foreign copy can convert their account to the Russian version and transfer their characters to one of the new realms.

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Activision Blizzard, Inc. , which was formed on July 9 as a result of the closing of Activision’s transaction with Vivendi S.A., today announced record stand-alone June quarter financial results for Activision, Inc.
For the quarter ended June 30, 2008, Activision’s stand-alone net revenues were $654.2 million, a 32% increase, as compared to net revenues of $495.5 million reported for the June quarter last fiscal year. Activision’s stand- alone net income for the June quarter was $59.0 million, or $0.18 earnings per diluted share, as compared to net income of $27.8 million, or earnings per diluted share of $0.09 reported for …read more

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Vivendi Games has announced that financial results for the first half of the 2008 fiscal year, with revenues down overall year-on-year by 11.2 per cent . The dropl is largely due to the strong release of World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade in the comparable timeframe last year, while the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, won’t ship for several months yet.

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Here is the latest sales stats by Gamasutra that shows an upsurge in the seven year old Diablo 2 (!!!) Battlechest sales:
PC
North America: 1. Diablo Battle Chest (Blizzard), 2. World of Warcraft Battle Chest (Blizzard), 3. The Sims 2: IKEA Home Stuff (EA Games), 4. Spore Creature Creator (EA Games), 5. The Orange Box (EA Games).

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Looks like another hit for Activision, who has just announced that Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS has sold in excess of 300,000 units in North America in the first seven days since its launch, making it the largest North American launch for the Nintendo DSTM in the company’s history by more than a factor of eight. In addition, Guitar Hero: On Tour’s performance ranks it as one of Activision’s top 5 best-selling launches of any title on any platform in the company’s history. That’s big stuff and that goes to show how popular Guitar Hero is.

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In advance of this weekend’s Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, the frenzy of speculation around what the company’s “big announcement” would be has increased further with Blizzard’s VP of Design, Rob Pardo, hinting that it might be a brand new title.
In a question and answer session that concluded this year’s GDC Paris, Pardo was asked directly if he could talk more about “the new game” that rumours have strongly suggested will be Diablo 3.
“So you want me to announce the game before our announcement?” he said. “No offense, but I think there’s like 300 people here, and I’ll be ripped …read more

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Treyarch has revealed details on Call of Duty: World at War, previously known as Call of Duty 5. Unlike Call of Duty 1, 2 and 4, which were developed by Infinity Ward, World at War is being developed by Treyarch, the developer of Call of Duty 3, and will return The FPS franchise to its WWII roots. Treyarch also revealed to the Official Xbox Magazine that the next Call of Duty will, for the first time, support 4 player co-op over Xbox Live.
I still dont get why do they need to get Treyarch when Infinity Ward just did a …read more

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Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith confirmed the development of two new Tony Hawk games during Activision’s quarterly earnings conference on Thursday. The first Tony Hawk game, arriving this year, is exclusive to the Nintendo DS and will introduce “new technologies not seen on the DS.”

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It has been reported that publishing giant has canceled its ESA membership and will not have a presence on the upcoming E3 show floor and will hold its own offsite press event on the first night of the conference instead.
“After careful consideration, Activision has decided not to renew its ESA membership for business reasons and will not be participating in any official E3 activities,” Activision told IGN in a written statement. “We appreciate the work that the ESA has done over the years in promoting the interactive entertainment industry with state and federal governments and wish the ESA best of …read more

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