You may have heard how some of the voice actors from GTA IV don’t feel they were compensated well enough for their work, most prominently Michael Hollick, the voice of Niko. Well, the voice of Roman, Jason Zumwalt, feels the same way; but he’s not sitting around doing nothing about it. No, he’s using his new celebrity to rent himself out to fans for some extra cash. And, well, also to pay off some of his debts it seems. “Oh! That is painful in real life!”

If you’ve played GTA IV, watched any trailers for the game, or even watched TV recently, odds are you’re already familiar with the voice of Michael Hollick. He’s the guy who lent his talents to bring the main character of Niko Bellic to life. So he should be pleased with how well the game is selling, right? Well, not really. It seem Hollick has received a total of around $100,000 for his 15 months of voice over and motion capture work, but that’s it. No royalties, no residuals; just the flat rate he and the other actors in the game received through the Screen Actors Guild. And while $100,000 for one and a quarter year’s worth of work isn’t bad, it’s a paltry sum when compared with GTA IV’s $600 million worth of sales; not to mention the fact that, were this almost any other form of recorded media, Hollick would be entitled to millions. Unfortunately, it seems the Guild has yet to work out agreements when it comes to video games and even the internet.

“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” Mr. Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, shortly after performing in the aerial theater show “Fuerzabruta” in Union Square. “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.”

Of course, while it’s easy to say that an actor making such a large contribution to a game should be compensated as such, Hollywood has a different view on the matter:

“What drives video games is not Tracy and Hepburn; what drives it is the conception of the creative director,” said Ezra J. Doner, a former Hollywood executive who represents entertainment companies as a lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in Brooklyn, N.Y. “The actor whose appearance or voice is used is more analogous to a session music for a band. The session musicians don’t get residuals on the sales of the CD. They get paid a session fee. It’s not like the star quality of Tom Cruise that’s getting people to buy that video game.”

Admittedly, she’s got a point. Personally, I never knew who voiced Niko up until now, and I frankly didn’t care. It’s certainly an unfair situation, but the popularity of a video game really is driven by a slew of factors; and the actors behind the voice work just aren’t one of them. Really, the only time I think I’ve ever known who was doing a voice in a video game was when it was a performer who had already been established in Hollywood (like Ray Liotta as Tommy Vercetti in GTA: Vice City).

Via New York Times

It was just a little over a week ago that Microsoft exec Aaron Greenberg randomly lashed out at Sony and what he believed to be their history of over-promising and under-delivering. Speaking with Next Gen about the April NPD numbers and the 360’s competition, Greenberg again had a fairly harsh assessment of the PlayStation 3’s place in the market.

But our direct competitor today continues to be the PS3. …What you’re seeing, though, is two platforms [360 and Wii] are having tremendous success. Xbox 360 has hit 10 million units, the Wii is now getting close to that milestone, whereas the PS3 seems to be a bit stalled, and what you’re finding is that there are two platforms that are performing very well, going after two uniquely different types of consumers, while the PS3 really seems like it’s getting squeezed out.

Earlier in the interview, Greenberg mentioned that of the 18 months PS3 has been on the market, 360 has outsold it in 16 of those months. Let’s forget every region outside of the United States and just look at the claim that the PS3 is being “squeezed out.” In the last two months, the 360 has outsold the PS3 by roughly 5,900 units. In January and February, the PS3 outsold the 360. And in December, the 360 had a fairly good lead. That means that only one of the last five months has seen a dominating performance of the 360 over the PS3.

And, again, we’re only talking about the U.S. here, which is the 360’s strongest market in the world. I think Greenberg makes some good points in the interview (like how May and beyond will be much more telling about the GTA battle between the two consoles, and how Microsoft has, for the most part, been more of a straight shooter with their promises in the past), but to say that the PS3 has stalled is utterly ridiculous.

Oh, and one last piece of food for thought: would Microsoft still be talking about the Wii as being a compliment and not a direct competitor if it wasn’t selling so incredibly well?

image via Corbis.com and my poor Photoshop skills

Okay, with Microsoft out of the way, it’s now Sony’s turn to give their spin on the NPD Group’s data for last month. Of the three current-gen consoles, PlayStation 3 sold the least in April (albeit by an extremely slim margin) and, overall, Sony platforms didn’t have a particularly good month. So what angle would Sony take?

The main talking point focused on year-over-year sales growth. The PS3 sold 127% better than last April, which isn’t huge, but software sales were up 410% to over two million units, thanks in large part to Grand Theft Auto IV.

Sony was also proud that, with 1 million copies of GTA sold, 23.6% of PS3 owners in the U.S. had purchased a copy, which is a 29% higher attach rate than GTA had on Xbox 360. (According to their math, the game had an attach rate of around 16.75% on 360.)

I found it somewhat amusing that the press release claims the PS3 “continues [its] blockbuster year” when, from a hardware standpoint, it really had a poor month. But that’s a minor gripe; what else do you expect from a press release.

Hit the jump for the full press release. Read the full article »

As expected, Microsoft continued to tout the fact that the Xbox 360 has surpassed 10 million units sold in the United States. Since they first made the announcement a few days ago, they’ve bumped that figure up to 10.1 million sold.

Surprisingly little from the press release Microsoft sent out had to do with figures that would stem from the 360 having been on the market for a year longer than the competition. That could be because they dedicated an entire portion of it to talking about how wonderful Grand Theft Auto IV has been performing on the 360. They even say it’s “outselling the other platform’s version by nearly 2:1 in the U.S.” — “other platform”? What’s up with that?

Hit the break for the full spinjob.

image via CrunchGear.com

Read the full article »

As it turns out, GameStop’s claim that 64% of all copies of GTA IV sold were on Xbox 360 was spot on — 64.9% is the exact number if you do the math with NPD’s numbers for the month of April. Between the 360 and PS3 versions of the game, GTA IV managed to sell 2.85 million even though it was released on April 29 — not too shabby.

Mario Kart Wii, meanwhile, sold more than a million copies. That’s a million plastic wheels out there in the wild, imparing people’s ability to control the game properly. And of course, with the number of Wii systems that sold in April, you know you’re going to see a lot of Wii Play sales, and that we did. Smash Bros. had a big drop off, from 2.7 million in March down to 326k in April. Not that Nintendo should be complaining, with five of their games in the top ten, with six of the top ten on Nintendo platforms.

April 2008 Software Sales

GTA IV (360) – 1.85M
Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel (Wii) – 1.12M
GTA IV (PS3) – 1.00M
Wii Play (Wii) – 360,000
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) – 326,000
Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (PS3) – 224,000
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS) – 202,000
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS) – 202,000
Guitar Hero III (Wii) – 152,000
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) – 141,000

Call of Duty 4 on 360 continues to do its best Mustafa impression, as it just refuses to be kicked out of the top ten. Could next month finally see it kicked out? I’m going to go ahead and predict a bold “no.”

According to at least one business news source the CBS buyout of CNet is part of growing trend involving companies trying to reach gamers. It’s all about demographics.

In the case of CBS-Cnet, the so-called synergies lie in core demographics. By the very nature of Cnet’s tech focus, its audience features the increasingly hard-to-reach 18-to-34-year-old men who prefer ”Grand Theft Auto IV” and ”Indiana Jones” to TV viewing — unless there’s a ball game on, of course.

The article mentions the recent Blockbuster offer to Circuit City and Microsoft’s attempted hostile take over Yahoo! as well. The common theme is the growing influence of gamers on the economic market. Yes gamers we shall rule the world! It’s only a matter of time.

via The Deal.com

Rockstar and Future Green Entertainment have announced that they will soon be releasing a new music album called “Liberty City Invasion: Music from and Inspired by Grand Theft Auto IV” by DJ Green Lantern. Obviously, the disc won’t contain the entire game’s soundtrack — that would take a large box set — but it will feature 16 tracks: half from the game and half inspired by it. Eight of the tracks come from the in-game radio station, “The Beat,” while the rest are cashing in on the game’s popularity inspired by GTA IV. The album will feature several known artists like Busta Rhymes, Wyclef, Fat Joe, Styles P, and Fabolous, as well as a number of up and coming artists. All the tracks were picked by DJ Green Lantern, who has gained a reputation for producing well-crafted albums.

“The Grand Theft Auto games have always featured stunning soundtracks and the amount of eclectic music in Grand Theft Auto IV goes above and beyond anything we have been able to do before” said Sam Houser, Founder and Executive Producer of Rockstar Games, “DJ Green Lantern’s contributions give the soundtrack a true New York flavor and we’re excited to be releasing his full album to fans.”

The album will be available for download on May 20th with a physical release to be announced soon.

Via Press Release

Flickr user Matthew Johnston has posted some pretty interesting side by side comparisons of spots in Liberty City vs. real-life parts of NYC. There are definitely worth a look, and instead of posting them all here at once, I will just let you click through the link at the bottom.Say what you will about Rockstar all you GTA IV naysayers, their attention to detail and dedication to immersive experiences are almost second to none.

Via: Flickr

I think we all could have guessed this was coming sooner or later. GTA IV is the biggest video game launch of the year, so it’s only natural that Yahtzee Croshaw would eventually turn his witty reviewing eye towards it. Amongst all the lavish praise for the game, it’s actually a little refreshing to have something poking fun at the game’s foibles, few though they may be. Although I have to admit that I’m now really wishing there were more dinosaurs in the game.