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ELSPA Charts - Console - Olympic Fever causes pole vault over SoulCalibur 4

Sunday 24th of August, 2008 - 18:17:29 GMT

Marking two months since the release of the game, Olympic Fever, helped by a rush of British medals, pushed the console versions of Beijing 2008 to the top spot on the 360 and PS3, pushing Soul Calibur on both platforms down to no.2. Madden NFL 09 was a new entry for EA at nos.4 on the 360 midtable on PS3 and no.8 on PS2. Metal Gear Solid dropped to 3 but Cash on Delivery 4 held fast at no.4 on PS3, and rose one place to 5 on Xbox 360. Clearly this game will stay in the charts near the top until the fifth and sixth games arrive.

On the Wii it was an all-Nintendo finish with Wii Fit at the top followed by Mario Kart and Wii Play. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games returned to 5 which is a good recovery for a game that's sold over a million copies, and it jumped from no.5 to 3 on the DS. Summer Athletics was the new entry for the Wii at 11, so Olympic fever continued to keep a hold on all formats this week, even if ultimately the parents' army sent Mario Kart Wii to the Top of All Formats this week, ahead of Wii Fit and Beijing 08. It will be interesting to see the chart update next week after the bank holiday extends the trading weekend.

- Ken

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Preys-World - EA Sports boss against suing file sharers

Sunday 24th of August, 2008 - 17:47:09 GMT

We already reported on the first Britsh pirate to receive a large fine for the advanced uploading of a game due for release next Friday.

However during our break, Peter Moore formerly of Microsoft and now firmly established at EA Sports, publicly ruled himself against legally chasing revenue from pirates.

"If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," said Moore. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

He's right in saying that there won't be any easy solutions. However, it's clear that as the no.2 videogames publisher, they have the kind of time to find a workable solution that TopWare Interactive did not possess. British courts would probably never slam a pirate for six figures either, as happened in America. UKP 16,100 is the record, jumping up from the UKP 3,000 levied to a more profit-driven pirate last winter.

Also, EA has come up with more creative solutions; punishing pirates, for example, by dropping the multiplayer mode from games such as Crysis, moving that development to sequels and/or add-ons.

So, EA's attempts at piracy protection will be interesting to see as time goes on, starting with Crysis Warhead which arrives on 12th September.

If you want to read the full interview with Moore, use the gamesindustry.biz link at the bottom of the page because the Eurogamer address may change.

- Ken

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Battlefield: Heroes - Excutive Producer Interviewed

Sunday 24th of August, 2008 - 17:08:48 GMT

The Executive Producer of Battlefield Heroes, has been interviewed over at gamesindustry.biz.

Whilst it's good news to read that DICE has a very loose definition of a closed beta (10,000 people so far), spreading out the key distribution to forums and social networking sites, the plain fact is that total newcomers to the game are going to get pounded into the ground by anyone who helped test the free-to-play companion release to Bad Company.

That now makes the release date "when it's done", if it will simply appear for download rather than waiting for one specific Friday.

- Ken

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Preys-World - Back!

Sunday 24th of August, 2008 - 16:56:11 GMT

We took our own Bank Holiday break earlier this week, now let's catch you up with what's happened whilst we've been away.

- Ken

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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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