The GameShadow Blog

Variety reports that Activision is to review all Sierra/Vivendi games due for release in 2009, with the future survival of all projects resting on the new owner’s appraisal of them.
With EA moving into a hostile position regarding its proposed purchase of Take Two, news regarding 2007’s merger between Activision and Vivendi - thereby creating the world’s largest [...]

Following the second month in a row in which the PS3 has outsold the 360, the death tolls are already being rung by industry analysts – for both Xbox 360 and Microsoft’s console foray in general.
It’s bizarre, really. Not too long ago, the 360 had a massively larger install base, a fantastic software library, a [...]

On February 24th 2008, EA revealed that it had made a bid to purchase huge games publisher Take Two (whose primary asset is the GTA producing Rockstar).
Though EA CEO John Riccitiello had been keen to acquire the pubisher for some time, the objective was only made public when dialogue between the two companies halted. EA [...]

Fed up with being ripped off by gold farmers? Want a trustworthy way of buying your way to the best equipment in Everquest?
Well it looks like your prayers are answered. Yesterday, Live Gamer announced that it had raised $24 million to build a “legitimate market for virtual trading”. Think of it as an ebay for [...]

The Golden Compass, based on the series of books by Philip Pullman, is now in the cinema. And, inevitably, there is a game out for it.
A game which has a Metacritic rating of 44 (that’s the PS2 version, the highest rated of all platforms – the PC version doesn’t have enough reviews to count yet.) [...]

The facts on GameSpot Gate are pretty thin on the ground. Here are the ones that are known:

Eidos paid for a major advertising campaign on GameSpot to promote Kane and Lynch
Jeff Gerstmann, a ten-year veteran of GameSpot, wrote a review that gave Kane and Lynch 6 out of 10.
Jeff Gerstmann no longer works for GameSpot.

As any [...]

In an unexpected announcement over the weekend, Vivendi, the parent company of Blizzard, has bought a controlling stake in Activision. The combined business, to be called Activision Blizzard, will be the largest third-party publisher in the world, with revenues of $3.8 billion compared with EA’s $3.1 billion.
The deal is quite complicated. In the first phase, [...]

At his Montreal Game Summit keynote, Jonathon Blow (the one man band behind 2008’s time-warping platformer, Braid) has railed at the McDonalds-esque game design in MMOs and in Bioshock.
“MMOs have empty gameplay, but keep players hooked with constant fake rewards,” said Blow. His concern is that, like fast food, MMOs are empty, and ‘nutritionally’ bereft – they’re [...]

Tournament.com, the website where players compete in Counter-Strike Source for real money, has closed down.
It’s the latest in a series of failures for the gaming / gambling model, and it’s beginning to raise doubts, in my mind at least, as to whether the concept is inherently flawed.

Gambling works because it’s based on luck. no matter [...]

id Software has announced the formation of a new division for production of mobile phone games.
Which is fantastic news, because mobile games have standards someone dragged up from twenty years ago. The vast majority don’t run properly, are clones of other, better games, and sully the name of strong PC franchises like Prince of Persia [...]

Being in the gaming business, and more so, the gaming update and file delivery business, I’ve been closely watching an interesting clash of both progress and hindrance. I sometimes buy a digital version of a game, usually because I can’t wait or just don’t have the time to go and buy a boxed copy.
An interesting [...]

With the announcement of the closures of EA Chicago and EA Chertsey, some industry watchers have been asking if EA’s days are the games industry’s 800lb gorilla are numbered.
I don’t think so. This looks more like a aggressive spring (autumn) clean of the company by incoming CEO John Riccitiello.  He announced a restructuring of the [...]

Warner Bros announced today that it had bought TT Games, which owns Travellers Tales (makers of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and Lego Star Wars).
It makes absolute sense for Warner, who are keen to build a powerful games business to match their strong movie and television activities. They have lagged Disney in building [...]

Midway released Q3 results this week, with revenues 6% below targets and a net loss. Midway has made losses in 30 of the last 31 quarters. The company saw cash outflows of $26 million in Q3 and now has approximately $31 million left in the bank.
It’s not all bad. Stranglehold has sold 1 million units, [...]

Recent announcements from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have shown the differing costs of launching a console:
Microsoft’s shares rose more than 10% yesterday after their quarterly results announcement showed strong results in the Vista and Office divisions, while sales of Halo 3 pushed the consumer division, which includes the Xbox 360, into profit.
Nintendo announced it has trebled its [...]