News (Page 3888)

French conglomerate Vivendi has finally agreed a sale for its entertainment business, with the media empire - including Universal Studios and Vivendi Universal Games - being sold to General Electric in a multi-billion dollar deal.

British developer Argonaut Games has announced a pre-tax loss of £10.9 million for the year ended July 31 2003, largely due to the cancellation of deals for two key products - but a strong pipeline promises good performance this Christmas.

Finnish mobile giant Nokia has stated that it hopes to sell between six and nine million units of the N-Gage in 2004, but the company may face an uphill struggle to achieve credibility for the device.

Consumer electronics giant Sony has announced further details of its hybrid games console and home multimedia centre, the PSX - with the entry level model set to go on sale in Japan this year at 79,800 Yen (€620),

Namco's Soul Calibur 2 has been knocked off the top spot in the UK sales charts after only a week, with EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 rising two places to take poll position.

The Consumers' Association of Great Britain has criticised Nintendo over what it describes as an unfair premium in the new pricing of the GameCube, which is £10 more expensive in the UK than in Europe.

Vivendi Universal Games chief executive Christophe Ramboz has stated that highly anticipated PC title Half-Life 2 will not ship in time for Christmas, following the distribution of source code from the game online.

Koei's Dynasty Warriors 4 has gone straight in at number one in the Japanese software charts, holding Grand Theft Auto 3 off the top spot despite very respectable first week sales for the title.

Publisher Konami has announced that it has received over a million UK pre-orders for this year's update to the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise, which arrives at retail on October 17th.

Console giant Nintendo has dropped the price of the GameCube in Japan, in line with recent cuts in the USA and Europe - which have caused a fourfold rise in sales of the Cube stateside, according to some figures.

The latest addition to the PlayStation product family, a hybrid console and home entertainment centre called PSX, will be shown off publicly for the first time at a technology show in Japan this week.

The only major console launch of the year happens tomorrow, with the N-Gage finally arriving at retail globally - but this must be one of the quietest platform launches ever, despite Nokia's claims of major marketing support.

Nintendo has announced the appointment of a new general manager for its UK operation, with former Australian director of sales and marketing David Yarnton taking over the reins at the company.

Game development services specialist Babel Media has been named in the Sunday Times' ARM Tech Track 100 league table of the fastest growing tech companies in the UK, ranking at number 81 in this year's listing.

Japanese console giant Nintendo has revised its financial projections for the year, dropping its full-year profit outlook by 5 billion Yen and projecting a loss of 3 billion Yen in the first half, which ended in September.

Sony Computer Entertainment has moved to clarify the situation regarding this weeks European Court judgement on the customs status of the PS2, stating that early reports were correct and the company has in fact won its case.

Development studio Valve Software has seen the entire source code to Half-Life 2 - including source from some of the company's middleware partners - leaked to the Internet following a breach in the company's security.

Nintendo will cut the price of its flagship GameCube console to £79 next Friday following Sony's PS2 cut last Wednesday. All eyes are now on Microsoft as the console price war springs back to life.

Guildford-based studio Lost Toys has become the most recent casualty among independent UK developers, with the company making its entire staff redundant and ending work on its current projects.

The European Union has officially branded the PS2 as a games console rather than a computer, in a move which foils Sony's plans to claim back millions of euros of customs duty by having it reclassified as a PC.