Posts tagged Wii
Daily Recap: May 7, 2009
May 8th
More earnings statements, game announcements, and a touch of the whimsical. Time for today’s news roundup!
Gunnin' for that #1 spot: Sales of Call of Duty: World at War helped Activision post earnings of nearly $1 billion this past year, the company announced today. Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft were also named as leading Activision-Blizzard franchises.
Just a couple of days ago, Electronic Arts announced its quarterly and yearly financial statement; today, Activision followed that up with its own release, and the returns are very impressive. Activision-Blizzard posted a $981 million net revenue in the first quarter of this year — no, that’s not a yearly figure. That beats the publishing giant’s own projections for the quarter by more than $100 million, and has caused the company to raise its revenue expectations for the 2009 calendar year to $4.3 billion.
“Our better-than-expected first quarter results were driven by strong global consumer response to the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero franchises and Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, despite challenging economic times,” Activision CEO Robert Kotick said.
Of course, as happens from time to time, some games that were rumored to exist were confirmed in the financial release. Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, and DJ Hero were all confirmed in the report, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen was made official later in the day. GH5 is a follow up to 2008′s Guitar Hero: World Tour and 2009′s Guitar Hero: Metallica (our review of which is here.) Band Hero is going to be family friendly, and DJ Hero will feature hip-hop, R&B, electronic, techno, and dance music and a turntable peripheral.
Daily Recap: April 21, 2009
Apr 21st
Another bright, hot day in Portland, Oregon. I mean, I love blue skies, but the true Oregonian in me screams for rain and gray. I’m weird; I realize that.
The gaming world was flooded with mostly release-date related news and a few droplets of real information, all of which you can read on the next page. Click that link! Read the rest of this entry »
Daily Recap: April 16, 2009
Apr 17th
Another day, another dollar, another set of news that you can use. Even better, today is…drumroll please…NPD DAY!
For those that don’t know, the NPD Group is the data analysis group that keeps track of video game sales data, which they then release to the masses on a monthly basis. While in some seedy parts of the Internet the NPDs may be nothing more than “troll food,” providing console crusaders proof that THIER CONSOLE IS TEH BEST EVAR for message board flame wars, the sales data are useful to show a few things we can dig into and analyze.
Resident Evil 5 was the sales leader in March, nearing 1.5 million total copies on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Image from residentevil.com.
A full list of console and game sales totals for March can be found at 1up.com’s news article on the topic. Salient analysis? Resident Evil 5 was popular – selling more than 900,000 copies on Xbox 360, and 580,000 on the PlayStation 3. On the console side, the Wii just keeps selling – moving more than 600,000 units in March, and 700,000 in February. Yowza. RE5 360, Pokemon Platinum on DS, Halo Wars, RE5 PS3 and Wii Fit are the top five games for March, and Wii Fit, Street Fighter 4 360 and then PS3, Wii Play and Killzone 2 are the top five for February.
Review: World of Goo (PC)
Apr 15th
I hope you don’t finish reading this review.
Go ahead and leave! Really, I won’t mind. I’d rather you not waste any more time before you close your web browser and download a copy of World of Goo. But hey, I’m not here to tell you what to do — I’m just a lowly blogger who’s here to state my case, and let you make the decision.
But come on. Let’s be honest — you and I both know you’re gonna get this game, and you’re gonna love it to death, and you’ll think back on it fondly for years to come. Sound good? Great. Not convinced? Read on.
Review: Guitar Hero: Metallica (Xbox 360)
Apr 6th
The Ecstasy of Gold
When the biggest name in music gaming dedicates an entire game to the most popular thrash metal band of all time, there’s not much need for introductions. (After all, we just covered the demo a couple weeks ago!) Just about everyone with a pulse has played one of the billions of Guitar Hero games by now, and Metallica has been an institution in popular music for more than 25 years. Say what you will about the Grammy Awards, but you don’t win nine of them without developing a sizable following.
Remember, this is the second time Neversoft has tapped a musical juggernaut to star in a game. However, Guitar Hero: Metallica comes a year after Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, and it benefits from being built on top of the newer Guitar Hero World Tour engine. While Neversoft demonstrates that it is capable of improving upon past failures — and really, this is the best Guitar Hero game they’ve made yet — this latest Guitar Hero iteration, just like every Neversoft-developed game in the franchise, is packed with ambition but stunted in delivery. Read the rest of this entry »