GamerNode: Latest Industry News

NPD says half of US population are gamers

The videogame industry is booming. According to the latest report from NPD Group, over half of the population of the United States -- 169.9 million out of 304 million, or just under 56% -- is now comprised of gamers. That's a 4.3 million-player increase since last year.

The 2009 Gamer Segmentation Report breaks down the US gamer population into seven categories, the largest of which is the "Secondary Gamers" category, totaling 33.6 million. These are individuals (mostly female, according to the study) who play less than four hours per week and do not own a console. "Console Gamers" (mostly male this time), who own at least one game system and play roughly 12 hours per week come in a close second at 32.9 million.

Other groups named in the report include "Heavy Portable Gamers" (30 million), ...

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UPDATE - Countdown has nothing to do with FFVII

Remember when I posted this story this morning? Well as it turns out, Square Enix's countdown website has absolutely nothing to do with a Final Fantasy VII remake, but with the company's card-based arcade strategy RPG, Lord of Vermilion.

First noted in a NeoGAF thread, the website contains images referencing the game and is likely to be counting down to the announcement of a home console port of the arcade title. Considering Square Enix's recent trademark registration for "Lord of Arcana," this seems far more likely than a next-gen remake of Final Fantasy VII.

GAF member Gilgamesh may have put it best with this handy graph plotting the internet's response to the news. I think most gamers will consider this quite a letdown.

[NeoGAF]

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Final Fantasy VII remake to be announced in a week...

Videogame publishers, just love countdown websites. They build excitement, garner lots of traffic hits, and then typically disappoint everyone who has visited once the timer runs down. If this trend is to continue, then possibly the most epic letdown of all will occur in just under a week, when Square Enix's recently created "VII DAYS" countdown site reaches zero. Hopefully, the opposite will be true, and we will see one of the biggest announcements from the Japanese RPG giant in years.

Most gamers recognize the symbolism in the large, Roman numeral VII; today could potentially be the unveiling of a current-gen Final Fantasy VII remake, delighting millions of fan across the globe. FFVII is one of the most revered RPGs -- one of the most revered games, period -- in videogame history, and th...

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GDC Europe going to Games Con 2009

Think Services announced today that the company, in conjunction with gamescom, will be bringing the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe to Games Convention 2009 in Cologne, Germany.

Frank Sliwka, who recently joined Think Services through the company's acquisition of Global Games Media (GGM), will lead the event as Vice President of European Business Development and Event Director for GDC Europe.

Think Services' Executive Vice President of Global Events Kathy Schoback expressed her excitement for the event, stating, "We are thrilled to present GDC Europe during gamescom. A world class game developer event belongs at the premier European game industry event. With the support of Koelnmesse, BIU (the German Trade Association of Interactive Entertainment Software), and the City of Cologne, E...

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"Why are you pirating from me?" asks developer

The pirating of software is as sure to happen as the sun rises everyday. Piracy is maligned by software protection groups such as the ESA, and is generally a hot button topic among game developers and publishers.

But Cliff Harris took the issue of pirating very personally--he is a one-man game development company and owns Positech Games.

When the independent game maker saw two of his games, Kudos and Democracy, end up on torrents for anyone to download for free, it really bothered him, to say the least. Harris decided to take things into his own hands and get to the bottom of the problem. On his company blog, he posted an open letter to pirates and asked one question; "what are your reasons for pirating games?"

"I want to improve my business, and ensure I stay afloat, and to do that, it wou...

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EA Casual Game boss quits. Casual Label shut down

Electronic Arts was hoping that the casual game market would be its answer to a successful money making opportunity.

But EA's Casual Entertainment development group has been shut down and will now be incorporated into The Sims game division and will be renamed the Sims Casual Label.

The former Casual Entertainment label was responsible for Boom Blox, Hasbro licenses, Pogo online games, and the Harry Potter franchise.

Kathy Vrabeck, president of the Casual Entertainment group has resigned, citing her departure "for personal reasons."

EA President John Riccitiello hired Vrabeck away from Activision last year. She served as president for Activision's publishing operations. Riccitiello hired her in hopes of charging up EA's company direction due to the gaming giant's downturns in earnings and wh...

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Left 4 Dead demo tomorrow, pre-load today

Tomorrow will see the release of the Left 4 Dead demo on Steam for those users who have pre-ordered the full game. For those of you who have pre-ordered Left 4 Dead on Steam, the demo can now be pre-loaded so you can access it as soon as it is unlocked tomorrow.

Everyone else will have to wait for the 11th before the demo is publicly launched on Steam and Xbox Live.

The demo will run from the 6th to the 18th, where upon it will conclude when Left 4 Dead is finally released. It seems a bit odd to have the demo no longer be available once the game comes out, but Valve must be hoping that their advertising, coupled with their reputation and word of mouth of customers will be enough to sell the game.

For all the 360 players it's not just the PC users who are getting special treats. The 360 demo w...

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EA forum moderator threatens game ban on members

If you own the games Spore or Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 and have been a malcontent on the associated forums, an EA forum moderator says that you may not only be banned from forum activity, but you could be banned from the games that are linked to your Master EA Account.

EA forum moderator eaapoc stated:

"Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It's all one in the same, so I strongly recommend people play nice and act matu...

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Obama in-game ads; how much does it cost?

It's the day after Barack Obama's multimillion-dollar infomercial extravaganza. The democratic presidential nominee bought half an hour's worth of television airtime across 8 cable and major broadcast networks to make his positions known to the American public.

Cost of this project? About a cool 5 million dollars.

But Obama is also buying up ad-space in video games too. The cost of this advertising is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what the infomercial's price tag was. According to information from the Federal Election Commission, the Obama election campaign spent $44,456.78 to game ad company, Massive Incorporated, for services rendered.

Interestingly enough, one of Obama's signature speech lines calls for parents to get more involved in their kids' lives by making sure they do their...

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The Beatles getting their own game via Harmonix

While early reports suggested that the Beatles, Apple Corps Ltd., MTV, and EA agreed to a deal placing the Beatles' music in the Rock Band catalog as DLC, the official press conference has now finished and given us even bigger news: the fab four are getting their own game.

The game, designed by Harmonix with input from the remaining folks in the Beatles' camp, will be "an unprecedented, experiential progression through and celebration of the music and artistry of The Beatles.""The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out," Sir Paul McCartney said.

Not much is known about the game yet, other than it will release in 2009 and will surely become a big seller. It may be Rock ...

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The Beatles coming to Rock Band

With the release of Guitar Hero World Tour, the battle of Rock Band vs Guitar Hero is more heated than ever. One side will likely deal a major haymaker to their opponent this week, though, thanks to some very unexpected (and British) help.

According to several insider sources, MTV, EA, and Apple Corps Ltd. have signed a deal which will allow the usage of the Beatles' songs in Rock Band 2. These sources have told the Wall Street Journal that the official announcement will come sometime Thursday, October 30. Not a bad birthday present for yours truly.

There's no question that the Beatles are THE prize catch for the music gaming genre. Hell, they're THE prize catch for any download-based music service; even Apple hasn't been able to secure the rights to use Beatles songs with the iTunes Store...

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Bethesda orders Fallout 3 trailers to be pulled

Bethesda sent out emails to various game sites that are running the trailers for Fallout 3 and requested that the ads be taken down immediately. Reason? It sounds as though the ESRB may have had something to do with it.

The email, sent by Bethesda VP Pete Hines said:

"In connection with ESRB's advertising guidelines, you are instructed to remove immediately any of our Fallout 3 trailers from your website, pending further notice. Thank you for your attention to this matter."

A quick look at the ESRB rules and regulations concerning game ads states that they should not "contain any content that is likely to cause serious or widespread offense... graphic and/or excessive depictions of violence."

The Fallout 3 trailer shown at E3 depicted an enemy head exploding in slow-mo and this may have turned...

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Sony says PS3 faster than Internet Explorer 7?

Are you tired of the performance of Internet Explorer when you're doing your online surfing? Never fear, you can always get better performance by upgrading.

No, we're not talking about Google's Chrome. What we're talking about is the PS3 firmware update--version 2.5.

According to Sony, the new update will bring Flash 9 support and increase the Javascript speed on the PS3 to almost 3 times more then before. End result of all this improvement? Surfing with your PS3 is faster than using Internet Explorer 7 in Javascript performance.

We wouldn't throw our computers out the window just yet because you'll still be limited to how fast you can type using the PS3's virtual keyboard. You may surf faster you probably won't type faster.

Firmware 2.5 will also have the Ad-Hoc Party feature for the PSP th...

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Eat Lead gets two awesome voice actors

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard keeps looking better and better. First, D3 conducts one of the most entertaining promotional campaigns of all time with the invention (and hyping) of the fictional Matt Hazard series. Then, they go and announce the voice talent for Eat Lead, and it happens to have two of my favorite actors.

Who are those people? Playing the titular Matt Hazard is none other than Will Arnett. One of the stars of Arrested Development (and also in 30 Rock), Arnett is easily one of the greatest comedy TV actors in the last decade. Throw in his appearances in movies like Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro, and it goes up another notch. 

Joining him is another great comedy actor, providing the voice of Wallace "Wally" Wellesley, new owner of mega game publisher Marathon Megasoft: Nei...

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Army of Two movie announced by EA and Universal

Despite the common wisdom among gamers that says movie adaptations of video games generally suck, it won't deter Universal Pictures and Electronic Arts from signing a deal to create a movie based on the EA third-person shooter, Army of Two.

And no, Ewe Boll will not be directing the movie. Sorry Ewe.

The film may have a chance among all the debris of failed video game movies; Scott Burns, who co-wrote the screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum, will be in charge of the scripting duties for Army of Two. The movie will start production next year.

The game, Army of Two, pulled in over $100 million in sales since its release in March 2008 although it received rather mixed reviews.

Donna Langley, president of Universal Pictures said, "Army of Two is a great project that has already attracted top name ...

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McCain has new video game: Pork Invaders

As the US presidential election comes closer, Obama and McCain are furiously trying to drum up more support for their perspective campaigns.

John McCain says that he is a maverick and wants to clean up Washington by getting rid of "pork barrel" politics -- the practice of wasteful spending of taxpayer money on questionable projects.

In order to emphasize this point, the McCain campaign has decided to make a video game called Pork Invaders, which is based upon the classic arcade game, Space Invaders.

The simple game sets you up with a McCain banner at the bottom. You shoot pigs that are descending upon your base. An occasional pork barrel whizzes by at the top and if you shoot it, you get bonus points, natch. The missiles you shoot say "veto." Cute, eh?

We're not sure if this game will bring i...

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Gamers more fun-loving and social then non-gamers

It seems that virtually every study that comes out about video games is negative. But a new study seems to go against this trend, and has some good things to report about those who like to game.

The research was conducted by IGN Entertainment and Ipsos Media CT. There were 3000 individuals who participated in the study and the final statistics are rather upbeat. It turns out that gamers are twice as likely to go out on dates in any given month as their non-gaming counterparts.

It would seem a lot of gamers are in long term relationships. 55% of gamers are married and 48% have kids.

There is more good news; it seems that gamers earn more than non-gamers. The average gaming household's income is about $79,000 per year. The average non-gaming household pulls in significantly less--$54,000 per y...

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Miyamoto is "concerned" about violence in games

Shigeru Miyamoto, game designer extraordinaire and the father of game icons such as Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda and the brains behind the concept of the Wii, says he is very concerned about the state of gaming.

He said the trend towards excessive violence in video games is an issue that needs to be addressed by game companies.

"I don't want to curb freedom of expression, but I am concerned many developers focus on excessive violence in order to stimulate people's minds. I believe that there are more ways of grabbing players' attention than violence alone."

Miyamoto doesn't want to pin all the responsibility on game developers though. He also believes that parents must do their share in monitoring the games their kids play.

"I also hope that parents take advantage of age ratings when letting the...

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E3: Will it ever be as great as it was before?

This year's E3 convention was "better" than last year's, but according to some in the industry, it was a relatively subdued, if not, tedius event.

The glitz and glamour of past E3s is still burned into the minds of too many game industry pros to let these images of the over-the-top extravaganza to fade quietly into the sunset.

Will the million dollar displays, live bands, booth babes, and booth hunks ever return to E3? We don't know but speculation has it that the E3 format must change dramatically to draw the attention it once enjoyed.

Reports are indicating that plans for next year's E3 (if there is one) will be revealed on G4's X-Play television show. What will be announced? No details have been released yet but Game Politics speculates that several possibilities are available regarding t...

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Obama to place in-game ads to reach voters

Presidential candidate Barrack Obama isn't a big gamer, but he does know how to reach them. Obama is buying up ad space in eighteen video games, with Guitar Hero and Madden '09 among the targeted titles.

The ads will be placed, in-game, on billboards and other places where an unobtrusive sign can be placed or hung. The video game ads will target states that allow early voting: Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Montana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, and Florida.

Obama spokesperson, Nick Shapiro said, "These ads will help us expand the reach of VoteforChange.com, so that more people can use this easy tool to find their early vote location and make sure their voice is heard."

The Obama campaign will be buying up game ad space in Electronic Arts' staples such as NASCAR, NBA, NHL a...

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