General Gaming News

Square Enix seems to know a good thing when they see one, and here they are with their latest foray, jumping headlong into the Apple iPad market. After all, hasn’t the iPad sold like a gazillion of such devices worldwide since its release, with not signs of stopping? That would make it the perfect mass market platform to introduce those who have yet to fall under the spell of the Final Fantasy series, wouldn’t it? Just for fanboys, the digital photo collection FINAL FANTASY XIII LARGER-THAN-LIFE GALLERY is now available for the iPad, alongside party game Chocobo Panic.

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FremantleMedia Enterprises and Backstage Technologies Incorporated has just announced the success of Family Feud for Facebook, claiming that since its March 12 launch without any fanfare whatsoever, it has grown to be one of the fastest-growing games on Facebook, managing to garner more than one million unique players in less than 30 days. Now that’s certainly an achievement worth trumpeting, and we guess it goes to show just how much folks love games like this, but knowing that Facebook has 400 million plus users, there is still much more room for improvement.

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Capcom has started a partnership with Tesla Motors, the people who came up with the first electric supercar in the world, offering gamers the Dark Void Tesla Roadster Giveaway. This sweepstakes will begin today, where it will be unveiled at an exclusive event at the flagship Tesla Motors showroom in Silicon Valley. Gamers can visit Capcom’s official Dark Void site to enter for a chance to win a variety of prizes, where among these ought to be a dream for most motorheads – an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas to test drive a Roadster. Others will probably vie for the Grand Prize of their very own Tesla Roadster.

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Love mobile gaming? Well, Verizon Wireless looks set to be the right mobile carrier for you as they are now ready to offer over 350 in-demand mobile games, where they will consist of a wide variety, ranging from classic arcade games to puzzles to mobile versions of popular console games. The first half of this year will see titles such as Tetris, Guitar Hero World Tour, Bejeweled, Solitaire by Verizon, PAC-MAN by Namco, The Oregon Trail, NEED FOR SPEED Undercover 3D, Sudoku by Verizon, 3D Brick Breaker Revolution, Call of Duty: World at War, Scrabble, Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? 2009, Brain Exercise by Namco, Deer Hunter 3, MONOPOLY Here & Now, World Series of Poker Pro, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Zuma, TETRIS Pop, RISK, Tetris Mania, TIGER WOODS 09 by EA SPORTS and Mahjong by Verizon. Looks like there is a fair bit of Tetris action going on here.

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Peggle has made a sizeable impact when it comes to casual puzzle games, and everyone (nearly, anyways) who have played WarCraft loved the game for its graphics, innate gameplay and overall challenge especially when played against one another. PopCap Games, one of the leading developer and publisher of casual games, has recently announced that they will merge both genres together, making available ten all-new World of Warcraft-themed Peggle levels. Best of all is, these will be available for free at http://www.popcap.com/promos/pegglewow.

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I don’t know about you, but books and additional stories written to expand a certain science fiction universe tend to skip my radar as I prefer what I’ve seen on the silver screen as the director intended, and no more than that. Well, I suppose that there is always room for those who are real hardcore fans of a particular series like Star Wars, Star Trek and Starcraft (this is a game), so kudos to writers of such series for garnering such dedicated following. Computer games might be equally loved as movies, but how many of those actually spawn a decent novel? CCP is the latest to join the fray, announcing a grand space opera set in the universe of EVE Online, where it will be known as EVE: The Burning Life and will be published in November 2009.

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Just how large is the music industry? Well, it is huge – which is why you see music starts tend to live it up much more than actors and actresses. Rock Band, once touted to be a “clone” of Guitar Hero has hit the big time as MTV Games, has just announced that that the Rock Band franchise has officially surpassed $1 billion dollars in North American retail sales alone within a period of 15 months as per figures released by the NPD Group. Not only that, more than 40 million paid individual songs have already been sold through downloads via the Rock Band platform, further cementing its position as the top dog where paid song sales are concerned, offering gamers more than 600 downloadable songs to date.

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This piece of news might not be 100% gaming related, but since it does involve an Xbox 360, we’re game (pun not intended) to cover it. Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling has recently announced that its extensive library of the world’s best professional wrestling action can now be viewed over Xbox Live Video Marketplace and Zune Marketplace. Fans of TNA (all three of you out there) will be able to gain special access to a bunch of TNA multimedia such as 13 TNA Home Video titles available immediately on the Xbox Live video marketplace that are going for 800 Microsoft points apiece. The entire dozen TNA 2008 pay-per-view events, including “Lockdown” and “Bound For Glory” will be on the Xbox Live on an exclusive basis as well.

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Xfire is a gaming company that has had some success in the past, and this time round they have released what is sorely missing from most games – an in-game web browser. Wait a minute here, you say, what the heck are we supposed to do with such a browser while we’re in the heat of a battle? Won’t reading an FAQ be detrimental to the overall gaming experience? Apparently not, as this in-game web browser will come in handy for a whole bunch of other folks who prefer to check from time to time a walkthrough or tutorial in an RPG which they are stuck in. Gamers who currently use Xfire technology to chat with their friends, take screenshots and capture game-play video now have no need to press Alt-Tab and be removed from the game, since you can press Scroll Lock + W to launch the new web browser in-game.

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Both Microsoft Corp. and Netflix Inc. must be pleased to know that their partnership has reaped the rewards of hitting the magical 1 million mark where Xbox LIVE Gold members are concerned since their groundbreaking Xbox LIVE application from Netflix was launched last November. In under three months, the entire Xbox LIVE community have already spent a collective total of 1.5 billion minutes of their lives watching movies and TV episodes. Hmmm, staying in when the economy isn’t too bright is always a good thing, right, although there needs to be a careful balance of stashing cash away just in case the economy does not receive enough internal spending to move forward.

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