Care to experience a video game version of the London 2012 Olympics, without all those ... hedgehogs? Sega has a product for you too. The publisher announced the release window for London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games, its "normal" Olympics tie-in. You can compete in the world sports arena in June 2012.

This time, the PS3/Xbox 360 outing will support motion controls via the Move and Kinect for certain events, allowing you to play Kinect-based beach volleyball or shoot at your TV with Move-enhanced rapid fire pistol.

Sega has also added global leaderboards, so you'll actually be competing with other players worldwide, just like some kind of massive sporting event.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

We've already told you what our favorite games of 2011 are, but the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences apparently needed a bit more time to ruminate on the matter. The final awards will be given at the annual DICE summit in Las Vegas on February 9, giving us all tons of time to pressure the AIAS into giving Rayman Origins the awards for Outstanding Animation and Outstanding Art Direction.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is the belle of the ball this year, with a total of 12 nominations across several categories. Other notable titles include Portal 2 (10 nominations) L.A. Noire (9 nominations), Bastion (3 nominations), and Battlefield 3 (6 nominations). 2010's top game from the AIAS was Mass Effect 2, which walked away with awards in the RPG and storytelling categories.

Jay Mohr will be hosting again -- here's his monologue from last year -- and the entire show will be streamed online through GameSpot, starting at 7:30pm PT/10:30pm ET. Or you could buy a plane ticket and fly to Vegas, hoping to somehow sneak in. We wouldn't suggest that, though, as your time and money can be better spent petitioning for Rayman Origins.

Hit the jump for the full list of this year's nominees.

Continue Reading

Sony Computer Entertainment UK VP Fergal Gara said the Move could have, should have done better in Europe, noting that the system's software lineup is crucial to its success. Gara named only one title, Sports Champions, that sold the best "by far" with a few hundred thousand units. We assume he expressed SCE's disappointment with the Move's success in the tone of, "I should have lost 20 pounds by now, even though I never work out and I eat bacon with every meal."

Gara is focusing on future titles to support Move, and by "titles" he means Sorcery (a game announced at E3 2010), and "other things that we know are bubbling under." SCE is stepping up its marketing and internal development for Move, Gara said, hoping to revitalize Move in 2012.

Assassination and dancing has proven to be a lucrative mix, as Just Dance 2 and 3 and Assassin's Creed: Revelations helped Ubisoft to lead this year's best seller's list with three entries. That's according to the NPD Group, which also estimates the video game industry's profits, comprising "new physical video and PC games, used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full-game downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile games," reached sales of somewhere between $16.3 and $16.6 billion in 2011.

Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 took top honors (it's kind of a big deal), while Just Dance 3 and Skyrim occupied the second and third spots, respectively. NPD also says that, despite sales growth in the digital sector yet again, physical copies offered at retail outlets still accounted for the majority of sales coming in at $9.3 billion, "an 8 percent decline over the $10.1 billion in 2010."

That decline was "partially" offset by increases in digital, mobile, and used game sales, which NPD expects to be a focus moving into 2012. "Our overall estimate of the market continues to point toward the increased imperative for deeper visibility into digital distribution than is available today, not only in the U.S. but globally," said NPD prez David McQuillan. Our waning shelf space agrees.

Continue Reading

Two major UK video-game retailers, HMV and Game, saw a drop in sales over Christmas, prompting HMV to reconsider its investment in games as a whole, The Telegraph reports. HMV's gaming market share fell 16 percent over the holidays, while sales in music and DVDs saw no change; games now account for 20 percent of HMV's sales. Chief Executive Simon Fox said HMV may focus only on AAA titles in the future.

Game's Christmas retail sales were down 15 percent, while year-on-year it lost 13 percent in sales, GamesIndustry.biz says. Online sales rose 4 percent, and sales for the year ending January 2012 dropped 12 percent, less than the UK gaming market's total loss of 13 percent. Game recently closed 39 stores and is expected to have 550 in the UK by 2013, GamesIndustry notes. CEO Ian Shepherd is banking on the Wii U and PS Vita to revitalize sales in 2012.

This holiday season has been kind to Sony, the company revealed today, specifically the PlayStation line of gaming consoles. The PS3 was the front-runner for Sony's parade of prosperity, invading over 3.9 million homes during the company's unspecified "holiday sales season" worldwide. On paper, it's impressive, but not quite as much when compared to the competition -- the Xbox 360 managed to outperform the PS3, selling 10 million consoles since the last tally back in late October.

Other top earners for Sony include the PlayStation Move, which managed to -- wait for it -- move 1.7 million units off store shelves, and the PSP, which sold 1.6 million. The PlayStation Vita, which launched in Japan just last month, was snatched up by 500,000 gamers in the region, while the PS2 also sold a half-million worldwide.

Continue Reading

Despite all of the informercials telling you game development is all about tightening up the graphics, it takes more than that to make a game. Media Molecule, best known for the LittleBigPlanet series, announced it would not to pursue another entry this year, in the interest of innovation.

At the end of March 2011, the studio reported a profit of £3.44 million ($5.3 million) for the year prior, yet spent £4.1 million ($6.3 million) over those 12 months on research and development, according to a report obtained by Develop. Media Molecule is striving to "remain at the forefront of technological advances" and "must bring new and often risky innovations to market in products of the highest quality," the report cites.

In layman's terms, the report is saying MM spent a ton of cash researching new tech. These include "leading edge physics and dynamics, rapid world creation from laser data, innovative routes to market via web based interfaces, 3D stereo-optics for advanced simulation, and use of 'hi-def' data capture and processing techniques." But with 50 people on staff during the period of reported expenditure, that comes out to £82,000 ($126,000) a head -- it's not unheard of for development studios to classify game development as research and development.

So how much of the money was used to pay its employees and specifically explore innovative new things? Without the report, we can't say for sure. It's possible this is simply a report of how much MM paid its employees for the year, a possible obligation for all UK business entities.

It's unfortunate, but it seems unlikely we'll be hearing Sony Computer Entertainment's current "executive deputy president" Kazuo Hirai regaling us with extended "Riiiiiiiiidge Racer!" shouts much more, as Nikkei is reporting he'll be taking over as president of Sony Corporation in the coming months. Current president, CEO and chairman Sir Howard Stringer will apparently be losing a third of his title to Kaz, and the move is expected "as soon as April," as translated by our bilingual cohorts at Engadget.

When Hirai was promoted to the deputy president role earlier this year, he became the heir apparent to Stringer's job as president, so it's not exactly an enormous surprise to hear this report. Sony had yet to confirm the news as of publishing, but Nikkei isn't exactly known for its false reporting. All the same, we've reached out for confirmation.

Update: Sony tells us it "Doesn't comment on rumor or speculation." Not exactly a denial, but take that as you will.