This List of the Top 20 Best-Selling Franchises of This Generation Has a Glaring Hole
Ubisoft released a list of the top 20 best-selling console franchises of this generation, and you’ll never guess who scored #1. That’s right: Call of Duty, closely followed by Mario and the FIFA series. Ubisoft’s own Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance franchises made #5 and #12, respectively.
However, in classic Industry style, the list leaves out one very significant player in the land of Generation 7. See if you can spot it by clicking below.
April 2013 NPD: Injustice on Top Despite Overall Sales Decline of 25%, Huge Drop in Hardware
Another NPD reporting period gone by, another month of decline for the games industry. Overall sales fell about 25% compared to March, with a 17% drop in software sales, 19% drop in accessory sales, an a whopping 42% drop in hardware sales. NPD cites a decline in the releases of new titles as a large reason for the slump. However, despite the month-over-month decline, year-over-year sales actually increased about 118% in unit sales and 130% in dollar sales, meaning those fewer titles were better drivers than the ones released last year.
The biggest-profile release of the month – Injustice: Gods Among Us – unsurprisingly fared best among April’s new games, with older titles like BioShock Infinite, Black Ops II, and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon still charting.
Click below for the top ten titles of April 2013.
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D: How Does the 3DS Version Hold Up Against the Original?
It’s kind of amazing that Monster Games has been able to take a gorgeous detailed Wii game and scale it down to work as a 3DS game. I mean, I know it’s been done before, what with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate technically being a Wii game and lots more, but Donkey Kong Country Returns is a freaking Retro Studios game for crying out loud! Those are notorious for being some of the most beautiful titles to grace Nintendo platforms.
If you’re curious to see how the 3DS version holds up, Josh over at The Bit Block put together a comparison video showing the two editions side-by-side. It’s surprising how nice the game looks on 3DS! Click below to see.
Nintendo Clarifies Official Stance on Player-Created Video Content
There’s a sense among game companies that Let’s Play videos represent a threat to their business. In a day and age where story-driven content is everywhere, being able to just click into YouTube and actually watch a game’s story without actually buying or playing it could potentially cut off sales. And it’s true – I’ve seen plenty of people avoid buying a game and instead defer to watching the core story on the Internet.
Nintendo’s been taking YouTube a lot more seriously lately, which made a lot of LPers nervous that they’d start cracking down on Let’s Play videos – which are technically derivative works of copyrighted material and could be blocked outright in conformity with the law if Nintendo wished. However, Nintendo’s stance is a bit different.
Pachter Estimates 55,000 Wii U Sales for U.S. in April, Vita Does Even Worse
Just ahead of NPD’s sales reveal, infamous Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter released his estimates for game hardware sales for the month of April. Highlights from the report: Xbox 360 is still on top with over 200,000 consoles sold, while PS3 picks up a close second in the home console department with 165,000 systems. As for Nintendo: 75,000 Wiis sold…and only 55,000 Wii Us. We’re talking January-level lows, which I suppose you might expect given that there was only one major Wii U title released last month, and it wasn’t even an exclusive. Even combining Nintendo’s hardware sales, they don’t even approach Sony or Microsoft.
Meanwhile, the handhelds situation is very different. Pachter estimates that 3DS managed an almost 50% jump over last year’s numbers with 185,000 units sold. PS Vita, on the other hand, dropped an impressive 57% year-over-year to 30,000 units.
Another Hardcore Lie Exposed: Third-Party Sales Actually Improved on Wii
Over the weekend, I delivered an extensive breakdown of some of the biggest myths about the popularity of “core” Nintendo titles on Wii. Many of you expressed that you would have liked me to focus more closely on the performance of third party titles in my discussion, to give a better picture of how Wii performed as a whole, not just on the first-party side.
I’ll admit: it’s very hard to put together a totally-accurate picture of Wii’s third-party performance because, in many cases, there just isn’t adequate data. However, I’ve extrapolated what I can from the known data to put together the best picture I can of the third-party situation on Wii. The results may surprise you.
Media Create Sales: 3DS Dominates Hardware and Software Charts
This week’s hardware and software sales numbers are in for Japan, and the 3DS has snagged the top spot yet again. Despite increased sales from a price cut, Sony’s PS Vita still lags behind both models of the Nintendo handheld. Meanwhile, the top-selling game of the week in Japan is a title you may have never heard of. Hit the jump to catch the breakdown.
Wii U Confirmed To Be Hacked, First Game Has Already Been Dumped
The WiiKey team broke apart the Wii U last month, which has now been confirmed with its first game dumped. The Avengers: Battle for Earth is the first Wii U game to be dumped, at the weight of 23GB. This doesn’t help the game companies much, for the Wii U key enables piracy.
WiiKey is a site that sells products that allows the systems to be used in ways that Nintendo didn’t intend. Nintendo released a statement when the rumors were first circulating about the hacking group, and plan to take necessary legal steps to stop the piracy.
What do you think about the hack?
Source: Gamechup
Morals, Meanings and Messages in Metroid: Other M
Other M was a game that took the Metroid series back to its gameplay roots. It departed from the first-person perspective established in the Prime Trilogy and returned to the classic third-person style with more side-scrolling oriented level design.
The new twist in Other M was the extended cinematic storytelling that drew a mixed reaction to say the least. Yet regardless of how players may feel about the cutscenes, the plot, or even the voice acting of Other M, they cannot deny that the story itself raises some significant issues for discussion.
Star Wars: Battlefront III Alpha Footage Released
Lately we’ve seen a lot of Star Wars-related leaks of canceled game projects, past and present. First Assault surfaced in March, a supposed precursor to an eventual Battlefront III release.
But now the Big Kahuna has appeared: a leak from actual footage of the actual Battlefront III, which was being developed by Free Radical and was canceled in 2008. The footage is from the alpha stages, so everything is far from complete, but it does good job of demonstrating the game’s scale and ambition nonetheless.
Click below to see about six minutes of pure Battlefront III goodness.
The Great Hardcore Lie Exposed: Wii Did Not Lose Core Gamers
In April of last year, Satoru Iwata claimed that one of the issues faced by Wii was that the new gamers Wii attracted didn’t translate into profitable customers. Because of this, Nintendo decided to step back from the priority they had placed on these new gamers with Wii when creating Wii U, instead focusing on the more “core” gamer, who he says felt alienated by Wii.
“Wii was able to reach a large number of new consumers who had never played games before by bringing hands-on experiences with its Wii Sports and Wii Fit,” he told investors. “However, we could not adequately create the situation that such new consumers played games frequently or for long, consistent periods. As a result, we could not sustain a good level of profit. Moreover, regrettably, what we prioritized in order to reach out to the new audience was a bit too far from what we prioritized for those who play games as their hobby. Consequently, we presume some people felt that the Wii was not a game system for them or they were not willing to play with the Wii even though some compelling games had been released.”
This idea that Wii lost core gamers while focusing too much on casuals is pretty widespread…but it’s also totally false! The fact of the matter is that Wii had a stronger core gamer audience than any other Nintendo console in history – and I’ve got the data to prove it.
Nintendo Needs to Focus on Creating Customers, Not on Bending to the Industry
My colleague Ben brought up an interesting point in his recent article, “The Wii is Both the Best and Worst Nintendo Console“: Nintendo may have gained a lot of fans with Wii, but it didn’t gain a lot of fans within the Industry. It’s pretty much 100% true. We’re seeing a lot of companies hesitate to bring games to Wii U with the belief that only the first-party games will sell anyway, or that no matter how they use the hardware they’re better off just sticking with PlayStation and Xbox.
According to the article, this was a weakness for Wii – but I’d like to propose something different. Doing differently than what the Industry wanted was actually Wii’s greatest strength.
