WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne is debuting as the official game for World Cyber Games 2009. Gamers will battle one-on-one for the world of Azeroth in this real time strategy. WCG has announced the official tournament rules and regulations including changes for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Starcraft: Brood War, TrackMania Nations Forever, and FIFA ‘09. This year’s Grand Final is scheduled for November 11-15, in Chengdu, China.
This year’s full lineup is listed in official press release following the break.

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It looks as though U.K. fans are just as crazy about the Call of Duty franchise as those in the U.S. because according to the All Formats charts from Chart Track, the week one sales of Call of Duty: World at War are higher than sales for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare when it debuted. Outselling CoD4 by more than 2 to 1, World at War is expected to be the most popular game during the Holiday Shopping Extravaganza across the pond.

If you look at the rest of the chart, you will notice that games published by Activision Blizzard dominate the chart by having 25 percent of all sales for the one publisher. Of course, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is on the chart as well, taking spot number two while Guitar Hero: World Tour coming in at number six (full kits for this game were just released recently released).

Last week’s number one best-selling game was Epic’s Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War 2, which dropped 64 percent and down to position number four.

To give you an idea what our British brethren are playing, here are the top selling games for week ending November 15:

1. Call of Duty: World at War
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
3. Football Manager 2009
4. Gears of War 2
5. FIFA 09
6. Guitar Hero: World Tour
7. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
8. Mario Kart Wii
9. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
10. WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2009

Thanks: GamesIndustry.biz

There’s just a single standalone downloadable game this week — Age of Booty ($10), the Capcom RTS featuring pirates that was released on the Xbox Live Arcade in October — but there’s no lack of downloadable content for other games. First and foremost is Pain Movie Studio Lot ($6) and the David Hasselhoff character to go along with it. But do you love/hate The Hoff enough to pay $2 to throw him around the world of Pain?

Little Big Planet gets six new costumes ranging in price from free to $2. The Lilly Pad, Hugo, Great Blue, and Frost E costumes all cost $1 each — or you can get the Animal Costume Bundle with all four for $3 — the Sack-Eating Plant costume — which was an SCEE contest winner — is available for free, and the MotorStorm Stormers costume will cost a pricey $2. Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds also gets new costumes, although they come in the form of a single pack for $3 and include five new costumes with six variations each. And Star Wars: The Force Unleashed also gets in on the costume fun with seven new characters and three new Secret Apprentice costumes for $5. The new characters include Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Luke Skywalker. Star Wars fans should be plenty pleased with these additions. If your favorite character wasn’t included, there’s still hope — this is “costume pack 1,” which suggests there are more on the way.

FIFA 09 has a plethora of free commentary packs for various languages — everything from Portuguese to Swedish to new English commentary is included — that will allow you to hear your favorite soccer commentators from around the world in their native tongue. Depending on which you download, you’re looking at a file from 423 MB up to over 1.1 GB.

The weekly dose of Rock Band content features 12 tracks from the Foo Fighters. Each track will cost you $2 or you can get all 12 in “The Colour and the Shape” album for $20. If Guitar Hero World Tour is your thing, you can find three new tracks from R.E.M. for $2 a piece, or you can get all three for $5.49 as a bundle. Jimi Hendrix also makes an appearance with a bundle of three songs for $5.49.

Need for Speed: Undercover isn’t even out yet, and there’s more DLC than I’d care to count available, all of it in that “would have been cheat codes last generation” class. Prices range from $1.75 on up, with various bundles available for as much as $10. They’ll unlock things for use in the game that you’d otherwise achieve by playing through the game.

And what would an update be without some new trailers and videos? There are a handful of new things to check out… unless you’re a PSP owner, in which case you’re pretty much out of luck for another week. The only thing for you this week is a demo of Neverland Card Battles.

An exhaustive report – combining factors like game sales, Metacritic averages and developer feedback through Gamasutra – has concluded creating the first-ever Top 50 Developers list from Game Developer magazine. Coming in at the top of the list is, but of course, Nintendo’s Kyoto studio, followed by Infinity Ward, Blizzard, EA Canada, and Valve.

The top 20 are as follows, along with some of their notable 2007 releases:

1. Nintendo Kyoto (Brain Age, Wii Play)
2. Infinity Ward (Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare)
3. Blizzard Entertainment (World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade)
4. Electronic Arts Canada (FIFA Soccer 08, NBA Street: Homecourt)
5. Valve (Portal, Team Fortress 2)
6. Konami Japan Studio (Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer, Dance Dance Revolution Universe)
7. Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank Future)
8. Capcom Osaka Studio (Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Monster Hunter Freedom)
9. Electronic Arts Tiburon (Madden NFL 08, NASCAR 08)
10. BioWare Edmonton (Mass Effect, Jade Empire: Special Edition)
11. Bungie Studios (Halo 3)
12. Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin’s Creed, Naruto: Rise Of A Ninja)
13. 2K Boston [& Australia] (BioShock)
14. Harmonix (Rock Band)
15. Bandai Namco Tokyo (Ace Combat 6: Fires Of Liberation, Beautiful Katamari)
16. Square Enix Tokyo (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Front Mission DS)
17. Game Freak (Pokemon Diamond/Pearl)
18. Epic Games (Unreal Tournament 3, Gears Of War PC)
19. Hudson Soft (Mario Party 8, Mario Party DS)
20. Neversoft (Guitar Hero III, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground)

The full list and all of the excruciating minutiae that went into the list can be found at the Game Developer Research website, located here. It’s interesting to see how the top 50 shaped itself; in the top 20 alone I was surprised by several things (Valve not being higher and Hudson Soft being so high, for example) – what do you make of the list?

As we’ve become used to with Microsoft’s spin on each month’s NPDs, their announcement that the “Xbox 360 won 2007” is based entirely on money spent. $4.8 billion in “total consumer spend[ing]” was the 360’s total, compared with the Wii’s $3.5 billion and PlayStation 3’s $2.2 billion. Microsoft claimed this was a historic year as “consumers have spent nearly 45 percent of total industry figures on Xbox 360.”

The above line chart (is that what they’re called? Math terms haven’t stayed with me over the years) was provided to illustrate the Xbox 360’s lead over the PS3, although the Wii is (not so) mysteriously absent from the chart.
Check after the break for a bullet point list from Microsoft illustrating just what a miracle the Xbox 360 is, and my subsequent demolishing of said list.

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Those of you who own a PlayStation Eye (are there any of you out there?) will find two new Eye games on the PlayStation Store today, each for $1.99. Mesmerize: Trace and Tori-Emaki both support 1080p and offer rather bizarre gaming expereices – absorbing visual and aural effects? An interactive art experience? Don’t dare file these two under “hardcore games.”

Also new this week is the Blast Factor Bundle, which includes both the full game, multiplayer pack, and Advanced Research pack. The new MotorStorm track pack I posted about earlier is available, along with the weekly dosage of Rock Band tracks.

Demos of FIFA Street 3 and Turok can both be downloaded for free, along with a ton of videos and themes.

Check out the full list after the break.
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With FIFA 08 and missing the top spot by just 1000 sales and Call of Duty 4 slipping to number three on the UK all-formats chart for the week of December 31st; Assassin’s Creed finishes out the year with only a 7% drop in sales.

The Simpsons Game, which has also proved to be very popular with UK gamers, fell by 24% as it dropped to number four, while Need for Speed Pro Street maintained its number 5 position even with a 23% drop in sales. The only game to actually see an increase in sales for this period was FIFA 08 misses top spot by just 1000 sales – see the full list below.

1. Assassin’s Creed
2. FIFA 08
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
4. The Simpsons Game
5. Need for Speed Pro Street
6. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
7. WWE Smack Down vs Raw 2008
8. More Brain Training
9. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
10. The Golden Compass

It surprises me that a WWE game would be so popular over seas – I thought it was strictly a Southern-American thing like NASCAR. Ya know, Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer with Pork Rinds and Camel Non-Filters as party treats while you watch both of these “sports” on split screen in your run-down trailer.

Of course I am joking. No hate mail please – I am southern through and through, I just personally do not like wrastlin’ and car racing.

Thanks for the info: GamesIndustry.biz

Hogging one half of this past month’s NPD top 10 sales chart is Halo 3 and Guitar Hero III, including the top four positions. Activision and Microsoft must be bringing in so much money off of those two games it just isn’t even fair.

Let’s get right into the list:

1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) – 433,800
2. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/ guitar (Xbox 360) – 383, 200
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/ guitar (Wii) – 286,300
4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/ guitar (PlayStation 2) – 271,100
5. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS) – 262,800
6. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 239,700
7. The Orange Box (Xbox 360) – 238,400
8. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/o guitar (PlayStation 2) – 231,700
9. FIFA Soccer 08 (PlayStation 2) – 129,700
10. Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day (Nintendo DS) – 116,900

The Orange Box number is fairly disappointing, although I’m sure the PC version sold absolute boatloads. The game’s marketing and boxart really don’t do it justice, which is why it’s likely to just get caught up in the Halo 3 – Call of Duty 4 whirlwind.

Guitar Hero and Halo’s success is by no means a surprise, but what’s worth noting is the Wii’s 286.3k number, which clocks it in at number 3. It outsold the PS2 version (but not if you combine the versions with and without guitar) and was just 100k away from the 360 version despite the lack of downloadable content. The PlayStation 3 version didn’t sell well enough to make the top 10, but ended up just under 106k. The game sold a combined 1.4 million despite being available for just under a week.

Ratchet & Clank Future’s no-show is perhaps the biggest surprise (because who didn’t expect Wii Play or a Nintendo-published DS game to make the list?) as it’s one of the biggest PS3 releases of the year. Not only that, but it was very well received by critics and by seemingly anyone who picked the game up, so it’s a shame it didn’t sell well. It managed only 74.5k.

And just in case you’re curious, Halo 3 is now the best selling game of the year with 3.7 million, beating Madden’s 3.2M and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl’s combined 3.6 million.

To contrast Halo’s dominance: PGR4 sold an absolutely abysmal 38,300. I said time and time again that it was releasing far too close to Forza Motorsport 2 for its own good, but wow – that’s just incredible.

Electronic Arts have announced 27 titles in their holiday line-up that are sure to please at least some of North American gamers young and old. The EA line-up brings titles to all major game systems, handhelds, and mobile. You will notice that some of these games are already out (The Orange Box), but since they were included in the press release, I have included them here as well – you will also notice ratings, pricing and format listed along with the title. This should make the decision making process much easier for you and EA has been kind enough to send along information about each game. Enjoy.

Army of TWO

Combat. Camaraderie. Cash. Master two-man combat with a live or AI partner to form the deadliest private military partnership a government can buy. Preorder Army of Two this holiday on the Xbox 360, and gamers will receive exclusive community created weapons. Pre-order Army of Two on the PLAYSTATION 3 and receive an exclusive dossier including hints and content from the graphic novel.

· Release date: November 13
· Platforms: Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3
· ESRB Rating: M for Mature
· MSRP: $59.99

Boogie

Shake it. Sing it. Create it. The ultimate party package for gamers of all ages, Boogie on the PlayStation 2 and Wii will have players dancing, singing and creating music videos to hit songs from over four decades. Players can even take their dancing act on the road with Boogie on the Nintendo DS. This version offers unique dancing modes including 3D gameplay using the 3D glasses packed in the retail box as well as mini-games not found on the consoles.

· Release date: November 15, 2007 (PlayStation 2/ Nintendo DS), August 2007 (Wii)
· Platforms: Wii, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo DS
· ESRB Rating: E10+
· MSRP: $59.99 (Wii) and $49.99 (PlayStation 2) – includes microphone; $29.99 (Nintendo DS) – includes 3D glasses

Command & Conquer Saga

Experience Command & Conquer like never before with The Command & Conquer Saga —thirteen Command & Conquer games spanning three generations of the series in a single package! This massive compilation spans over a dozen Command & Conquer games including the award-winning Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars and all the titles featured in Command & Conquer The First Decade. Available in North America this October for the PC, The Command & Conquer Saga marks the largest PC franchise compilation to date.

· Release date: October
· Platform: PC
· ESRB Rating: T for Teen
· MSRP: $49.99

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Everyone loves lists, and within this list is something everyone can love. Below you will find complied release dates for games coming out in October. The dates listed are as current as possible, so if a publisher changes the date we will try our best to update the list. We are well aware that September still has a couple of weeks left, give or take, but we just want to help plan your lives for the next month or two. Who loves you baby?

10/1/2007

Backyard Basketball 2007 —- GameCube
Field Ops —- PC
Heavy Rain (working title) —- PS3
Hot Shots Golf 5 —- PS3
MLB Power Pros —- PS2
Popx3 —- Wii
Race —- PC
RACE 07 – The WTCC Game — PC
The Chosen – Well of Souls —- PC
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass —– DS
Ultimate 3D Pinball —- PC, Wii

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