Exclusive IGN Data and Analysis Predicts Game Sales, News and Trends
BRISBANE, Calif. – January 23here, 2009 – IGN.com, the Web’s leading videogame and entertainment information destination, has released “IGN Previews 2009,” its first ever predictions for game sales, hardware developments and industry trends for a new year. Leveraging IGN’s proprietary research engine, GamerMetrics, and the analysis of IGN’s tenured staff members, “IGN Previews 2009” provides insiders with informed analysis about the future of gaming.
“The gaming industry was one of few industries to see growth in 2008, but that did not surprise us” said Peer Schneider, senior vice president of publishing. “In our Preview, IGN predicts that a stellar lineup of games, hardware price-cuts and launches will keep sales strong well into 2009.”
Bumping this to the top like last time!
That was fun, wasn’t it? Erm, of course not…Not at all!
Now, this is going to be a bit difficult to explain. The website had gone down a couple of days ago, as I described in another post, due to problems resulting from the a RAM upgrade and the installation of a new motherboard. Everything was back up to snuff on Friday thanks to one of our amazing tech guys.
Now, unfortunately I woke up on Saturday to discover that the site was pretty slow, which is extremely abnormal since I know for a fact that our host is quick. So the same tech guys discovered that a hard drive was faulty and was nearing complete failure. When he encountered this, he immediately shut off the server, etc, and wanted to put files on a new HDD. But things can’t be that easy, can they?
Nope. So that’s why it took more than two days to fix everything. And honestly, I can’t blame our tech guy…He was brilliant! And he never was annoyed when I bothered him every five minutes since I am that concerned about the website. In the future, we may switch hosts, but for now, I’m happy to see that things are back. I’m just praying that we won’t find another problem to be hassled with. I don’t really know what else I can say other than I’m extremely sorry. I’ve said this before, but it truly is rare that Nintendo Everything experiences downtime, and this was just a situation that one thing led to another and coincidences piled on top of each other. I really don’t want anything like this to happen again. I can’t tell you guys how bothered I get when I see that the site is down even for thirty minutes. So imagine how bothered I have been thanks to NE being down for more than two days!
Anyway, I’ll stop blabbing now. Keep in mind that I have NO intentions of shutting down Nintendo Everything in the near future, so if you ever see that the site is down, please know that it will be back eventually…I promise! Anyway, thanks for sticking with us through these technical downtimes.
Please note: The backlog of news will be posted tomorrow (1/26) and there WILL be short/minor downtime throughout the night (EST). Again, thanks for sticking with us and this should all be sorted soon!
“Flock and Age of Booty are both coming to PC via digital download solutions. So hopefully you’ll enjoy those. There’s no plans at the moment for WOTB:C3 or 1942 to come to PC though. I’m not so sure we’re going to have a digital day this year. While we have a number of digital titles on the slate, their timing and our learnings about announcement timing means that we’ll introduce them within the normal course of business (maybe at events like E3 or Captivate, maybe all on their own via Unity… we’ll see how the timings work out).” – Christian Svensson, Corporate Officer/VP of Strategic Planning & Business Development
Perhaps Mega Man 10, Capcom? Or a title for DSiWare?!
Tenchu 4 – 80%
Play on Wii! Pikmin – 80%
SimAnimals – 78%
Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars – 73%
Let’s Tap – 74%
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile – 69%
Monster Lab – 72%
Neopets Puzzle Adventure – 65%
DS
Age of Empires: Mythologies – 78% (graphics 7,audio 8,gameplay 7, innovation 6)
Big Bang Mini – 83%
Chrono Trigger – 87%
Mushroom Men Return of the Fungi – 40%
Bomberman 2 – 85%
RIZ-ZOAWD – 72%
Thanks to joclo for the news tip.
Launching an original core IP on the Wii is a bit risky, but it looks like THQ’s investment in de Blob is paying off. According to NPD numbers, the game has sold 230,000 units from September 22 to December of last year. Keep in mind that this figure is only for America alone, as the NPD does not keep track of global figures. For further investigation of de Blob’s performance, you might be interested in knowing that Nintendo’s Wario Land: Shake It! only sold 150,000 units in the same time frame mentioned above.
THQ has responded to the sales of de Blob and the company has stated that they are “pleased with de Blob’s performance worldwide” and that gamers should “expect to see more of de Blob in the future.” We already know that a de Blob title is planned for the DS – Will THQ create another title for the Wii as well?
Although Rockstar has yet to elaborate on the Wi-Fi functions that will be present in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the company has discussed one particular feature that can be expected. Players will be able to send friends waypoints through the Internet.
On the DS touchscreen, a mini-map is present and by tapping it, a draggable, zoomed-in road-map of Liberty City will be displayed. When you tap on a location, a waypoint will be brought up. The game will then draw the shortest legal path to the destination.
On the downside, this does confirm that Chinatown Wars will require friend codes in at least some modes. Rockstar has been confident in the game’s Wi-Fi aspects, so it may be worthwhile to have to use friend codes.
