NEWS In Brief
EA: The latest Need for Speedgame, The Run, will arrive in Europe on 3DS, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PC on Thursday, November 17th. A UK release is expected for Friday, November 18th.
ZYNGA: The social games giant has acquired Guildford- based studio Wonderland Software which is to be renamed Zynga Mobile UK.
NINTENDO: Wii Play: Motion will hit UK shelves on Friday, June 24th. It features 12 mini- games. The original Wii Play has sold 9m copies in Europe to date.
APPLE: The white iPhone 4 has launched across the UK and US.
ACTIVISION: The publisher has hired celebrities to lend their voices to its latest Call of Duty: Black OpsDLC, Escalation. These include Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert England, Michael Rooker and Danny Trejo.
WARNER BROS: Upcoming FPS FEAR 3 has been pushed back to Friday, June 24th. It was previously scheduled to arrive in late May.
Konami: ‘Rebuilding PES is a long process’ Publisher says it is closing the gap on EA’s FIFA games in terms of quality
by Christopher Dring
KONAMI has told MCVthat while Pro Evolution Soccer may never beat EA’s FIFAin terms of sales, it can still be a success on its own terms. It also claimed that after losing its status as the critics’ favourite, PESis closing the gap on its great rival in terms of quality. UK general manager Pete
Stone said: “I don’t think there’s a massive gap in terms of the playability. There are certain areas we need to improve, but it’s not a huge gap – and we’re gradually closing it. “We may not outsell FIFA, but we can sell enough so
that it’s good from our point of view. Don’t think of it as a battle where we’re trying to ‘win’, or outsell them,
“ by James Batchelor
SEVERAL UK games publishers have signed up to support Pixwoo, a new gamer-centric social network. The site launched in
Sponsored By
February and is designed to bring platform holders, publishers and developers closer to consumers through dedicated company and game-specific profiles. UK firms that have already registered with the
by Dominic Sacco
CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S VIDEOS:
Brink
Doctor Lautrec The Witcher 2
Videos are available within the free iPad Edition of MCVon iTunes and the free Browser-based Digital Edition, which can be accessed at
MCVUK.com
A HOST of independent retailers have told MCV they want to sell downloadable games. Retailers such as ShopTo, MyMemory and Barkman Computers are eyeing up moves to digital, although how they go about launching in this space is not clear.
www.mcvuk.com
Don’t think of it as a battle we’re trying to ‘win’ or to outsell FIFA. Pete Stone, Konami
because that’s not necessarily the case. “We’ve made progress and that’s beginning to be noticed, but we’re also going to spend a few years
rebuilding PESand sales. It’s a long process.” After a period of commercial decline, Stone said that the current version of PESsaw sales stabilise and expects the next iteration, due this autumn, to remain flat.
According to GfK Chart-
Track & MediaControl GfK, figures encompassing sales in 12 major European territories, FIFA outsold PESlast year by a ratio of 3.3:1. In 2009 the ratio was 2.1:1 – and in 2006 it was as
close as 1.1:1. Konami: 020 8987 5730
‘Facebook for gamers’ gets publishers support
site include Codemasters, Capcom, Namco Bandai Partners and Rising Star. “Being a partner allows organisations to set up a professional page on Pixwoo and message your games’ fans directly,” said CEO Pascal Vielhescaze. “It gives you the opportunity to reach thousands of gamers for free. But we appreciate how busy everyone’s lives are at the moment, so to alleviate the pressure we’re proposing to
set up and run professional pages and games pages for UK partners for the first three months absolutely free of charge.”
Pixwoo’s CEO is looking for more publishers to sign up
Pixwoo bills itself as a combination of Facebook and MySpace, and plans to launch a media sharing channel similar to that of YouTube in the near future. A mobile application for iPhone and Android is also being considered.
www.pixwoo.com
Is there room for indie retailers in digital?
“We’re looking at getting involved in the digital games market and I think you’ll see us do something this calendar year,” said
ShopTo.Net’s purchasing director James Rowson.
MyMemory.co.uk’s online
marketing manager Jean- Paul Bouic added: “It’s an aggressive market. We’ll see if there’s scope for
downloads and maybe look
We’d like digital downloads but we’d need a lot of investment.
“
Robert Lindsay, Games Centre
into entering that market next year.”
Launching a digital platform may prove costly, so indies might look at white label offerings from Metaboli and Gamestreamer. MD of Scottish-based retail chain Games Centre Robert Lindsay said: “We’d like to be there but I think we’d need a lot of investment. I do not see it just yet.”
May 6th 2011 7
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