Gaming Sales Finally Decline
by Taylor Flatt on April 16th, 2009 at 7:06 pm EDT - 728 views
The gaming industry has finally seen a decrease in sales for the first time in the economic situation. While hardware sales dropped 18%, video game sales dropped 17% from $1.72 billion to $1.43 billion and software sales dropped 17% as well. This decrease is reported by the NPD while conducting their monthly studies in March. Although the situation has effected all other industries, it is no surprise that the gaming industry is one of the last to suffer. Offering recreation and infinite possibilities, it makes only sense that this would be one of the last to find their brick wall.
A NDP analyst, Anita Fraizer, had this to say about the situation,
While it might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that the sky is starting to fall on the video games industry given this month’s results, it’s important to remember that two very big things are different this year than last. First, Easter fell in March last year whereas it fell in April this year, and last March included the release of Super
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0 CommentsNCSoft Gets Ready to Close Tabula Rasa
by Andrew Kao on February 18th, 2009 at 4:24 pm EDT - 646 views
The widely acclaimed Tabula Rasa will end its service on February 28th, according to the open letter distributed by the company. The company has begun distributing rewards for their other games, as well as refunding subscriptions that were paid for February and January. NCSoft had sited that the reason for closing the service was that the game had a player population of less than it had anticipated, citing a gap between real and expected revenues.
Rumors had been floating around that Tabula Rasa would be made free to the public, however with the recent events putting forth, Tabula Rasa seems to be officially closing all services. Tabula Rasa will indeed be missed by many players, however in my opinion, I think NCSoft is making the right decision to focus on their more popular games, instead of lingering on some of their dying franchises.
SecuROM Leaks Details of Upcoming 1.03 Patch?
by Drew Flatt on February 1st, 2009 at 11:22 am EDT - 937 views
A member in another forum called lolel had an interesting post, it said this,
“I had an issue with Securom launching the game using my retail CD. It was not recognized as a genuine disk. So I sent them an an email and they responded back in less than 12 hours. They sent a link to a new LaunchGTAIV.exe file that happens to be a no CD launcher. Below is what they wrote with a link to the new .exe file:”
So what do you think happened? Well the unthinkable happened SecuROM sent him a working no cd exe. Here is their email back to him.
Future of Gaming – Where are we headed?
by Andreas Rothbauer on January 27th, 2009 at 9:31 pm EDT - 3,189 views
In these tough economic times when many people use the entertainment industry as an escape from the brutal reality and are looking for affordable family entertainment I thought it was time to reflect on the gaming industry and where we are going. I am sure many of you have probably grown up with the NES and other 8 bit consoles – so have I. Looking back at those days of playing the Super Marios, Zeldas and constantly blowing on the dusty cartridges to get them to work makes me miss my first gaming experiences and the epic struggle of trying to play or should I even dare say beat some of those superhard video games from the early 90s. However, I loved every minute of it and doing it with friends were some of the best times I’ve ever had.
Today, video games take on a new but just as important of a role in our lives as adults. As mentioned before, money is hard to come by in this day and age and many people don’t even have jobs anymore. Still, families are seeking entertainment and the unlikely suspect of a video game console has stepped up to deliver just that. What was once a geeky and negatively looked upon activity has spread into nearly every living room and TV show in the United States and even the entire world – newly elevated to pop-culture: the Nintendo Wii.
Category: Games, Graphic Cards, Online, Operating Systems, Programs, Reviews, Security
Tags: Future of Gaming, Gaming in the Cloud, Nintendo Wii, PS4, Steam Cloud, Xbox 720
Burnout Paradise – New Trailer And Other Info
by Bradley Wint on January 26th, 2009 at 9:55 pm EDT - 313 views
The Burnout Paradise team has created a lovely trailer to highlight some of the cool stuff coming in The Ultimate Box. Check it out below. Make sure to hit the High Quality button to see it in its full luster. The Ultimate box comes out on February the 6th, but if you pre-order from the EA UK Store, you can get it earlier on the 3rd.
The box is now available for £29.99. It will also be available from the US EA Store very soon. The PC version will be available worldwide while the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will be limited to the European and Asian regions.
Check out the video below.
Category: Games
Tags: Burnout Paradise
GTA Update Breaks Mods
by Chris Willhite on January 25th, 2009 at 11:49 am EDT - 441 views
A new GTA IV update released apparently breaks ASI support which allows users to load in custom mods or scripts. The memory offsets that the new patch did also break compatibility with the mods themselves.
Fortunately there are some workarounds to get you’re mods loaded, however, all of the exsisting mods need to be updated to work with the new game version before you can load them in.
Here is a list of workarounds to get your mods loaded, courtesy of GTA4HQ.
Don’t worry about waiting long for the new mods either, a new version of aru’s C++ Script Hook should get modders updating your favorite mods pretty soon.
Source and more information: GTAHQ.net
Image courtesy of Rockstar Studios
ACES Studios shut down
by Nathaniel Ed on January 24th, 2009 at 11:13 am EDT - 508 views
Microsoft announced Friday that ACES Studios, the creator of the Flight Simulator series, will be closing it’s doors, as an implication of Microsoft’s 5,000 worker layoff.
Is this the end?
Apparently it isn’t. A Microsoft spokeswoman Kelda Rericha said that Microsoft remains committed to it’s long running franchise.
We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise, which has proven to be a successful PC-based game for the last 27 years. You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great Live experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time.
Well, Flight Simulator is probably the longest running Microsoft franchise, since it’s first Flight Simulator was shipped in 1982. I find it hard to believe that they would just kill off a gem like Flight Simulator. Apparently they will keep Flight Simulator alive in some form or another. Only time will tell the true future of Flight Simulator.
Source: PC Magazine
Image courtesy of Cnet
Category: Games, Industry News
Tags: ACES Studios, Flight Simulator, layoffs, Microsoft
Valve’s Take on Piracy
by Stephen Spring on January 19th, 2009 at 11:22 am EDT - 527 views
Valve, creators of such games as Half Life, Counter Strike, and more recently Left 4 Dead, have come forward today at a Game Business Law summit at Southern Methodist University. At the summit Valve stated that the piracy problems were largely the fault of the marketers and not the consumers.
We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia. The reason people pirated things in Russia is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television. They say ‘Man, I want to play that game so bad,’ but the publishers respond ‘you can play that game in six months…maybe.’
Holtman then stated that whenever their Valve products were readily available in Russia, piracy of said game dropped dramatically. Holtman took aim at the marketers again saying that the majority of pirates were simply “Underserved” customers. (That’s UNDER-SERVED)
This comes as a suprise to many as Valve, the creator of Steam, currently is one of two dominating powers in the video game sales industry and for a company whos livelyhood is creating and selling games to take a defensive stand point strikes us as a little odd.
Spore Review
by Andrew Kao on January 12th, 2009 at 7:05 pm EDT - 1,099 views
I played Spore a while back, however being loaded on Red Bull combined with being absent-minded, only now I remember to bring you the review on Spore to gamers out there.
Spore, developed by Maxis and published by the colossus EA Games, is first and foremost a god game. Having received so much hype that one would be led to believe that that it was a fourth installment of Halo. The developer’s name, Will Wright, is somewhat of a household name in the gaming industry, having brought you the extremely popular Sims series, with the third one coming soon, now decides to expand player freedom and customization from a household, to an entire make-up of evolution history.
Tags: Electronic Arts, God Games, Maxis, Spore, Will Wright
List of Epic MMOs
by Andrew Kao on January 9th, 2009 at 11:13 pm EDT - 12,982 views
I first off would like to say this list is comprised of both free mmo games as well as store bought franchises. Most of the games I have tried myself as well as did some research on how others feel about these games, (many times I had to borrow the game or use a trial version). So I would like say that this list is composed of some MMO games, free and store bought, that you might to try playing these days. On behalf of myself and PCE I hope that this proves an asset. The following MMO’s and MMORPG’s are not in any particular order.
Tags: Ace, Age of Conan, Aion, Alien Arena, Atlantica, BF 2142, Combat Arms, Drift City, Eve, Exteel, Granado Espada, Guild Wars, list, Lord of the Rings, Maple Story, MMO, MMOFPS, MMORPG, Online, racing, Silkroad, Sword of the New World, Tabula Rasa, Team Fortress, Test Drive Unlimited, Vendetta, Warhammer, World of Warcraft