Though many decry or feel alienated by Nintendo’s focus on the casual gamer, the strategy appears to have paid off, quite literally, for the company. According to Forbes, Nintendo’s Wii is pulling in some pretty impressive numbers and may be the only console this generation that’s actually making money, even if that profit is a [...]
Continue reading...Monday, December 1, 2008
For a mere $100,000 (about a seventh of the median cost of a single-family home here in San Francisco), private investor Mark Thomas has just acquired 87% of the shares of Midway Games. The controlling stake was previously the property of media mogul Sumner Redstone’s deeply indebted holding company National Amusements.
Continue reading...Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Update: Several GameCyte readers are having friction with Chase National Bank in sorting out the several confusing offers available at this time. Caveat emptor, and you can read full details in the comments below. Original Story: Pop quiz: Which is the cheapest current-gen home console? If you said the $250 Nintendo Wii, you’d be wrong — it’s [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, November 13, 2008
Though more than one CEO has cited an October retail slowdown in recent investor conference calls, such a slowdown happily does not seem to have afflicted the U.S. video game industry sales as a whole. Today, the NPD reports that game industry sales actually increased 18% year-over-year to $1.31 billion. The biggest winner, as usual, was [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Why did five THQ development studios vanish into thin air this weekend? Probably because the company posted a Q2 loss today of $115 million, over sixteen times that of last year. (For comparison purposes, THQ’s tripled their losses this July to only $27 million.) As a result, the publisher has decided to do a little necessary “streamlining.” [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, October 30, 2008
“EA Curbs Spending by Curb Stomping 600.” “Riccitiello Replaces 6% of Employees with Mercenaries.” “EA Cuts Off 2400 Of Its Own Limbs.” There were a variety of jokes with which I could have headlined this article. But this is no laughing matter. As many as six hundred men and women working for Electronic Arts, the second-largest independent video game [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, October 1, 2008
In mid-August, Capcom VP Christian Svensson reaffirmed the company’s commitment to developing software for the PlayStation Portable. Calling rumors that support would entirely cease “absolutely 100% false,” he told the official Capcom forums that the company was in fact making more PSP games. But if PSP development has not stopped, it has certainly slowed. In a [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, September 17, 2008
With a rumor swirling around our fair internet this morning that Google was preparing to buy Valve “any second now,” the speculators at The Inquirer certainly had the games industry in a tizzy. The games media, in turn, did their homework, and Valve’s Doug Lombardi denied such rumors to several sources in no uncertain terms. [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Back in March, game developer and Gamasutra contributor Ian Bogost went to Toronto, and came back with two things: a glowing preview of the Spore Creature Creator (only tempered by an intuition that the game might not cater to the same broad audience as The Sims) — and within that preview, news that Spore would [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, July 1, 2008
“It reminds me of the circumstances attendant upon the death of Van Jansen, in Utrecht, in the year ’34. Do you remember the case, Gregson?” “No, sir.” “Read it up – you really should. There is nothing new under the sun.” – A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle Those who try to apply analysis to make predictions about an [...]
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Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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