Today, 7-Eleven announced that they will start carrying certain video game titles for sale, including Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.
Additionally, they will make several prepaid game cards available for companies (and games) like Nexon, Habbo, Gaia, Guild Wars, Runescape, Aeria, City of Heroes, ijji and Neopets.
Press Release: Gamers never die; they just grow up … and continue to play ... and play ... and play. Today, the average gamer is not in his teens, but in his early 30s and, not surprisingly, most likely male. They play at home, at social gatherings, at work (shhhh) and online.
That’s good news for 7-Eleven, Inc. whose customer base skews heavily male between the ages of 18 and 34. The world’s leading convenience retailer is ready to take the proverbial plunge into video game sales after dabbling in it over the past years with successful Slurpee® beverage promotio... More »
Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday that it was ending print publication of its 27-year-old flagship, PC Magazine, and would take the title online only.
PC Magazine’s circulation was 1.2 million in the late 1990s. It is the latest of several magazine publishers to drop a print edition, as advertising plummets and the cost of printing a paper version rises.
“The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn’t there anymore,” Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview.
To quote: Seven production, circulation and advertising employees will be cut as a result of the move, out of a total of about 140 who work on PC Magazine and PCMag.com. Mr. Young said the company was considering taking its other print magazine, the video-game publication Electronic Gaming Monthly, into an online-only format, but would not make a decision before the end of the year.
For gamers, the new year usually begins after mid-November and this year’s no different; pretty much all major console exclusives have been released.
So, this is the first time that we can actually look back at 2008 and see which console had the best exclusives for the year - the PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii.
To do this, I decided to tally up the Metascore ratings (as of 11/20) for what are arguably the top ten exclusives for each console. Games that are available on PC and only one console are on the list as well (World of Goo and Left 4 Dead are two examples). So let’s dive right in to those potentially forum-rioting numbers:
Nintendo Wii: 1. No More Heroes - 83%
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 94%
3. Mario Kart Wii - 82%
4. Wii Fit - 80%
5. Wario Land: Shake it! - 78%
6. Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility - 64%
7. World of Goo - 95%
8. Wii Music - 63%
9. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the N... More »
Have you ever played a game and got to a point that just frustrates the heck out of you and no matter how many times you try you just can’t complete a task/perform a jump/find a switch?
That’s the point that I’m tempted to toss the controller across the room.
That point hit me while playing Mirror’s Edge the other day, the parkour-inspired game where you’re a futuristic courier on the run who must bounce, jump, swing and wall-run from the pursuing police. All had been going well until I came to a section where I had to wall-run, jump then turn and grab on to a bar. Do you think I could do it first go? If you answered no, you’d be right.
After about 15 minutes I was still trying to master the move, but generally ended up on my back on the floor below or missing the wall run completely and just dropped to the floor below me.
I think that was when I tossed the controller on to the couch - gently, mind you, as I’m too tigh... More »
Believe it or not, whether you are a PlayStation gamer or not, you’re going to be disappointed that Sony really doesn’t have anything up their sleeve in terms of marketing their products... their odd ads are just plain out boring.
What’s even worse is that they are releasing one TV Spot with the same theme every few days till the 21st when they are launching a “bigger campaign”. I don’t know about you guys, but the TV spots so far are not inspiring me yet.
The first one is known as the “Alley” and the second one known as “Office Park”, and are part of the reflection campaign. Hopefully this “bigger campaign” will be more persuasive to the average consumer this holiday season.
Show us your killer titles, like Resistance 2, and LittleBigPlanet that you have been so excited for this year!
At the same BMO Capital Markets' conference last week in New York where he gave an update on upcoming GTAIV DLC and Chinatown Wars, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick offered a glimpse further down the road. In his "Negative Approach" blog for cnet, Dave Rosenberg related these remarks from Zelnick:
The Holy Grail is taking a business, already a very large and successful business that's focused on packaged goods... and turning that into a subscription business or a semi subscription business where we have an ongoing relationship with consumers, giving them products that they want. Who's better positioned to do that than the company that has the top franchises?
It isn't much of a stretch here to start connecting the dots. The Grand Theft series definitely fits the bill as a "successful business that's focused on packaged goods," and it's also the top of their franchise properties. And though delayed, the DLC plan for GTAIV offers an ideal test run for a "semi... More »
A 15 year-old Swedish boy may have had the drive to follow in his fellow European gamers' footsteps of reaching level 80 in World of Warcraft in one 27 hour marathon session, but his body wasn't nearly so keen on the idea.
According to a Times report, after playing Wrath of the Lich King for 24 hours straight, he "suffered what appeared to be an epileptic seizure."
Doctors would later reveal the boy's body systems "had been disrupted by a combination of sleep deprivation, lack of food, and the prolonged period of concentration playing the game."
Understandably, the boy's father plans to place limits on the amount of time his son can play videogames after he makes a full recovery.
Let's make something clear; marathon gaming sessions aren't fundamentally bad since they have the potential to facilitate positive social interaction. But when Ho Hos and gumdrops become substitutes for spaghetti and meatballs and people start having seizur... More »
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