According the EA, Mass Effect 2 has sold over two million units worldwide in less than a week.
The brilliant success has been achieved despite the sequel only being on sale in America since Tuesday and released in Europe just today, making it the first ‘blockbuster’ of 2010. "Mass Effect 2 has earned 40 perfect scores, amassed over 30 editor's choice awards and is donning the front cover of 20 magazines worldwide," said EA.
"On launch day, the term 'Mass Effect' was in the top 10 trending topics on Twitter and most searched on Google News. MSNBC.com said, 'Mass Effect will go down as one of the most influential video game series of all-time on the Xbox 360 platform'."
Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare, added:
"Mass Effect 2 is poised to be one of the biggest games of 2010. We could not be more proud of the game's universal acclaim and early commercial success."
Whether you’re a fan of the series of not, you’ve got to admit that it’s a really impressive achievement by Mass Effect 2.
360 owners have had great times playing GTA: Episodes form Liberty City, knowing that it was exclusive to Microsoft’s console, well now it looks as if they’re going to have to share, because it’s makings it’s way to the PS3 and PC.
The news was leaked after customer of retail website, SimplyGames.com saw a listing for Episodes from Liberty City on PS3, which was later pulled from the site. The company, later, released a statement, saying:
“We can confirm that the details on our website are correct and that this title will be released on the PlayStation 3 in the near future.“
“We have had to remove this title from sale for a short period. As soon as this title is available to pre-order we will email you with all the details so you can get your order placed as soon as possible.”
This was then confirmed by Rockstar Games president, Sam Houser who said:
"It's been a long time coming, but we are proud to finally deliver Episodes from Liberty City for the PC and PlayStation 3."
"We appreciate the patience of our PlayStation 3 and PC fans worldwide, and we look forward to putting the games in your hands this March."
If you’re an Xbox 360 owner who’s slightly pissed off about this piece of information, then please raise your hand. Okay - one, two, three…
 After yesterdays news about Ubisoft developing a brand new football game to rival FIFA and Pro Evo, the company has since announced that it’s simply a ‘rumour’.
According to a French website the ‘rumoured’ game was scheduled to be released and has “several English team” helping to develop the game, including Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard. But a spokesperson for Ubisoft has since said:
"sorry, but we're not commenting on rumours."
We can’t work out if Ubisoft actually are working on a football title and are using this ‘rumour’ as an excuse to get development hush-hush, or whether they really aren’t working on any such title. Honestly, we don’t care because we know that a third football game would get trounced by FIFA and Pro Evo.
Nintendo are given a very vague release date for Metroid: Other M of summer, 2010.
The game, developed by Team Ninja and Nintendo, is set between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion and will take the series back to it Action-Adventure roots instead of another FPS style game. Even the ex-head of Team Ninja, Tomonobu Itagaki seems pleased with the direction the series is heading in and wishes his former team good luck with their development.
"Metroid is a fantastic game that I played a lot on the Disk System when I was a child," said Itagaki. “I hope Team Ninja works hard in making a good game.”
So, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 and The Legend of Zelda both slated for a 2010 launch, Nintendo fans have a lot to look forward to this year… finally.
The growing popularity of digital distribution has yet to effect the major retailers on the high streets.
Although many companies believe that digital distribution is a step in the right direction, they all agree that customers would rather buy a physical game, which they could sell or trade-in, rather than buying downloads. Phil Moore, sales director at Grainger Games:
"Digital distribution hasn't affected our business a great deal in 2009."
"[While] we're focusing our minds on the opportunity that digital distribution could present [to] retailers, we've been more intent on developing and improving our current online proposition."
Gennaro Castaldo, HMV spokesperson:
"Like all parties in the games business, we know it's gradually coming and are working on laying foundations to prepare for this. HMV recently acquired 50 per cent of digital services provider 7digital, which will give us greater understanding and expertise and will, hopefully, enable us to build a compelling platform that will also extend to games."
Igor Cipolletta, Shopto owner:
"We've seen with PSP Go that the market isn't ready for a digital-only game console, especially at a price point so close to the PS3."
"DLC for 'established' consoles has increased and, in most cases, adds value to existing titles. However, this is in regard to additional content rather than what you would term 'games on demand', which gamers perceive as being overpriced compared to physical media and which cannot be traded in or sold once finished with."
We, personally, think that services like Steam and Direct2Drive are great for the PC games market and so much simpler to upload onto your computer, but we still can’t imagine a world without some sort of physical medium - be it a CD or a cartridge.
We actually praised Nintendo for stepping up and releasing demos for some WiiWare titles. Playing a game before purchasing it helps a great deal to understand how the game plays and what it’s like. But it looks as if Nintendo are pulling the plug on WiiWare demos. If you went into the Wii Shop Channel today (Thursday, January 28th) you would have seen this message from the big N:
"Now's your final chance to try some of WiiWare's finest for free. Download the following WiiWare game demos for free via the Wii Shop Channel before the offer expires on 31 January."
So if you still want the chances of getting demos for Final Fantasy: My Life As A Dark Lord, Bit Trip Beat, Nyx Quest, World Of Goo or Pokemon Rumble then you’d better act fast, because they’re gonna’ be gone next week.
It’s a shame, because we were really hoping that free WiiWare demos would be the norm, just like it is on Xbox Live and PSN.
According to French website, Jeux Video Ubisoft is planning to release it’s own football game to take on the likes of FIFA and Pro Evo.
Ubisoft's footy game is said to be due for release at the end of this year and have been working with "several English clubs" including Liverpool and its captain, Steven Gerrard to develop the game. The head of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot has expressed his thoughts of getting his foot in the competitive football game genre.
"The sports genre is different - there are lots of good elements there because it is more casual, so it would bring new customers to Ubisoft. So we have something to grow there, and that's what we are doing."
Is there enough room for a third competitor to enter the ring? or will it get pushed out like so many other football games have in previous years? Remember when Sensible Soccer tried to make a come-back? Didn’t work out too well, did it.
 Nintendo has released its latest financial results and according to them 67 million Wii consoles have been sold to date worldwide and over 125 million Nintendo DS consoles.
And if that wasn't enough, Nintendo also announced that they have sold over 509 million Wii games and 688 million DS carts.
Incredibly, Wii Sports Resort has sold 13.5 million copies, New Super Mario Bros. Wii 10.55 million and Wii Fit Plus 10.16 million; truly impressive numbers considering some of those games have only been on sale for a few months.
Surely everyone must own a Wii or DS now.
Nintendo has uncovered the very first designs for the first Legend of Zelda game, released on the NES. Drawn in 1985, these include the original specifications, rough sketches of characters and items, the dungeon select screen, the first land map and the first dungeon maps. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said:
"The original specifications were drawn up in 1985, and here we are today still making Zelda games based upon these specifications."
He also admitted that the design team had enough ideas from the original sketches to use for the next ten years. Blimey!
Toshihiko Nagako, Nintendo’s SRD president explained how the lands in the game were designed.
"Back then we had some long paper, and Tezuka-san and Miyamoto-san would sit side by side and draw together. You drew the stuff on the left, Tezuka-san, and the right side is Miyamoto-san's. If you look closely, you can tell how a marker was used to make small dots. These are rocks, and these are trees. And you can see Miyamoto-san's personality. At first he's making individual dots, but as he gets tired of it, toward the top, he just fills in a bunch of space!"
Ahh, those were the days. Back when you only need a piece of graph paper to create a classic franchise. Priceless.
 An attorney in Philadelphia has filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft over the company’s ‘Points’ system used to purchase downloadable content through Xbox Live.
Samuel Lassoff received an invoice from Microsoft, earlier this month, which included charges for purchases he couldn't complete because he didn’t have enough Microsoft Points. Because Microsoft Points are sold in denominations of either 2100 or 4200 many users tend to have left-over points that they, sometimes, can’t use.
Mr. Lassoff claims that he and “hundreds” of other Xbox Live users been overcharged by Microsoft. In his lawsuit, he said:
"Microsoft breached that contract by collecting revenues for digital goods and services which were not provided."
Microsoft has acknowledged that their ‘Points’ system isn’t without it’s flaws. Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg told G4TV that the company is considering to drop the ‘Points’ system all together.
"I think people like to see the dollar amount. We never intended to ever mislead people. I think we want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we're looking at,” said Greenberg.
"How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars? The fact is that you've got to think that we have one service that we're offering around the world. The nice thing about points is that no matter if you're on the yen or the Euro or the dollar - something that's 200 points is 200 points everywhere around the world.
"There's more technical complexities to being able to put local prices in. You have to do that for every product in every country and you then have to deal with currency fluctuations. So there's some challenges to that, but we absolutely did it with the Games On Demand, response has been good and absolutely it's something we're looking at doing."
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