According to a rumour suggestion on VG247 today, Nintendo has being informing UK publishers that Nintendo’s 3DS console will be hitting UK shelves in March.
Nintendo UK official response was, “That’s rumour and speculation as we’ve not announced any date for 3DS,”
Whatever the case, we definitely won’t be seeing the 3D-enabled handheld until 2011.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Red Dead Redemption has maintained its top spot in the UK gaming charts for a second week running.
Other obvious contenders ranked high in the charts, with Just Dance and Wii Fit Plus still somehow maintaining their position in the upper area of the charts. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is sitting surprisingly low in the charts though, at number 8.
Sega’s Alpha Protocol and Activision’s Blur failed to enter to top 10 at all, entering the charts at 13 and 14 respectively. This is not entirely surprising though, considering the poor critical reception both games have received.
Catch the full list after the cut.
Rising Star Games has just confirmed that No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle will be hitting the UK on May 28th for Wii, having originally been due for a unspecified April release.
“We’re really excited to announce the official European release date No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle,” said managing director of Rising Star Games Martin Defries in the recent PR release, “The original became a cult hit on the Wii when it released four years ago and the sequel is set to attract an army of new followers.”
Although it doesn’t have a confirmed western release date, the PS3 / 360 version the original No More Heroes is out in Japan on April 15th.
Bad news, MGS fans – Konami has told CVG that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker won’t be hitting the UK as soon as we thought it would – the release date for the game in the UK has slipped from May 28th to June 18th.
No reason was provided for the game’s delay, and us US release appears to be unaffected. They probably forgot to replace all those words that have an extra “u” in them in the Queen’s English, or something.
We’ll keep you updated.
The British game developer association TIGA has put forward a plan for giving developers in the UK a tax break, and we learned today that the Government has accepted this plan.
What this means is essentially that the UK based studios will have more money to go around, which can mean more jobs, bigger budgets and so on. It also makes it easier and more lucrative for up-and-coming developers to start their own studio.
Several other big countries in video games have tax breaks for developers, as does the UK film industry, so the British developer community have been pushing for this for a while.
Big studios in the UK include Lionhead (Fable), Rocksteady (Batman: AA), Rare (Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñjata), Rockstar (GTA), Criterion Games (Burnout), Bizarre Creations (Blur, Geometry Wars), Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet) and a host more.
Finally! Crackdown 2 has just received an official release date in the UK. The title will be hitting shelves in the country on July 9.
Ruffian’s also released the first ViDoc for the game.
A summer release was originally mentioned a few months ago by Ruffian Games, but this is the first confirmation of an exact release date.
Full press release after the cut.
It wasn’t too long ago that Movie Gallery announced they were closing over 800 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores across the US, but now it seems like UK-based GAME is following in the footsteps, albeit on a much smaller scale.
12 GAME stores, six GameStations and 25 Debenhams concessions will be shutting their doors after a rough Christmas period resulting in being down 18% in sales.
“The majority of the identified sites are located close to another one of our stores, and we will help each customer affected by a closure to transfer to their nearest store as well as our online offerings,” GAME told Games Industry.
“We will provide extensive support to the teams in each store. However, with deep regret, we have had to offer redundancy to 247 employees. We will do our utmost to redeploy roles if possible, and have started consulting with all affected employees in the 43 sites.”
Sad day. :( More game stores closing.
ELSPA presented some rather interesting software sales figures today. In 2009, the Xbox 360 overtook the (until recently) unstoppable Wii as the biggest software-shifting format in the UK. That’s a first.
The Xbox 360 pulled in £459 million worth of software revenue in 2009, although the Wii sold a higher number of titles in general, shifting over 18 million games last year.
PlayStation 3 finally made itself competitive in 2009, with over 11.9 million games sold to consumers, up 1.5 million from the 10.4 million games sold in 2008.
In total, over 74.6 million games were bought by people in the UK last year, which roughly accounts for one video game per person in the country. If that’s not mainstream, I don’t know what is.
Based on figures gathered by MCV today, Modern Warfare 2 has sold approximately 1.23 million copies on it’s first day on sale in the UK, according to GfK-ChartTrack.
The figure is impressive. Do you want to know just how impressive?
It’s double the figure of GTA IV’s day one sales (609,000). This makes making Modern Warfare 2 the fastest-selling video game in UK history, with 1,230,588 copies sold in total day one.
This roughly means that Modern Warfare 2 is in approximately one of every 24 UK homes.
Impressive would be an understatement.
When we weren’t busy eyeing up Sony’s impressive booth at the Bullring Centre in Birmingham, England, another impressive show of force by Sony caught our eye – Nathan Drake is making his face known in style!
Take a look for yourself.
It’s rather impressive.
The GameStation store in the Bullring Centre is the largest games store in the UK (in terms of floor space), and Sony clearly hasn’t wasted any time in getting Nathan Drake’s face out there where people will see it.
The console industry is a huge and competitive market, Sony aren’t sitting on their laurels, and they’ve taken the fight to the Bull Ring.
The Bullring Centre in Birmingham, England, is one of the largest shopping centres in Europe. Imagine our surprise when we pop into the centre, only to see Sony had come out in full force to promote the PlayStation name to the public, with a truly impressive display.
A bird's eye view of one of the most recognisable symbols in gaming today. It's certainly a smart way to make people take notice of your brand logo!
The giant PlayStation logo above was only the start.
According to the latest tweet from Europe’s Xbox Community Manage (there’s a mouthful title) Graeme Boyd, you’ll be able to watch TV from Sky on your Xbox 360 on October 27.
Pricing and channel line-up will be revealed at launch, according to the tweet.
October 27 – that’s the date when you’ll be able to watch TV from Sky on your Xbox 360. Channel line-up and pricing to come at launch
Thanks for letting us know, Graeme!
Surprising move, this. As you may already know, several retailers confirmed to the press today that the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU will be receiving a price increase (yes, you read that write) in the UK, up from £129.99 to £159.99.
It was also confirmed that Xbox 360 accessories will receive a price increase by at least one or two pounds. It’s important to note that this only applies to the UK as well.
This move is not entirely surprising. The pound sterling is currently a horrendously weak currency. Some may recall that Nintendo did the very same thing no more than six months ago, so this is hardly unprecedented.
In a move that’s a bit of a change to the normal process, Nintendo have announced that it intends to raise the UK trade price of the Wii by £18-20, due to the recent depreciation of the pound.
“We are only – reluctantly – raising our trade price now to retailers due to unprecedented and sustained depreciation of the pound,” Nintendo told VG247 in a statement today.
“This is a problem brought about by extreme currency fluctuations that are a symptom of the global economic situation.”
It should be noted that it’s only the trade price that is being increased; whether to retail price of the machine sold is store goes up will be entirely at the discretion of the retailers.
Are you a good gamer? Then Britain’s Royal Air Force might have just the job for you, though it may require some experience in flight simulators.
PressTV believes the RAF is trying to save money by replacing pilots with gamers:
The Royal Air Force (RAF) announced Saturday that pilots without full combat training will replace top guns in controlling unmanned Reaper planes in ‘frontline missions’ in Afghanistan as part of a plan to reduce costs…
Although a small mistake by the remote-controlled pilot can be lethal for civilians or friendly forces nearby, RAF chiefs, believe that ‘lower grade’ pilots with 30 hours’ basic flying training can fly sensitive missions over Afghanistan…
It appears that RAF chiefs have based their claim on studies suggesting that the best drone crews are often young ‘video-game players’ rather than ‘experienced fighter pilots’.
Sounds a bit strange to me, but if it works, kudos to the RAF.
