G-News

In a conference call, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime announced a new program addressing the shortage of its Wii console.

Under terms of the program, consumers who purchase a Wii console through GameStop in December will be guaranteed delivery of the system by the end of January.

A year after its launch, the console remains in short supply.

Jim Silver, editor in chief of Toy Wishes magazine and an industry analyst, said it was unusual for an in-demand product to remain so hard to find for so long.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Silver told The New York Times. “By a year later with hot items, inventory usually catches up.”

James Lin, a senior analyst at the MDB Capital Group in Santa Monica, California, estimates that Nintendo is leaving USD 1.3 billion on the table by not having enough supply to meet the demand.

“They could easily sell double what they’re selling,” he said.

Nintendo’s headline title Wii Fit, the much talked about and demo’d exercise platform, has moved up one place to take the top spot in the latest software chart sales figures from Media Create.

The title sold 150,000 units in the week ending December 9, while Mario Party DS sold 107,000 in second and new entry Tales of Innocence shifted 104,000 copies in third.

Hot Shots Golf Portable 2 was another new entry in fourth, and Microsoft’s Lost Odyssey debuted in seventh, selling 55,000 units.

The full top ten is as follows:

1. Wii Fit (Wii)
2. Mario Party DS (DS)
3. Tales of Innocence (DS)
4. Hot Shots Golf Portable 2 (PSP)
5. Prof Layton and Pandora’s Box (DS)
6. Dragon Quest IV (DS)
7. Lost Odyssey (360)
8. Powerful Pro-kun Pocket 10 (DS)
9. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
10. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii)

Square Enix today announced a firm release date for Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings in the UK. The game will be with us on February 15th 2008.

Following the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, Electronic Arts has told GamesIndustry.biz that there is always a possibility of further acquisitions by the publishing giant.

EA Partners’ Nick Button-Brown, speaking at GDC Lyon, also said that he believes the Activision Blizzard deal was necessary for Vivendi, although he doesn’t expect to see any real effects of the merger for at least six months.

“Vivendi needed to make a change, they were just drifting. And Activision have been doing really well, Blizzard have been doing really well so it’s definitely an interesting combination,” he said.

“It’s very interesting, I don’t think we’re going to know exactly how it’s going to go until it settles down for six months,” he added.

Asked whether EA is eyeing developers for potential acquisitions, Button-Brown, who is director of business development for EA Partners said: “It’s always possible. My primary aim is to find new IP and work with great developers whether we acquire them or not.

“It would have to work for both parties. There are no hostile takeovers, it has to be right,” he said. “Look at Bizarre being bought by Activision. Bizarre were independent for so many years but then they felt like they wanted a little bit of shelter and it fitted. If we’d have been working with Bizarre, that would have been an interesting deal.”

EA currently works with a number of independent developers that have provided some of the company’s most recent success stories – Rock Band from Harmonix, Crytek’s PC shooter Crysis and Valve’s Half-Life collection The Orange Box.

For EA Partners, the challenge is finding quality independent studios that can provide titles where the publisher doesn’t already have major strengths.

“There’re so many opportunities out there. Look at Crytek, they make absolute bleeding-edge first-person shooters and they have been doing this for some time. It’s not something that we specialise in.

“There’s some really good creativity outside of EA. Look at Harmonix, EA couldn’t have come up with Rock Band. It’s not something that anybody other than Harmonix could have done, they spent years building that expertise. It’s about finding expertise that we don’t have in-house,” he said.

Now that communications between AMD and Havok have broken down, AMD has admitted that it’s considering buying Ageia, if the price is right. AMD’s head of developer relations, Richard Huddy, told Custom PC that ‘we’ve had that discussion, yes. It’s a discussion that goes round every three months – someone turns to me and says ‘why don’t we buy Ageia?’ and I go through the arguments about why we should and why we shouldn’t.’

Despite, Ageia’s disappointing games-support for its PhysX chip, the company’s PhysX software is free, and has accordingly been used widely, even if the PhysX hardware itself isn’t supported. As such, buying Ageia could give AMD a chance to continue to compete in the gaming physics arena now that Intel has bought Havok.

“Nintendo coming out in front (in the seventh-generation console war) simply because they’ve changed the way we play. While Sony and Microsoft engage in an arms race of bigger, faster and more complex games, Nintendo’s outside-the-box thinking has created a system anybody can pick up and enjoy.

PS3 problems stem from how the box was handled at launch and a top-down attitude telling consumers what they want as opposed to listening to their concerns. But, recently, Sony is making some strides, the best example being the price cuts on their all-in-one machine.

The Xbox 360 is actually sitting quite pretty. It’s currently the hardcore gamer’s choice and has the largest library of games. Their online component is a model that their two competitors should seriously look at and rip off.

But the Wii’s effort to expand the gamer marketplace is to be lauded, and also for helping ushering in the whole casual gaming trend. They are leading the industry into new areas, and we are very happy to be pulled along.”

Mudhar reviews and compares the three companies and systems in terms of:
• Sales
• What they do best
• Where they could improve
• What’s to come
• What they say
• Best exclusive games

Yesterday I reported on something Mark Rein mentioned about Unreal Tournament III on Xbox 360. More specifically, about how development on that version of the game wouldn’t begin until next year. Turns out that’s not exactly the case, as Rein rectified his comments today and sent the following note to Joystiq:

What I probably should have said was ’start working on it again’. We had the game up and running on all three platforms up until last spring. In fact Official Xbox Magazine came out and played the game for a great cover story they did on it. We stopped working on the 360 version so we could concentrate our efforts on shipping the various PC and PS3 versions. Once we get those out of the way, and take some time to enjoy the holidays with our friends and families, we’ll start working on the 360 version again. There’s still a decent bit of work to do. For example we have simple LAN play but no Xbox Live implementation yet and we need to work with Microsoft to figure out how to accommodate mods on their platform.
That’s better news than what we had before, but it still sounds like it’s going to be quite a while before we see UT on 360.

If the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray were decided on price point alone, HD DVD would have it in the bag. However, Blu-ray is narrowing the gap with the introduction of the Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions DH-401S; an internal PC drive available at a suggested price of USD 199.

The drive serves only as a Blu-ray, DVD and CD player although a PC equipped with the DH could be routed to a TV via an HDMI cable.

“With the increasing availability of Blu-ray Disc movies and other video content, consumers now have an affordable way to view the brilliant picture quality Blu-ray technology offers right on their personal computers,” says Christine Hsing, a marketing manager at PLDS, said in a statement. “Beyond that, the BD-ROM can serve as a playback device to their HD TVs by connecting an HDMI cable from the PC to the TV. This would save consumers hundreds of dollars on the purchase of a standalone Blu-ray player solely for that purpose.”

The specs for the DH-401S are:

* BD-R/RE/ROM single- or dual-layer discs read at up to 4X speeds

* DVD±R or DVD-ROM single- or double-layer discs read at 12X

*  DVD±RW single or double-layer discs read at 8X speeds

* DVD Single-layer or Double-layer media read at 4X maximum

* DVD ±R or DVD-ROM Single Layer read at 12X max

* DVD±R Double Layer and DVD±RW Single Layer read at 8X max

* CD-R/RW/ROM has a maximum read speed of 32X

The DH-401S comes bundled with Cyberlink PowerDVD software.

The World of Warcraft comic series hits the shelves this Wednesday. In an effort to promote the new comic book adaptation, MTV Multiplayer has published issue #0 which is an online-only issue for promotion purposes. World of Warcraft comic is published by Wildstorm, which is av branch of the well-known DC Comics.

The comic doesn’t appear to follow the game too closely, so it should make an interesting run. I find that comics that follow the game too closely tend to get boring too quickly. Check out issue #0 over at the MTV page to see if this is something you will be interested in.

I’ve been looking forward to next week’s PlayStation Store update, which will feature a demo of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and was taken by surprise when I saw how great this week’s update is. While the TimeShift demo is old news to anyone who has played it already on Xbox 360 or PC (and undoubtedly regretted it), Need for Speed ProStreet is definitely worth a look given the change in direction for the series.

While there’s only a single PSone game this week, it’s a real classic – arguably what is the best Twisted Metal of them all (if you remove Black from the conversation, it’s a no-contest), Twisted Metal 2, is now available for $5.99.

And just to grind my gears, there’s a bunch of downloadable cheats (which cost money, of course) for The Godfather.

It’s quite a long list between all of those cheats and videos, so you’ll have to hit the jump to see the full list.

Demos

TimeShift Demo (free)

Master Time to become the Ultimate Weapon in this single player demo from forthcoming FPS TimeShift™

File size: 479 MB

ESRB Rated M

Need for Speed ProStreet Demo (free)

Compete at the highest level of street racing. Experience the intense rivalry of Grip Racing and prove yourself in the all-new Speed Challenge - the ultimate test of speed and control.

File size: 906 MB

ESRB Rated E 10+

PS one Classics for PS3 / PSP

Twisted Metal 2 ($5.99)

It’s a whole new world to blow away with new cars, new battlegrounds, and new killer combat!

File size: 322 MB

ESRB Rated T