Games Industry Wire

Infogrames, the company which owns Atari, is reporting that their sales have fallen 24 percent in the first three quarters of their fiscal year, according to GameSpot. The news is not entirely a surprise. The company is in the midst of a restructuring plan in which some of Atari’s internal studios are being jetisoned and sold.
The U.S. marked accounted for 33% of the sales through their Atari name while Infogrames in Europe accounted for 58%. The U.S. sales dropped 9 percent while European sales are up by 10 percent over last years 48 percent.
The news is surprising given the release of the …read more

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It’s a do-over ladies and gents.
Microsoft has officially announced that they’re going to relaunch the Xbox 360 in Japan. The relaunch will take place in late June and may come with different a pricing plan and a different marketing campaign.
Japan was the only country that the Xbox 360 did not sell out at launch. Hmmm… maybe that explains where all the Xbox 360s were at launch in the states.
Is this a surprise? I think not. Microsoft has never had a foothold in the Japanese market, and I think they’ll just be loosing money by doing a relaunch. But, since Bill …read more

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With the release of the Xbox 360, Xbox Live has become a significant part of the Xbox experience.
Microsoft released new numbers for their Xbox Live service. They claim that gamers have spent more than 1.5 BILLION hours gaming on Xbox Live since the launch in 2002. Halo 2 alone accounted for accounted for 500 million hours of the 1.5 billion. Now, however, the Xbox 360 is really showing us what online gaming is all about.
Around 60 per cent of Xbox Live account holders have used the Xbox Live Arcade, and more than 3 million games have been downloaded. On average, …read more

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PCs have always been ahead of consoles in gaming, but with the Xbox 360, Microsoft was on the cutting edge of graphics and hardware. Now, however, Dell has regained the top position with the XPS Renegade. This looks like an amazing pieice of machinery. Here are some of the specs:
* Custom Paint Job from Mike Lavallee
* Signed by Mike Lavallee and Michael Dell
* Quad NVIDIA SLi Technology (Total 2GB of Video Memory) 4 Video Cards!!
* NVIDIA nForce 4 SLi Technology
* Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition Dual Core 955 w/ HT overclocked to 4.26 GHz
* Dual Western Digital “Raptor” 160gig Raid …read more

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According to Dean Takahashi, author of the forthcoming book” Launch of the Xbox 360,” Microsoft is launching in to the handheld gaming industry alongside Nintendo and Sony. Supposedly, J Allard is heading up the project now that the Xbox 360 is in cruise control. The device will allow users to watch movies, play games, and listen to music. With the launch of this product, Takahashi insists, Microsoft will also announce an itunes-like service to distribute music.
All this sounds real fun, but as most of us know, this has been speculated and shot-down before. So, is this real? I’m not …read more

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Ubisoft, I believe, has created the first killer app for the 360, Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter, and it seems that gamers are letting Ubisoft know the game is amazing.
Ubisoft’s shares have risen 4% on account of this one title for the 36O and Xbox. GRAW has sold over 240,000 in the US and 120,000 in the UK and, as of right now, is the fastest selling 360 game thus far.
Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft Chairman said, “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter had the best ever first-week sales performance for our company and is looking like a major commercial success.”
I love to …read more

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In a recent interview, Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, played down Sony’s announcement by saying, “For us, Sony’s announcement doesn’t change anything. We’ve had a very clear strategy for a long time now and we’re not going to change that. We’re not going to react to anything that they do.” He is merely assuring the public that Sony’s announcement has not changed Microsoft’s game plan, and Microsoft may still have a few tricks up its sleeves.
Kim also commented on the “worldwide” launch that Sony proposed. Kim knows the difficulty of launching a console worldwide; Microsoft tried, and …read more

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The agreement, outlined in a 10-Q filing yesterday, is for a three-year term, and provides for the payment of $25 million in restricted stock, plus unspecified internal royalties.

The 10-Q explores the value of Rockstar’s creative heads, and the risk to the company of any failure to offer a decent package to GTA’s bosses. It states, “We rely on our management and other key personnel for the successful operation of our business. In particular, we are highly dependent on the expertise, skills and knowledge of certain of our Rockstar employees responsible for content creation and development of Grand Theft Auto and other titles.”

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Reports from development sources close to Sony Computer Entertainment are indicating that the firm is planning a major digital distribution service for game content, which could be a key element of PlayStation 3 – or even of a relaunched PS2.

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It’s believed that new information on the Playstation 3 will be announced at the event, which will hopefully provide clarification on the amended release schedule and new demonstrations of the next-gen format in action.

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