The stories for this week:
- Circuit City Pulls the Plug
- Eidos Might be Purchased by Unknown Paramour
- New Full GTA Game Coming Late 2009?
- Star Wars Battlefront III, We Hardly Knew Ya!
- December NPD Numbers Out
Circuit City Pulls the Plug
They supposedly had two entities that were interested in purchasing them, but they set a drop dead date of Friday and decided to go the liquidation route. Supposedly the liquidation sale starts today (Saturday), although remember that a lot of companies like Sony have restricted the flow of product to Circuit City stores because of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November. It is sad they are closing their doors, but maybe this will get Frys to expand their operations to states they aren’t in yet and take on Best Buy. Hope you find some good deals in the liquidation and there is no word on when the use of gift cards may be cut off, so be sure to use them ASAP!
Source: Joystiq
Eidos Might be Purcased by Unknown Paramour
First you piss and moan that 1.5 million copies of Tomb Raider Underworld just wasn’t what you hoped for so you slashed jobs at Crystal Dyanmics. Now you seem to be in negotiations to be purchased by some unknown company. The smart best is that it is Warner Bros. since they purchased a 20% stake recently, but other companies include EA, Ubisoft and Square-Enix. Eidos has been in and out of buy up interest for a while now, so we’ll see if this actually pans out this time around.
Source: Joystiq
New Full GTA Game Coming Late 2009?
The original rumor comes to us via the upcoming Game Informer magazine with Raven’s Singularity on the cover. They leak the info that Rockstar North is reportedly working on a full retail game for at least the 360 and PS3, so this has nothing to do with the upcoming DS game. The rumor goes on to say that they are planning a late 2009 release. This is a bit far-fetched with them still working on at least the 2nd DLC for the 360 version of IV, but then again Take Two is probably looking for any money making opportunity it can to keep other companies from trying to gobble them up for a price they don’t agree with. We’ll see in the coming months if this is true or not, I just find it tough to believe.
Source: Joystiq
Star Wars Battlefront III, We Hardly Knew Ya!
We all know that Free Radical has gone out of business and supposedly some workers from there leaked out some art assets from various games they were working on, one of which was Star Wars Battlefront III for LucasArts. This week someone leaked in-game alpha footage of the game shown to LucasArts in November. The footage isn’t super exciting, however at one point you hear about a Sith Kenobi and just yesterday Kotaku had an art asset of said character and he looked rather cool. Too bad we will never be seeing Battlefront III on the shelves unless LucasArts decides to drop it to another developer.
Speaking of LucasArts, there is also word that the Indiana Jones game shown a while ago has been canceled, although their PR person does a roundabout denial of that by saying the franchise is still important to them. If that is canceled I’m not exactly sure what LucasArts is working on at the moment and the only game they are publishing would be the Star Wars MMO that BioWare is working on. Does LucasArts even have any internal development staff anymore?
Source: Joystiq
December NPD Numbers Out
December seems to have been good for everyone in regards to hardware with the Wii selling 2.15 million units, Xbox 360 at 1.44 million and the PS3 at 726,000. The PS3 number is the largest they have sold in a month this year. Outside of that not much to be happy about since the 360 outsold it by almost 2 to 1. On the software front the list was dominated by Wii and 360 games with one PS3 game making the list.
1. Wii Play w/ remote - Wii – Nintendo – 1.46 million
2. Call of Duty: World at War - Xbox 360 – Activision – 1.33 million*
3. Wii Fit w/ balance board – Wii – Nintendo – 999K
4. Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel – Wii – Nintendo – 979K
5. Guitar Hero: World Tour - Wii – Activision – 850K*
6. Gears of War 2 - Xbox 360 – Microsoft – 745K*
7. Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360 – Electronic Arts – 629K
8. Mario Kart - DS – Nintendo – 540K
9. Call of Duty: World at War - PS3 – Activision – 533K
10. Animal Crossing: City Folk - Wii – Nintendo – 497K*
* Includes Collector's, Limited, Legendary, and Bundled Editions
NPD also released the top 10 selling games of 2008, also with only one PS3 game on it:
1. Wii Play w/ remote - Wii – Nintendo – 5.28 million
2. Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel – Wii – Nintendo – 5.00 million
3. Wii Fit w/ balance board – Wii – Nintendo – 4.53 million
4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Wii – Nintendo – 4.17 million
5. Grand Theft Auto IV - Xbox 360 – Take-Two – 3.29 million*
6. Call of Duty: World at War - Xbox 360 – Activision – 2.75 million*
7. Gears of War 2 - Xbox 360 – Microsoft – 2.31 million*
8. Grand Theft Auto IV - PS3 – Take-Two – 1.89 million*
9. Madden NFL '09 - Xbox 360 – Electronic Arts – 1.87 million*
10. Mario Kart - DS – Nintendo – 1.65 million
* Includes Collector's, Limited, Legendary, and Bundled Editions
Of final note is that total sales were up 17% from last year at $21.33 billion, $5.29 billion of which came from December itself. Wow!
Source: Joystiq