Games Digest

Games sell music

According to tech-blog Tiger's Leap, music industry execs are increasingly turning to videogames to build bands. The blog entry highlights Green Day's "American Idol" appearance in a Madden NFL game as the reason it achieved such a high chart position.

Tiger's Leap article in full

Simon M

Gran Turismo 4 to flop?

Sony has announced that Gran Turismo 4, it's eagerly anticipated next iteration of the driving series, will arrive in the UK on March 9. But The Guardian's games blogger Keith Stuart thinks it might flop. In an interesting think-piece, he says GT4 is out-of-step with current gaming desires. Its 700 cars to collect, crashes without any damage and photo mode speak of outmoded car-fetishism rather than a la mode auto-destruction, as seen in Burnout 3.

The Guardian article in full

Simon M

Sony plans iTunes rival for PSP

Marketing magazine has a story that Sony is planning a music downloading service to fit its new handheld console, the PSP. Sony has refused to confirm any concrete plans on this service. But with onboard storage in the form of the Memory Stick slot, the PSP is ripe for downloading both music and movies to.

Simon M

PS3 playable in May

According to hardcore gamers site computerandvideogames.com Sony has confirmed that the PS3 will be playable at E3 in May. E3 is the world's largest videogames trade show, held in May, most years in LA. We'll be there, of course. And now you're wishing you could be too. What form the playability takes is another matter. The PS2 E3 presence was for one year a set of four development kits showing off the potential power of the PS2. If Sony does debut a playable PS3 at E3, in whatever form, it's fairly likely to be competing with the debuts of the Xenon or Xbox 2 and Nintendo's Revolution machine. More news as and when we get it...

Simon M

More Nintendo DS launch plans

More from Nintendo's Paris DS launch: In an aggressive press conference, clearly designed to take the wind out of Sony's sails, as well as announcing pricing and launch date (March 11, £99.99), Nintendo also had this to say...

1. There will be an allocation of 650,000 DS units to Europe for the launch. That's more than were available for either Japan or America.

2. Nintendo has earmarked a budget of €35m for the launch. So expect a marketing, advertising and PR blitz in the coming months.

3. The company showed off one of its gaming aces with MarioKart DS. The game, featuring eight-player Wi-Fi wireless play, is due for launch later in 2005.

4. Building on the US and Japanese success of the in-built chat-and-draw PictoChat software among women, Nintendo says it will be making efforts to market the DS to women, including building up a women-specific marketing campaign.

Nintendo DS to hit UK March 11

In Paris today Nintendo confirmed that its new DS handheld will launch in the UK on March 11th and will retail for £99.99. There will apparently be 14 games available from day one.

The dual screen handheld has already been quite a hit in both the US and the Far East and its launch is eagerly awaited in Europe. Among the early games, which will cost between £19.99 and £29.99, are Super Mario 64 DS, oddball Japanese mini-game collection Project Rub, Pokémon Dash and puzzler Polarium . The actual DS hardware will ship with a demo version of probably the best of the initial wave of DS games, Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt. The full game is not due out until May.

Car passengers game against other cars

The Interactive Institute Of Stockholm is researching mobile games that could be played between passengers in different cars. Its prototype "Road Rager" allows passengers in different cars to compete against each other when in close proximity using a PDA and special peripheral.

Interactive Institute Of Stockholm project website

Simon M

DS winning sales war of the handhelds

The week closing January 16 was the first where the Sony PSP outsold the Nintendo DS in Japan. However, the PSP appears to have a long way to go to catch up the DS's lead in the war of the new handheld consoles. The DS has sold over 1.2 million units in Japan, over 2.5 million globally. While the PSP has sold merely 800,000 so far. However, the Sony PSP did launch with very limited stock. And defects with the console have marred the initial launch. So this race has only just begun.

Simon M

Games TV beats games magazines

Gamer.TV research shows that its TV shows on Bravo now have a greater audience than the combined readership of the specialist games magazine industry in the UK. ABC audited figures for the specialist magazine market shows less than 600,000 copies a month, while Gamer.TV the show attracts over 1 million viewers, while Dominik Diamond vehicle When Games Attack attracts over 2 million.

Simon M

PSP link to PS3 patent emerges

News.com has uncovered a patent filed by Sony in 2003 that appears to relate to its PSP handheld connecting to its next home console, the PS3. The patent details a "portable gaming device" connecting to a "base computing device" for more than just sharing content such as music or game saves. As well as these, the patent suggests the "base computing device" (read: PS3) could also execute programs and send the results to the PSP, while the PSP could "concentrate on providing video and audio." Reading between the lines, this seems to imply that a PSP near a PS3 could run games more complex than its own hardware would allow, using the PS3 to boost power.

Simon M