Japanese Puzzles to Solve Boredom on your mobile

Hands-On Mobile™, the world's leading developer of connected games and applications, today announces the launch of Japanese Puzzles, the first time a compendium of three popular Japanese puzzle games has been brought together on mobile phones. Japanese Puzzles is the perfect follow-up to Sudoku Garden, which became one of Hands-On Mobile's top five selling titles in 2006. As well as Sudoku, Japanese Puzzles also offers Kakuro, and, for the first time on a mobile phone platform, Tenpenki.

Tenpenki makes the player use logic to create a picture in a grid as guided by numbers running across the top and down the side. These nonogram puzzles were first created in the late 1980s in Japan and by the mid-1990s puzzle magazines were routinely producing up to 100 nonograms per month. Kakuro is a challenging form of maths crossword and, in Japan, it is the second most popular form of puzzle behind Sudoku. Sudoku itself remains a modern puzzle phenomenon, with the majority of British newspapers offering a variety of Sudoku puzzles for readers to complete.

"Japanese Puzzles is a unique game that combines the familiarity of Sudoku with different and equally challenging games that will attract both new and avid puzzle fans," said Eric Hobson, President and General Manager EMEA, Hands-On Mobile. "The puzzle sector is a vast market, and one where demand still exceeds supply. We are looking forward to helping people everywhere combat boredom wherever they may be with the three addictive and re-playable puzzle games in Japanese Puzzles."

Japanese Puzzles will be one of the most feature rich puzzle titles to be offered on a mobile platform. To help players find puzzle solutions, the game allows up to nine number options to be 'pencilled in' making it easier to solve games. Players can also look up hints, and for complete beginners there is a tutorial mode. As players progress and improve they can look back at statistics and review how their performance has changed.

Japanese Puzzles will appeal to both casual and experienced gamers alike. To make things easier for those who are on the move, the game offers players the ability to save their progress so they can return to it later. Meanwhile for those wanting a more indepth experience, Japanese Puzzles has a 'Voyage' mode, which allows players to take on all three games and unlock more content. Players can access even more content by downloading new puzzles every day and also by competing for the fastest time against other puzzle fans from around the world.

NEW Blacksite Demo Available on XBOX Live!

Midway today announced that a new Xbox Live BlackSite demo is available today. The demo highlights two levels from the game's single-player campaign, taking gamers through the Rachel, NV town square and courthouse, and placing players in the gunner's seat during a helicopter escort mission through the desert canyons of Nevada.

The immersive and fast-paced action FPS title, which is available in stores on November 30th for Xbox 360 and PC in Europe, and will ship for PlayStation 3 in Europe in Q1 of 2008.

BlackSite gives gamers a chance to direct their living, breathing squad mates with a context-sensitive "One-Button Squad Command" control. Destructible environments can be reduced to rubble, creating interactive cover points that can be blown away with enough firepower.

Visit blacksitegame.com or midway.com for more information. Additional screens, videos and fact sheets can be found on Midway's press site, login information below.

Commodore and FIP create Speedball-PC

Legendary computer manufacturer offers branded PC for cult game

Commodore and Speedball have been a winning team from the outset. Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe excelled as one of the most successful games ever for the Amiga 500 platform in the early nineties. Until today the early computer games generation worships the unmatched combination of action-sports cult game and legendary gaming computer. FIP Publishing and Commodore now revive the glorious alliance with a state-of-the-art gaming PC. This high-end machine will be exclusively branded with the classy artwork of the new Speedball 2 – Tournament. The futuristic computer is perfectly suited to run the new action-sports title in full 3D details. Besides, the partners offer a branded case with 750 Watt power supply unit to computer tinkerers. Commodore will present both products on its website www.commodoregaming.com.

The tradition-steeped computer manufacturer and FIP will additionally approach the Speedball community with a targeted newsletter mailing. Moreover, Commodore is going to use high-resolution 3D models and artworks for their Ckin library, from which users can choose individual designs for a custom PC. In return, the games publisher FIP integrates the famous Commodore logo into the packaging and the official websites, where it promotes the branded products also.

“What a truly remarkable return to one of the great gaming alliances this represents” Sean Charles, Marketing and PR manager of Commodore Gaming added. “The Speedball series are no less than a milestone in C64 gaming history, from a development house that became known for both innovation and its unique style and is fondly remembered by many. We believe FIP’s re-imagining of Speedball 2 to be a respectful project that benefits greatly from involving original developer Mike Montgomery as a consultant and adds great value to this classic title with many of today’s key features, like online functionality.”

Create your own Home Sweet Home!

Big Blue Bubble is thrilled to announce that its newest causal title, Home Sweet Home, is finally released!

Home Sweet Home is a home design game created by Big Blue Bubble and published in collaboration with Oberon Media. Home Sweet Home is currently available at www.HSHgame.com and is scheduled for release on major casual game portals December 14th, 2007.

Home Sweet Home is a home design game where you will listen and learn about your client’s tastes, create fabulous designs for your clients, and then direct your build team to assemble it all in front of your eyes.

Game Description

Picture the scene. You move into a new house and you have visions of how you want every room, except for one. Sure, there are some items you know you need in that room but, other than that, it’s a blank canvas. Who do you call? How about the ‘Home Sweet Home’ team?

Learn about your clients to ensure you are designing the perfect room for their tastes. Next, choose the furniture, choose the colors and patterns and place items around the room until the design is perfect. Then direct your build team of workers to assemble it all in front of your eyes!

With simple controls, a fun graphical style and an easy to use interface, Home Sweet Home allows the player to nurture their creative gaming experience. Remember – a house is not a home until its ‘Home Sweet Home’!

Home Sweet Home is available at www.HSHgame.com

Nintendo Is Unstoppable

Remember those commercials that said, “Sega does what Nintendon’t”? Well, it turned out to be true. Sega ended up almost shutting down, left the hardware market entirely and is now Nintendo’s slave, as evidenced by their former mascot Sonic the Hedgehog’s appearance in “Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games” and the forthcoming “Super Smash Bros. Brawl.”

A similar thing happened in the last few years, with Sony and Microsoft fanboys claiming that Nintendo had become too kiddy with their GameCube, while “real gamers” play “Grand Theft Auto” and “Halo” and all those ludicrous things.

Most recently, these crowds of what I like to call “newbie gamers,” who have no concept of what makes quality game design, have been trying to pigeonhole the Nintendo Wii as “the casual gamers’ machine.”

Well, that’s crap. Look at the crazy sales figures—Nintendo just missed outselling Microsoft’s Xbox 360 during this past October only because of a supply shortage, and then, by a mere 20,000 units. The Wii has outsold the 360 by double or more almost every other month of the year. Besides that, there is an incredible lineup of titles already out and on the way, including a little game called “Super Mario Galaxy” that came out last week. The game sold 250,000 copies its first day in Japan, and it’s being called “Nintendo’s greatest platformer ever” by IGN.com. Having played it myself, I can tell you it has some pretty astounding physics and graphics for only being on a system that’s supposedly “two GameCubes taped together.”

That aside, the Wii has incredible potential in the future to attract more “hardcore games” from third-party developers, even more so than the 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, and I attribute this to casual games.

How so? Things like the Wii Remote and upcoming “balance board” accessory have been derided from the get-go by people like Mark Rein of Epic Games (developers of “Gears of War” and “Unreal Tournament III”) as “casual-game devices.”

That may be true as far as games like “Wii Sports” and “Wii Play,” but in reality, these accessories have created the biggest and best revolution in hardcore gaming as well.

“Metroid Prime 3” for the Wii showcases unheard-of precision using the combination of the Wii Remote and nunchuk accessory to recreate mouse and keyboard controls—a control scheme “Halo 3” players can only dream of (or wait for the game’s inevitable release on Windows Vista, thus negating the purchase of a $400 Xbox 360).

The upcoming “balance board” for Wii Fit, a plank that measures shifts in weight, translating them into on-screen action, could easily be expanded for genres like extreme sports, adding real-time motion control to the SSX snowboarding games or Tony Hawk series.

The forthcoming “Wii Zapper,” while packaged with a simple point-and-shoot game called “Link’s Crossbow Training,” has already been adapted for Sega’s upcoming “Ghost Squad,” a first-person arcade-style shooting game in the vein of “Time Crisis.”

People like to say, “Well, Nintendo’s first-party games are the only ones that take advantage of the hardware. Case in point: Metroid Prime.” This, too, is a fallacy. If casual games bring in more of the “mainstream” and, thus, bigger revenues and a wider audience, doesn’t this bode well for third-party support, in that companies will have incentive to devote more money, bigger franchises and higher-quality development teams to third-party games?

The simple answer is yes. Furthermore, it has already happened. “Medal of Honor: Heroes 2” was just released for the Wii and boasts 32-player online capability, which – for a “casual games machine” – is pretty impressive. Besides that, critics have hailed its control scheme as a step above Nintendo’s own “Metroid Prime 3.”

Finally, we can’t forget about another little game known as “Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” From all the information released so far, it looks to be the most hardcore Nintendo has ever been. The game boasts multiple online modes, a level designer, 20-plus fighters with more to come, including Sonic the Hedgehog and “Metal Gear Solid’s” Solid Snake. It will be the biggest gaming extravaganza Nintendo has ever produced and, perhaps, in the history of the industry.

The future is clear: Nintendo will win this Christmas in the short-term and this generation’s console war in the long term with a combination of low development-costs, casual and hardcore software, innovative accessories and the gangbuster sales of the Wii and Nintendo DS. Save your money from that overpriced piece of junk, the Playstation 3 (which happens to be selling worse than the GameCube was at this time five years ago), and invest in some Nintendo stock. Don’t waste your time with Halo. Get a Wii.

Amazon Germany will not sell Wii to UK!

Amazon Germany (Amazon.de) has stopped selling the Nintendo Wii to UK buyers.

After shortages in the uK market publicised the fact you could buy a Wii from Europe, Amazon has stopped the practice.

What changed this situation? Was it pressure from Nintendo?

Is it legal? The UK is part of the European union and that should bring free trade between nations, so why have Amazon stopped selling the Wii to the UK.

If you have the answer please let me know.

You have less chance of buying that Wii for Christmas now!

If you know where you can still buy from Europe let me know.

The video-game console wars, one year later

With the holiday shopping season set to start, a full year has passed since the head-to-head competition began between the Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 video-game consoles. In terms of sheer demand, the Wii has been the runaway hit. But there are a variety of ways to assess the data. Here's a breakdown.

Worldwide installed base: The Wii has essentially matched, in one year on the market, the cumulative unit sales that the Xbox 360 built over the past two years. (The Wii and PS3 were launched in November 2006; the Xbox 360 in November 2005.) Price is a big factor here, with the $250 Wii coming in significantly lower than the PS3 and Xbox 360. And Microsoft may have its sights set more on Sony. But if the objective is to have the most consoles in homes, the Wii has come a long way toward that goal.

Sources: Microsoft earnings report, disclosing 13.4 million unit sales through Sept.; Nintendo earnings report (PDF) showing 13.2 million units sold through Sept.; e-mail from Sony spokesman, reporting 5.6 million sales to date. Note: Reports based on other data have shown the Wii already taking the lead.

U.S. installed base: In cumulative sales in the United States, Microsoft is still in the lead, according to NPD Group statistics. These numbers, like the ones above, include sales during the year that the Xbox 360 was on the market before the PlayStation 3 and Wii were launched. The Xbox 360's weaker showing on the worldwide chart above, compared to the U.S. ranking at right, can be attributed to factors including the Microsoft console's relatively lackluster showing in Japan.



U.S. head-to-head: This category is an attempt to adjust for the Xbox 360's head start, trying to make more of an apples-to-apples comparison. It counts sales only over the past year in the United States. (I compiled this chart by adding up the numbers from the NPD Group's monthly reports over the past year.) Among the new consoles, the Wii has led U.S. unit sales in 9 out of the 12 months it has been on the market, the market-research firm says. The recent exception was September, when "Halo 3" was launched, temporarily lifting the Xbox 360 into the monthly unit-sales lead.

Worldwide launch-year results: Finally, this chart looks at how each console did in its launch year, over roughly comparable lengths of time. For the Xbox 360, it shows worldwide unit sales in the period from November 2005 to September 2006, adding up numbers disclosed as part of Microsoft's earnings reports. For the Wii, the chart shows sales from November 2006 to September of this year, as described in Nintendo's earnings reports.



For the PS3, it shows worldwide sales over a slightly longer time frame, from November 2006 to present, as reported by a Sony spokesman this week, which means there are a few more weeks of sales in the PS3 number than in the others. Issues of manufacturing and supply also can limit first-year sales. Even so, it's interesting to note that the PS3 wasn't lagging the Xbox 360's launch-year pace by a whole lot.

Other considerations: For each company, market share is key from a strategic perspective. But it's important to note that unit sales are just one way of measuring a console's performance. Microsoft, for example, points to its U.S. lead in areas such as total revenue from hardware and software, and the number of games sold per console. Still, profitability is another important factor, and the company's Xbox unit hasn't yet started turning a consistent profit, despite billions of dollars in investment.

With one year of head-to-head competition now in the books, I'll be interested to hear how people think all of this will turn out.

PCs always better than PS3 Xbox and Wii, says Crytek

Crysis' recommended graphics card costs more than PS3, XBox, 360, or Wii

While admitting that he doesn't spend that much time playing them, Crytek's art director says that videogame consoles can't compare to the PC.

"My opinion on them in comparison to the PC is that I think the PC is always better," Michael Khaimzon told GamesIndustry.biz.

"Because the PC you can do so many things with, and the console is just there for the gaming."

Khaimzon, who grew up in Communist Russia, hasn't worked on any console games. He has, however, helped create the amazing visuals in the Crysis PC game.

He views consoles as inferior simply because there are so many more things you can do with a PC.

"You cannot create characters on a console - you can't run a 3D programme from one, as far as I know. You can't play certain strategy games on a console well, like Total Annihilation for example, or at least I haven't seen one, I think it's limiting to certain types of games," he said.

At the same time, he noted that PCs allow user to plug in a controller and play the same kinds of games as consoles.

Khaimzon isn't concerned with compatibility issues and the price of graphics cards, criticisms that are often brought against PC gaming.

"[N]obody forces you to upgrade your PC. You can take Crysis and play it on a medium-spec machine and it will still run, even on an older machine.

That said, Crytek recommends that Crysis be run on an Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB graphics card that costs upwards of USD 400--more than the 40GB PlayStation 3, the Arcade or Pro model Xbox 360, or the Nintendo Wii.

"If people think there are games that are worth buying a USD 500 video card for, then they should go ahead and buy it and enjoy games of that quality - but they can still enjoy games at a lower quality as well," he explained.

500,000 Super Mario Galaxy sales in first week

Fastest-selling Mario title in the US (Surprise, Surprise)

Nintendo has revealed that Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii sold over 500,000 units in its first week of sale in the US.

"Super Mario Galaxy had the strongest one-week debut of any Wii game to date and has also become the best-selling Mario title ever in its first week, with US sales of more than 500,000, based on internal sales figures," commented George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing.

Released in Europe last Friday, the game debuted at number five in the UK all-formats charts, although the Chart Track data only accounts for the first two days of sale in the region.

PC Store won't kill off UMD, says Sony

New download service complements disc format, great for casual games and demos (See earlier post)

The newly-launched PlayStation Store for PC does not spell the end of the road for Sony's Universal Media Disc format, according to Darren Cairns, head of online marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

He told GamesIndustry.biz: "The UMD business is still good for us and our publishers. It's still a burgeoning market, and we're still selling a large number of PSPs on a weekly basis, so there are a large number of new people coming into the market."

The potential to offer titles at a lower price point, because the costs of production and retail are cut, might seem like good news for gamers - but there are no plans to head down that path any time soon.

"I don't think that this would give us any cause for concern over UMD, I think they sit very well together. When you talk about the more casual games, pick-up-and-play games, you would definitely want to put them through the Store rather than have disc production, in to retail, and so on."

When asked if he felt that the Store could go on and offer a much wider selection of general entertainment media in the future - building on the current film trailers available and adding music tracks and video perhaps - he reiterated that the focus to begin with was on games.

"The PC Store is very much targeted at getting lots of really good game content at the start for the millions of PSP users that we've got. Longer term, the PlayStation Store is predominantly for game content for day one and we're working on the plans to build that out after.

"For us being able to deploy and push additional content, whether it's an additional overlay for a GPS or whatever, it's important going forward. But what we wanted to do was really establish the PlayStation Store on the PC, as it is already on the PS3."

The downloads themselves currently have no defined size limit, and they will vary according to game title. As an example the Bboy full game download weighs in at around 835MB, but full titles won't necessarily include all content found on the corresponding retail UMD.