News (Page 3860)

Publisher Activision has shipped two million units of movie tie-in Spider-Man 2 to retail worldwide since the game launched last week - while the movie has smashed US box office records with the largest opening weekend ever.

Dino Dini, creator of the Kick Off and Player Manager football titles, has launched a scathing attack on the industry's lack of appreciation for development talent, and accused it of losing focus on gameplay in favour of production values.

Publishers Vivendi Universal Games and Novalogic have struck a deal which will see VUG distributing all of the smaller company's current and upcoming titles in North America, including Novalogic's latest, Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising.

A new report from analyst firm Piper Jaffray is predicting that the growth of the video game industry will slow significantly in the "transition" years of 2005/06 - but major games publishers are more optimistic, according to one senior source.

Leading European videogame retailer GAME Group has issued a trading update which confirms the company's predictions that the first half of 2004 would see a market decline, but the firm expects strong performance in the second half.

Japanese publisher From Software has acquired the rights to the Tenchu series from Activision, and will be handling the development and publishing of all future titles in the series - with plans to develop the brand beyond games.

One of the most anticipated titles for Christmas 2004 is set to make its European debut at the Game Stars Live consumer games show in London this September, it has emerged, with Pro Evolution Soccer 4 playable for the first time at the event.

Atari's Driv3r has stayed at the top of the UK sales charts for a second week, despite a decline in sales of some 17 per cent, while only two new titles entered the All Formats Top 40 as the flood of new titles at the end of June abated.

Mobile phone giant Nokia has announced details of its N-Gage Summer Tour, a promotional event which is visiting cities across Europe to give gamers a chance to try out the new N-Gage QD device and a range of new software.

Square Enix Ltd, the recently reorganised European division of the giant Japanese publisher, has announced that massively multiplayer title Final Fantasy XI will be available across Europe in September.

There was further bad news for troubled publisher Acclaim in its latest round of regulatory disclosure documents, as the company admitted that it has lost the rights to the Turok franchise and Major League Baseball.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has given an extensive talk on the state of the industry to the Japan Economic Foundation - including evidence from sales figures which he claims prove that online gaming is not yet an important factor.

Magazine publisher Future Network Plc has issued a trading statement detailing rising revenues in the first half of this year, and has extended its global deal to publish Official Xbox to 2011 - the longest deal of its type ever to be signed.

Publisher Acclaim has announced its full-year results for the twelve months ended March 31st, revealing a net loss of $56.4 million and a major decline in revenues - along with a warning that the firm may face bankruptcy in the near future.

A number of key new software releases surged to the top of the Japanese charts this week, almost doubling the overall software sales over the previous week and ending a seasonal slump which had lasted for almost a month.

Publisher Vivendi Universal Games has finally confirmed the existence of a PC version of its critically acclaimed Xbox first person shooter, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.