Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category
Wii reigns supreme on eBay 2008 top gadget list
The Nintendo Wii took the #1 spot in eBay’s 2008 tech toys and gadgets top list, with over 2 million related items sold on the site. The Xbox360 was next at 1.3 million, followed by the Sony PSP and iPod touch.
The full list is below.
1. Nintendo Wii: 2,056,866 related items sold
2. Microsoft Xbox360: 1,297,903 related items sold
3. Sony PSP: 350,591 related items sold
4. iPod Touch: 281,361 related items sold
5. Nintendo Wii Fit: 266,584 related items sold
6. Apple iPhone 3G: 212,837 related items sold
7. BlackBerry Pearl: 207,688 related items sold
8. BlackBerry Curve: 193,788 related items sold
9. Sony Playstation 3: 103,333 related items sold
10. Guitar Hero III: 98,159 related items sold
11. Halo 3: 91,067 related items sold
12. Grand Theft Auto IV: 43,005 related items sold
13. MacBook Air: 12,423 related items sold
14. Guitar Hero Aerosmith: 3,749 related items sold
15. Rock Band 2’s: 1,650 related items sold
World Of Warcraft hits 11 million subscribers, but is slowing down
Gaming powerhouse Blizzard Entertainment has issued a press release announcing that the number of subscribers for World Of Warcraft has surpassed the 11 million mark.
For the record: subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access.
The milestone for the popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) represents a 10% growth in 10 months and shows signs of slowing. If you consider the fact that the online game debuted in November 2004 and took only six months to go from 9 million to 10 million subscribers, you can conclude that it took Blizzard much longer to add this last million subscribers to its user base than in the past (the company announced it reached the 10 million mark in January 2008, up from 9 million in July, 2007).
On the other hand, WoW was estimated to hold an impressive 62% of the massively multiplayer online game market back in April.
On 13 November, the second expansion of WoW, dubbed “Wrath of the Lich King”, will launch in several regions around the world. Maybe that will help reignite growth, or at least help it hold onto its massive lead in market share.
World Golf Tour hits hole-in-one with rich multiplayer flash game
Despite the fact that males have long accounted for the majority of online gamers, there is a surprising shortage of casual online games directed at men aged 25-45. Beyond fantasy football and online poker there is little variety, with nearly every game failing to take advantage of advanced graphics or any interactivity beyond clicking “all-in”.
World Golf Tour is looking to fill this gap. The site has launched a free, full-featured Flash game that offers 3D graphics, an advanced physics engine, and user-customizable characters – it’s not as good as EA’s Tiger Woods series, but it’s going to be close enough for most people. The site launched a beta version last year, and is now introducing a new course, expanded customization options, and multiplayer support.
CEO YuChiang Cheng says that his team recognized early on that it wouldn’t be able to compete with EA’s massive development team and art department, so it took a few innovative shortcuts. To create the game’s graphics, the WGT team went to the famed Kiawah Island Golf Resort, where it took geo-tagged photographs spanning the entire course. The team then went through and mapped the photos to a 3D model, which makes the world seem three dimensional while telling the physics engine how each part of the photograph should affect the ball. Using technology similar to Google Earth, WGT allows users to move through the course by seamlessly displaying photographs that are adjacent to each other. The result isn’t as immersive as the 3D worlds crafted by EA’s huge dev team, but it’s very impressive.
While users will be able to play games on their own, the game allows for multiplayer sessions, and tracks stats across all games to produce a network-wide leaderboard. Along with the game itself, the WGT homepage allows users to create profiles, befriend and challenge other golfers, and participate in massively multiplayer tournaments. Tournaments will include cash prizes as well as virtual goods prizes, like new clubs and clothing that can be used to customize an in-game avatar. WGT will generate revenue through microtransactions for these virtual goods, as well as sponsorships for their virtual tournaments.
World Golf Tour will likely do very well – it’s polished, free, and will appeal to millions of golf fans. It may not stand up side-by-side to a console game but its target audience won’t care, especially given the fact that WGT can be played from nearly any browser with no download.
Taking the Wii to the next level
With 28 million Nintendo Wii consoles sold around the world it is no longer possible to declare its success a fad. But can Nintendo sustain its phenomenal momentum?
Nintendo’s global president Satoru Iwata is humble enough to admit that even he had been surprised by the epidemic-like success of the Wii console.
He told BBC News: “It was so fast. We knew the Wii was the right direction for the company. But the question was always how many years it would take to find success.”
The answer was two years. In that brief time Nintendo has dramatically altered its fortunes in the home console business, while at the same time maintaining, and even improving, its dominance in the handheld gaming space with the DS.
Play time
The change of fortunes began when Mr Iwata took over as president of Nintendo in 2002, only the fourth man to hold the position since the company was founded 109 years ago.
Speaking to BBC News at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) In Los Angeles, he said: “Five years ago when I was appointed I thought that if we didn’t do anything but took the same route there would be no bright future for the entire industry.
“So we decided we needed to increase the number of people gaming.
“We started thinking about people who weren’t playing games and asked ourselves why they were not interested. And why had some people stopped playing despite playing in their youth?”
The solution was not a rush towards a high definition games platform targeted at the hard core gamer but remembering the simple pleasures of playing with family and friends.
The Wii console introduced a mass market of gamers to motion-sensitive play, replacing the button-laden controller with a wand that could direct action with the flick of a wrist.
Within weeks of the Wii’s launch people were taking their new console around to the homes of friends and family, and word of mouth quickly spread.
“It was so fast because those who appreciated the new attractions of Wii must have been those who used to play video games. And these people were telling friends and family about the console.
“People who first started playing with the Wii were so excited that they had to spread the news.”
History lesson
The success came after the perceived disappointment of the GameCube, which finished its lifespan behind the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in terms of global sales, selling 22 million units over seven years.
Nintendo had tried to compete directly with Microsoft and Sony and failed.
Its resulting and ultimately successful move was to realise that the market of people who could play games but were not was much bigger than the market of those already playing games on a regular basis.
“It was somewhat out of the boundaries of common sense for the time,” said Mr Iwata.
“From the perspective of people from outside the industry it might have looked like a gamble. But I do not think it was a gamble at all.”
One of the original criticisms of the Wii at launch was that the underpowered machine would increasingly suffer in comparison to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as the machines went through their lifecycle.
But Mr Iwata dismissed talk of a console lifespan as nonsense and somewhat irrelevant.
“After all, the primary concern is not to let consumers purchase hardware but to enjoy software,” he said.
Future fun
But that did not mean Nintendo was not already thinking about life beyond the Wii.
“However hard our software developers try to create new and unprecedented titles with great ideas eventually there will be a day when devs will say they have no more means with that hardware.
“That’s exactly the time we need to introduce people to new hardware. We do want to be flexible about this,” he said.
“We just don’t want to decide upon a fixed lifecycle of any platform.”
Addressing another criticism of the Wii, Mr Iwata said it was a “misunderstanding and misconception” to say that the console was struggling to attract support from developers outside of Nintendo.
“The number of third-party titles for Wii is actually more than what is available for other platforms.
“And in the initial launch platform period for any platform, the third-party software titles for Wii are outselling any of the third-party titles for other platforms.”
Nintendo remains the home for some of gaming’s most enduring franchises and icons, from Mario to Zelda and the success of the Wii has ensured they will remain part of the landscape for some time to come.
But there were no details of any new Mario or Zelda titles given at the recent press conference held by Nintendo to highlight its plans for the months ahead.
“At this E3 we had to focus on software for the mass audience and software that will be sold in this year or next.
“This one of the rare opportunities to reach out to mass audiences around the world.
“In order for us to create a new Super Mario game or Legend of Zelda game that can cater to the strong demands of core gamers around the world it takes two to three years.”
While its competitors battle to become the multimedia hub for the digital living room Nintendo is determined to continue on its course of “putting smiles on people’s faces”.
He said: “All we have got to do is carry on. People are going to get tired of new proposals. We have to offer them new proposals before they do.
“We really want to keep surprising people,” he said, then added: “It’s not easy at all.”