Rob Fahey (Page 142)

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.

Recent agreements signed by Microsoft with a variety of companies to supply technology for the successor to Xbox reveal that the company is switching to the manufacturing model preferred by its rivals.

A small flurry of new releases this week didn't help to lift the Japanese software market out of the sales decline it's been experiencing for a few weeks, although Namco's new drumming title debuted strongly.

Third quarter results reported by Vivendi Universal show a significant decline in revenues for the company's games division, continuing a downward trend which has carried throughout the year to date.

Leading graphics chipset manufacturer NVIDIA has edged into profit in its third quarter results, after revenues rose more sharply than expected, and projections for the coming quarter are also strong.

The release of Activision's financial results this morning brought with it a helpful breakdown of the installed bases of the various consoles in North America, including projections through to the end of FY2003/04.

Sony's online military action title, SOCOM II: Navy SEALs, has broken US console online gaming records, clocking up 22,000 simultaneous players within its first 48 hours on sale in the USA.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are planning to spend around £20 million on marketing in the UK this Christmas, in a move which should help to drive one of the largest holiday sales seasons the market has ever seen.

Second quarter results for publisher Activision have revealed a decline in revenues and a drop into the red due to a smaller release schedule than last years - but the company has high hopes for the current quarter.

Comments made by Nintendo of America marketing supreme George Harrison earlier this week have been interpreted as suggesting that there may not be another Mario title in production for the GameCube.

GameCube consoles are rolling off the production lines in Japan once again for the first time since January, as global demand for the system finally outstrips the backlog of units which had built up at Nintendo's warehouses.

Publisher Interplay has reached a settlement in its lawsuit against Vivendi Universal Games over their distribution agreement in North America and Asia-Pacific, and the agreement will now be continued through August 2005.

Although sales of the PlayStation 2 appear to have peaked on a worldwide basis, European sales continue to grow - with shipments of the PS2 in PAL territories growing by some 25 per cent in the first half of the year.

Electronic Arts' director of consumer marketing for Europe, Al King, has announced his decision to leave the company after over a decade of working with the publisher - a career which has spanned much of EA's meteoric rise.

Almost exactly a month after Nokia's N-Gage launched worldwide, a spokesperson for the company has stated that it is "pretty pleased" with customer reaction to the device, but that there's much to be done if it's to meet expectations.

Nintendo of America has announced new figures which show the GameCube doubling its market share in the USA in the past month, and holding a strong second place position leading into Christmas.

Publisher Atari has shut its Hunt Valley development office following the completion of its most recent project, bringing an end to the studio which under its previous name, MicroProse, was responsible for several classic titles.