News (Page 3881)

Nintendo's biggest hope for Christmas has had a strong debut, but has failed to displace FIFA 2004 from the top spot in the UK charts, coming in at number three behind Activision's True Crime.

The purchase of a minority shareholding in Japanese media giant Bandai by Nintendo in late September has come under scrutiny once again, as an interview in a Japanese magazine reveals in-fighting on the Bandai board over the sale.

Japanese publisher Capcom has announced a profit for the first half of fiscal 2003, turning around a loss last year, and has given unit software sales guidance for each of the hardware platforms in the current year.

Computing giant IBM is now involved in chip design for all three next-generation consoles, announcing late last week that it will be providing processor technology for Nintendo's next games system.

Sales of Nintendo's GameCube rose by over 145 per cent in Japan last week as the highly anticipated Mario Kart: Double Dash went straight in at number one in its first week on sale.

Japanese publisher Konami has reported a large rise in its profits for the first half of the 2003 fiscal year, with the boost attributed largely to the success of its video games and trading card games in the USA and Europe.

British developer starts a beautiful friendship with Californian publisher

Leading UK videogame retail chain GAME Group has been awarded the Customer Focus Award at the National Business Awards ceremony in London, and was highly commended for the Business of the Year award.

Medal of Honor GBA team made redundant as sequel fails to materialise

Japanese publisher Sega has seen a massive boost in its first half profits thanks to better than expected performance of its arcade division, while the loss-making console games division is rapidly approaching break-even.

Japanese giant Nintendo has announced a loss for the first half of 2003, as expected, and has reiterated its plan to launch an innovative new game product next year - with an official unveiling expected at E3.

An innovative development "incubation" company which was founded by some of the pioneers of the Xbox project with a view to acting as a middleman between publishers and developers has been forced to close due to lack of funding.

Further information regarding Nintendo's latest console, the iQue, has emerged from China, including details of the software which will ship with the system and a revised price point.

Microsoft has denied that a re-release of Halo with added Xbox Live support is on the way, quashing speculation fuelled by what has transpired to be a budget release of the hit game, scheduled to arrive in the next few weeks.

Nokia's aspirations in the games industry have been hit by a major setback this week, as pirates worked out how to break the protection on N-Gage game cards, leading to the posting of the full range of software to the Internet.

Nam Tai Electronics, a production company which creates EyeToy webcam peripherals for Sony, has announced that it has increased its production of the devices fourteen-fold in order to meet increased demand.

Speculation over a major announcement which Microsoft has pledged to make on November 15th, the second anniversary of the Xbox launch date, points to the launch of a new version of Halo with Xbox Live support.

UK development studio Genepool is seeking new finance and publishing deals after the project it had been working on was cancelled, and hopes to be able to continue operating despite laying off all of its staff yesterday.

Nintendo has this morning claimed that the GameCube has increased its market share across Europe five-fold in the past three weeks, and now holds 25 per cent of the market - putting it ahead of Microsoft's Xbox.

Although all of Electronic Arts' Christmas line-up will roll out without online support on the Xbox this year, the publisher is still in talks with Microsoft about adopting the Xbox Live service and is hopeful of a resolution.

FIFA 2004 fought off a posse of new releases this week to maintain its headlock on the nation's top slot, making it three straight weeks at number one for EA and extending FIFA's lead over Pro Evolution Soccer 3.