Resident Evil 6

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:48:47 +0000

Rumor: talks of possible THQ shutdown

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:32:46 +0000

Yesterday, rumors of THQ possibly shelving its entire 2014 game lineup hit the Web followed by speculation that the publisher may be shutting down. Apparently, THQ may also be looking to shop around for a buyer for the company.

Kevin Dent, IGDA Mobile SIG chair tweeted that he heard that THQ was in financial trouble. He also revealed that he also heard that the company already made plans to cancel its entire 2014 lineup, most notably its MMO, Warhammer 40k: Dark Millennium Online.

Just last year THQ ended up shutting down five of its development studios with massive layoffs. Red Faction and MX vs ATV were canceled along with the closure of Kaos Studios responsible for Homefront.

As reported by VG247, THQ has issue an official response refuting these claims stating that the publisher has not canceled its 2014 lineup and has not made any decisions around its MMO.

However, the publisher did reveal that the company is looking to revamp its business strategy, scrapping all kid-friendly projects to completely focus on hardcore games.

I know many of you will be saddened to hear that THQ will no longer make SpongeBob games in the future. However, I’m sure Darksiders II and Metro: Last Light will more than make up for it.

INTEL SOURCE LINK: gamer.blorge.com

Game|Life Podcast: Does Xbox 360 Need Games Anymore?

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 07:54:58 +0000

INTEL SOURCE LINK: Wired.com

Will the future of videogame consoles be decided by videogames at all, or are we all just looking for fancier TiVos?

On this episode of the Game|Life podcast, we continue our discussion of the State of the Game as we enter the futuristic-sounding year 2012. On last week’s show, we talked about … well, we talked about Star Wars: The Old Republic mostly, but then we moved on to a discussion of the portable videogaming market and how it will continue to be impacted by and defend itself from mobile games.

Today, we move on to consoles. On Thursday, the NPD Group released its sales data for December 2011. Surprisingly, and in sharp contrast to previous years, the sales of each home game system were lower in December than in November. But the Xbox 360 had a banner year, and Microsoft had some major statistics to announce about the uptake of its non-gaming entertainment services like Netflix. Of note, the number of people using such apps went up by a whopping 50% from November to December.

With that in mind and considering Microsoft’s ever-growing feature set (which now includes live television), we find ourselves questioning what role traditional videogames will play in shaping the industry going forward. Wired magazine senior editors Chris Baker and Peter Rubin join Wired.com managing editor Marty Cortinas and me.

(Some other key factoids from NPD mentioned on the show are below.)

The Game|Life podcast is embedded below and is available on iTunes. You can also download it directly.

Quotes from NPD analyst Anita Frazier

“Hardware was particularly hard hit in December. Normally, we see sales increase from November to December on an average sales per week basis (keeping in mind December is a 5-week retail month as compared to November which is a 4-week retail month). The 3DS and the DS were the only platforms to realize a unit sales increase versus November, which is highly unusual since typically all platforms enjoy a lift in the biggest month at retail.”

“Our preliminary estimate for the other monetization methods in which consumers can acquire games content is $7.24B for 2011, an increase of 7% versus 2010. This includes the consumer spend on used games, digital full game and add-on content downloads, mobile games, social network games, subscriptions and rentals. The increase in these areas partially offset the decline in new physical retail sales of content in 2011.”

“We get asked a lot about how Skylanders is performing. If you combine the sales of software bundles with the character packs which are tracked in the accessories category, the title would rank 4th in December, and 10th for Annual 2011 on dollar sales.” (Note: The quote originally read “11th,” as we say in the podcast. NPD later corrected the quote to “10th.”)

Quotes from Microsoft

“The hours of video consumed globally on Xbox LIVE increased 140 percent from 2010 to 2011.”

“In December more than 60 percent of U.S. Xbox LIVE Gold members used entertainment apps on Xbox LIVE — for an average of an hour a day each.”