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Archive for the ‘Video Gaming’ Category

Video gaming is no stranger to sexual controversy. Case in point: after the original Mass Effect was released, Fox News made sensational claims of rampant full nudity and graphic sexual images. Part of the hullabaloo focused on the genders of the lovers in question. If you chose to play lead character Commander Shepard as a female, you could romance a crew member of the all-female Asari race, meaning that a lesbian relationship (if the word lesbian could even be applied in this circumstance) was possible.

At the time, gamers rose to developer Biowares defense. The studio had long been beloved, having created such role-playing classics as Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights. We raised our voices in solidarity, supporting our cause. Gaming, and gamers, were being attacked. The mainstream press was the enemy, and we defended Biowares creative drive with sharp tongues and heady righteousness.

My, how things have changed.

Mass Effect 3 was released last week, and the non-gaming press has largely ignored the games (relatively tame) sexual content. The gaming community, on the other hand, has turned on its former darling, using strong rhetoric to attack the trilogys finale. Some fans have legitimate gripes. Some of them are unhappy with the ending, though to avoid spoilers, Ill avoid mentioning what has them aggravated. Some of them bristle at the new multiplayer mode and how it influences the expansive single-player story. And unfortunately, some players condemn Mass Effect 3 for supporting man-on-man romance.

Why the change of heart? After all, Mass Effect 3 leaves such matters up to the player. This isnt real life. I didnt choose to be gay, but as a male Commander Shepard, I can romance multiple characters, the majority of them female. Bioware has hardly burdened the unwitting masses with explicit gay subject matter — theyve simply allowed me to see my in-game character as I see myself. In fact, other Bioware games, such as the acclaimed Dragon Age: Origins, have allowed me to do the same, as have games from other studios, like Fable II, and the perennial favorite, The Sims.

Nevertheless, review aggregation website Metacritic was inundated with homophobic venom following Mass Effect 3s release. The site is removing inappropriate user content, but as I write this, theres still plenty of bile being spewed. As one of the tamer reader reviews states: Bioware figured lets make the hero homosexual now in stark contrast to the first 2 games where he was normal. Meanwhile, after my review of the game was published on GameSpot, one of the first replies I received on my Twitter feed claimed that I must love faggot niggers. (Cortez, a male love interest, is a man of color.)

Some of the unease comes from growing discontent with Bioware as a whole. With Dragon Age II, the studio left its PC-centric design in favor of a simpler game with greater crowd appeal. Fans revolted, criticizing everything from the story to the gameplay, and blaming publisher (and Bioware owner) Electronic Arts for restraining the studios creative drive. A blatant marketing campaign that impacted gameplay certainly didnt garner Bioware any goodwill. Game journalist Jessica Chobots overtly sexualized likeness appears in the game as a potential love interest, but her mediocre voice acting and awkward, unnecessary presence makes it easy to conclude that Bioware is willing to sacrifice creativity in favor of promotional partnerships.

This wouldnt seem to have much to do with gamer homophobia at first glance. Ask anyone who plays Halo or Gears of War online and you hear the same stories: everyone is called a faggot, and games are routinely called gay in the pejorative sense. This is the young male audience, hiding behind the usual curtain of online anonymity. Its not news to anyone remotely interested in video games. But Bioware has traditionally avoided homophobic ire, and the context is important. The studio now caters to the masses, and as one Metacritic user suggests, they went the way of political correctness and interject(ed) as much Homo mumbo jumbo into it as possible. Compared with our singular defense of the original Mass Effect, youd think Bioware was thanking us for our support by murdering our families and leaving their lifeless husks out for the vultures to peck. We gamers are an entitled bunch.

And — no surprise — the young men who form the most vocal subset of the gaming community arent the most welcoming bunch. To them, lesbian romance was fine, because lesbian romance was hot. Besides, the Asari arent really lesbians; theyre aliens! By contrast, they regard gay male romance as gross and shoved down our throats by nature of its existence. No matter that you can simply choose not to pursue that road if you dont wish to. To this gamer, the answer is simple: Bioware must cater to him, and to him alone. Its bad enough that the real world has to include homosexuals, but his games, too? Preposterous. Disgusting. Liberal. Its the gay agenda at work, soiling the heteronormative power fantasy hes been able to have up to this point.

Remember the guy who called me a lover of faggot niggers? Were not changing his mind anytime soon. But the reasonable majority can fill the deafening silence with words of support. If you love games, champion developers like Bioware for filling their games with people we recognize; its comforting to see people like me, and not like me, in these worlds. And if youre a member of the gaming press, use your words to say something meaningful. Its not always enough to say, Well, heres a thing. You have a voice. Its time to say, This isnt OK. Were in a position to take a stand. So take one, already.

February 2012 was no different for the video gaming industry as it continued to report detrimental sales figures on year-over-year basis. According to market research firm, The NPD Group, US sales for February 2012 was down 20.0% from the comparable previous year to $1.06 billion. The decline can be attributable to the lack of major titles being released by publishers. However, sales figures improved from $750.6 million recorded in January 2012.

Sales through digital downloads of full games and add-on content downloads, MMORPG games, social networking games, mobile games, rentals and subscriptions accounted for an additional $550 to $600 million.

Software sales were down 23.0% to $464.4 million from the previous-year period. Hardware sales also fared no better and were down 18.0% from the comparable previous year to $381.4 million. However, both Software ($355.9 million in Jan 2012) and Hardware ($199.5 million in Jan 2012) sales improved sequentially. Additionally, revenue from the sale of video game accessories was down 16.0 % to $215.2 million from the year-ago period.

Activision Blizzard Inc.s (ATVI) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 held on to its position as the top selling video game for the fourth month in a row in February 2012. Square Enix Inc.s Final Fantasy XIII-2 snatched the second position. UFC Undisputed 3 from THQ Inc. (THQI) was third in line followed by Electronic Arts Inc.s (EA) much-awaited Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning in the fourth position. Ubisofts Just Dance 3 came in fifth in the list. EAs Battlefield 3 seems to have lost its sheen and plummeted to the 10^th spot from the fifth position it held in the preceding two months.

Now coming to the hardware segment, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)s Xbox 360 console system outsold Nintendo Co.s Wii and hand-held 3DS. In February 2012, a total of 228,000 units and 262,000 units of Wii consoles and handheld 3DS consoles were sold, respectively. Microsoft sold 426,000 units of Xbox 360 and it was the top-selling gaming console. Incidentally, the launch of Sony Corps (SNE) PlayStation Vita in late February failed to lift the hardware sales.

Despite the dismal figures in February, analysts tracking the video game industry believe that few big game launches from bellwether publishers could boost revenues in March. Some of the games that are to be launched in March are Nintendos Mario Party 9, Konami Corp.s (KNM) Silent Hill Downpour and Capcoms Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Incidentally EAs much coveted Mass Effect 3 has already been released and the company said that it has shipped 3.5 million units of the game in the first week of its release.

We believe that the video game industry is undergoing a massive transition from physical to digital platform. Thus, the corresponding retail sales decline is not unexpected. Digital online games, including used games, rentals, mobile games and social games, have gained tremendous popularity in recent times. We believe that publishing companies having an exposure to these segments would be able to gain a first mover advantage.

However, we also remain cautious about retail sales and believe that strong growth in the digital business will cannibalize the market going forward. According to one of the studies by Strategy Analytics, the global online games market is currently worth $4.0 billion and is expected to triple in the next five years.

Moreover, the overall video game market remains highly fragmented, graced by a large number of companies. This has increased competitive pressures, keeping prices down.

Despite competition and a lackluster macro outlook, we believe that companies with significant exposure to the digital business will stand out even in this sluggish market. Additionally, new game releases and improvement in consumer spending will act in favor of the industry.

Read the full analyst report on SNE

Read the full analyst report on MSFT

Read the full analyst report on ATVI

Read the full analyst report on THQI

Read the full analyst report on EA

Read the full analyst report on KNM

The joint study by the Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Education and Iowa State University in the United States found that violent video game content served as a good prediction of attention problems. — ST PHOTO: JOYCE FANG

(CNN) — Since the iPad first appeared in 2010, video gaming has been one of the key features Apple has touted for the device, alongside video viewing, electronic reading and Web browsing.

But on Wednesday, as it unveiled the latest version of its iconic tablet computer, Apple clearly set out to be a game changer in more ways than one.

This new device actually has more memory and higher screen resolution than an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, said Mike Capps, CEO of Epic Games. So, these guys [Apple] are redefining mobile gaming again.

Dubbed a graphics powerhouse by Apple CEO Tim Cook, the new iPads chief selling point is its high-resolution screen — leaping from the iPad 2s 1024 by 768 pixels to a hefty 2047 by 1536 pixels.

Brett Lovelady started Astro Studios in 1994 with the objective to bring more of a consumer product perspective to technology. But after stints at Frog and Lunar, Lovelady wanted to make “anything that wasn’t technology–toys, soft goods, sporting goods. They began royalty relationships, translating the value of design into real equity.

Their breakthrough came when they designed Nike’s Triax 250 sportswatches, earning $300 million over five years. The studio got involved with Nike’s concept team, designing the company’s first line of golf clubs and eye wear, then began applying those skills to video games with a redesign of Alienware and the Xbox 360, which remains one of their most visible products.

In 2006, Lovelady spun off Astro Gaming to make actual products. In short order, it has become the Rolls Royce of professional gaming gear. The A40 Headphones, which also make up the A40 wireless system, is where professional-grade gaming meets professional-grade design applied to the marketplace–with headphones that mix voice and game sounds in 7.1 surround simulation and connected with a MixAmp digital decoder. “I was tired of doing this for someone else and making them tons of money,” Lovelady tells Co.Design. “I was going to walk the walk.” One of the biggest lessons, however, was personal. When you’re a designer, you work with the client, get it as close as you can, and then say good luck, he says. When you own the company, you have to stay with those products, you make improvements, get customer feedback, and have a dialogue with the industry. That affects the next product you design. You wake up every day totally focused on keeping the customer happy as opposed to keeping your client happy. Here, he tells us six other lessons.

1) Apply business models from other disciplines

“As a design studio, we were fortunate to sit in the front row of a lot of things,” Lovelady says. He launched Astro Gaming in 2006, the same year the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live were released. And although the Wii, Kinect, and Rock Band hadn’t even come out yet, you could still see how important interaction and communication was becoming. “You could connect the dots,” he says. “We wanted to be like what Nike was to basketball or Burton to snowboarding. Astro would be that for video gaming.”

2) Find a design language to build around

Astro had credibility from their work in the action sports arena, but gaming is much more of a team sport–a sports model that brands hadn’t really applied. “If you go to a Major League Gaming event [the professional circuit for videogames],” Lovelady says, “it’s a cross section of every type of person–it’s kids, young adults, and a lot of women now too.” By targeting the premium accessories market, Astro Gaming gave people of all stripes a brand identity that they could authentically relate to and rally around. And across all the products, from the MixAmp to the headphones to the backpacks, the design vocabulary is familiar, and consistent across all models and products. If you look at the backpack above, for example, you can see curves and proportions that are echoed in the headphones as well.

3) Design for the edge cases

When the Astro designers realized that professional gamers wore headsets for hours to days at a time, they made them extra comfortable. And since today’s games are developed in high-fidelity, like movies, the headsets solve a real problem by helping gamers hear what the developers wanted them to hear, including audio cues that help you win the games. And like all sports, Lovelady says, “We started with the pros because the best athletes get the best product and if they win, you get that halo effect.

4) Design around use–not around the technology

When we were with the pros, Lovelady recalls, they would have one set of headphones around their necks so they could talk to each other and another for game sounds, because TV muddies out the game sound. So we solved a problem. Astro also built customization into the product from beginning to end, putting pivot points to alleviate discomfort, and adding printing options so that teams could add their logos and own identities to the product for competitions.

5) Edit the products, curate the brand

Even if you’re making products on your own, you have to learn to make the changes necessary to self-edit to make products accessible, Lovelady says. In fact, Astro’s first attempt packed in too much technology and they ended up being too complex and expensive. They had to decide which materials were not too cheap but also not too expensive. We were not heavily editing ourselves at first, Lovelady says. We were like, This is the optimum solution, let’s go get this made. But we had to go back and make it all work and not be $1,000. They ended up going with a single driver, and eliminated some experimental tougher materials because they were so much more expensive than ABS or polypropylene.

6) Find the new business model in the price gap

As accessories go, Astro’s system is expensive. But it was a conscious decision, Lovelady says. The average price for headsets when they started was $35. Astro’s system was $250, nearly as much as the system itself. But most of the accessories were toy models and were very low-end. The gaming community consists largely of gear-focused and tech-minded players who want the best experience possible. We had to break the model out of what people expected out of video gaming accessories.

More information here.

If rumors hold true, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo had better plan for an all-out war, or duck and cover, because a new gaming system might be heading to our living rooms soon.

Valve, the creator of video game Portal and owner of the popular PC game downloading site Steam has been hinting lately that the company might tweak their business model to include its very own homegrown gaming hardware. As in a Steam Box of some sort, a new TV-based gaming system to play their creations, as well as those made by others but available via download from their site.

How might a purveyor of PC games cause an earthquake under video gamings big three? After all, Sony has allowed you to purchase and download games to play on their long-standing PS-3 devices, as well as for their newly released Vita hand-held system. Microsofts X-Box has its own gaming and download marketplace, as does Nintendos Wii and DS-based systems. Part of the shakeup might come with regard to the price point weve all been paying for the games we play on their systems.

Valves Steam site has a reputation for providing its popular gaming titles for less than those from the big threes sites. Sometimes substantially less. They already deliver big titles such as Ubisofts Assassins Creed series, LucasArts Battlefront and Lego Star Wars titles, and some of Segas blockbuster Sonic series.

As the quality of Steams already 1,100 offerings improve and with a direct line from their site into their own gaming system to your television, expect a push for lower gaming prices across the board. As Steam pressures itself internally to produce more of its own titles, expect those price points to flex further.

With a company as hungry as Valve taking on its own gaming platform, expect some level of innovation as well. Steams controller patent, shown here, apparently is to be designed with interchangeable parts, to reconfigure the controller best for whatever game you are playing on their upcoming platform. Pretty slick…

So, when are we going to learn more? Some believe that Steam will roll their new monster out (or officially unveil plans for it) at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Others think theyll wait until the Electronic Entertainment Expo, held this June in Los Angeles.

Have you ever considered video games to be works of art? A show called The Art of Video Games, opening Friday at the American Art Museum, moves beyond looking at games simply as a form of entertainment and draws our attention to how games are a design and storytelling medium–perhaps the art medium of the 21st century.

By the same token, have you ever stopped to think about how food figures into video games? Pac Man chows down on power pellets, Mario is a hardcore mushroom-monger, Donkey Kong a banana connoisseur. There have been games devoted to food fights or hamburger chefs being chased by manic pickles and sausages. Furthermore, ever since the video game boom of the late 1970s, games have been used as a means to advertise products–including edibles. While advergaming may be a recent piece of Internet age jargon to describe web-based games created to market a branded product, the concept has been kicking around since the dawn of video games. Here are a five notable games that were created to promote familiar foodstuffs.

Tapper (1983): Lets start with arcade-era gaming. The premise of this one was simple: You are a bartender whose goal is to keep sliding beers down the bar to quench your customers thirst. This cabinet is noteworthy for its clever physical design: Bar-style beer taps are used to control your character and places to rest your drink. Players will also notice that the Budweiser logo is shown front-and-center and on the bars back wall. Although the game was initially meant to be installed in bars, it was re-tooled and re-christened Root Beer Tapper as a kid-appropriate game for arcades and home video gaming platforms.

Kool-Aid Man (1983): Whats notable about this game is how the marketers and the computer programmers behind the game clashed. Marketing wanted a single game that could be adapted to the variety of gaming systems then on the market, whereas programmers wanted to create multiple versions of the game, each one able to take advantage of each platforms technical strengths. For those who bought the Atari 2600 version of the game, you played the Kool-Aid Man who had to thwart little round creatures called Thirsties who drank from a pool of water–if the water was depleted, the game ended. The Intellivision version was drastically different, with players controlling two children trapped in a haunted house being terrorized by Thirsties. If you collected the ingredients needed to make Kool-Aid, the Kool-Aid man characteristically busted through a wall to thwart the Thirsties.

The California Raisins (1988): The late 1980s and early 1990s were a great era for clay-animated television ads hawking food, and the chief ad mascots were the California Raisins. This Motown-esque group of singing raisins was featured in several television ads, a Christmas special and a Saturday morning cartoon show. The raisins released several albums and even inspired two video games. The first was a PC game in which you played a raisin whose friends were trapped in a cereal factory and its your job to rescue them.The second is the stuff of gaming apocrypha. Developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System and slated for release in 1991, it was cancelled at the last minute, perhaps in part due to the raisins waning popularity. I still think thats doing pretty well for something as simple as dried fruit. (On a side note, the raisins claymation counterpart, the Dominos Noid, also graced PC screens.)

Chex Quest (1997): For a kid, finding a prize at the bottom of the cereal box is the ultimate payoff for eating breakfast every day. (Aside from all the associated health benefits.) While small toys are par for the course, the cereal box can also be a source for home gaming entertainment. The first video game packaged in a box of cereal also happened to have a food theme. Chex Quest was based on the then-popular Doom series of games, which was notorious for its extreme violence. Chex Quest, on the other hand, was totally kid friendly. You played as an anthropomorphized piece of Chex tasked with saving the planet from an invasion of slimy, green creatures–but instead of killing them, you zapped them with your gun and teleported them to another dimension.

Darkened Skye (2002): Released on the Nintendo Game Cube platform in 2002, you play Skye, a shepherdess charged with fighting the forces of darkness with your wits, weapons and magic Skittles. Yes, you read that right. Turns out there are Skittle-laden rainbows that bring color and life to Skyes world, and she unleashes the magic of said Skittles in her mission. What an epic extension of the taste the rainbow ad campaign!

All that said, perhaps the most perfect marriage of video games and the culinary world is the Super Nintoaster–the product of a gaming fan who gutted a toaster and replaced the heating elements with all the requisite circuitry and jacks to make a perfectly functional gaming system. Pac Man shrimp dumplings, served at Red Farm restaurant in New York City, come in at a very close second.

The Art of Video Games will be at at the American Art Museum through September 30.

Peter Molyneux only announced his departure from Microsoft last week, but already his position has been filled. The new head of Microsoft Game Studios Europe will be former Sony executive Phil Harrison. A formal announcement has been made by Microsoft, with Phil Spencer, corporate vice president at Microsoft Studios saying: Phil is one of video gaming’s true visionaries, and his experience overseeing global studios and deep industry relationships make him the ideal person to lead our European efforts.

Phil Harrison is best known for his time at Sony, speaking at E3 and GDC when the Playstation 3 was first launched. He also introduced the world to Playstation Home as well as LittleBigPlanet at GDC in 2007. After leaving Sony in 2008 he briefly worked at Atari before moving on to the streaming company Gaikai in 2010, holding an advisory position to the board.

Harrison will be filling in for the role of Peter Molyneux, who last week left Microsoft and Lionhead in order to join new venture 22 Cans. Molyneux was best known for creating games such as Black amp; White, as well as the Fable series. He’ll still continue on as a creative consultant until the latest Fable game has been completed and released later this year.

In the press release from Microsoft, Harrison says:

I am excited to be joining the senior team at Microsoft at a pivotal time for our industry. I am really impressed with the companys long-term vision for growing the market for interactive entertainment globally and also with the incredible wealth of talent, technology and resources the company has available to succeed.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 13,
2012/PRNewswire/ — Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq:
ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch technology
solutions, today announced a new high-performance family of
16-string
LED drivers with integrated timing algorithms that
improve picture quality of LCD TVs by eliminating 3D
ghosting and flickering effects. With these capabilities,
the AtmelMSL2164 and
AtmelMSL2166
devices are ideal for delivering the most compelling
viewing and video gaming experience via new 3D and 2D
scrolling backlight TVs.#160;

The LED drivers work seamlessly with Atmel
AVR® microcontrollers (MCUs), including the Atmel
tinyAVR®, Atmel megaAVR® and Atmel AVR XMEGA® devices. The
microcontrollers process timing and dimming instructions,
sending this data to the MSL2164 and MSL2166 devices. The
AVR devices, along with firmware, provide a total solution
that optimizes the entire backlight design, delivering
superior performance compared to competitive solutions.

Featuring highest efficiency power management and backlight
control along with multiple dimming modes for 3D, scanning
and zone dimming edge-lit LCD TVs, the MSL2164 and MSL2166
devices drive up to 16 parallel strings of LEDs and offer
comprehensive system and fault management to support
high-performance backlight design. With this new driver
family, high-end TV OEMs can deliver high screen resolution
and greatly enhance picture quality using internal lighting
timing algorithms that improve the backlight timing
accuracy, with higher resolution vs. other solutions on the
market today. At the same time, since OEMs will be able to
choose from smaller form factor MCUs, such as tinyAVR
devices, they can lower their system overhead.

Historically, TV OEMs have had to calculate the appropriate
parameters to effectively illuminate a desired area in the
backlight of a display. LED drivers would generate
algorithms to set the appropriate string phase to optimize
synchronization of the backlight to the LCD panel. Often,
OEMs had to perform additional calculations to adjust the
string phrase to ensure that the backlight was properly
synchronized within the frame refresh. The MSL2164 and the
MSL2166, with multiple pulse width modulation (PWM)
modes-including forward, inverse, trailing and
center-reduce design complexity because the timing
algorithms are integrated into the devices. This ensures
that the backlight is illuminated at the most optimal
moment, when all of the LCD pixels have settled.

Next-generation TVs, particularly those with 3D
displays, demand a different approach towards local
dimming, said Girish Ramesh, marketing
manager of smart power products at Atmel Corporation.
Our newest LED drivers, the MSL2164 and the MSL2166,
with their smart timing algorithms and programmable PWM
modes, give OEMs who are developing LED edge-lit TVs a
clear advantage in performance, design time and cost.

Minimize Power, Maximize Backlight Performance

The MSL2164 and MSL2166 devices drive external MOSFETs with
high current accuracy and string matching. By offering the
widest dimming resolution in Atmel#39;s LED driver product
family, the devices increase the contrast ratio and reduce
power consumption by at least 20% compared to other
available solutions.

• 12-bit PWM string dimming, which allows 4,096 gray scales
  for an enhanced image
• 8-bit global intensity dimming
• 12-bit PWM string phrasing
• 10-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) current control,
  which increases dimming control in lower light conditions
• 8-bit adaptive power correction, which maximizes
  efficiency of up to 3 string power supplies

An on-chip EEPROM allows OEMs to pre-program key system
parameters to allow multiple subframes and reduce overall
system design complexity and cost. The LED drivers feature
Efficiency Optimizers that adaptively control up to three
DC-DC converters that power the LED strings, minimizing
power while maintaining LED current accuracy.

Availability and Pricing

Production volumes of the MSL2164 and the MSL2166 are
available now, with prices at $5.95for
quantities of 1K.

About Atmel

Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) is a worldwide leader in
the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive
touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile
memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one
of the industry#39;s broadest intellectual property (IP)
technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the
electronics industry with complete system solutions focused
on industrial, consumer, communications, computing and
automotive markets.

2012 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel®, the
Atmel logo and combinations thereof, AVR®, AVR XMEGA®,
megaAVR®, tinyAVR®, and others are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other
terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Press Contact
Jeff Erhart, Director, Corporate Marketing
Tel: (+1) 408-518-8457; Email: jeff.erhart@atmel.com

SOURCE Atmel Corporation

NEW YORK (Trefis) —
Gaming stocks such as Electronic Arts (EA), Activision Blizzard (ATVI) and GameStop (GME) are expected to decline, after a NPD Group report revealed that retail video gaming software sales declined by 23% in February 2012 compared to that in February 2011. Though the figure improved from the massive 38% drop in January, the 23% decline was far deeper than the markets expectations.

We believe a lack of significant new releases in February, combined with the changing landscape of the gaming industry from retail to digital and the aging of current generation consoles, were the primary reasons behind the steep decline.

See our full analysis for Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and GameStop.
Continuously Declining Video Gaming Industry
Video game sales remained choppy throughout February, with software and hardware sales declining by 23% and 18%, respectively. A lack of new games was the primary reason behind the decline in software sales. Though Activision Blizzards Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) was the market leader in February, we believe the lead of MW3 on gaming charts better represents the lack of exciting new games rather than the continuing strength of MW3.

The situation was equally bad in hardware sales. The 18% drop in hardware sales primarily reflected a sharp decline in Nintendos Wii sales. Microsoft XBox 360, with units sales of 426,000 for the month, continues to be the market leader in gaming consoles. We expect the hardware sales figure to improve in March, as the recent launch of Sony PlayStation Vita is expected to improve the hardware sales numbers, going ahead.

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