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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Nintendo’s Wii Sports Resort was the bestselling video game in the U.S. last month, moving more than a half million copies—and Wii MotionPlus add-ons—with one exception. It was actually outsold by EA Sports NCAA Football 10.*
The power of the PlayStation 2 and the appeal of Gundam is still strong in Japan. Or at least the fan base of each is, as PS2 software sits atop this week’s weekly Japanese software sales chart.
MTV Games and Harmonix are likely overwhelmingly pleased to announce that North American sales of Rock Band have passed the $1 billion mark over the past 15 months, according to the NPD group.
Eurogamer recently had the chance to visit Quantic Dream to see their new PlayStation 3 adventure Heavy Rain in development, and they returned with some interesting statistics on the eagerly anticipated title.
Not just Pokémon! What games do little Japanese kids play? Well, according to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Associations of Japan (PTA), 2.8 percent of the 5th graders said they often play games with explicit sexual content, while 97.2 percent, well, don’t. What games were most popular among Japanese elementary school kids? Action games (including fighters) came in at 30.9 percent, followed closely by RPGs at 28.4 percent. Interesting factoid: Out of those polled, only 4.8 percent of grade schoolers don’t have home consoles. They probably have other things! Over 95 Percent [Mainichi via Sankaku Complex][Pic]
You might need to head to Australia to find them (Brian? Luke?). Or at least, that’s where the sure bet is. A story in the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend cites figures showing 41 percent of gamers in Australia are women, and also 38 percent in the United States, both figures representing growth. The Herald also says that if the trend continues, it will be 1:1 guys/girls gaming by 2014.
A Courier Mail story, posted today, points out that at 48.5%, the Queensland has the highest percentage of game developers in the country and collects 40% of the industry’s earnings, or $55 million if you happen to like dollar signs. It’s all in the Australian Bureau of Statistics report we talked about not long ago.
The article includes comments from Steve Stamatiadis, creative director at Krome Studios, as to why the state is such a force in the Oz games industry. According to Stamatiadis, Queensland is not only a hotbed of talent, but has the educational facilities and history to back it up.
Stamatiadis also couldn’t help but mention that the Wii version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is being developed at Krome. He reckons it’s “a big honour and a huge marketing juggernaut”, two facts we couldn’t agree more with.
State leads the industry [Courier Mail, via Sumea]
The ABS has released hard numbers on the state of our local games industry. Don’t be shy – the data is available to anyone who wants to read it, including tech-savvy amphibians, extra-terrestrials and my grandma.
While there’s a lot of interesting info in the report, I found the opening paragraphs the most poignant:
At end June 2007, there were 45 businesses in Australia involved in the provision of digital game development services. These businesses employed over 1,400 people and generated a total income of $136.9m which represented an average of $3m per business.
Sadly, these numbers contrast poorly with the industry’s expenses:
Total expenses incurred for the same period were $128.5m. Almost two-thirds of this amount was attributable to labour costs ($83.8m).
Two-thirds in labour costs? If this doesn’t stick a massive flashing sign on just how much a 40% tax rebate is needed, I don’t know what will.
Hit the jump for a press release from the Game Developers Association of Australia, which includes a few words from president Tom Crago.
The NPD Group (those same people who bring us all the neat sales numbers) just published their annual results charting how much of the US actually plays video games. And yeah, we already gave away the punchline in the headline.
