All Topics Gaming older than one year ago

Xbox 360 - 443.5K units DS - 398.4K units Wii - 253.9K PS3 - 214.5K units PSP- 84K units - software pulled in $403.3 million - hardware pulled in $313.8 million - total industry sales pulled in $846.5 million - Year-to-date, total game industry sales in the U.S. are now at $7.

We showed you this shirt awhile back, but do you know how it came to be? It’s based off another very famous shirt, Three Wolf Moon. Now that you know the inspiration behind the shirt, you can learn how the retailer of the original Three Wolf Moon feels! Click here to check out the [...]

Following last night's press event for BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games handed out swag bags with some decidedly cool stuff inside. Instead of the usual - a notebook! - the dev packed in two posters, some chocolates, and this fancy "Murder of Crows" statuette slash bottle, just like the one Booker DeWitt drank from in our preview of the game. While we can hear something sloshing around in there, we didn't open the bottle to learn what it is; we'll leave that task to the three of you.

That's right, we've got three bags and we're giving them all away to you. Take a peek in our gallery to see exactly what you'll get and head past the break for our giveaway rules.

Once again, Nintendo fans are left in the dark when it comes to their versions of a multiplatform game. Only now are we getting to see what the games will look like. I’m not posting the full-page scans due to the publication that has these screens, but I feel it’s only fair that [...]

Time travel, mini-games, and a lot of burping.

Industry analysts have already weighed in with their thoughts on Kinect's $150 price point -- now we're hearing from one of them on how well he thinks the gizmo will sell. The answer: really well, actually.

Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital has crunched numbers and deduced that Microsoft is manufacturing the motion sensor at a rate of two million per month, and believes that four million will be sold by 2011. That figure doesn't purely represent stand-alone sales, however. "The mix of Xbox 360 shipments for the holidays will be more heavily weighted toward the Kinect bundle," Sebastian believes, which is why he's upped his sales forecast from three million units in calendar Q4.

Interestingly, the analyst points out that sales of PlayStation Move, which launches roughly six weeks earlier on September 19 and "without as much 'buzz' as Kinect," could offer a better picture of how Microsoft's motion control offering will perform after it makes its bow on November 4.

#salesget Last week's sales champ, Sengoku Basara 3, was soundly defeated by Namco's latest Tales game, which draws upon the powers of a big PSP install base and Japan's love of doe-eyed anime-style characters. How well did Tales of Phantasia do? More »

What's the common thread between American McGee's Alice, Call of Duty and Quake 3? They were all powered by id Tech 3. Like Unreal Engine, id Tech was heavily licensed amongst third parties, used in a wide variety of console and PC games; however, it seems that id (and new parent company Bethesda) is no longer interested in pursuing the middleware market.

In an interview with Eurogamer, id's Todd Hollenshead said that Rage's id Tech 5 is a "competitive advantage and we want to keep within games we publish." Certainly, the awards the game picked up at E3 -- including "Special Commendation for Graphics" -- provide testament to that claim. From Bethesda's perspective, the engine is simply too good for anyone else to use. "We're not going to license it to external parties," Hollenshead explained. "If you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing."

By restricting id Tech 5 to Bethesda games, id has essentially exited the middleware market, which is largely dominated by Epic's Unreal Engine. "Epic's made a good business out of that so kudos to them," Hollenshead said. "But I wouldn't change the way we've done things."

A recent press release has announced that Aeria Games' free-to-play MMO Dynasty Warriors Online will soon expand its borders beyond Japan as part of a new licensing agreement with Tecmo Koei. The online hack-and-slash is now set to launch in North America and Europe as well, though no timetable has been placed on its arrival. Hopefully, the interim will give us enough time to figure out what the hell is going on in this gameplay video.

If you can't wait to try your hand at reaping vast fields of soldiers with the help of some remote accomplices, keep an eye out for Dynasty Warriors Online's beta, which the press release promises will be "testing soon."

#science Could Claytronics make the simple act of preparing a meal as interactive and engaging as a video game? Michaël Harboun explores the future of everyday objects with the Living Kitchen Project. More »

More punishment than pleasure, here's our list of life-changing products.

There's a lot to process in the debut trailer and screens for BioShock Infinite, not the least of which is the look of the characters, which have a slightly exaggerated look to them. In a discussion with Gamers With Jobs on their 200th podcast, Irrational Games boss Ken Levine explained.

"A movie uses photorealism quite often because it's free. We don't get a cost benefit for being photorealistic, it's the same reason Pixar's not photorealistic, you just end up creepy," he said. "There's no need to be photorealistic and I think it's kind of a cop out. I'd much rather play a game that's stylized."

Or maybe by 2012, we'll all look like Pixar characters and that will be the new photorealism. See, it's hard to say, because that's so long from now.

#kinect Harmonix has officially confirmed nine songs from Dance Central's danceable soundtrack, including hits like Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison" and Lady Gaga's "Poker Face." The Xbox 360 game's new ESRB rating may have just outed three more. More »

#gameface When they're not making Disney television shows about living in suites located in hotels and cruise ships, the Sprouse brothers are busy hawking goods. In this case, Nintendo goods. More »

Ninja Theory's upcoming action-adventure title, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, has freed up a new trailer and boy is it epic. We're talking big, bold words, narration Don LaFontaine would be proud of and plenty of slow-mo badassery. Break your shackles, vault on past the break and absorb every epic second through your eye muscles.

#bargains Where can you get 27 different id Software and Bethesda Softworks titles for only $70? At the Steam QuakeCon 2010 Sale, along with daily specials on the best games the two companies have to offer. More »

My name is Naoki Maeda, and I’m the Music Composer and one of the creators of DanceDanceRevolution! If you’re not familiar with DanceDanceRevolution, it’s the cult favorite arcade game and pioneering dance game that started it all!

If you followed the franchise, you know that we’ve been a part of the PlayStation family for years now. In fact, we recently teamed with the SCEA and the state of West Virginia to bring DanceDanceRevolution with the PlayStation 2, to all of the public schools in the state of West Virginia. This program, designed to combat childhood obesity, was a big hit — with Governor Joe Manchin praising it and Michelle Obama even stating President Obama has DanceDanceRevolution.

With each year and each iteration of DanceDanceRevolution, we work to bring new and fun challenges to players — which leads us to today, where I’m happy to announce DanceDanceRevolution is coming to the PlayStation 3! The PlayStation 3 is a console that we’ve been developing on for over a year and now that we’re ready to show the game, we wanted to come on the PlayStation.Blog to tell you how excited we are!

In DanceDanceRevolution for PS3, players can expect the same high-energy fun that you’ve been accustomed to. Players can look forward to hearing licensed music from today’s top artists and also music from our team here at Bemani. And since players will be able to access DanceDanceRevolution on the PlayStation Network, you can be assured; there will be a lot of downloadable content coming down the line.

The best thing about bringing DanceDanceRevolution to the PS3 is that we can use the AWESOME PlayStation MOVE motion controller. This awesome new peripheral allows us to bring some really cool new aesthetics and challenges to the game. We took out the avatars to allow the camera and the MOVE controller to put the focus on the player.

As we speak, I’m on a plane coming to the US from Japan! That’s because today (Thursday, August 12), we’re hosting the very first ever DanceDanceRevolution community event. This event is the official launch party for our PS3 sku! I’ll be there, along with some of the other good folks from Bemani and KONAMI. And since the PlayStation.Blog is my family too, I’ve given them 25 invites! So if you’re in the LA area, let us know if you would like to come! For more information, head to our Facebook page! I hope to meet a few of you there!

We have a lot more news to tell you about DanceDanceRevolution PS3 in the future, but we wanted to come here first and give you a little taste! So look out for DanceDanceRevolution PS3 this holiday season!

Never one to back down from a challenge, id's technical wunderkind John Carmack has somehow - we imagine with the aid of The Dark Arts - managed to condense its latest game onto the iPhone. Revealed during the live keynote at the annual QuakeCon in Dallas Texas, Carmack revealed that id's delivering a version of Rage (replete with MegaTextures and a 60 frames-per-second framerate!) onto the iPhone. While the demo was given on the iPhone 4, he said it could run on 3GS and looked best on iPad.

The game came about from an experiment with something on the Wii and, in keeping with that experimental model, Rage for iPhone won't have a four-year dev cycle: It will be out this year, before Rage, and it will be cheap, in keeping with the iPhone App Store's model. A second Rage iPhone game will be released alongside the release of the PC/console release next year, and Carmack is still "spot-surveying" the Android market to determine if it's worth supporting. He said it won't happen "this cycle" but he'll reevaluate in about six months. More news from QuakeCon as we hear it.

Even Bethesda can't resist releasing some (tangentially) BioShock-related news today. During QuakeCon, Bethesda's Pete Hines announced that parent company Zenimax has acquired Arkane Studios, who most recently worked on level design for BioShock 2. The developer is also responsible for Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

At the keynote, Arkane CEO Raphael Colantonio expressed his delight at being in the same company as id Software and Bethesda Softworks, and teased an unannounced game to be shown in the future, "including at QuakeCon." Which is, in fact, right now. So we'll find out about the product of this union really soon.

The Black Keys will make their debut in the Rock Band Music Store of downloadable content for the Xbox 360, PlayStation3, and Wii next week. The Black Keys’ Rock Band debut will include a three pack of tracks launching this Tuesday, August 17. The Black Keys Pack 01 will feature “Strange Times” and “I Got Mine,” [...]

#quakecon2010 Bethesda Softworks' Pete Hines just revealed at QuakeCon 2010 that its parent company Zenimax Media has welcomed another developer into its fold. Zenimax, which acquired Quake developer id Software last year, is also the new home of Arkane Studios. More »

#quakecon2010 During his keynote speech at QuakeCon 2010, id Software's John Carmack demonstrated Rage on the iPhone, running at 60 frames-per-second and able to "kill anything done on the Xbox or PlayStation 2." More »

We’ve shown you the pictures of the prank, but now you can see some video of how it was done!

SEGA pranksters redecorate a co-worker's cubicle.

In a recent interview with Fangoria, prolific horror film producer Don Carmody gave an update on the sequel to the 2006 film adaptation of Silent Hill. Things are going less than awesome, as Carmody explained production is "a little stalled now because of [writer/director] Roger Avary's [legal problems], so a little unsure yet." Carmody is referring to Avary's one-year prison sentence, which he received after being charged with vehicular manslaughter following a fatal 2008 car accident.

Carmody went on to explain, "the original plan was Roger writing and polishing the screenplay, and when he had finished his thing, we'd begin full-blown preproduction. I'm not sure what's going on with that. We know we want to make Silent Hill 2 and have a basic outline for it. We'll have to see." According to the Ventura County Sheriff's Department website, Avary has been released from prison -- whether or not he's in the screenwriting mood remains to be seen.

Square Enix ups the class of its classic strategy title.

Team working on unannounced project.

#ncsoft Picking up Aion's free Assault On Balaurea expansion at retail has its benefits, including one of several retailer-exclusive pets, each with a special benefit for players possessing it. Dibs on the odd-looking squirrel thing! More »