Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: Big Weekend for video gamers

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Big Weekend for video gamers

It was a big weekend for video gamers this weekend.

First up was the Japanese launch of the Xbox 360 at Tokyo's Shibuya Tsutaya Shopping Center. I'm having trouble verifying concrete numbers, but here's the possible breakdown:

Units pre-sold before lauch: 320,000
Attendance at launch: 250 people
Hours before all units sold out: 3

I'm hoping for some more information to verify these tidbits, as if the 320K count is true, it's huge (Microsoft only sold 500,000 units total of the original Xbox).

UPDATE: A survey by Japanese Famitsu magazine says only about 62,000 units were purchased on December 10 and 11 -- less than half of the estimated 159,000 Xbox 360 consoles available in Japanese stores. This is also half the 123,000 units Microsoft sold of its previous generation Xbox in the first three days of its Japanese intro the beginning of 2002.

Dead or Alive 4 and RPG eNCHANT arM would have changed opening weekend sales of the Xbox 360. Currently, DOA is the must-own franchise for Japanese Xboxers, and its absence may have seriously damaged the consoles cred. The game slipping from launch (and now at risk for its end-of-year reschedule) tells me (A) The game wasn't ready, making rock star game designer Tomonobu Itagaki probably very, very unhappy; and (B) Microsoft doesn't have that much influence over Team Ninja or Tecmo, LTD.; after all, Microsoft did get ensure it's first-party Project Gotham Racing 3 did make the launch, even after an announced slip.

Next up was the Spike TV's Video Game Awards 2005. I normally don't like awards shows (maybe my view'll change when I hopefully become an honoree in one), but this year's show was actually a lot of fun.

You can't go to the website yet to get the full list of winners (the "countdown time" hasn't been updated, and is currently counting "up" in negative integers), but the intro video is hilarious, especially for longtime gamers, and emcee Samuel L. Jackson did a great job, and was having fun.

Notable wins were Dave Jaffe as Designer of the Year (Sony designer for God of War) and Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie winning for best game based on a movie (with famed Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil designer Michel Ancel accepting (in an entertaining way).

Ancel had some interesting things to say about the future of movie-based games, saying that deeper back-and-forth collaboration between the designers and directors will be key (I'm sure Electronic Arts and Steven Spielberg are listening.

F.E.A.R. stole the FPS crown from Call of Duty 2 (according the Best Buy, the top selling title on the Xbox 360).

Other highlights of the boradcast (and the afterparty) were worldwide premiere clips for new games and movies like (Midway's next iteration of the Spy Hunter franchise (also to be a film next year, and both starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) and The Outfit. I am disheartened by the BloodRayne film, but the Aeon Flux trailer showed badly, but I liked the film. I did not, however, enjoy Kristanna Loken as afterparty emcee, and her exchange with actor Billy Zane was one of my more painful recent experiences.

Though all does seem a little more right in the world with Resident Evil 4 winning game of the year.

I did make the mistake of taking on a third, low-caliber game broadcast this week -- U@Play, a local video game TV broadcast that I stopped watching out of irritation some time ago. I broke the ban today to watch the Xbox 360 coverage, and remembered why I stopped watching the show. Besides the poor production values, the host is pretty insipid ("graphics that will give each eyeball a full-body Swedish massage"; what?), and constantly gets the names of games wrong (it's "Perfect Dark Zero", not "Perfect Zero Dark"; and learn how to pronounce "Kameo".

If someone wants to fund an alternative to this, I'll be your game-passionate (and articulate) TV personality. Contact me.

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Big Weekend for video gamers

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