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ELSPA Charts - PC - Olympic fever brings the sole new entry

Tuesday 19th of August, 2008 - 21:01:31 GMT

There was no change to the top four games yet again, so see last week's PC rundown. However, Sins of a Solar Empire moved to midtable, allowing a massive leap of 17 places for the PC version of Beijing 2008 to rise to no.6 after only a fortnight. This added weight of PC sales also allowed the Olympics game to vault to no. 3 on the All Formats chart, in the bronze medal position behind Wii Fit and SoulCalibur 4.

Though the new PC entry sent three games downward, the EA sandwich moved to the bottom of the top 10 due to CnC 3 dropping to no.9, but Crysis rising to no.10 as people rush to play through the first game before Warhead's release on 12th September. Mid table is just below its best chart position since the launch last November.

GRID's massive drop sent it out of the chart altogether following last week's relative recovery. Stronghold failed to make any headway either, joining GRID and the standard edition of Flight Simulator X on a nosedive back out of the chart. Due to both the Physx pack from Nvidia and the release of Community Bonus Pack content, Unreal Tournament III has re-appeared in the PC Chart for the first time in months, taking Crysis's averaged position at 12. Despite uncertainties over the expansion pack's publishing arrangements, World In Conflict re entered the chart at 16 two weeks after marking half a year on sale, while Sim City Societies edged into the bottom of the chart once more, having been released the week before The Soviet RTS.

- Ken

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Preys-World - Pirate fined GBP 16K for game with launch price of GBP 10

Tuesday 19th of August, 2008 - 11:40:53 GMT

Topware Interactive is celebrating today after one of the four people the company successfully sued, was made to pay 1000 times the official price of its game, Dream Pinball 3D. The game will actually miss the UK Bank Holiday and is only released at the end of the month, 29th August.

The anonymous woman was fined GBP 6,086 in direct damages and the legal costs of GBP 10,000 - In other words, GBP 16086 for a game with a RRP of GBP 16 from shops, and which she could have pre-ordered from Play.com for less than a tenner, since its release date is after the bank holiday on Friday 29th August. Even then, the Jersey-based website only plans to increase the initial launch price by one single pound. Play's bargain price may have arisen from the bad reviews given by American console buyers of the game, particularly over on Amazon.com.

The damages were multiplied by the approximated number of downloads arising from her upload of the game to a file sharing site. In addition to the three other people successfully found guilty, 1000 further names of pirates were obtained via the legal action. However it was not made clear whether this larger group had pirated videogames alone or music, movies and TV episodes as well.

Either way, in the era where Crysis has been condemned to midtable chart placings by its heavy piracy, it serves them right and it will be the ultimate irony if these four people pirated a game that really was rubbish. The first British Amazon reviewer certainly thinks so.

- Ken

Financial information: Metro London (print)

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Playstation 3 - UK retailers bring forward PS3 SKU for Bank Holiday

Monday 18th of August, 2008 - 13:21:58 GMT

Since mid-July, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe had been due to announce the new 80Gb PS3 as arriving on 27th August. Thankfully a host of major retailers (Play.com. Amazon, Gamestation and GAME) decided that they didn't want to miss out on three days of lucrative Summer Bank Holiday trading and as far as they're concerned, will ship the new model from this Friday 22nd August. Online orders would most likely arrive on the official date in any case unless premium delivery was selected, giving the bricks and mortar gaming chains the weekend advantage.

At the same time there will be no price cutting from Sony, which makes sense given that the hard disk space is doubling up from 40Gb for the same £299 price. Cutting the price now would reduce the options in the run-up to Christmas for both the console itself and potential bundles.

For those who hadn't already modded larger drives into their consoles, the higher hard disk size certainly helps Sony to have it both ways regarding Blu-Ray playback and longer-term storage of downloadable content. If there isn't a killer game release to go with it as there was in the Spring with GTA then we're unlikely to see queues and people getting mugged for the console. Sony will probably content itself with the slow trickle of sales up until the Christmas rush.

- Ken

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Playstation 3 - Burnout Paradise coming to the Playstation Network

Friday 15th of August, 2008 - 11:56:50 GMT

Digital distribution on consoles took another step along the road today with Criteron announcing that they would be making Burnout Paradise available for PS3 gamers to download via the Playstation Network.

The game will be available at a budget price point of $30 and will include all the free downloadable content that has been released since the games release in January packaged in. However the Playstation Blog post only mentioned the US Playstation Store and there is no clarification from Sony as to whether Burnout Paradise will be available to download in other regions.

Sony is really taking the lead when it comes to offering full retail games on their download service with Warhawk and Grand Turismo 5 Prologue already finding a home on PSN and now Burnout Paradise. Microsoft haven’t really followed suit other than to offer old Xbox games as downloads, but then that might be because not ever 360 gamer has a hard drive on which to store downloaded games. So despite Microsoft claiming that digital distribution is the way forward, right now it is Sony who is leading the charge in this area.



-Nat I

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ELSPA Charts - Console - Soulcalibur stays top, Wii Fit still in stock and top

Thursday 14th of August, 2008 - 14:09:24 GMT

On the Wii, there was only one new breakthrough into the top 10, Rayman’s Raving Rabbids up from 12. Otherwise, there were no changes to the top four games over last week’s chart, with Big Beach Sports at 3 splitting Wii Fit, Mario Kart and Wii Play at 1, 2 and 4 respectively.

Soulcalibur IV remained at the top of the 360 and PS3 charts but the stagnation pattern was repeated. On the 360, only The Bourne Conspiracy moved into the top 10 on 360 whilst Uncharted Drake’s Fortune rose to 5 from the lower half of the top PS3 20, with the Bourne tie-in rising but sticking at 12. Otherwise, the big two consoles had the same shuffling around of titles as the PC.

- Ken

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ELSPA Charts - PC - stagnation rules the summer holidays

Wednesday 13th of August, 2008 - 17:22:03 GMT

The Sims remained in the top two positions and Civilization IV seems to have joined the piracy-proof club, climbing to 3. In fact there were no new entries into the top 10 at all, just a lot of musical chairs. WoW Battle Chest fell to 4, Cash on Delivery stepped up to 5, Sins of A Solar Empire fell to 6, The Sims Double Deluxe also fell to 7, CnC 3 moved to 8 even without much in the way of movement for the add-on in the budget chart. Assassin’s Creed fell to 9 and GRID remained in the pits at 10.

The bottom half of the chart was more interesting, with cult strategy favourite Stronghold debuting at 20. There was a re-entry above it at 19, unfortunately it was yet another Sims 2 add-on. Otherwise both Flight Simulator X editions were the non-movers at 14 and 17, Crysis at 12 and Mass Effect at 13 re-created the EA Sandwich outside the top ten, DoW Soulstorm rose to 11 but the complete edition fell to 16, swapping places with Age of Empires III at 15.

Despite the proper start of the English Premiership this weekend Championship Manager 2008 hasn’t dropped out yet in favour of a 2009 edition. It rose to 18 allowing the forementioned new and re-entry.

- Ken

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Wii - MadWorld will ruin the Wii says Mediawatch-UK

Wednesday 13th of August, 2008 - 12:52:56 GMT

MadWorld isn’t even out yet and already people are kicking up a fuss. Mediawatch-UK, a British organisation that campaigns for decency within film, television and games has complained that the game will ruin the family friendly image of the Wii. Speaking to The Mail online, who else, John Beyer, director of Mediawatch- UK said,

"I hope the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will view this with concern and decide it should not be granted a classification. What the rest of world does is up to them. We need to ensure that modern and civilised values take priority rather than killing and maiming people. It seems a shame that the game's manufacturer have decided to exclusively release this game on the Wii. I believe it will spoil the family fun image of the Wii."

First off I hope you are not trying to unduly influence an independent body Mr Beyer with your outdated and narrow views, and secondly why don’t you wait until you have played the game before complaining about it. I’m not going to even bother commenting on the rubbish about it spoiling the image of the console. He talks like it is Nintendo’s responsibility to make sure kids don’t play violent games rather than the parents, it’s classic blame shifting by an official who is out of touch with the modern world.

Hopefully the BBFC totally ignores this guy and gives the rating the game deserves based on playing through it. On Nintendo’s end they just said that they were confident that the game would receive the rating it deserves and thus only be available to that age group.

I long for the day when we are rid of these idiots.



-Nat I

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Team Fortress 2 - Heavy update dated

Wednesday 13th of August, 2008 - 12:51:15 GMT

Been itching to find out when the next free update for Team Fortress 2 will be available for download? Well achievement whores rejoice for the Heavy upgrade will be online from Tuesday the 19h of August.

Like previous updates this one will include new Heavy specific achievements and unlockable weapons, but Valve threw in a little surprise by announcing a new mode with five new maps to go alongside the addition of Goldrush from the previous update, and another popular community-made map.

More details will be revealed here as we get nearer to the release date.

I’m looking forward to being able to go into servers and finish off a few more Pyro achievements so that I can finally get the Backburner. It should be a lot easier to get kills with so many Heavies around.



-Nat I

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Preys-World - Batman: Arkham Asylum revealed

Wednesday 13th of August, 2008 - 12:50:28 GMT

I posted an article recently talking about how it was estimated that EA might have lost $70m by not releasing a game alongside The Dark Knight despite having the license and now they have been beaten to the punch by Edios who have announced a deal with DC allowing them to develop a Batman game based on the comics.

Batman: Arkham Asylum will be a dark and gritty affair with combat focusing on stealth and speed using just three buttons; attack, stun and throw. Thankfully it will not be just a straight up brawler as you will be required to carry out a bit of detective work in order to solve various puzzles throughout the game.

The game is being developed by Rocksteady Games who have previously worked on Urban Chaos: Riot Response and they have a teaser site online already.

Hopefully the developer will be able to strike the right balance between all out action and puzzle solving, but right now with the history games like these have and the lack of pedigree of the developer it all sounds a bit bog standard.



-Nat I

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Windows - Why is Bionic Commando: Rearmed $5 more on the PC Capcom?

Tuesday 12th of August, 2008 - 12:29:46 GMT

The imminent release of Bionic Commando: Rearmed on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and PC digital distribution has caused some consternation among fans as the PC version is around $5 more than the console ones.

When originally asked why there was this discrepancy Capcom got rather tetchy when it was put to them that the added cost might have something to do with piracy, bearing in mind their comments last week after poor sales of Devil May Cry 4 on the PC were attributed by the company to rampant piracy. It was they claimed down to “different business terms/expectations in that sector and more importantly, generally prevailing pricing of PC digital games versus their console counterparts. The typical downloadable price for digital-only games on PC is actually $19.99.”

So it’s not Capcom’s fault, but rather the wider market. This answer did little to placate the complainers and so Bionic Commando producer Ben Judd decided that it was time to defuse the situation a little by revealing that PC owners will get additional content in the form of extra challenge levels via a free patch.

“I can give you a song and dance about PC digital content being more expensive as a general rule... but nobody wants to hear that crap. I can say this: for the PC version we are planning on uploading some additional PC-only challenge rooms via a free patch so you will get more bang for your buck.”

So there you go, PC gamers get a little bit more for their money, but is it really enough content to justify the much higher price tag. After all they are asking around £10 for what is a re-make of a classic game and a quick browse on Steam shows that there are a number of far more accomplished games available for the same price.

Capcom’s dalliance with the PC seems to be turning into a bit of a nightmare right now.



-Nat I

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