The first Scribblenauts from developer 5th Cell was a wildly ambitious game. It featured a rather comprehensive lexicon of objects that could be summoned – with the properties and characteristics you’d expect of them – to be used in puzzle solving levels.

It was ridiculously charming, and ended up being a pretty damned successful title – but ended up being let down by its poor controls. Well, it’s getting a sequel – and the problems with the first game are being addressed. It also has a few new tricks up its sleeve…

Read the rest of this entry »

This week Yahtzee takes on Dante’s Inferno and let’s just say he’s not a major fan. However I can’t quite tell if he doesn’t like it due to the religious undertones (overtones?) or simply because it isn’t as good as God of War?

Read the rest of this entry »

Activision have, during their latest financial investor call, announced that we’ll only be seeing one game in the Guitar Hero Franchise – one of just two music rhythm games from the publishing giant this year.

The other? Previously announced sequel to Activision’s highest grossing new IP, DJ Hero.

Read the rest of this entry »

First we had the return of the Microsoft X-events and now Nintendo is throwing themselves a big shindig. I hope this isn’t the start of a move away from the major conventions to individual mini ones, I think that will take some of the glitz away from the industry to be honest.

Either way Nintendo are hosting an event in San Francisco on the 24th of February and while we haven’t yet been told what will be shown we can expect to see some news around Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid and possibly Zelda which is just ever so overdue by now.

What about a new Motion++ or WiiHD?

Source: VG247

Ubisoft’s bean counters have been doing their thing and have released some pretty little tables showing the financial breakdown of Ubi’s sales for Q3 by region and platform.

First up we can take a look at the regions where Europe is the current lead with 49% of the sales followed closely by North America with 45% and then the rest of the world gets bundled together for the remaining 6%.

It’s a pretty scary thought thinking that the rest of the planet accounts for such a small part of Ubisoft’s market.

Read the rest of this entry »

Money, who needs it right?

Apparently we really don’t, because if you thought that January was already quite a good month to kick the year off with and steal all your cash, then just wait and see what February has to offer.

Gametrailers have put up a Games Of February 2010 video highlighting some of the big releases coming this month, and its a doozy. Heavy Rain, Aliens vs Predator, Bioshock 2 and more hit shelves this month.

Check the video out after the jump for even more and if there is anything missing that you are really excited about, then let us know in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to particularly sales of the Videogame adaptation of James Cameron’s Avatar, Ubisoft will be shifting their focus towards more “high end franchises” and away from the licenced games they’ve become known for doing.

Ubisoft expected to sell between 3.5 and 5 million copies of the poorly received title, and instead only managed 2.5 million – a Far Cry from the the reception of the film itself, which has thus far managed to take in over $1.68 Billion.

Read the rest of this entry »

If I had a beer right now, I’d be drowning my sorrows in it. According to the NPD, who’ve collated all their data, Wii Play is the best selling game in the last 15 years.

Of course it’s gained this accolade through a technicality, with it being a collection of godawful mini-games bundled with a Wiimote – but it’s a record that’ll stand. Other Nintendo efforts that did particularly good business were Wii Fit coming in at 5, and and Mario Kart Wii at 6. Pretty impressive considering it managed those sales on just one platform.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve seen all 3 console manufacturers sales figures, but let’s take a closer look at their year-on-year revenues, based on console and software sales figures. slightly alarming is that despite good sales on each platform, all 3 console makers saw a significant drop in revenue in 2009.

Both Microsoft and Nintendo seem to have suffered a loss in revenue – to the tune of about $200M -based on a lower console selling price, because they each sold more units than the year previous. Most alarming though was Sony’s $1.3 Billion drop in revenue over the previous year.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Nintendo DS is easily one of the most pirated systems available today, thanks to the R4 cartridge and the industry it spawned with competing cards like the AceKard, M3 and CycloDS.

While these devices are often sold advertising their ability to run homebrew applications, the reality is that they’re largely used to play illegal roms of DS games. Their illegality has been highlighted in the UK this week, where a resident, Yun Can Meng, was sentenced to a year in prison after admitting to importing over 25 thousand of the devices for resale.

Read the rest of this entry »

American sales tracking wizards NPD group have released their December figures – and surprise, surprise, Nintendo are still making a killing. while you’d expect everybody and his grandmother to already own Nintendo’s white waggle box, it appears that’s not the case – as it managed 3.81 million units, outselling the Playstation3, PSP, Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 combined.

The system that came the closest was Nintendo’s own handhelds, the DS family, with sales of 3.31 million.  Interesting to note was that the PS3 has displaced the Xbox 360 forcing it to third place, outselling Microsoft’s console by 50 000 units. Was this a December fluke, or is it a trend that’s going to continue?

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a house full of crappy plastic peripherals, something I pretty much blame Nintendo for. As demonstrated by games like Tony Hawk Ride and the perpetual onslaught of rhythm games, peripheral based gaming is hot business right now.

Ea it seems, is keen to jump on the bandwagon, as they signed deals with multiple accessory providers – Sakar, Sunflex Europe and Accessories 4 Technology – to create as well as market sporting peripherals and interactive fitness crap for PC and console use.

Oh god, why?

Read the rest of this entry »

Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, has been discussing the DS’s successor with a Japanese newspaper and had the following to say

"[It will have] highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing,”

Firstly I would be a little worried about the next DS forcing us to wave our arms around and make stupid faces to play the game seeing as this thing is intended to be used on public transport and at boring meetings.

However the thing that really worries me is that he is promising that the new DS will have “highly detailed graphics”. Why?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m still waiting on the official Christmas results but the latest sales rankings in Japan have put the Wii miles ahead of it’s competition once again.

The PS3 is still doing well but nothing like what it did when Final Fantasy was released and the Xbox 360 is still sputtering along, but at least it beat the PSP Go I guess.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s going to be at least a week before the analysts return from their million dollar yachts and 5 star hotels to let us know who really won the holiday shopping war but until then we can keep ourselves occupied with the less than accurate sales from online stores and auction sites.

First up is eBay which allows people to track sales using their market research application which Michael Fahey from Kotaku used to great effect in compiling these stats.

The graph above shows us in pure dollar terms who won (Xbox 360 slightly ahead of Wii) and who lost… let’s actually just take a second to see how abysmally the PSP Go faired and to remember why the retailers are not backing it.

Read the rest of this entry »