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The Week in Review news piece summarizes and highlights the most important gaming related news and rumors over the past week. This weekly article will keep you plugged in and in-tune. A short week ended up being fairly short on important gaming news. But we did gets some date confirmations leaked to us. A Sony Computer Entertainment Benelux release list for Q1 2009 showed such games as Flower, Ragdoll Kung Fu, and Fat Princess coming to PSN in February and March. Also, it looks like WipeOut! Pulse will be getting a PS2 port. Though this is a Euro-centric list, expect the dates and info to be relevant for North American gamers as well. It’s also rumored that Mass Effect is slated to get a two-disc edition on February 10, 2009. The pack will include the game in its entirety, a making of documentary, game trailers, music, design galleries, and… the Bring Down the Sky additional content. To top it off, it’s set to retail for $19.99! It looks like not everyone has been affected by the global economic slump. Ubisoft is reporting that third-quarter sales, ending December 31, 2008, were up 13% to €508 million. Ubisoft is also projecting a rosy fourth-quarter with 5%-10% market share increase. Also, Ubisoft has confirmed that the next Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, and Ghost Recon titles are in the works for 2009-2010 . Finally, Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves guillemot, sees the next wave of gaming consoles being released by 2012 . As such, the company is preparing to invest in new technology and picking up some strategic acquisitions to fuel future growth. Maxis announced this week that there have been 65 million “pieces of user-created content shared online .” That’s a lot of content going into the imminent release of the Spore: Galactic Adventures expansion. We also found out that Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena will be releasing for Wii and DS , respectively. Look for these titles to release in fall 2009 . Microsoft announced that they are shedding 5,000 jobs in an attempt to cut costs. The layoffs should save Microsoft about $1.5 billion a year. Interestingly, Microsoft actually made a larger profit last quarter by 2% over the same fiscal quarter a year ago. Nevertheless, CEO Steve Ballmer and execs felt the cuts were necessary for financial liquidity going forward. What’s more, these cuts at Microsoft were not supposed to affect the games division. Now it appears as if there may in fact be some fall out. Microsoft announced on Friday the closing of Aces Game Studio – the internal development team responsible for the development of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Thanks so much everyone and we will see you next week! |