Gamestop VP says Call of Duty: Ghosts is “on track to be the most pre-ordered title of the year”
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U | 1 Comment
– Gamestop VP of merchandising Bob Puzon
Just as a little editorial sidenote: It’ll be incredibly interesting to see how long Call of Duty can go being annualized before people get fatigued of it. It’s such a well-loved franchise!
Activision renews “Sing Hero” trademark
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments
Though it’s not any indication of activity within the franchise, it appears as though Activision doesn’t plan on letting go of the Sing Hero brand name anytime soon, as they’ve renewed the trademark for it in relation to an “unannounced project”. The trademark was initially filed back in 2009, although not a single game with that moniker has ever been released.
Activision Publishing CEO says yearly Call of Duty releases “have found a nice equilibrium with peoples’ appetite”
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Wii U | 1 Comment
“Having alternating studios is one of the secrets to the franchise’s success. You have different creative people who are strong-willed and have minds of their own. Everyone gets what makes a great Call of Duty game. Treyarch and IW are the masters, and have built this thing. So, there’s a lot of common DNA from year to year. But then people come in and want to top each other. There’s some healthy competition. There’s a desire within the creative team to not do the same thing and not be stagnant, the same way there is in the player community.”
– Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg
Hirshberg also mentioned how Call of Duty releases have become a sort of “pop culture event” that people want to take part in simply because it’s topical. He compared to to the release of Avatar (2009 movie), saying “a lot of non-hardcore sci-fi fans saw Avatar because it was an event. You felt you had to be a part of it. We’ve reached the status with Call of Duty of this sort of pop-cultural inevitability.”
Latest Nintendo annual report touts over 650 million units of hardware sold over 30 years
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments
Details from the latest NIntendo annual report have come in, and it gives some interesting figures that really put things in perspective:
– Over the past 30 years, Nintendo has sold 653 million units of hardware.
– 268 million consoles, 385 million handhelds
– 2.195 billion units of software sold on home consoles
– 1.907 billion units of software for handhelds
– Software numbers include download software and bundled software
To put things in perspective: That works out to nearly 60,000 units of hardware sold every day on average, and nearly 375,000 units of software sold per day on average. The average software tie ratio? 6 games per unit of hardware.
That’s a lot of merchandise. Wowza.
Ubisoft Toronto director says AAA titles can innovate, but it’s going to be “stifled” by costs as we move forward
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 1 Comment
“I think the big question to me, as the expectations of these big triple-As keep on growing and the consoles become more powerful and teams get bigger, is how do we keep the costs in line? That’s for sure one of the things that is going to stifle innovation eventually. Anytime you want to make a big triple-A, you’re spending, let’s say $100 million, you’re not going to want to take a chance. It’s got to be, I’m making the next Call of Duty or the Assassin’s Creed and I know it’s going to make ‘X’ amount, so we’ll make money. I think that’s the tougher thing.”
– Managing Director of Ubisoft Toronto Jade Raymond
Raymond went on to say that she believes developers need to find new ways to make money if they want to keep making huge, AAA, innovative titles. Budgets like that aren’t conducive to innovation unless you can find another source of revenue.
Conglomerate corporation Vivendi plans on selling most of its shares in Activision-Blizzard, publisher to become an independent company
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments
News has come out today that French mass-media-multicorporation Vivendi is planning on selling the majority of its stock in game publisher Activision-Blizzard, a move that would break the company from the shackles of shareholder interests and return it to being a publicly traded and by-and-large independent company.
What does this mean for their games? Not much. Business should operate as usual over at the publisher, and CEO Bobby Kotick will remain in position after purchasing the shares from Vivendi for a hefty $2.34 billion in cash.
Suda51 talks games relating to culture and art, says he feels a ‘duty’ to create games that ‘push the status quo’
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments
“Therefore, I feel at Grasshopper one of our obligations– our duties– to the video game world is to create revolutionary titles that really push the status quo.”
– Game designer Suda51
One of the few folk truly approaching game design from an artistic standpoint, Suda certainly lives up to what he says with every game he’s made that I’ve played. I’m not sure we need every single developer to go down the road he’s on, but I do agree that more people should approach game design in fundamentally the same way.
Parent company of game developer Atlus delisting its stock, accepting bids for its operations
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News | 0 comments
Amidst seemingly insurmountable financial troubles, developer Atlus’ parent company (“Index Corporation”) will be delisting its stock on July 28th, and should begin taking bids for its goods and services next week. Atlus employees continue to say that the situation won’t affect their daily operations, and the launch of games like Shin Megami Tensei IV (which came out earlier this week) and Dragon’s Crown will remain unaffected.
Index Corp. CEO Yoshimi Ochiai and Chairman Masami Ochiai plan to resign.
Level-5 releases special wallpaper, is forced to include the airplane from AeroPorter due to poll results
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in 3DS, General Gaming, Images, News, Wii | 0 comments
Though I’m sure they don’t mind in the slightest, game developer/publisher Level-5 was recently forced to publish a special wallpaper with characters from many of their most popular franchises… as well as the airplane and the “porter” from AeroPorter! The 3DS download title apparently held a spot in the popularity poll that they put up to determine which characters would be drawn into the wallpaper, and so many people put down their vote for the non-living, metallic flight-body that Level-5 had to include it! The airplane managed to snag 46,263 votes, ahead of the second-place Inazuma character who pulled in 38,339, and the porter himself (a character with no face or personality, mind you) got ninth, with 17,889.
Take a look at the wallpaper above, or click here to download a full-sized version.
Official ‘Earthworm Jim’ Facebook page abruptly talks about what a fourth game in the series might be called
Posted on 10 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments
The Earthworm Jim Facebook page is managed primarily by Doug TenNapel (creator), with some extra comments by MIke Dietz and Ed Schofield, all of whom worked on the series in some official capacity. Whether this means anything is hard to say… he could have just been thinking about the 3D entry in the series and pondering how fans don’t really think too highly of it!
