Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks Yes, we know that today has been just positively dripping was sales figure data, so it may be hard to muster up the courage to face yet another list. Please, bear with us, as we walk through another week of Media Create published hardware sales data for the week of January 7 to 13. As in the US of A, Japan still loves itself some Nintendo DS. But the handheld hit just narrowly escaped a weekly takeover by the PSP. It was so close! That would’ve been a story, friends.
The rest of it is, sadly, business as usual, as the nation recovers from New Year’s spending. Probably a good thing as we’re still coming down from the NPD bender from this afternoon.
Nintendo DS Lite – 97,369 PSP – 96,159 Wii – 84,530 PlayStation 3 – 38,907 PlayStation 2 – 14,499 Xbox 360 – 4,690You’ve seen the set images. But those are just pictures. And as we all know, films are moving pictures. Now how about some behind the scenes footage. Above is an interview with Justin Chatwin, who says this about playing Goku:
Um, the character of Goku, an important character to play, uh, been around on kid’s cartoons for a while, uh, so I hope I do a good job.
THIS MOVIE IS DOOMED. Hit the jump for hidden camera footage of the cast being introduced to reporters. The M.C. even forgets Justin Chatwin’s name. No, really!
These song downloads for music games, they’re eaaaasy money. Look at Rock Band here. Game’s barely been out a couple of months and already you lot have bought over 2.5 million songs. Most popular stuff? The Metallica pack comes in at #1, with the Queens, Police, Sabbath and Bowie packs also doing well. Most popular individual song was Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero”. BONUS NEWS ITEM: Harmonix also state that the game’s promised full-album downloads are coming “very shortly”. Rock Band song sales top 2.5 million [GameSpot]
Big day for numbers! And while most talk of the day’s numbers has centred around Nintendo, Halo and Call of Duty, you’d do well not to forget about Guitar Hero. Because between Guitar Hero II’s continued sales on PS2 and 360 and Guitar Hero III’s appearance on 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PC & Mac (we’re not counting Rocks the 80s out of spite), the series as a whole pulled in over $US 820 million in the US during 2007. Which, according to the NPD, is a new record for a franchise in a single year. If it didn’t cost more than most other games that would warrant rapturous applause. Since it does, though, it’ll have to contend with polite clapping.
Nintendo fever is still in its gestation stage over in Korea. It certainly hasn’t hit the level of, say, Japan. But! The brand and its characters are starting to pick up speed. Over at 4CR, Nick Rumas blogs:
I was at a friend’s home in the vast apartment wasteland that is North Seoul, when suddenly I heard the faint sound of someone playing a most familiar tune on piano: the SMB theme. It certainly isn’t out of the ordinary to hear the reverberation of kids playing piano in Korean apartment buildings, but this was a first for me.
Upon asking, I was informed that learning the Mario theme in piano lessons has recently become a big thing among kids, a nice diversion from the boring numbers they generally have to trudge through. This may be minor anecdotal evidence, but it’s still more proof that Nintendo and its DS are making a real impression upon Korean kids, a neat thing to witness firsthand in a place where the company virtually didn’t exist a year ago.Doot doot doot, do-do-do-doot, doot doot do-doot, doot doot, doot-do-do-do. Yep, now it’s stuck in your head, too! Mario Song Fever [4CR][Pic]
Announced all the way back in July 2007, these have been a while coming, but NECA have finally gotten around to releasing some pics (and more info) of their well-overdue Gears of War figure lineup. The first series of figures, due in Spring, will feature three characters: Marcus, Cole and a Locust Drone. No word on a price yet, but looking at the level of detail on these things, we’re sure fans will pay an arm, a leg and no more than, oh, $US 29.95. Click on the above shot for a bigger version, with another shot and the press release a click away for any and all interested parties.
Putting aside the fact this is so early in the game’s development (hence the raw graphics), and that whoever was playing the game obviously couldn’t play the game, this very public demonstration of Sierra’s Prototype seems to have gone quite well. Especially the parts where it looks like Crackdown, but with helicopters, and blood.
Japanese consumers are tough cookies! They are selective — picky, even. Or are they? A survey on Japanese website kakaku.com questioned over 3,000 gamers. Findings include:
• 43 percent said the top reason they pick a console was “because it’s compatible with the game they absolutely want to play.” • 43 percent want to buy the “most talked about console.” • 6 percent said that price is a factor in determining which console they buy. • 10 percent have a PS3. • 25 percent have a Wii. • 3 percent have an Xbox 360. • 28 percent said they wanted to buy a Wii in the future. • 27 percent said they wanted to buy a PS3.
Ah, yes. Fun with numbers. Japanese Gamer Poll [CNN via Next Gen][Pic]
Remember when Sony took backwards compatibility out of the PLAYSTATION 3? That hurt. But, don’t worry, it appears as though Sony hasn’t totally given up on BC. A job listing for a development engineer has popped up on the Sony Computer Entertainment site. The job entails:
Implementing and improving software emulation for the PS/PS2/PSP/PS2 for the PS3 and the next generation system.
Sure, no doubt Sony is planning their next console (as are Microsoft and Nintendo), but that’s still pie in the sky stuff! What interests us: Sony clearly hasn’t given up on BC and seems be interested in PSP games on the PS3. Meaning? We assume players could download PSP for play on the PS3 — the opposite of the current PS3 to PSP transfer. And right now, that sounds way neater than any PS4 rumours. Job Listing [Sony Computer Entertainment via GameFront via GAMER via Dtoid]
Xbox Live Status Watch: Day 27 Just when we thought the outages were over, along comes a bug. Not only is the official Xbox site’s support page officially reporting official problems with Xbox Live, but reports from readers are also starting to roll in. Readers tell us they’re having lots of problems with matchmaking. The official word is that the issue is connected to Windows Live ID and could effect account creation, renewal and recovery. Make sure to let us know if you’re still experiencing problems.
