News (Page 3904)

Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 clocks up a second week at the top of the UK sales charts this week, while there are new top ten entries for Codemasters' Club Football and the PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved.

Telecoms giant BT has announced the launch of new broadband packages aimed specifically at console online gamers, offering them an all-in-one solution to getting their Xbox or PS2 online.

Sony's PlayStation 2 is the most popular console in South Korea by an overwhelming margin, according to a recent survey, despite Microsoft's best efforts to establish the Xbox in this emerging marketplace.

Tom Hall and John Romero, formerly the key names behind Ion Storm and Monkeystone Games, have joined Midway's San Diego development studio to work on a variety of new projects for the publisher.

Nintendo UK has jubilantly announced a four-fold increase in sales of the GameCube hardware in the two days following its recent price cut to £79, although even this major boost can't lift it past its home console rivals.

The heavily new release driven Japanese software market has fallen back dramatically this week as few new releases graced retail shelves, with Hudson's PS2 RPG release Far East of Eden II taking the top spot.

New question marks have been raised over the launch date of Valve’s Half-Life 2, which is thought to have been pushed back to 2004, with EB Games in the USA now listing the title for a November launch once again.

Sony sold 33 per cent less units of the PS2 in Japan during the first half of 2003 compared with the same period in 2002, according to new figures published last week which also show the GameCube making gains.

Major UK catalogue retailer Argos has re-introduced Nintendo's GameCube to its range several months after dropping it, with newspaper advertisements promoting the console at its new UK price point.

Microsoft's Xbox may not be receiving ports of key Sega arcade titles OutRun 2 and Virtua Cop 3 after all, with the company still unsure about demand for the titles on home consoles.

Japanese publisher Namco has doubled its profit projections for the first half of its fiscal year and increased its full-year projections, mostly thanks to the strong performance of Soul Calibur II in overseas markets.

LucasArts president Simon Jeffery has resigned from his position at the company after over three years at the helm, stating that he plans to return to England with his family.

Nintendo is celebrating a new milestone for the GBA SP handheld console in Europe, reporting today that it has shipped two million units of the system here - bringing the total European shipment of GBA hardware to some nine million.

Leading UK games retail chain GAME is set to recruit over 2000 temporary staff to cope with demand over the Christmas season, representing an increase of some 50 per cent in its workforce.

Leading game publisher Electronic Arts is to be added to Fortune Magazine's e-50 Index, a stock index which is designed to act as a benchmark for the Internet economy and includes companies such as Sun, Microsoft and Cisco.

Nintendo has shot to the top of the class in America, with the GameCube outselling the PS2 by 20 per cent to become the best selling home console in the USA last week following a price reduction in late September.

SCE's chief technology officer has revealed that mass production of the Cell microprocessor is due to begin in the second half of 2005, a timescale which hints at a spring 2006 launch for the PlayStation 3.

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.