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Shocking research shows men like video games
People with any type of condition triggered by shock may want to stop reading now, but research by Frank N. Magid Associates shows that console gaming is the top choice for entertainment among young males. Now breathe, BREATHE! It's a lot to take in at once. GameDaily posted the charts for the study of 1,864 Americans which shows among males overall console gaming came in third behind using the internets and watching TV. Among males 12-34 console gaming came in first and then drops dramatically in older demos.The research shows that women overall would rather talk on the phone, watch a DVD, listen to music or read a book before playing a console game; however, there is an odd spike among 18-24 year old females for console gaming. Playing free web-based games did better with females, particularly among women of a mature age. No real shocking revelations, but we're always appreciative of research that gives some understanding to gamer demographics.
New GameSpot Editor in Chief wants to regain your trust
We know that a lot of you harbor resentment towards GameSpot in the wake of the whole Gerstmann-gate affair, and we can't blame you. We've all got hefty, Gerstmann-shaped holes in our hearts, and our faith in the once great review database is now shaken. However, Ricardo Torres, GameSpot's recently appointed Editor in Chief, is determined to regain your trust in the site, regardless of how many stern 7.5s he'll have to hand out in order to do so.In a recent interview with GameDaily,Torres claims that GameSpot staffers are coming back to work (those who haven't resigned), and that "people are getting back into the swing of things." He also hopes that their strengthened dedication to putting out untainted content will win back their original readers. What do you think, gang? Is it possible to forgive and forget? Or has that ship sailed, been boarded by pirates, then viciously torpedoed by U-Boats?
GameDaily's biggest story of '07: Record shattering game sales
The Red Ring of Death's billion dollar climax, Blizzavision, and year two of Wii Shortages were all bested for GameDaily's biggest story of the year by the gigglebucks of cash the video game industry made in 2007. Not just Nintendo, but everyone (except Atari), rolled in the sweet smell of dollars, pounds, euros, and yen this year. We already know the UK is breaking records, but leading up to November's NPD numbers, the US video game industry is up 50% to $13.2 billion, with guesstimates saying it'll cash-out around $18 billion by year's end. That $18 billion would also be NPD-tracked numbers and would not account for online subscriptions, casual games, micro-transactions and other incidentals. The video game industry is slowly catching up to the film industry and surpassing the music industry.If you're looking for a refresher on 2007, GameDaily covers most of the major incidents from the big Take-Two CEO ousting in March to recent incidents like Gerstmanngate. It's definitely worth checking out all the things that made this a crazy and profitable 2007.Read - The 20 Biggest Stories That Rocked Our World in '07 (part 1)Read - The 20 Biggest Stories That Rocked Our World in '07 (part 2)
GameDaily 'Persons of the Year': #1 - 3 and readers' choice
GameDaily concluded its "Persons of the Year" feature today by announcing Nintendo America's COO Reggie Fils-Aime took the top spot; Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb took the readers' choice award. Fils-Aime bested Activision CEO Bobby Kotick (#2) and Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos (#3) because of the Wii's phenomenal success in the States. GameDaily had previously announced #4 and #5, which went to Aaron Greenberg and Jeff Gerstmann respectively.Major Nelson -- guru of Xbox -- received the readers' choice award after politely directing his loyal readership to GameDaily's website. Before Major Nelson stepped up his campaign, Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond was in the lead. Too bad Raymond didn't win though, GameDaily ended up having "Men of the Year" awards rather than "Persons of the Year."Read -- 2007 Persons of the Year #1Read -- Persons of the Year: Readers' Choice Unveiled
GameDaily's leave a comment, win a Halo 3 360 giveaway
The cool cats over at GameDaily are giving away a Halo 3 Xbox 360 as part of their Win-It-All Holiday Giveaway and we think you should enter. The giveaway runs from now'ish through Monday, December 17th at 8:00PM eastern and is sadly only open to US residents who are 18 years or older. But good news is that if you meet the requirements and are a US adult then your giveaway chances are great. They're so great because, at the time of this writing, there are absolutely zero entrants, which statistically makes your odds of winning the Xbox 360 somewhere around ... guaranteed to one! All you have to do to enter the fun is head on over to GameDaily, create an account (icky, we know), post a comment and press submit. Then wait patiently for an email stating you've won a new Halo 3 Xbox 360. It's easy as rhubarb pie!
The breast video game boobs to haunt our mammories
It's been a while since we noticed a gaming site go straight for the Maxim demographic full force, but boy did GameDaily ever do it with its "Boobs through the Years" pictorial. Twelve pictures of boobs (eleven women and one man) from the last 30 years of gaming litter this feature. The Soul Calibur IV breasts, which are certainly the most gratuitous in recent memory, get the feature bouncing along. Once again, the piece is so base, but the site sure did get creative with some of the descriptions. For example, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 (pictured) is described as having mammary glands where each have their own "mother brain." And don't forget about Rachel from Ninja Gaiden's "heaving mounds of fury." Oh mercy, time to go make a donation to the Girl Scouts on GameDaily's behalf.
Hellgate: London demo available now on GameDaily
A day before it busts out of hell everywhere, the Hellgate: London single player demo is available at GameDaily today. No stupid logins or signing up, just download and go. Hellgate: London is the long awaited first game by Flagship Studios, whose development team consists of old Blizzard employees that worked on Diablo, Warcraft and StarCraft.The 1.5GB Hellgate: London demo will allow players to choose from two of the six available classes in the full game: "The swashbuckling melee action of the Blademaster or long-range killing action of the Marksman." The demo is a good chance to get a taste for what lurks in London before its Halloween launch (Nov. 2 for Europe).
WSVG president breaks down what happened
GameDaily BIZ tracked down Matt Ringel the (former?) president of the World Series of Videogames, to figure out just what the hell happened last week.As you can see from our own interview with Ringel earlier this year, things seems to be rolling along great for the WSVG-- they were working with Blizzard to make presentation much better for Arena PvP, and they had gotten a deal together with CBS to show their videogame tournaments in a series of specials. But Ringel says the WSVG wasn't alone in the space-- the CPL is another big player, and one who many have cited as a successor to the WSVG-- and advertisers had a big problem determining what the differences were between all the organizations. Ringel doesn't add much more, except to say that the WSVG is really, truly dead: Games Media is going to focus on their online properties, including Gameriot.com.As we said on the podcast last Saturday, this doesn't mean professional gaming is over-- it just means the WSVG didn't do it right. But considering the WSVG was working hand-in-hand with Blizzard to promote Arena PvP, it might mean the end of non-Blizzard professional Arena matches. My guess is that instead of partnering with another organization to run professional tournaments, Blizzard will be much more inclined to just run their own, at BlizzCon and other Blizzard-related events.[ via Joystiq ]
Nintendo's Harrison: Microsoft rushed Xbox 360 and Sony had to price drop PS3
GameDaily finished transcribing their interview with Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate communications George Harrison. A quick tidbit from the interview released last week gave us the info that the Game Boy name is probably dead. The full interview sheds little new light on stuff like Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan saying Wii revisions aren't out of the question and whether or not Harrison, Kaplan and other executives are staying with the company following the move -- the answer to that is a big ol' no comment. Harrison did talk Sony and Microsoft though. Harrison says in terms of the Sony price drop, "I don't think they had any choice." He then makes the error of saying that "it's pretty soon after launch to be dropping your price." That was a nice try by Harrison to pull a fast one and make us forget that Nintendo knows quite well how to drop console prices to save themselves. Case in point, the Gamecube dropped its price almost 60 days earlier into its life cycle than the PS3 did. Although he gets back on point saying Sony is continuing to confuse consumers with two versions of the PS3. We wonder why Sony can't just learn from their PSP Lite and simply replace the old with the new. As for Microsoft, Harrison says they were so busy trying to rush the Xbox 360 to market and beat PlayStation, while "discounting" Nintendo, that it "set them up for the hardware problems that they're having now." He says Microsoft confessed because they couldn't hide the issue any longer, "It's a stunning admission; it's more than a billion dollars." Harrison says Microsoft didn't have a choice on their admission, it just became too much. So, Sony admitted they needed to drop the price, Microsoft admitted their RROD problems ... now, what does Nintendo have to confess?
Game Boy name may be over and possible WiiWare in 2007
Nintendo marketing exec. George Harrison says the Game Boy name may be put to rest. The DS has been been successful enough that the company no longer needs to depend on the Game Boy brand name for future products. We always did wonder what happened to the next Game Boy.Harrison tells GameDaily.biz, "It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark." And so a name synonymous with many gamer's childhoods is buried. Oh well, it's not like the DS name has hurt Nintendo's bottom line.Curiously, Harrison also said Nintendo's WiiWare could be out in 2007. Actually the quote is kinda in reverse order. Harrison says, "It may not take until 2008. I've seen a couple of ideas that have already been generated even before we went public [with WiiWare]. Whether those are going to be ready or not, I don't really know." So, it pretty much hinges if the developers get their stuff in order. Only the next six months will tell who gets their WiiWare out first -- the quality of those games is a whole other issue.
More PSP "exclusive titles" remain unannounced
E3 is right around the corner, and Sony's getting the PSP ready for the big show. In a great interview with GameDaily, John Koller, senior marketing manager for PSP, had a couple of key things to say. Of particular note is his response to what he thinks the key titles of PSP later this year:"There are a number of exclusive titles coming from a third-party perspective, but without getting into all of those since many are unannounced, I think the three big games for PSP are Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (again, a fantastic game), SOCOM: Tactical Strike (a huge franchise for us on the first-party side) and then God of War."We're excited as-is by the upcoming PSP library, but to think that even more exclusives are coming is tantalizing. We were surprised by Star Wars Battlefront becoming a PSP-exclusive ... could any more big hitters be coming our way? Read the full interview at GameDaily for more info on the PSP/DS war, UMD sales, and more on why this is the "year of the PSP."
Estimated layoffs at SCEA were "totally off base"
Earlier, we reported that up to 100 employees were laid off by SCEA. It appears that these figures were incorrect, and "way high." In a statement to GameDaily, Dave Karraker noted that less than 50 employees were let go. Government regulations require a company that lays off more than 50 individuals to issue a WARN notification -- something Sony did not have to do in this latest step in their corporate restructuring."We had a number of different department shifts in restructuring throughout the company, but nothing that's different from what we would typically have," Karraker explained. "The stuff that's been going on and has been going on since I started, back in September, is just continual shifts and changes within departments that's nothing unusual for any company on a regular basis."According to GameDaily's findings, the lay offs affected a variety of departments, including Consumer Service, Finance, Business and Technology, Operations, 1st and 3rd party test, Marketing and Sales. Karraker refuted the claims, and made note that such layoffs are part of "normal business practice."
Saw this coming: Games based on Saw coming
Brash Entertainment says that they're looking to change the way that movie-license games are made, and one of the first IPs getting the treatment will be the Saw franchise, GameDaily BIZ reported today. There's no word on what sort of game the horror series will inspire, but we've got our fingers crossed for some hybrid of Deception and Night Trap.Brash says that they've got 12 other games in development and 40 licenses under their belt. They're not exactly just a bunch of upstarts either, with $400 million in funding to play with. So, their attempt at Saw either represents the start of something great or the opening salvo in a crapstorm. Let's hope it's the former.
PS3 sales worse than predicted
The dire prediction that PS3 would only sell 100k units in April was way off target. It was too high.NPD released their numbers today, and unfortunately, the situation is so grim that Sony's PR machine may not be able to come up with a suitable spin. Sony's latest console endeavor sold through only 82k units. In comparison, the Xbox 360 sold through 174k units (which is also, admittedly, disappointing).All hope is not lost, of course. NPD's Anita Frasier spoke to GameDaily about the state of the PS3: "Undoubtedly the sales results are not encouraging to date, but I for one am not counting out the PS3," she said. "While there has been good content available for the platform, there hasn't yet been the 'killer' title that tends to drive hardware sales acquisition among the broader audience. As the content ramps up, I'm confident the hardware sales will too. Rather than revisit this each and every month, particularly as we head into traditionally slower months of the year, I think we should really wait to see what the picture looks like in 6 months. Everything will be much clearer then."
SCEE may lay off 10 percent of staff
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe may be tightening its belt in the coming days, with a layoff of up to 10% of its workforce (about 160 employees) on the horizon. GameDaily BIZ has confirmed with SCEE spokesman Nick Sharples that the firings are in the works. Sharples' tone suggests that the layoffs are all but a certainty. The exact number of pink slips to be handed out, drawn from GameDaily's anonymous tipster, is still unconfirmed. Sharples chalks up the downsizing to the company's need to streamline operations and reduce costs, which seems like as good a reason as any to lay off some of your staff. There will obviously be temptation to lump this together with negative PS3 sales reports or price drops in the UK, but we'd rather not turn the firing of 160 humans into flamewar fodder. Here are the facts: 1) The company's game division lost around $446 million last year, a drop of more than $1 billion from the year prior. 2) Companies hate losing money. 3) There is no number three. Our sympathies go out to those who might soon be jobless. May we suggest PC gaming as your next endeavor? Romero says it's going to be huge.
GameDaily's delusional list of 'overrated' industry people
GameDAILY's Chris Buffa has moved on from talking about the sad state of game reviews and giving lessons on how to be a better games journalist. Now he's after the big guys. In probably the most incredible grab for traffic we've ever seen, he explains who the top five "overrated" industry people are. Ready to hear the list? Koji Igarashi (Producer of Castlevania) David Jaffe (Creator of God of War) Hideo Kojima (Creator of Metal Gear Solid) Shigeru Miyamoto (Creator of most things Nintendo) Reggie Fils-Aime (The only non-developer) There you have it, the list of the most "overrated" people in the industry. Other than Reggie, who is a marketing guy and is paid for being "overrated," these other individuals are the industry. Shigeru Miyamoto is overrated, but American McGee merely gets an honorable mention? This list wasn't about going after those who are actually overrated, it was just finding the biggest fish to fry with only a dab of oil in the pan.
Analyst: lower price, younger demographic
Analysts get paid a lot of money to come up with stuff. While most of the info they spew out is incorrect, it's still fascinating to see the kooky predictions that they come up with. GameDaily BIZ reports that Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian believes that Sony will be targeting younger players in future PSP campaigns: "Sony could be preparing to bolster the PSP handheld market with a shift in marketing towards a younger demographic, possibly including a hardware price cut later this year."A lower price combined with some more kid-friendly software a la LocoRoco may help the PSP compete directly against its biggest competitor: the DS. Certainly, Nintendo has reaped the benefits of going for the younger gamer: will Sony be able to strike gold as well?
God of War II's director says PSP version "definitely a possibility"
Cory Barlog, director of the upcoming God of War II recently spoke with GameDaily BIZ, waxing on about the future of the franchise. When asked if the franchise would ever jump ship to the PSP he had a few interesting things to say: "That would be awesome. I mean, I've been a big proponent of that concept for quite a while. I want it on every possible system you could put it on. I think it's definitely a possibility. It's not something we haven't discussed but it's not something we're actively discussing right now."But does this mean that the Ready at Dawn slip-up was just a mistake? It sounds like Barlog is denying that God of War is currently in development for the our system. We keep on hearing conflicting reports of GoW on the PSP, but hopefully, we'll see what's going on with this hotly anticipated title at next week's GDC.
Developers have to "wise up" and avoid 3D
Chris Buffa from GameDaily XL has a truly opinionated piece on the PSP. He blames developers that "shoehorn games onto this sucker that don't belong." Examples include Brothers in Arms: D-Day. No... he meant all FPS games on the handheld. Heck, he somewhat insinuates that all 3D games are flawed on Sony's portable:"Most 3D games play like garbage on Nintendo's hand held. At the same time, most of its games work because developers play to all of the system's strengths, rather than ignore its weaknesses. Konami, for example, would probably attempt a 3D Castlevania on the PSP as opposed to a 2D one, simply because of the system as well as Sony's love for all things 3D. Same with Metal Gear. Portable Ops has control issues. Why not create a 2D game, or a top down game, ala the Game Boy Color Metal Gear? Go retro. People would still purchase it."But wouldn't taking advantage of the PSP's strength involve taking advantage of 3D gaming? Certainly, the PSP is a far more powerful machine than the DS. Games like Daxter prove that the PSP can work quite well in the 3D environment. Games like Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins showcase how 3D graphics can make 2D games look especially beautiful. Maybe if developers focused on more refined controls, and shorter load times, the complaints of so many would dissipate rather quickly.
If handhelds were getting grades, the DS Lite would get an A
According to the folks over at GameDaily, every console is deserving of a grade and the DS Lite is even more deserving of a good grade as it received an A. They quote the obvious outstanding features of the handheld as the reasoning behind the good grade, such as touch-screen controls, a large library of great games and reasonable $129.99 price tag. While we would've given the handheld an A+, we'll support them in saying that next to the iPod, the DS Lite is a must-have gadget for anyone.[Thanks Ali!]
