A Parent’s Guide To Video Games For Your Kids

This story never gets old. A few weeks ago, I was at BestBuy picking up some goodies for my wife.  While I was in line, a mother walks up with her son that had to be no more than eight or ten years old, and clutched in his hot little hands was a copy of Call Of Duty: Black Ops. I’ve seen this more than once this holiday season mind you.  But for some reason,… Read On »

OnLive Delivers Through The Cloud. But Will It Succeed?

Recently, OnLive began offering their OnLive Game System for pre-orders online for a very attractive price of $99.  This game system features a revolutionary way of accessing games and content through the use of “The Cloud” as opposed to the more traditional physical media formats that you see in today’s consoles. But what is OnLive?  What does it do?  How does it work?  And more importantly, what effects, if any, will it have on the… Read On »

October Sales Data – Christmas Season Predictions

Nintendo down 50%, Sony Leads The Month Sony led the month of October with over 990,000 unit sales pulling ahead of Microsoft by almost 230,000 sales in the last two weeks.  Two contributing factors to Sony pulling ahead were most likely the launch of the Playstation Move, Sony’s motion controller, and anticipation of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, with people opting to pre-order the Xbox 360S 4GB and 250GB bundles with the Kinect device. More… Read On »

Console News For Monday, November 8

Microsoft Bundles Alan Wake – Forza 3 In Holiday Bundle

For those of you who don’t want to be Kinect’d, Microsoft is releasing this year’s holiday bundle with core gamering goodness.  The new bundle will come with a copy of Forza Motorsport 3 and a token to download Remedy’s hit thriller, Alan Wake.  This bundle will launch at the $299 price point leaving gamers to decide, get Kinect?  Or go with a couple of core games?

Source: Major Nelson

Mass Effect 2 For PS3 To Receive Free Extra Content, Missions

PS3 users will finally be receiving Mass Effect 2 on the Sony console with some extra goodies.  It will be including all of the DLC missions that Xbox 360 users had to purchase this last year, as well as a new mission worth about six hours of gameplay and an interactive comic to walk them through the events of the first game, making key decisions that affect the outcome of Mass Effect 2.

It will be interesting to find out if Xbox 360 fans will have access to this extra six hour mission as later downloadable content.  It would probably be a good idea for EA to release it to appease the 2.12 million fans of the Xbox 360 version may feel a bit left out and disgruntled if it isn’t the case.

Source: GameRant

Kinect Technology Could Have Gone To Apple First

Apple Inc., a company whose dedication to innovating arguably stands above any other company could have had Project Natal, now known to the world as Microsoft’s holiday hopeful, Kinect, first.  But why would Apple, king of new technologies miss out on this huge opportunity to bring something unique to their own line of products?

Because, “Apple is a pain in the ass,” according to PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha.

In an interview with Cult of Mac Editor, Leander Kahney, Beracha said that when Apple was introduced to the technology, it was the stack of legal agreements and NDAs that turned Beracha off to the partnership.

Interesting.

Source: Cult Of Mac

Microsoft Giving Away Free Xbox 360s With Purchase Of Win7 Phones In Toronto

As you know, Windows Phone 7 launches today.  And what better way to celebrate this event than getting a free Xbox 360 with your purchase of an HTC 7 Surround or LG Optimus 7?  People shopping at the Toronto Eaton Centre can get just such a deal.  But you better be quick, word is that numbers are limited.

Source: Wirelessly Obsessed

Coming This Week

I’ll be taking Microsoft Kinect For Xbox 360 for a test drive and writing down my thoughts, as well as with the new 360 Dashboard.  Also, my holiday sales predictions after last week’s numbers are posted.  Stay tuned.

~W75

Video Games Live Comes Back To The Motor City

I am a huge fan of Video Games Live.  And in Detroit, I’ve now had the pleasure of working as a volunteer at both concerts, this year and the one in 2008.  If you haven’t yet been to see this awesome concert in person, I urge you to go right now to their website and check for the soonest date that they will be in or around your city. Conceived in 2005 by founders Tommy… Read On »

Supreme Court To Hear Arguments On CA Video Game Ban Law

Today, the United States Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in  Schwarzenegger v. EMA.  This case will determine if the 2005 law passed in California banning the sale of violent video games to minors is constitutional or not.

The law overrides the ESRB ratings by requiring a seperate label be placed on video games deemed inappropriate for minors.  The point of contention in the law is the labelling of “violent video games” in the law makes it possible to label children’s games such as “Super Mario Bros.” as violent and require an 18+ label.  This of course could greatly affect video game sales, as well as the type of content that they could sell to minors.

As a parent, I agree with the restriction of sales of violent video games to minors.  However, I believe that the ESRB has created a robust system of ratings designed to catch the attention of parents and make it easy to decide whether or not a game is appropriate for their child.  I also believe that the ESRB’s retail partners overall are doing a good job of enforcing these ratings by refusing to sell Mature rated games to minors.

However, laws passed by the government are usually intentionally vague and are open to broad interpretation, usually doing more harm than good.  And instead of creating an arbitrary system to label games as the government sees fit to label as Mature or 18+, I think that any state government would be better off to partner with the ESRB in enforcing its already established ratings system as they already have 15 years of experience behind them.

~W75

News for Tuesday, October 19th

AT&T Offering Free Month of Zune Pass With Win7 Phone

AT&T Wireless is offering a 30-Day trial of Zune Pass with the purchase of a Win7 Mobile Phone.  Dubbed the “Entertainment Pack”, you also get access to 30 days of AT&T’s Uverse services, as well as ilomilo, a new, cutesy Xbox Live game.

Source: AT&T; ilomilo

Best Buy Still Doesn’t Have Any New 250GB Slim/Kinect Bundles?

Apparently Best Buy is still having issues with procuring the $399 Xbox 360S Bundle with Kinect for pre-order.  With Microsoft stating that this is a bigger launch than that of the 360, you have to wonder exactly how many units have been pre-ordered, since the 360 only had 400,000 units available when it launched in 2005.

Source: BestBuy

Kinect To Launch With 17 Titles This November

Looks like the guys over at Wired UK have gotten the up-to-date launch list for Kinect this November.  Not much has changed with the exception of a couple more games from Konami.  With all of the sports and fitness games releasing at launch, there are going to be a lot of skinnier geeks this coming spring.

Source: Wired UK

Call of Duty: Black Ops Stolen From The Presses?

Apparently, some guy (or gal) in Alabama swiped a few copies of COD: Black Ops from the presser not too long ago.  Shortly thereafter, the enterprising thief sold the copies to a few upstanding gentleman on some of the forum sites dedicated to cracking and copying software.  One person in particular, “Ungodly Leaker”, who was responsible for the leaking of Halo: Reach apparently had posted that they received a copy as well. 

With almost 1.8 million pre-orders placed, this looks to be yet another very hot download for the less than ethical gamer.

Source: Escapist; VGChartz

Halo: Reach Stats Updated By Bungie

Bungie released updated statistics on gameplay and matchmaking this last Friday.  Some interesting numbers:

16,445 Man-Years have been spent playing Halo: Reach (Not to be confused with Dog-Years)

784,000,000 player-games have been played (1 game with 4 players is tallied as 4 player-games)

544,000,000,000 Credits have been earned (spend that money, playa!)

3,900,000 Screenshots have been uploaded (and plenty of them feature juvenile looks at Kat’s “bad side”)

5,970,000 total files have been uploaded (your bandwidth bill is in the mail)

300,000,000 Mountain Dews were do’d

If only the real world economy was based on Halo dollars…

Source: Bungie.net

Console News For Monday, October 18th

Weekly Sales Update: Microsoft Pulls Ahead of Sony for Year On Sales

Microsoft this week finally pulled ahead of Sony in sales for the year by 1,000 units for the year last week.  This comes after Sony managed to have a commanding 1 million unit lead before the 360S was released last June.  While it’s still anyone’s game with the Christmas season looming, things are looking well in Microsoft’s favor.

By the numbers:

Console	Americas	Japan	EMEAA	Worldwide
	118,030	51,427	92,225	261,682
	92,079	2,700	68,995	163,774
	70,156	18,659	69,405	158,220
	61,067	12,266	57,356	130,689
	21,449	34,747	29,503	85,699

Source: VGChartz

Total monthly sales for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 stand at 269,067, 308,145, and 343,265 respectively for October.  With a few weeks to go, it looks as though console sales are starting to warm up for the Christmas season.  Unfortunately for Nintendo, it doesn’t look like the Wii will be doing well this month, being behind number 2 placeholder Sony at 269,000 sales for the month so far.  This is a shortfall of almost 40,000 units behind Sony and a little over 60,000 units behind Microsoft.  This may turn out to be the first October that Nintendo has failed to sell more than 1 million units since launch.

Konami Dates Kinect for Xbox 360 Titles

Konami recently released a presser announcing the dates of their upcoming Kinect for Xbox 360 titles.  Konami, not to be outdone by upstart Harmonix in the dance ring is releasing Dance Evolution on November 10th along with CROSSBOARD 7, a racing game with animals.

On November 25th, Konami will release Sports Island Freedom under their Hudson Soft brand.  This title will add a few unique sporting events to the already sports packed game line-up including: Archery, Paint Ball, Beach Volleyball, Dodge Ball, Kendo, Mogul Skiing, Snowboard Cross and Figure Skating.

Source: GamersHell

Microsoft Spending $1 Billion on Kinect, Windows Mobile 7 Marketing

Microsoft is shelling out a lofty billion dollars on their marketing campaign for Kinect and Windows Mobile 7 to make sure it stays in the game of…gaming…and…phoning.  Money spent includes Ads on Nickelodeon and Disney (presumably for Kinect.  Unless they’re marketing phones really early nowadays),  product placement ads on Glee and Dancing with the Stars’, a Times Square Event and ads in various magazines.

What really makes me angry about this is that there are plenty of innovative products that Microsoft comes out with that just get thrown at the wall just to see if they stick.  Perhaps if they gave the Zune team a bit more than enough to cover money for lunch, they’d see more ZuneHD sales.

Source: TheNextWeb

Nintendo Wii Getting NetFlix Without A Disc

Following in the footsteps of the Xbox 360 and PS3, Netflix and Nintendo have announced that you will no longer be required to use a disc to stream your multimedia goodness on the Wii without the use of a disc.  Which is great, if you like watching your hi-def shows in 480p.  Good future proofing Nintendo.

Source: Business Wire

Fallout: New Vegas DLC Announced Before The Game Even Releases

Bethesda Softworks recently announced that Xbox Live will be getting the first New Vegas downloadable content before the PS3 will.  Now, call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t we be talking about the game before it launches?  And not its DLC?

Could The Gran Turismo 5 Delay Hurt Sony Sales This Christmas?

Recently, Sony came out and stated that Gran Turismo 5 would be yet again delayed from it’s November 5 release to “Holiday 2010”.  With just three weeks to go, there is speculation aplenty as to what is causing this many times delayed game to be pushed back at the last minute.

According to VGChartz, Kazunori Yamauchi posted on his Twitter, “Apologies for the delay, It’s because time and labor were spent ironing the kinks out of [the game’s] complex system. I’m really sorry. Everyone, it’s inexcusable… Wait a little longer.”

It kind of sounds like they found a pretty critical issue with the game at the last minute.  But only time will tell.  But what does this do to their Christmas lineup?

VGChartz has listed over 200,000 pre-orders for GT5, so while it’s not a blockbuster game for the PS3 like Call of Duty: Black Ops, it’s still a flagship title with a lot of anticipation and buzz about it.  And with any flagship title, any console maker can be guaranteed that many of those pre-release orders will also come with game sales.

Sony’s 2010 sales lead has been precipitously slipping ever since Microsoft released the Xbox 360S this last June.  And while the Move has already garnered 460,000 sales in it’s first month, the highly anticipated Kinect sensor is expected to do far better, even more so with the recent news that major retailers globally have been selling out of their allocated pre-orders.  Sony needs to bolster their holiday lineup if they’re going to maintain the ever so slight sales lead that was at one point over a million unit gap.

Looking at the presales charts so far, Sony could very well lose out to Microsoft at the end of the year if it’s only exclusive in the top ten pre-sales is pushed back too far.  Those software sales may be reduced with people opting to purchase different games instead, or even worse, forgoing the purchase of a PS3 altogether for one of its competitors.

Hopefully we’ll hear some new news soon.  But if Sony doesn’t get GT5 out of the door by Black Friday, I think it could very well have an impact on their year end sales.

Console News For Thursday, October 14th

Playstation Move Moves 470,000 Units In The First Month

VGChartz is reporting that 470,000 unique Move units have been sold in the first month since it’s release with over 600,000 individual Move controllers (including bundles and standalone) having been sold.  Doing the math, that means 130,000 second, third or fourth controllers have been purchased for the 470,000 new Move users worldwide.

While this does seem like an impressive number, I think that the momentum from Microsoft’s ad campaign, and recent reports of retailers actually selling out of pre-orders might indicate that as far as launch goes, Kinect will have a major advantage over the Move. 

With the information available to us right now (which isn’t much since everyone seems to be keeping a lid on Kinect pre-order numbers), I would not be surprised to see Kinect ship out well over 1 million units in it’s first week.  Only time will tell, and November is rapidly approaching.

Source: VGChartz

Crazy Taxi Coming To Xbox 360 and PS3

Sega is remaking the Dreamcast hit Crazy Taxi and putting it out on XBLA and the Playstation network in 720p goodiness.  Sega’s site is currently reporting that it’s available now.  But we know that’s not right because everyone else is reporting a release date of November 23 for PS3 and November 24 for XBLA.  Those crazy kids at Sega…

Now if only they’d release Shenmue.  And a Seaman remake for Kinect would be quite exciting.

I’ll let you all think about that one for a bit.

Track List for Dance Central Released

And it looks to be a doozy.  CVG reports 32 intial tracks for us to sweat and boogey to in our living rooms, bedrooms and parent’s basements are being packaged for delivery.  Of course, we know that Harmonix probably has quite a stockpile of audiophile ammunition in store to release as DLC on day and date of release as well. 

Source: CVG

Gran Turismo 5 Delayed…Again

Can’t say I didn’t see this coming.  Looks like GT5 is pushed back to “sometime around Christmas”.  If Duke Nukem comes out before GT5 does, I’m officially calling it Vaporware.

Halo Waypoint Announces New Noble Map Pack for Halo:Reach

Halo Waypoint has just released some screenshots of the up and coming Noble Map Pack for Halo: Reach.  The new maps are Tempest, Anchor 9, and Breakpoint.   Release price is to be 800MS Points and will have the opportunity for you to add an additional 250 gamerscore to your tally.

Personally I think that ten bucks is a bit stiff of a price to pay for new maps.  But i’m sure that sales of this will do well.  According to Bungie.net, the map pack will be released on November 30.

Source: Halo Waypoint; Bungie

Follow-up To Yesterday’s Best Buy Pre-Order Stoppage

Best Buy has managed to wrangle some additional allocations for the standalone Kinect package.  However, the 250GB 360S Bundle is still not available.  The only word that I’ve received from Best Buy is that they have requested more from Microsoft and should hopefully have some soon.

Netflix App Finally Available On PS3 On October 18

Joystiq has just confirmed that an app for Netflix will now be available for the PS3 starting on October 18.  Users will no longer be required to insert a disc to run the Netflix application on PS3.  Video details here.

Source: Joystiq

As always, comments are welcome.

~W75