Category Archives: Variety (Print)

Game for a fee hike

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The cost of playing “Modern Warfare 2” with friends on the Xbox 360 is about to go up. Microsoft announced Monday it would raise annual subscription rates for its Xbox Live service from $50 to $60 starting Nov. 1.

That’s the first price increase in Xbox Live’s eight-year history — and it’s a move that will affect more than just gamers in households. Microsoft has steadily added adding non-gaming functionality to the service in a bid to lure consumers who are looking for other entertainment options, including streaming of films and music.

Read more at Daily Variety

Nintendo cuts DS prices

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With a new handheld gaming system on the way, Nintendo is giving its current device one last hurrah at retail.

The company announced plans Monday to shave $20 off the price of the two most recent versions of its Nintendo DS — the industry’s best-selling hardware.

Read more at Daily Variety

Study: Gamers get social

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Disney’s $563 million purchase earlier this month of Playdom had its skeptics, but a new survey showing the reach of the social game market could silence the deal’s critics.

The NPD Group, which tracks the sales of video games, reports that 20 percent of the U.S. population has played a game on Facebook or some other social network in the past three months. That works out to 56.8 million people tending virtual farms or collecting virtual bugs.

Read more at Daily Variety

Tablet tech takes TV live

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Technology is keeping Hollywood on its toes: Just when studios have gotten used to Netflix reinventing the homevideo biz and are flirting with becoming a major player in the pay-TV biz, it’s time for networks to face a very near future when Apple’s iPad and rival tablet computers steal more eyes away from TV sets.

Verizon is about to offer up the latest carrot for consumers, with the telco giant announcing plans Wednesday for an upcoming app that will let its FiOS TV customers stream television and on-demand programming to the iPad.

Read more at Daily Variety

Browder shines on ‘Starcraft II’

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On a recent July day in Paris, game developer Dustin Browder was living like an international rock star, doling out autographs and chatting with fans.

The lead designer on Activision-Blizzard’s “Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty,” one of the most anticipated vidgame titles of the year, was in the City of Light for one of many midnight launches held worldwide for the game. Nearly 1,500 people showed up in the rain there to buy the game the instant it went on sale, July 22, and to get Browder to sign their copy.

Read more at Daily Variety

Gamers more than ready for ‘Duty’

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While most videogame publishers are taking advantage of digital downloads to extend their profits these days, none are doing so as successfully as Activision.

The company on Monday announced that life-to-date sales for downloadable expansions to its “Call of Duty” games have surpassed 20 million units.

Read more at Daily Variety

Disney digs social gaming

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Disney’s taste for social gaming could be bigger than many people first believed.

The Wall Street Journal and others have reported that the Mouse is in talks to buy social games company Playdom for an estimated $500 million or more. No deal has been formally announced, and neither company is commenting on the reports. If completed, the acquisition would be the second notable expansion by Disney’s gaming arm this month.

Read more at Daily Variety

PC games surge in digital download

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While physical sales still hold a dominant position over digital downloads when it comes to videogame consoles, retail is in danger of losing that spot with PC gamers.

A study from the NPD Group, which tracks videogame sales, finds that digital downloads of PC games essentially reached parity with retail sales in 2009. Online purchases of full-game PC titles hit 21.3 million in the U.S. last year, compared with 23.5 million units purchased at stores.

Read more at Daily Variety

Kinect sets its price

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Microsoft on Tuesday announced that Kinect, its new gesture-recognition controller for the Xbox 360, will retail for $150 when it hits stores Nov. 4. That is in line with what the gaming world was expecting — but it may make the launch of the long-awaited system a bit less spectacular than people were hoping.

The company says the chief goal of Kinect is to attract new users to the Xbox 360. To achieve this, Microsoft will also offer a larger bundle, which includes an Xbox 360 (with 4GB of storage), a Kinect and “Kinect Adventures” for $299.

Read more at Daily Variety

Xbox Live goes dark

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(Note: I do not choose the headlines on Daily Variety stories.)

Two years ago, Microsoft announced plans to compete against television programmers on their own turf. On Thursday, the company conceded the first round to the networks.

After two successful seasons, the Microsoft has cancelled “1 vs. 100,” an online adaptation of the Endemol-created NBC gameshow. The game was the centerpiece of an experiment called Xbox Live Primetime — a scheduled series of interactive games that represented the videogame industry’s first serious foray into turf dominated by TV. It was a hit, too, setting a Guinness World Record for the most simultaneous contestants in a gameshow at 114,000.

Read more at Daily Variety