Diehard GameFAN

Author: Christopher Bowen

  • THQ Signs Marketing Deal With World Wrestling Entertainment

    THQ announced on Monday that they have signed a deal with World Wrestling Entertainment that further integrates marketing for THQ’s WWE branded video games, which includes the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw series and is set to expand to social and iPhone/iPad devices, into the parent company. The deal, of which financial terms were not disclosed,…

  • More Industry Layoffs: IO Interactive, Possibly Namco Bandai Affected

    I was pretty upset when I read of the “routine” layoffs at EA Canada, something I took some stick for. I can’t even feel emotional over the latest news to come on that front, as two more companies have been affected. A source with IO Interactive has confirmed to Kotaku that an undisclosed number of…

  • Vince Desi Slams CA Games Law Proponents For Picking On Postal Franchise

    On the eve of the first hearings in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA, Running With Scissors, the makers of the Postal series of games that have been singled out by some as proof that the industry needs government regulation, have put out a press release emphasizing their take on the situation. As we chronicled recently, Postal…

  • Review: FIFA ’11 (Microsoft Xbox 360)

    FIFA ’11 is out with new tweaks and innovations, but are they all for the better? Chris Bowen proceeds to answer that question in his review.

  • Leland Yee: ESRB Too Biased To Police Games Industry

    California State Senator Leland Yee (D) continued his defence of his bill that is up before the Supreme Court of the United States by slamming the organization that currently acts as the regulatory arm of the industry. In an interview with Gamespot, he implied that there is a conflict of interest involved that requires the…

  • Mega Man Creator Keiji Inafune Leaves Capcom

    Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, who is famous for creating the legendary Mega Man series of games and was recently promoted to the company’s Global Head of Production, resigned from the company effective at the end of November. However, due to his accrued vacation time, the resignation is essentially immediate. In his blog post (JIS) announcing to…

  • Microsoft’s Xbox Division Surges To $382m Q1 USD Profit

    Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7 divisions, profited (reg. required) $382m for the first quarter of its financial year, which is up from the $207m it made for the same period of time in 2009. The division brought in revenues of $1.79b for the quarter, of which…

  • Sony PlayStation Division Hits $85m USD Q2 Profit

    Sony’s Networked Products and Services division, which includes the PlayStation products, profited (reg required) Â¥6.9b ($85m USD) profit for Q2 of their financial year. This is a major turnaround for a company that lost Â¥59b ($731m!) for the same period of time in 2009, and is despite a decrease in game sales from Â¥196b ($2.4b)…

  • Southpeak Looks To Fill “Untapped” Education Game Market With Tap and Teach Series

    Southpeak Interactive, who are known more for games like Two Worlds II and nail’d, will start publishing more educational games starting in November, after noticing what CEO Melanie Mroz called a “large untapped market”. Southpeak will publish Tap and Teach: The Story of Noah’s Ark will be the first in the Tap and Teach series,…

  • Sony Announces “PlayStation Rewards” Programme

    Apparently taking a cue from cereal companies in the 1960s, Sony has announced a PlayStation Rewards loyalty programme. The idea is just like collecting all of those boxtops from back when my mother was a child: the more money you spend on the PlayStation Network, the more rewards you get. The programme is set up…

  • Playstation Phone Shown By Engadget, Denied By Sony, Defended By Engadget

    Yesterday, technology site Engadget showed what can only count as a massive coup: pictures of a Sony Ericsson developed Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) phone that is being dubbed the Playstation Phone. The phone would resemble a PSPgo, in that it has buttons for gameplay sliding out from the touchscreen, a long analogue pad where the start…

  • Electronic Arts Conducts “Seasonal Roll-Offs” On Canadian Employees

    There are times when reporting the news makes me angry. This is one of those times. Joystiq has confirmed with Electronic Arts that the company has “rolled-off” – that’s “fired” in corporate whore-speak – jobs for the third year in a row, as part of what company spokesperson Jeff Brown terms “team size adjustments”. “As…

  • God of War Dev: It “Doesn’t Make Sense” To Develop For Piracy-Ridden PSP

    PSP releases don’t get much bigger than God of War: Ghost of Sparta. The next game in the famous series releases next week, and is sure to do gangbusters at retail. This fact makes it that much more startling that developer Ready at Dawn’s Ru Weerasuriya is talking about something completely unrelated to the game:…

  • CSI: Fatal Conspiracy Announced

    Ubisoft has announced the next adventure game in their CSI franchise. CSI: Fatal Conspiracy will feature five connected cases, which lead to one major culprit, and will feature the same style of forensic analysis that the show is known for. The game features the real actors from the show reading their lines, as you assist…

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops Won’t Outperform Modern Warfare 2, Says Pachter

    Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has said that while Call of Duty: Black Ops will sell like gangbusters this holiday season, it won’t outperform Modern Warfare 2, nor will it set any records. His reasons: Treyarch’s reputation, and what he perceives to be negative reactions from games press that apparently have already been written. “The…

  • Sony Stock Boosted By Idiotic Apple Rumours

    Remember that load of bollocks I reported on yesterday about Apple being rumoured into buying large companies like Sony? The result of that speculation is a potential reason as to why we’re in a recession* right now: the markets reacted to it. According to Rueters (via Destructoid), at one point today, Sony stock was up…

  • Michael Pachter: Apple Should Stick To What They Know

    Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter has responded to the speculation that Apple should purchase a company like Sony or Electronic Arts by actually agreeing with my analysis for a change: Apple shouldn’t bother with videogame companies. “I don’t think a video game company acquisition makes sense… if they make an acquisition, they are far more…

  • The Last Guardian Protagonist’s Gender Changed Due To Panties

    CVG reports via PSM3 that The Last Guardian was actually going to have a smaller, adolescent female lead instead of the adolescent boy that the game is getting. One of the main reasons? Upskirt shots. No, really. Fumito Ueda of Team ICO said this. “The Trico is a very powerful creature… If we’d had a…

  • Preorders Being Taken on Back To The Future Adventure Game

    Telltale games has announced that they are taking preorders for Back to the Future, an episodic adventure game in the same spirit as other Telltale games Sam & Max and Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People. The new game takes place six months after the last movie, and features Christopher Lloyd returning to the…

  • News: Zynga Valuation Placed (Wrongly) Above Electronic Arts

    According to Industry Gamers, SharesPost has put social games company Zynga at a valuation of $5.51bn USD in a list of privately owned companies. This, combined with Electronic Arts’ recent devaluation of their publicly owned stock, shows a valuation of Zynga above Electronic Arts, the industry’s second largest publisher. Businessweek (link is a 404) adds…