UK Sales Chart Image after the jump.

The news comes during a week of rumblings that NCsoft’s Austin office may be on the verge of laying off staff or closing, a rumor that NCsoft vehemently denies.

Lineage and Lineage II both saw a drop in sales compared to last quarter as did Guild Wars, while City of Heroes and City of Villains as well as Tabula Rasa saw an increase in sales from the previous quarter, according to the earnings release.

The report goes on to say that NCsoft completed the third stage of closed beta testing for Aion on July 20. Beta testers were able to play Aion’s core features including Realm vs. Realm in the Abyss, a designated zone where the two factions, Elyos and Asmodians, constantly battle for various fortresses as well as abundant item crafting, new quests, better user interface, and higher level character advancement.

The company plans to start an open beta test for Aion and launch the game in Korea in the fourth quarter of the year, according the report. The game will launch internationally within three to six months of the Korean launch.

The company also plans to start beta testing for three casual games in 2008: Love beat, Punch Monster, and Dragonica.

“In order to maintain our ongoing development cycles and a diverse game portfolio, multiple games are in development currently across all NCsoft studios,” said NCsoft’s CFO Jaeho Lee. “We anticipate publishing these new titles within the next two to three years, during which we believe we’ll maintain NCsoft’s status as a leader in the global on-line game market.”

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.

“Regarding Brian, he recently resigned to form a startup technology company (outside the game industry), which is why we’ve posted about the open position. This change won’t impact the game,” said a representative.

“We’re really pleased with the look and feel that Brian helped create for Diablo III, and the new person we bring onboard will work with the other artists on the team to maintain the art style moving forward.”

via Gamesindustry.biz

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.

Two new Russian language realms have been opened for new character creation only, while three will be opened for free character migration.

However, the Russian accounts have different restrictions on them compared to the standard European ones. With a Russian-only account customers can play on Russian realms only, and have to pay their subscription in roubles. With a European account gamers can play on both European realms and Russian realms, but need to pay in European currencies.

World of Warcraft currently boasts 10.9 million active subcribers worldwide, with significant player bases across North America, Europe and China. The latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is due before the end of 2008.

Source

Revenue and operating income were also both down year-on-year, by 6.4 per cent to JPY 90 billion (USD 830 million) and by 65 per cent to JPY 1.5 billion (USD 13.8 million) respectively.

However, the company is still predicting revenue and operating income to show slight growth by the end of March 2009, with full year targets of 470 billion (USD 4.3 billion) and 38 billion (USD 351 million) respectively - although profit is expected to fall in the same period by 31 per cent compared to full year 2008.

The videogames section of the business was actually the only segment to show sales growth in Q1 year-on-year, up 3.8 per cent to JPY 25.5 billion (USD 235 million).

Japan saw the majority of the company’s unit sales, with 1.7 million titles sold, while Europe was responsible for 1.39 million, North America for 740,000 and the rest of Asia for 113,000.

Those numbers are set to jump following new releases to 13.4 million in Japan for the full year, 5.68 million in Europe, 5.46 million in North America and 300,000 in the rest of Asia.

In Q1 the most popular title was Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3, selling 420,000 units in Europe, followed by Japanese duo Taiko Drum Master for DS 2 on 260,000 and Tales of Symphonia on 215,000.

The PlayStation 2 platform was the company’s best-selling console for games with 1.15 million units sold for it, followed by the Nintendo DS on 985,000 and the PlayStation Portable on 769,000.

Source

“It seems like we have plenty of options,” company president and founder Martin Walfisz told VG247. “We’ve had some good meetings here [at the Develop conference.]”

“Being a part of a merger like this is a strange situation, because obviously the new organisation has to look over all of its assets, everything it owns and its strategy for the future. For the past six months we’ve been waiting for the merger to go through and to understand whether they see us as a part of their future or not.

“Apparently they didn’t want an RTS studio in Europe, and to be honest we would have loved to have worked with Activision, but we’re pretty confident in our capabilities and there are not many studios that can match our quality.”

Company VP David Polfeldt added that Massive was working on the expansion to World in Conflict for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 alongside Swordfish - but Walfisz revealed that while Activision Blizzard won’t be publishing the titles, it does own the IP.

“That’s part of the whole situation now. In theory they could sell World in Conflict separately from Massive. I think that any buyer would like to make sure it goes together, but we don’t own it. Activision owns it, so that’s their call.

“I think that right now everyone is in ‘wait and see’ mode and just want to know what the future holds,” he said. “But Massive has been in tough situations before in the past 12 years, and we’ve always come out stronger. Most of the guys in the company at least have faith in our ability to find a really interesting future.”

No details on timescale, or who the potential suitors might be, were revealed - although one Europe-based publisher has been strongly linked to the studio.

Source

Update: Since this story was published, the ESRB removed the GTA IV listing for PC from its public online database. However, the ESRB has not sent out a retraction letter to subscribers of the ESRB update service.

Bully, a third-person perspective action game set in a schoolyard, was originally released on Sony’s PlayStation 2 back in October of 2006. The enhanced Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii shipped in March 2008.

At this time we’re still awaiting an official comment from Rockstar Games regarding the ratings update.

Source: IGN.

At the start of the demo, players can get a sneak peak of the new Virtual Trainer mode as they are immediately dropped into the Madden Test - used to assess a players Madden IQ. Throughout the game, a player’s Madden IQ is constantly updated and adjusted, as are the difficulty and play settings which are based on the Madden IQ. The Madden Test consists of four core game play mechanics: Passing, Rushing, Pass Defense, and Rush Defense.

Madden Moments allows gamers to replay a team’s key moment from the 2007 NFL season. In the demo, the Giants Super Bowl-winning drive is the featured Madden Moment. Players will take over the reins of Eli Manning and the Giants with about two minutes to go and attempt to score and walk away with the NFL championship.

Madden NFL 09 is scheduled for release on August 12 and introduces over 85 new features and enhancements. Madden NFL 09 also includes a brand-new broadcast presentation package featuring Cris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond, online leagues, and the most realistic graphics in franchise history.

For more information about Madden NFL 09, check out www.madden09.com.

Wonderland Online officials will be launching a new US server named “LEO” after the weekly server maintenance on August 5th EDT (GMT-4). The new server has 3 server branches and its name will be at the top of the Server List. Therefore, players can have more server options when entering the game and the population stress on Aries server will be relieved.

In addition, a new European Server is currently being tested and will be released in August.

For more details please visit http://wl.igg.com/news/newscontent.php?aid=796.

Images via Gamespress.com. Copyright 2008 IGG.

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 the previous fiscal year’s June quarter.

Excluding the impact of expenses related to equity-based compensation of $0.02 per diluted share and one-time costs related to the business combination between Activision and Vivendi Games of $0.02 per diluted share, Activision had non-GAAP net income of $74.3 million and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $0.23 for the June quarter. This compares to non-GAAP net income of $32.8 million and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $0.11 for the June quarter of the previous year, in each case excluding the impact of expenses related to equity-based compensation.

Separately, on July 24, 2008, Vivendi announced its preliminary June quarter financial results (on IFRS basis) which included results for the business that became part of Activision on July 9, 2008. For the quarter ended June 30, 2008, Vivendi reported 223 million euros in revenues and 42 million euros in EBITA for Vivendi Games which includes the results of Blizzard Entertainment®.

Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, stated, “Activision’s June quarter stand-alone results were the highest ever for a non-holiday quarter, driven by two new Guitar Hero titles - Guitar Hero®: Aerosmith® and Guitar Hero®: On TourTM -, Kung Fu PandaTM and continued sales of our catalogue titles. Our record performance highlights the continued strength of our business. We are well positioned to continue to capitalize on our strong product portfolio and the positive trends in our industry.”

Kotick continued, “We have completed our transaction with Vivendi and our integration plans have identified higher than anticipated cost-synergy opportunities. Both Activision and Blizzard Entertainment’s businesses have maintained their momentum. Activision Blizzard’s combined outlook for calendar year 2008 is set to exceed the comparable calendar year 2009 non-GAAP financial targets that we provided on December 2, 2007, by approximately $600 million in non-GAAP net revenues and $100 million in non-GAAP operating income.”

“We are very excited to add Vivendi Games’ multi-million unit selling properties Crash Bandicoot®, Ice Age® and Spyro®, as well as two new intellectual properties - Prototype and an as yet unannounced title - to our game roster,” commented Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing. “The combination with Vivendi Games strengthens our holiday slate which is already anchored by three of the top-selling franchises in the industry - Guitar Hero, Call of Duty®, James Bond and includes such highly anticipated games as Call of Duty®: World at War, Guitar Hero® World TourTM and Quantum of SolaceTM, as well as Crash Bandicoot®: Mind Over Mutant and The Legend of Spyro®: Dawn of the Dragon.”

Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, added, “Since June 2007, World of Warcraft® has grown its subscriber base by over 1.8 million, to 10.9 million players. Blizzard Entertainment also continues to launch World of Warcraft in new territories and we are very excited about its recent release in Latin America and the upcoming launch in Russia. Blizzard has a strong pipeline of products in development including World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich KingTM, StarCraft® II and Diablo® III.”

via Gamespress.com.