Video game sales break 6-month losing streak, eke out tiny gain in September

Halo: ODST, released in September, topped that month's games chart. Credit: Bungie.

Sales of video games and consoles in the U.S. eked out a tiny gain in September, ending a 6-month streak of year-over-year declines.

Fueled by the releases of Halo ODST and The Beatles: Rock Band, last month's sales of games and consoles grew slightly to $1.28 billion, barely topping last year's sales of $1.27 billion, according to data released this afternoon by NPD Group. For a more detailed analysis of MTV's The Beatles: Rock Band performance, check out Ben Fritz's post on Company Town.

Unit sales of Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 edged up as shoppers took advantage of the recently discounted console prices by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. But on a dollar basis, sales took a 6% hit last month, down to $472.3 million, due to the lower prices. 

Sony, which whacked $100 off the price of its PS3 console in August, tapped into pent-up demand to outsell the Wii and the Xbox 360. Sony sold 491,800 PS3 consoles in the U.S., compared with 352,600 Xbox 360s and 462,800 Wii consoles. Sony's performance ended Nintendo's long reign as the game console chart-topper, at least in the living room. Nintendo also sold 524,200 hand-held DS game devices last month.

Sales of games, however, grew 5% to $649.3 million, helping to make up for the loss in hardware sales. Here are the top 10 titles sold last month (title, platform, copies sold):

1. Halo: ODST (Xbox 360) 1.52 million
2. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) 442,900
3. Madden NFL10 (Xbox 360)  289,600
4. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS) 258,100
5. The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox 360) 254,000
6. Madden NFL10 (PS3) 246,500
7. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (Xbox 360) 236,000
8. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) 212,500
9. Guitar Hero 5 (Xbox 360) 210,800
10. The Beatles: Rock Band (Wii) 208,600

Source: NPD Group

-- Alex Pham

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter @AlexPham.

Will Wright, creator of The Sims, talks toys

Will Wright, creator of The Sims. Credit: Stupid Fun Club.

Will Wright is still messing around. The 49-year-old creator of The Sims, Sim City and Spore quit Electronic Arts in April, but he continues to "build things that people would want to play with."

Wright is still cagey about what he has up his sleeve, but he's given us a few clues.

Hint #1: It's a toy. Wright will be taking his concept to the New York Toy Fair in February, where he will deliver a talk titled "The Evolution of Entertainment: A Toy's Place" at the Engage! Expo, a conference on the convergence of toys, the Internet, virtual worlds, games and social media.

Hint #2: It will involve games. How could it not? Wright's games have sold more than 100 million copies and generated more than $1 billion in sales for EA, which has invested in Wright's company, the strangely named Stupid Fun Club.

Hint #3: It will have robotic components. "To some degree," he qualifies. "All of our projects have crossover elements. Even calling it a toy makes it too specific." Wright's fascination with robots dates back to when he was a child building model tanks and attaching motors to them.

Hint #4: It will be connected to the Internet. Many toys have developed online components. Ganz's Webkinz, for example, is both an online virtual world and a line of plush toys. Hasbro has collaborated with Electronic Arts to create a virtual world based on the toy company's Littlest Pet Shop line of stuffed animals.

Hint #5: It will rely on crowdsourcing. No surprises there, since The Sims spawned hundreds of thousands of fan-created YouTube videos. Wright cites a toy called 20Q that asks players to think of an object, then proceeds to guess what that object is after asking 20 questions. The program that generates the answers came from a database of questions and answers generated by millions of visitors to a website of the same name.

Still don't get it? Neither do we. But we're still intrigued. Hopefully, Wright will have more to say at The Engage conference at Toy Fair.

-- Alex Pham

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter @AlexPham.

Video game sales slip 6th month in a row

Madden NFL 10 tops chart of best-selling games. Credit: Electronic Arts.

Boom! Not even John Madden and his trademark expressions could avert the crash in video game sales in August, which fell 16% from a year ago.

The drop was the industry’s sixth consecutive monthly decline, according to a report released today from market research firm NPD Group Inc.

That means sales of games and game consoles must grow 14% in the last four months to the year in order for 2009 sales to be flat with 2008, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Last month, even sales of Madden NFL 10, a popular football simulation game developed by Electronic Arts Inc., were down from a year ago, prompting EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello to say, “It is discouraging that one of our highest-rated and best-marketed Madden titles in years is facing strong headwinds.”

Here are last month’s top-selling titles:

1. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360)
2. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo Wii)
3. Madden NFL 10 (PlayStation 3)
4. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
5. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)
6. Madden NFL 10 (PlayStation 2)
7. Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PlayStation Portable)
8. Wii Fit (Wii)
9. Mario Kart (Wii)
10. Fossil Fighters (Nintendo DS)

Source: NPD Group Inc.

-- Alex Pham

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter@AlexPham.

Riot Games snags $8 million, will launch League of Legends in China via Tencent

Artwork from League of Legends. Credit: Riot Games.

Riot Games, a Culver City company started by two former roommates from the University of Southern California, this morning announced it has bagged $8 million in venture funding, bringing the studio's total financing to nearly $20 million -- even before Riot has launched its first game.

The largest investor in the latest round of financing is Tencent, a Chinese Internet company. Based in Shenzhen, Tencent operates QQ, China's largest instant messaging services, with 448 million active users. Tencent had previously agreed to publish Riot's title, League of Legends, in the world's most populous country.

Riot, founded in 2006 by USC grads Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, will launch the game in North America and Europe in October, followed by a launch in Asia. As a fantasy role-playing game, League of Legends is born out of the World of Warcraft mold. Indeed, it was developed by the same team that made Defense of the Ancients, one of the most popular player-created "mods" based in the Warcraft III universe.

But League of Legends, or LoL (go ahead, snicker), is expected to differ from WoW in two key respects. The first is that League of Legends focuses on short game sessions that last 20 to 30 minutes from start to finish. In contrast, World of Warcraft campaigns can last hours at a time, much of it waiting around for something exciting to happen. League of Legends promises to distill that experience into shorter bursts of combat and strategy, minus the thumb twiddling.

Secondly, League of Legends will be free to play, whereas World of Warcraft players must buy the game disc and pay a monthly subscription to play the game online. Riot's business model, which is much more prevalent among game companies in Asia than in America, is to entice players to buy virtual goods, such as character outfits and power-ups.

"There are people who will play for a couple of months and spend a couple of bucks," said Mitch Lasky, partner in Benchmark Capital, a venture fund that has invested in Riot Games along with Tencent and FirstMark Capital. "Then, there will be people who will play for a couple of years and spend a couple hundred bucks. This game provides an experience that can accommodate that."

-- Alex Pham

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter @AlexPham.

Take-Two releases Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony trailer, settles 'Hot Coffee' lawsuit

The highly anticipated trailer for the latest game in the family of Grand Theft Auto titles, and specifically in the fourth generation of the franchise, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, was released this morning. To watch it, click on the video above.

It'll likely be a mature-rated title when it comes out on Xbox 360 as a downloadable add-on game for Grand Theft Auto IV on Oct. 29. (It will also be bundled with a disc-based collection called Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City.)

The trailer, however, is pretty tame, unlike the "Hot Coffee" sex scenes contained in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that landed its publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software, in legal hot water four years ago. The New York game company today said it had settled a class-action lawsuit related to the incident for $20 million.

"Hot Coffee is officially over," said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities.

The latest installment of the gritty GTA franchise involves Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince. Maybe more so than other GTA titles, this game tries to focus more on incorporating music into the gameplay, especially since Gay Tony is a nightclub owner.

Sales of the Ballad of Gay Tony are not expected to hit the levels reached by Grand Theft Auto IV, released last year as a disc-based game. Take-Two this afternoon said its sales for the quarter ended July 31 plunged 68% to $138.6 million. Its third-quarter net loss of $55.5 million contrasted with a profit of $51.8 million last year. The slump is mostly attributable to the lack of a GTA release in the quarter, analysts said.

-- Jevon Phillips and Alex Pham

No, Blizzard's DRM doesn't require players to always be online

Chill out, folks. You will be able to fire up your laptops and play StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty on the plane.

Last week, when we wrote about the anti-piracy efforts Blizzard Entertainmentwould be taking next year with StarCraft II, fans fumed. (Many assumed, though Blizzard would not confirm, that the same anti-piracy mechanisms would also be used for Diablo III, which the Irvine game developer said would come out sometime after StarCraft II.)

The stipulation that players must verify their copies of the game over the Internet by phoning home to Blizzard wasn't sitting well.

The concept reminded users of the bad taste left by digital-rights management locks that plagued the early days of legitimate music downloads, with Apple's iTunes at the forefront.

To clarify, you will indeed need an Internet connection when you first install the game. You'll also need a connection to play with other people. (To the chagrin of many players, Blizzard won't include LAN support-- the ability to play with others on the same computer network, such as at a dorm -- without going online.)

But you can freely disconnect and play single-player or challenge modes, wrote Blizzard spokesman Shon Damron in an e-mail. Obviously, you won't get ...

Rock Band abandoning hardware, Guitar Hero focusing on new audiences

A screenshot from The Beatles: Rock Band. Credit: MTV Games.

The music video game genre has been in a profound slump this year, with sales down 46% so far, according to the NPD Group.

Part of that is due to the recession, of course, but part of it may be waning consumer interest in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The games' publishers, Activision Blizzard and MTV Networks (owned by Viacom) have seen the impact on their bottom lines and are taking big steps to shake up their businesses as a result.

As a story in today's Times explains, the biggest change comes in the form of The Beatles: Rock Band, a risky bet worth tens of millions of dollars in royalties alone.

But as MTV launches the game with its distribution partner, it's also implementing a new strategy: Flee the hardware business. Sure, there's a limited-edition, $250 hardware package, but quantities are limited. And there's a $160 "value bundle" featuring original Rock Band hardware that MTV is eager to get rid of.

If you're new to music video games and want controllers for The Beatles: Rock Band, MTV has a preferred solution: Buy Guitar Hero.

“The opportunities around hardware are really limited,” said Scott Guthrie, general manager of MTV Games. “We are getting into a focus on software and [downloadable song] revenue streams.”

MTV Games senior vice president of electronic games and music Paul DeGooyer puts it even more abruptly: “Let others take on the burden of getting those super-tight margin instruments out there."

The "others," of course, is really one company, Activision Blizzard. And its CEO Bobby Kotick admits it's time for a change as well.

Kobe Bryant: NBA 2K10 is 'like practicing without getting hurt'

For most of his career in the NBA, there have been two Kobe Bryants, evolving in mirror universes.

One is a 6-foot-6 Lakers guard who grew up playing Double Dribble with his cousins during summer visits to his grandmother's house. The other is also a basketball player, albeit a digital one created 10 years ago by Visual Concepts, a video game developer in Novato, Calif.

If the real Kobe built up his shoulders, so would the virtual Kobe. When he became leaner and faster, his digital doppelganger also became sleeker and more fleet-footed. And if Kobe grew more hair, digital Kobe would also have longer hair.

This year, the virtual player will acquire another habit when NBA 2K10 comes out on Oct. 6: He will sometimes jut out his chin in the heat of competition, just like the real Kobe. To find out what the flesh-and-blood Kobe thinks about the evolution of his digital twin, click on the video above.

The game's developer, now owned by Take-Two Interactive Software, has added facial animations to its franchise, which over the years has become the best-selling basketball simulation video game on the market. Much of the franchise's success is due to the studio's near-fanatical devotion to replicating the details of the actual sport into their video games.

What does Bryant think about this? We spoke with him yesterday about video games in general and his role in the NBA 2K titles, which he says he likes to play because it lets him "practice without getting hurt." Here's an edited transcript of the conversation:

Do you play video games?

Kobe Bryant: I do. I enjoy the realism of it.

What games did you play when you were a boy?

Bryant: Double Dribble was my game. I had six cousins. My father played. My uncle played. My sister played. We all got together at my grandmother's house and had these tournaments in summertime in the back house. It was really brutal. We played for hours. Then we'd go into the swimming pool. Then go back and play again. It was good times.

Do you play now?

Bryant: During the season, [Lakers guard] Jordan Farmar brings the...

BlizzCon overflows with excitement after attendees play StarCraft II and Diablo III

Hundreds of fans play an early version of Diablo III while many more fans wait in line. Credit: Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times

When Activision Blizzard announced it was pushing back the release of its hugely-anticipated computer game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty to 2010 from this year, fans began to worry that maybe the game's development wasn't as far along as they had expected.

Blizzard Entertainment, the game's Irvine-based developer, put those concerns to rest with a fully playable multiplayer version of the game that was presented to media and fans at its annual BlizzCon event at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The initial buzz among the conference's 26,000 attendees revolved around World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the expansion to the massively multiplayer online PC game. But once gamers got their hands on the sequel to the most popular real-time strategy game for the PC, BlizzCon shifted its focus to StarCraft II.

The game feels complete. We didn't run into any bugs or oddities during several game sessions. Each faction appeared delicately balanced with teams able to achieve victories using a wide variety of tactics and mercenaries. The first batch of feedback from fans was overwhelmingly positive, developers at the show said.

In reality, the sequel isn't all that different from the original StarCraft, which first stormed store shelves in 1998. That's kind of the point, Blizzard Chief Operating Officer Paul Sams said. "The original formula is important," he said Saturday in Anaheim. "StarCraft is all about speed. It's all about big armies and the competition."

The competitive aspect is a big reason for the delay. Blizzard is prepping a new version of its online gaming platform ...

John Madden talks about the virtual gridiron, the Madden Curse and life outside of the broadcasting booth

John Madden in 2002 on the field in Foxborough, Mass. Credit: Ida Mae Astute / Associated Press.

John Madden, the NFL legend and former broadcaster, made his call in April when he announced his retirement. But that didn't mean the 73-year-old was out of plays. Madden still relishes his role as an advisor to the video game franchise that bears his name, Madden NFL.

Although the game, published by Electronic Arts, already shipped last Friday, it is continually updated via downloads on Internet-connected game consoles such as the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. That's a feature Madden fully plans to take advantage of as he analyzes the sport from a custom-built viewing room designed to let him tune in to every live football game.

His analysis of these games will make their way into weekly updates of the game, which can also accommodate changes in the lineup due to injuries other game changers.

Madden spoke to the Times yesterday about how he's tackling his role as the go-to coach of the virtual gridiron with renewed vigor, and whether he believes in the "Madden Curse," coined because athletes appearing on the cover of the video game have been prone to suffer injuries.
To read an edited transcript of the conversation, click continue reading.