EA have announced that they will be closing down even more of their online servers.

Almost all of the games having their servers closed down are pretty old ones that no one is really playing, well I assume that that’s why is closing them. The list includes a bunch of titles such as the Godfather for PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as Mercenaries 2 for PC, Lord of the Rings: Conquest for Xbox 360 and PS3 as well as Army of Two in Asia and for PS3 only.

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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.

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Last week EA released their 2010 line-up, letting us know that things like Dead Space 2 and Dragon Age 2 were on their way. Conspicuously absent? Anything Rock Band and Left 4 Dead related.

We now know why. According to GameInformer the publisher – which has been struggling financially – will be moving away from distributing games that aren’t developed by studios under their umbrella. Ella, Ella. eh eh eh.

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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.

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Hideo Kojima has called Yamauchi and everyone at Polyphony Digital  dirty, rotten criminals. Ok, he hasn’t really – but he may as well have. Metal Gear solid : Peace Walker on the PSP has been hit by a delay – and Kojima is rather upset about it, going so far as to call delays criminal.

"I always preach to the staff, ‘You must not have a delay after a release date has been announced. There is no greater crime as a game developer.’

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One of the benefits of working in the industry is that you get to meet tons of PR people and industry insiders and I can tell you now that virtually every single one of them are great guys and girls. You do get the odd exception but in general it’s a nice industry to work in.

However the flip side to that is when you meet a hugely excited PR person who is actively trying to convince you that the crap they are peddling is the best thing since sliced bread, you like the person, you know they are just doing their job but sometimes you just want to grab them and shake some sense into them.

For instance… Sony’s John Koller has recently come out and stated that Sony is excited about the entrance of the iPad and do not see it as a threat to their portable gaming experience.

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Tecmo’s Team Ninja will soon be releasing another game in the DOA series of beach games, this time on the PSP and titled “Paradise.” It’s quite evident that despite no longer being under Itagaki’s helm, Team Ninja are still depraved perverts, as they pretty much brought hand-held boob physics to a new high (or low, depending on your stance).

The PSP of course is graphically limited, but does have its benefits in that you can now do your rubbing and tugging on the go! Hooray! After the jump you’ll find a trailer highlighting the “game’s” “features” – which seem to consists solely of showing off digital T and A.

Sex sells? It sure as hell does.

On a completely unrelated note – if you like hotdogs, never ever use those little packets of tomato sauce as a personal lubricant. It can get quite confusing.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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Ten-year-old Kade Goodman’s Christmas – and quite possibly his life – was ruined by the unfortunate sight of exposed male genitalia, when it was discovered that the used PSP he’d received for festivus contained an explicit picture of a penis.

The offending image was discovered by the lad’s 13 year old brother, who found it in the background images. Kade’s father Shon was rather upset by the ordeal.

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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.

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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.

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I received an email from Halfbrick studios the other day which is strangely enough a how-to tutorial instead of a standard “Buy Me” marketing email.

Phil Larsen the marketing manager from Halfbrick studios has put together a YouTube video demonstrating how to play PSP Mini’s on your PS3 and obviously has also used their game to demonstrate it.

It’s a pretty decent looking game and a pretty helpful video to boot.

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