There’s no doubt that the now infamous practices which gave notoriety to Guerrilla Games is widely frowned upon. A few bad apples like these really threaten the integrity of the industry as a whole.
While “bullshots” (as they are commonly known) are sometimes created for not-as-dubious purposes, once they are intentionally passed off as the real thing they become lies, plain and simple. Their existence is largely due to unscrupulous marketing people whose only interest is in the short term gains of duping customers, while leaving the franchise and even the developers to deal with a soiled reputation.
However the scope of visual marketing is large, and there is a surprisingly large gray area between what is truth and what is lie. This week GamePro look closer at why these practices continue exist, despite their all-round negative consequences.
Last year, UK citizens spent a massive £1.52 billion on video games, a 25% increase on last year’s sales and still climbing. With these figures, perhaps development companies will start developing games specifically for British needs? Prepare yourselves for “Fox Hunt: Tip Tip Tally Ho Edition”.
Nintendo have taken home an Emmy for excellence in engineering creativity - for the second year in a row. The award recognized their innovative interfaces - the motion controls of the Wii and the touch-screen, dual-screen Nintendo DS.
“The pioneering interfaces for Wii and Nintendo DS reflect our long tradition of seeking new ways to enhance the gaming experience for users at every level,” said Don James, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of operations. “We’re grateful for this award and thank the academy for honoring us a second time.”
Rare have either been hitting the eggnog a bit early or they are giving us a sneaky clue on their Viva Piñata and Banjo Kazooie themed Christmas card. The clue is on the innocuous stocking marked KI3. Could this mean that a new Killer Instinct game is on the way? Unfortunately when quizzed about it Rare says not:
“Purely out of contractual obligation, no, we’re not working on KI3.”
Oh well, looks like it’s back to getting our asses handed to us in Mortal Kombat DS.
NPD figures have shown that Activision are the clear winners in both console and handheld game sales for 2007. The company held a record market share of 16.8%, up 7.9% from last year. In November five of the best selling games in dollar value were Activision games, with the top two consisting of Guitar Hero III and Call of Duty 4. Between Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and now World of Warcraft there really is no stopping the company.
2K have announce the opening of its new 2K Marin studio in Novato, California. As reported previously the new studio will be populated by some of the people that worked on BioShock, as well as some newcomers. 2K are being rather shady about the new studio’s responsibilities, only saying that they will be assisting other studios and working on their own IP. Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K Games, had this to say about 2K Marin:
“We’re focused on continuing to bring new brands and cutting-edge gameplay to market with the creation of the 2K Marin studio. Marin will build upon our success in creating and leveraging AAA franchises.”
Activision have hit out at Harmonix’s accusations that they are to blame for blocking the patch that enables Guitar Hero III controllers in Rock Band. Activision claim that they met with Harmonix and MTV Games/Viacom over the use of the controller and that they were “unwilling to discuss an agreement with Activision.” We are willing to bet that it’s not the discussing that Harmonix were adverse to, but the driving of a truckload of money to Activation’s backdoor.
Activision ends their statement with a pretty obvious jab at Rock Band by saying, “Activision’s top priority is to provide consumers with a seamless marriage of best-in-class hardware and software.” I guess Rock Band isn’t the best-in-class then. Read the full statement after the jump.
Despite the huge amount of publicity Crysis has received, the title has not managed to convert this into performance on the sales charts. The title to date has sold a measly 86,633 units since its launch date of November 13th. Unreal Tournament 3 is doing even worse, selling only 33,995 since its November 19th release. Both games share the fact that a major system upgrade is needed for most people to get the best out of them.
Is this the consumer’s message to developers to throttle back the spec requirements of games, or a growing indifference toward the FPS genre?
You might have been too busy bathing in the plethora of excellent games that came out this year to notice that 2007 was a hectic year for the videogame industry. Thousands of blog posts with “Console Wars” in their titles may have even induced a yawn or two. But if you’ve been meaning to catch up on how the console gaming market played out this year, the latest edition of Bonus Round may be just what you need.
Watch and learn people. Here’s how you turn “coming dead last” into something that resembles a success of sorts. In November’s NPD figures, all three of Sony’s platforms occupied the bottom three rungs of the hardware ladder. But Sony refused to acknowledge any sort of failure, issuing a statement saying that combined PlayStation sales were up 160% from October, that the PS3 saw a 285% spike in sales over the previous month and that their total software revenue for the month was up 128%. Also highlighted was the fact three PS3 games made the month’s top 10 in sales.
We could also do some simple addition for you and tell you how the DS alone outsold all three of Sony’s platforms, but hey, we wouldn’t want to show up Sony’s fine PR work.
