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:
- Ubisoft Joins the Online Play Pass Club
- Duke Nukem Forever Drops into #2 in Sales for June
- PopCap Finalizes Rumored Sale to EA, Zynga Also Bid
- King of Kong Remake Happening?
- Captain America and Call of Juarez: The Cartel Next Week
Ubisoft Joins the Online Play Pass Club
Ubisoft confirmed the rumors earlier this week that they would be instituting a “play pass club” with the release of Driver: San Francisco later this year. This is of course to get people to buy the game brand new and not have to pay a fee to play online if they pick it up used down the road. One would assume this will also be tied to Ubisoft’s huge release later in the year of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Just warning you now.
Source: Joystiq
Duke Nukem Forever Drops into #2 in Sales for June
No word on the number of sales, but Take Two ruled the top two spots in sales during the month of June. L.A. Noire stayed on top with the universally panned Duke Nukem Forever coming in at the second spot. Sony also announced that the game in #3, inFAMOUS 2 sold the most copies for one system during the month. NPD now joins all the sales from every system together for their sales chart, they aren’t divided anymore so with inFAMOUS 2 being on PS3 only it is not surprising that it sold better than either of the top two games on each single system.
Source: Joystiq
PopCap Finalizes Rumored Sale to EA, Zynga Also Bid
A while ago it was rumored that EA had purchased PopCap and this week it was confirmed. The more interesting thing though is that Zynga also bid about $1 billion for the developer. PopCap was ultimately sold for about $750 million to EA, but there were bonuses/performance payouts tied to it that would take it to about $1.3 billion.
The more interesting story here revolves around former gaming journalist Jeff Green. He went to EA after leaving 1Up to work on the Sims games. He then left to go become the social director for PopCap. Now he is once again under EA’s umbrella should the sale go through in August.
Source: me
King of Kong Remake Happening?
It is sounding like the 2007 documentary Fistful of Quarters: The King of Kong may be remade and possibly into a more mockumentary style. My question is why remake a game that is 4 years old? Why not just do an updated version of it following Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell since their battle is still ongoing? Seth Gordon, the original director, has gone on to do major films and television shows, so the fantastic documentary certainly helped his career.
Source: Joystiq
Captain America and Call of Juarez: The Cartel Next Week
Two possibly good games this week. I’ve heard good things about the Captain America game from some journalism peers, I guess we’ll see if it can break the usual bad video game/movie tie-in record. Finally, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, the third game in the series, comes out this week as well. Enjoy!
Source: me