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Latest Gear Live Videos
Doctor Bans Child from Playing Video Games to Stop Head Twitching
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Culture, PlayStation 2,
A 9-year-old boy was ordered to stop playing video games. As odd as it sounds, turns out that after playing a lot of video games over his winter break, he began noticing that his head was uncontrollably jerking back and forth. As a result, his doctor ordered him to stop playing PlayStation - and sure enough, his head stopped jerking. It’s too bad this kid ran into trouble most likely as a result of playing video games - and it seems really unusual. However, console and game manufacturers do suggest limiting your hours playing games and watching out for seizures and the like.
Read More 
| Local6
Gallery: Doctor Bans Child from Playing Video Games to Stop Head Twitching
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This Week’s Best Selling Games
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360,
Thanks to Next Generation, this week’s best selling games from Gamestop’s Amazon.com storefront follow. Click through to see them.
Click to continue reading This Week’s Best Selling Games
Gallery: This Week’s Best Selling Games
Alternate King Kong: The Game Ending
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Action, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360,
Ubisoft recently announced that its King Kong game has an alternate (happy) ending! Possibly to help boost sales, after already dropping the price of the game, the publisher has revealed that the game contains an alternate ending where Kong survives and is returned to Skull Island. We feel this announcement has been made partly due to all the talk of the game’s low replay value. However, in order to obtain the other ending, players will have to put in a bit more time - and since the game’s only $30, this new announcement may help increase sales.
So what’s the big guy have to say about it? (No not Kong, Peter Jackson!)
“I wanted the game to be able to take the audience a bit further than what the film could,” said Peter Jackson. “And the final climax of the game gave us an opportunity to do something that the film could not do, which was to have an alternate ending - obviously everybody pretty much knows how King Kong ends.”
Read More | GameDailyBiz
Gallery: Alternate King Kong: The Game Ending
IGN’s Best of 2005 Awards
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Nintendo DS, Nintendo Gamecube, PC, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360,
IGN recently posted its Best of 2005 Awards and honestly, we agree with most of the site’s choices. IGN’s broken the awards up by console and has created a whole slew of categories - it took a good amount of time just to see all of the different categories for each console. At any rate, a list of the big winners follows…
Click to continue reading IGN’s Best of 2005 Awards
Gallery: IGN’s Best of 2005 Awards
Previous Generation King Kong Drops to $30
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Action, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2,
In somewhat of a surprising move, Ubisoft has dropped the price of its new King Kong title to $29.99. This price holds for all versions of the game except for the Xbox 360 version, which still retails for $59.99. After somewhat disappointing sales numbers for the month of November, we knew price drops would be coming soon for current-gen games, but this soon? For a title this new? The King Kong videogame has received very good reviews - as the film it’s based off has also. Between Friday and Sunday the film fell short of expectations and grossed a little more than $50 million. Ubisoft probably lowered the price for two reasons - because of lagging videogame sales and also because of lower-than-expected ticket sales for the feature film.
Read More | King Kong Pricing
Gallery: Previous Generation King Kong Drops to $30
NPD November Sales Numbers
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Corporate News, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360,
Not too many surprises in the November sales numbers. Xbox 360 sold around 326k but could have easily sold more had its supply been stronger. The PS2 still dominates the charts but console sales numbers are down compared to last year. We’re a little surprised to see the huge 4:1 tie ratio for Xbox 360 software. (The tie ratio refers to how many units of software are sold per machine.) Oddly enough, PSP sales numbers weren’t included in this analysis’ release.
In terms of the software sales numbers, Activision’s Call of Duty 2 leads the Xbox 360 pack despite an annoying bug. While Microsoft’s Perfect Dark Zero was the third best selling Xbox 360 game, consumers simply didn’t see it as the ‘killer-app’ that many originally hoped it would be. Meanwhile, Mario Kart DS made a fairly strong showing at #10 on the list - especially considering it’s a handheld title. The figures released are immediately below.
Xbox 360 = 326,000
PS2 = 531,000
Xbox = 197,000
GCN = 272,000
DS = 370,000 (approx)Xbox 360 software sales = 1.3 million units, Tie ratio of almost 4:1.
Overall software sales are down 18% over November 2004. Console software sales are down 33%, even with the Xbox 360 sales contribution.
Hardware sales are down 44% over last year.
November Top 25 Software Sales
US Top 25 Videogame Titles
Rank Title PublisherRank Title Publisher
1 XBX STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT II LucasArts
2 PS2 STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT II LucasArts
3 360 CALL OF DUTY 2 Activision
4 PS2 MADDEN NFL 06 Electronic Arts
5 PS2 WWE SMACKDOWN VS RAW 2 THQ
6 360 MADDEN NFL 06 Electronic Arts
7 PSP GTA: LIBERTY CITY STORIES Take 2 Interactive
8 PS2 TONY HAWK AMERICAN WASTELAND Activision
9 GCN MARIO PARTY 7 Nintendo
10 NDS MARIO KART Nintendo
11 PS2 50 CENT: BULLETPROOF Vivendi
12 PS2 CALL OF DUTY 2: BIG RED ONE Activision
13 360 NEED FOR SPEED: MOST WANTED Electronic Arts
14 PS2 SOUL CALIBUR III Namco
15 PS2 DRAGON BALL Z: BUDOKAI TENK Atari
16 PS2 NBA LIVE 06 Electronic Arts
17 PS2 BLITZ: THE LEAGUE Midway
18 PS2 NEED FOR SPEED: MOST WANTED Electronic Arts
19 PS2 RATCHET: DEADLOCKED Sony
20 PSP STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT II LucasArts
21 360 PERFECT DARK ZERO LTD ED Microsoft
22 PS2 SOCOM 3: US NAVY SEALS Sony
23 PS2 GUN Activision
24 PS2 THE MATRIX: PATH OF NEO Atari
25 XBX CALL OF DUTY 2: BIG RED ONE Activision
Source: The NPD Group/NPD Funworld, POS
Gallery: NPD November Sales Numbers
Final Fantasy RPG Battle Reenactment
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Internet, PlayStation 2, Role Playing Games,
Looking for a good laugh? Watch a few characters battle in an entertaining fan-video linked below. The reenactment is based off of Final Fantasy battles and features a limit break along with some good old summoning. If this video doesn’t put you in a good mood and make you laugh, we don’t know what will.
The video’s currently being hosted on Google Video. What would we ever do without Google?
Read More | Google Video
Gallery: Final Fantasy RPG Battle Reenactment
Snoopy Comes Home To Fight Red Baron
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: PC, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox,
That’s right, your favorite beagle is coming to a home videogame console near you next fall. Out of the whole Peanuts bunch, Snoopy is certainly the coolest and it’s about time he’s the star of another videogame (see Snoopy Tennis, Snoopy Concert, and others.) But honestly, none of those games were very good.
What may be the biggest move for Snoopy in years is the fact that Namco is developing his new title, Snoopy vs. the Red Baron. Could any other developer be better suited to make this game? Probably not considering Namco has the Ace Combat series under its belt. Sure, Namco’s Star Fox: Assault wasn’t the greatest, but we’ve still got hope.
Snoopy vs. the Red Baron is coming for PS2, PSP, and Xbox. The game will also feature over fifty missions, and Peanuts stars including Charlie Brown, Linus, and Woodstock. This is a remake of the classic Atari 2600 game.
Read More | IGN
Gallery: Snoopy Comes Home To Fight Red Baron
Ubisoft King Kong Interview
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Adventure, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360,
Played the new King Kong game? It’s surprisingly good, even if it’s a little bit on the shorter side.
Considering that games based on movies usually don’t turn out this good, it’s interesting to take a look inside Ubisoft and see what made the game’s development special. GameDaily recently posted an interview with some members of the Kong development team that’s definitely worth checking out. In fact, here’s a Q&A excerpt:
BIZ: Obviously creating the official game for the movie is a huge undertaking. What steps were needed to ensure that production stayed on course?
Xavier: The main challenge is to work in parallel with a movie and a universe that is created as you are developing the game. You have to anticipate, to wait for assets to be delivered, and make sure you validate on a regular basis the different choices you make to make sure you are on the right track… while making sure everything still fits in your planning.
Peter J made us feel comfortable because he really did not want the game to be a simple adaptation of the movie but he sees the game as a sister or a brother to the movie and an expansion to his universe. That means he accepted (and was suggesting) differences between the movie and the game in order to meet our constraints and make the best game possible. We also worked with Philippa Boyens (co scenarist) to make sure we were respecting characters and tone.
You need a lot of exchanges, and we were lucky to go to New Zealand five times to breathe some of Kong’s air!
Five times to New Zealand?? If only we were so lucky…but then again, we could just boot up a copy of the game and find ourselves in a remote jungle without having to sit on a plane for hours on end.
Read More | GameDaily
Gallery: Ubisoft King Kong Interview
December’s Upcoming Game Releases
Posted by Brandon Gribin Categories: Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, Portable/Mobile, PSP, Release Dates, Xbox, Xbox 360,
Looking for some new games to spend your hard-earned money on? Well you’re in luck! What follows is a list of games that will be hitting retail shops between now and the end of 2005.
This Week:
Final Fantasy IV Advanced - GBA
Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku I & II - GBA
Chaos Field - GCN
Gauntlet Seven Sorrows - Xbox/PS2
Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play - PSP
Next Week:
Pocket Dogs - GBA
Samurai Showdown V - Xbox
Dead or Alive 4 - Xbox 360
Aside from Dead or Alive 4, it looks like there isn’t anything too excited due out for the rest of the year. Furthermore, will Dead or Alive 4 even come out this year? It’s slated to ship on December 21st, but it wouldn’t be that surprising if it were delayed again.
Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play could turn out to be a keeper, but we’ll hold judgment on it for now. And finally what the heck is Pocket Dogs? Dare it be a Nintendogs rip-off?
Gallery: December’s Upcoming Game Releases
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