The Stupid Gamer

Madden is popular.

In just a week on the market, EA’s flagship franchise has managed to sell over 2 million copies across all formats; which translated in over $100 million in sales. This is a 12% jump over last year’s sales in the same time period, and the fastest rate in its 17-year history, a good sign that EA is continuing to reap the benefits of the NFL exclusivity agreement they paid so much to secure. Due to the high number of reported sales, EA’s stock was up today and closed at just over $51/share.

It’s crazy how Madden just keeps on selling at the rate it does. I like playing Madden, but I’m amazed that so many people are willing to buy the game year after year when so many of the upgrades are minimal at best. This year’s Madden is most likely to become the best selling version, especially when you consider that it will launch alongside the Wii and PlayStation 3 systems later this Fall.

For all you Madden fans out there, enjoy the game. Just do me one favor though: DON’T BUY THE MICROTRANSACTIONS! Thanks.

Source: MarketWatch.com

Electronic Arts, the world’s largest videogame publisher, has inked a deal with Massive, Inc. to bring in-game advertising to some of their upcoming releases; including Need for Speed Carbon and Battlefield 2142. The deal will allow EA to place sponsored content within the games that can be rotated regularly.

I’m fine with sponsored content being in games if it’s non-intrusive or if it actually lends to the realism of the game. Having sponsors on the sidelines of Madden works well, and having Dole brand bananas in the Monkey Ball games is great. Hopefully we don’t see these ads in an out-of-place fashion ever. Publishers like EA are already charging $60 for titles, the last thing that will please gamers is to shove ads down there throats that don’t seem natural.

If companies like EA are going to start placing ads into games to “offset development costs,” shouldn’t they also pass some of those savings onto the consumer? If you are going to have to see ads each time you jump online to play with buddies in a round of Battlefield, shouldn’t the game cost $5-$10 less? We all know that this won’t happen, but it’s an interesting possibility to think about.

So I guess we’ll just swallow the ads for now and keep on playing. Soon, like microtransactions, in-game ads will just be another thing you are forced to accept in order to experience the “next-gen” in gaming.

Source: CNN Money

$600. Massive Damage. Giant Enemy Crabs. Riiiiiiii-iiiidge Racerrrrr. 4D Gaming. Paying for Potential. Pre-Rendered Trailers. This is Living.

The PlayStation 3 is releasing November 17th of this year and it seems that Sony is doing everything possible to screw it up. Analysts, investors, and anti-Sony fanboys are feasting on what seems to be a constant stream of negative Sony news and using it to predict doom for gaming’s most dominant player. The truth, however, is that Sony is probably going to still going to be the market leader by the end of the PS3/360/Wii lifecycle. Why? It’s simple, really. Sony still has the best 3rd party support and the biggest names in gaming will be making appearances on the PlayStation 3 in a big way.

We can whine and moan all we want about the PS3 price, but in the end we as gamers eventually will go where the best software is. If you want to play Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, and many other big 3rd party party franchises, you’ll need to own a PlayStation 3.

Sexy, powerful, and running with an “exclusive” crowd.I’ve tried to rationalize with myself that I can wait a few years to buy a PlayStation 3, but the more I look at the lineup the system is sporting; I think it’s going to be harder to hold off buying one than to drop $600.So, where will you be November 16th? Will you be out in the cold waiting in line? I think I probably will be.

Three more novels based in the Halo universe have been announced, including one that is titles Halo: Ghosts of Onyx. The first of the three novels will hit this November, while the other two will ship sometime during 2007.

I read the first three Halo novels around the time Halo 2 released for the Xbox and they were a pretty good read. The writing isn’t of the highest quality, but any Halo fan should be sucked into the storyline right from the beginning for the rich history and in-depth look at the characters of the franchise. In the meantime, fans of the series can check out the Halo Graphic Novel if they haven’t already.

The Halo novels are published by Tor and can be found in just about any bookstore in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section.

Here are the latest charts for sales on the Japanese front. The DS is still doing insane numbers. I have no idea how long this can continue, but if Nintendo can translate some of the excitement to the Wii, they’re in for a very successful launch in their homeland. On the software front…well, you’ll have to see it to believe it.

Japan/Software

01 NDS Final Fantasy III - 503,051
02 NDS NEW Super Mario Bros. - 65,556
03 NDS Rune Factory - 42,210
04 NDS Brain Age 2 - 41,784
05 NDS Cooking Navi - 37,326
06 NDS Tamagotch 2 - 30,504
07 NDS Mario Basketball 3-on-3 - 30,355
08 NDS Animal Crossing Wild World - 30,023
09 NDS Brain Age - 22,866
10 NDS English Training - 17,465

Hardware/Japan

DS Lite - 163,274
PSP - 29,945
PS2 - 21,829
GBASP - 2,719
GBM - 1,819
Xbox 360 - 1,197
GCN - 837
DS - 410
GBA - 14
Xbox - 12

With a huge focus on the Xbox 360 and the upcoming PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles, many people have written off the current gen list of releases. There are, however, tons of great games coming within the next few months that won’t be available on next-generation systems. A few of the notable titles include: Yakuza, Lego Star Wars II, Baten Kaitos Origins, Super Paper Mario, Final Fantasy XII, Okami, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Valkyrie Profile 2, and even the GameBoy Advance is still alive with Final Fantasy V coming soon.

When new consoles release it’s extremely hard to ignore them, but with such a great Fall/Winter lineup for the current generation of consoles, it might be best to hold off paying $600 for a PS3 until you get through the current gen backlog that is bound to pile up on you. Maybe you could save yourself $50 by waiting, or at least see a round of price drops hit the PS3/Wii launch titles.

Of course, if you’re anything like me, you’ll ignore all of this and pick up both new consoles during their launch period along with way too many games and you’ll have a hopelessly large backlog for years to come.

Ridge Racer 6, for the Xbox 360 has received a price drop to $19.99. While the game was criticized for being very similar to the PSP Ridge Racers, the game is still a quality title in my book. At $19.99 you’d be crazy to pass on this game unless you had a burning hate for all things racing or for the Ridge Racer franchise itself.

According to the Wikipedia’s Top 100 charts, the Nintendo Wii is just about as popular as sex and pornography and significantly more popular than Adolf Hitler, Mozilla Firefox, or Jay-Z. The WikiCharts are part of a new set of tools offered by Wikipedia that are used to track its most popular pages.

This doesn’t actually mean that the Wii is the hottest thing out there, we all know my wife is, but it does mean that the Wii is still enjoying a fair amount of buzz despite a pretty scarce amount of news. Apparently, September 14th is going to be the day that Nintendo announces just about everything about the Wii’s launch and software lineup. For now, enjoy the WikiCharts list, it’s pretty funny (but more disturbing) to see what people are spending their time reading.

With each new screenshot released of Nintendo Wii software, you’ll find a fair amount of forum posters in a variety of forums throwing around the acronym GWF. The term is being used by a (growing) group of gamers that aren’t fully convinced that Nintendo is actually bringing a true revolution to gaming with the Wii’s remote. GWF stands for “gimmicky wrist flicks,” meaning that the core gameplay of the game is built upon simply replacing button presses with the flick of a wrist and not upon actual innovation.

Sure, there are plenty of titles that aren’t making the best use of the Wii-mote features, but I think that soon after launch the whole GWF movement will be smashed. I can actually understand the sentiment of the GWF finger-pointers, but after playing several Wii titles at E3 2006, I believe that Nintendo truly is bringing a revolution to gaming. The DS had many of the same type of critics that claimed that the DS was going to be basically a GameBoy Advance with PDA type gaming added to it.

Is it a lack of faith in Nintendo’s innovations that cause these movements to arise? Is it Nintendo still paying for their mistakes with the N64 and GameCube? I think those questions definitely factor into why the Nintendo skeptics easily gain momentum, but I think it has more to do with the fact that you simply can’t understand the Wii’s charm and magic until you try it for yourself. The DS taught us that “Touching is Believing,” the Wii will teach us that wagging is wonderful. Once the Wii launches, and everybody gets to spend some time with the software, the GWF movement will most likely die alongside those claims the DS was merely a dual-screened PDA.

Have you ever wondered what Nintendo ships to game reviewers alongside the software itself? Well, some of the “press gifts” are pretty simple, some are cool, and some are plain weird. For example, when Nintendo shipped Animal Crossing: Wild World to reviewers, it came with some housewarming items. When I tore open the box it shipped in (which was large for a DS game), the box had a wicker basket, a sponge, a garbage bag, a box of Tide laundry detergent, some animal crackers, a few other things. Recently, Starfox Command showed up with a bag of airline peanuts with the game’s logo on the outside and an airsickness bag. A few of things that have shown up include: T-shirts, special-themed boxes, figurines, DS stylii, posters, stickers, towels, postcards, perfumed letters from Princess Peach, and much more. Below is a pic of some random things from a few titles.

Enjoy!