Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- PlayStation Network Continues to Be Down, Rumored Dev Version Up and Running
- Deus Ex Website Hacked, 25k Emails Stolen
- Mortal Kombat and Portal 2 Lead NPDs
- LA Noire Launch Trailer
PlayStation Network Continues to Be Down, Rumored Dev Version Up and Running
The PlayStation Network continues to be down as we enter the 4th week. And while we're still not given a firm date of its launch, we are reminded that it should be fully operational by May 31st. In the meantime various media outlets are reporting the developers are gaining access to their version of PSN, but its not without its problems already.
Many of their accounts and test accounts have gone missing with no way to recover the data - most finding it frustrating to continue their testing where they left off for games in development. So while the immediate impact of the PSN being down might be loss of playtime, developers are actually losing development time which may cause for delays down the road.
Deus Ex WEbsite Hacked, 25k Emails Stolen
It started to what many thought was a ruse or a ARG for Deus Ex, but it quickly became apparent due to the recent PlayStation Event that this would be a marketing stunt gone extremely wrong. Square-Enix later confirmed that almost 25k email addresses were exposed as well as 350 resumes for potential developers. The website was down for almost 3 full days, replaced by a hacker banner with their calling card.
Source: Joystiq
Mortal Kombat and Portal 2 lead NPD numbers
North American sales numbers for April have been revealed and both Mortal Kombat and Portal 2 lead the pack.
Likely as a result of these two games, total US spending was up 20 percent year-over year, from $802.4 million in 2010 to $961.2 million in 2011. Microsoft can also claim some responsibility for the high numbers -- it informed us that the Xbox 360 was the top-selling console last month, moving 297,000 units (a year-over-year increase of 60 percent).
The 3DS also sold almost 200k units during April - its first full month on the market.
Source: Joystiq
LA Noire Launch Trailer
The biggest game release this week is without a doubt LA Noire from Rockstar Games. The detective/action game set in a 1940s LA is set to release on the 360 and PS3 and we've got the launch trailer below. The facial animations are simply mind blowing.