It may be notching up top honours at outlets like GameSpot and The Wall Street Journal, but Skyrim doesn’t quite what it takes to be Forbes‘ Game of the Year. More »
In light of Forbes amazingly perceptive 2000 piece about the computers of 2010, Forbes’ Paul Tassi decided to take a stab at predicting what gaming will be like in a decade. More »
Forbes looks at some of Apple’s latest maneuverings and concludes the company is muscling up on its mobile gaming business. More »
Earlier this week, Forbes writer Peter C. Beller made a tit of himself when he swallowed some Activision PR and reprinted it in his article on Bobby Kotick. Today, surprisingly, he stands by it.
Financial publication Forbes takes a look at some of the things people are still willing to spend money on in the face of the recession, and of course, our favourite hobby makes the cut.
Uh, oops. Over the weekend, Forbes ran an article citing data obtained from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). Forbes’ article said that, according to EEDAR, only 4% of games ever make a profit. Wha? 4%? Sounded silly. Seems it was silly. Forbes mis-quoted EEDAR’s data, which actually says that only 4% of all games that ever enter into production make a profit. Sounds like a case of semantics, but it’s a key difference. Just like movies, most games that enter into production never actually see the light of day. Of those that do make it onto store shelves, it turns out 20% of them return a “significant profit”. That sounds more like it. EEDAR’s full correction follows.
Chris Morris of Forbes magazine thinks that Google should try its luck at publishing video games. The search engine behemoth has put some serious research time into advertising within games and certainly has the resources to acquire a developer or three.
As well as the rather ill-received virtual world Lively, the article points out that Google already has some technologies that could mix well with gaming. Google Earth could make a for an excellent flight sim (in fact, it already has) while streetview might be useful in a GTA-like game.
I’d love to see the Google brain trust attack a problem like enemy AI or random terrain generation. It’s just a shame we will have to wade through adverts to get there.
Will Google Play Games? [Forbes]
And if American football, unabashedly violent, is also a combat simulation, then really one genre dominates the top 10 list that Forbes asked NPD to put together: the best selling home video games of all time, in units sold, in the United States. NPD’s data goes back to 1989, so this does not include units sold before them.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the winner at 9.4 million. Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock clocks in at 8.2 million, but after that, it’s nothing but football and shooters: Three versions of Madden (06, 07 and 08), Vice City, Halo 2 and Call of Duty 4.
This list is almost immediately out of date, of course. Grand Theft Auto IV has shipped 11 million copies and sold 8.5 million, with an analyst saying it’ll move 15 million by the end of the month. That’s a global figure, but really, who wouldn’t expect it to park at No. 1 and bump Madden ’05 off the list at No. 10.
