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"While our business has continued to outperform the videogames market, we are facing tougher market conditions entering 2010, and must make sure we operate as efficiently as possible while delivering the high standards of service our customers demand. Following the successful integration of Gamestation, many head office functions were moved to Basingstoke last year to streamline support functions across the Gamestation and GAME brands. This has proved effective and the Group is now proposing to review its central infrastructure in order to further maximise opportunities for growth and efficiencies. The Group is committed to redeploying roles wherever possible, and has started consulting with all affected employees." - GAME statement
“Winning Eleven [as the series is known in Japan] games until now, he said, have been just extensions of the Famicom era. Players were fine with this through the PS2, but the development staff now need to change their concepts and ideas to something more appropriate for the new generation machines like Xbox 360 and PS3.” - series’ lead developer Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka
I'm not one to speak on sports titles, but I just can't figure out what Konami can do with the Pro Evo series to turn the FIFA tide. Once EA has the lead, it's hard to gain it back from them.
San Goku Shi DS 3 (NDS, Koei): 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
Nodame Cantabile: Tanoshii Ongaku no Jikan Desu (NDS, Bandai Namco): 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
Konami is going to keep raking in the cash from LovePlus for as long as they can. With the announcement of LovePlus + looming on the horizon, Konami is giving one last LovePlus push with a special Valentine's Day bundle. The details of that bundle are below.
- LovePlus game
- pocky
- augmented reality card with a Valentine’s Day greeting
- one greeting from each girl
- costs $58
Level-5 is a pretty hot developer right now. How are they going to make their name even more well known? They're going to open up an office in North America. Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino has stated that Level-5 will be branching out into North America in order to easier publish titles in the states. Perhaps if/when Inazuma Eleven comes out here, Level-5 will be publishing the title on their own.
Mr. Hino also discussed the branching out of their games into other mediums, just like we've seen with the Professor Layton series.
"A major goal for Level-5 is to expand into the entertainment industry. The staff is working hard to make it so that we become not just a single game company, but a major entertainment brand. I don't know if it will be five or ten years later, but the staff has started to believe that we can really do this."
A portion of a CVG interview with Peter Moore...
CVG: What do you expect from E3 2010 after last year's return to form - and what have you got planned?
PM: There's nothing I can say because I don't know. You would be shocked-slash-horrified to see how close we as publishers get to E3, still not really clear what we're going to say. So much of this stuff comes together so late: The development teams have to work on demo levels - it's non-trivial work.
I echo the sentiment that E3 was a lot better last year; a lot more like 'the old days'. It captured the excitement that the industry's feeling about three platforms that are competing very aggressively with each other with differing experiences. Secondly, it really show the magnitude of who we are versus movies and music, to which we have always had a slight inferiority complex.
E3 is our way of showing - particularly right there in LA - the entertainment mediums we compete with for the same dollar how big, how immersive, how enthralling and how on the edge of the future we are.
Those couple of years when we weren't able to do that [in 2007 and 2008], when we didn't have the full 'E3 experience', they were probably a couple of tough years for the industry, in terms of maintaining its place as a mass-marketing entertainment medium. Now we're firmly back in the saddle - and the future looks very bright indeed.
"It's a complex problem. We do have the five-minute rule: if you find your connection's poor you can drop out within the first five minutes. After that there should be a penalty; just in the online world there are complexities that mean by the time the data comes back to our servers, something there means it doesn't award the win to the right person. So we're always looking to improve that." - 2010 FIFA World Cup line producer Simon Humber
If I have one pet peeve with online games, it's the rage-quitters out there. I've actually played an online game with someone that is tied to Nintendo, and they rage quit during a Diddy Kong Racing DS game! I won't give out there name...I'll just hope that they read this and feel the shame!