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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.”

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Sony announced today that the cumulative worldwide shipment of the Gran Turismo franchise has exceeded 50 million units as of April 30, 2008. This sales figure was achieved over the past 10 years and 4 months since the launch of the first title in the franchise - Gran Turismo, in December 1997.

The Gran Turismo franchise, from the original Gran Turismo to the latest Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has received high regard not just from game fans, but also from professional racing drivers and people in the automobile industry.

The seventh installment, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, has recorded strong sales since the first launch in Japan in December, 2007, followed by North America and Europe in Spring of 2008, with more than 2 million units of cumulative shipment worldwide and contributing to the further expansion of the PS3 platform.

Title Release Dates in North America

• Gran Turismo - May 12, 1998
• Gran Turismo 2 - December 23, 1999
• Gran Turismo 3 A-spec - July 10, 2001
• Gran Turismo 4 - February 22, 2005
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue - April 15, 2008

Via: Press Release

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has been a huge success, particularly in Europe, but Sony has told GamesIndustry.biz that it expects LittleBigPlanet to outsell the first significant GT game to come out in over three years. (Sorry, Gran Turismo HD simply doesn’t count.) I don’t think anyone is doubting the success of LBP, but outselling Gran Turismo is no small task.

“We’re hoping sales will be higher than GT5 Prologue,” said SCEE prez David Reeves. Kaz Hirai also spoke at this week’s PlayStation Day, and was quite high on the game.

“These are genre-defining titles, something we’re very proud of, and just one facet of the rapidly growing world of PlayStation,” said Kaz Hirai, president of SCEA.

“[LittleBigPlanet] will completely revolutionise the way gamers interact with their games, especially through the community functions and the ability to interact with LittleBigPlanet lovers around the globe,” he added.

So, anyone want to place any bets? How many sales do you expect to see LBP sell in its first few months at retail?

see more crazy cat pics

I guess this was to be expected, but it’s still nonetheless very impressive. GTA IV is just one day out of the gate and already it’s smashing records. Early sales figures are showing that 609,000 copies of the game were sold on day one, edging out the previous record-holder, GTA: San Andreas. But the one piece of data that’s sure to have the fanboys arguing for awhile is that the Xbox 360 version accounted for 55% of sales, narrowly edging out the PS3 version. That’s hardly a win though, considering the millions that Microsoft pumped into promoting the 360 version, compared to Sony’s much more humbler promotions. GTA IV’s sales however did substantially surpass each console’s previous “day one bestsellers”: Halo 3 for Xbox 360, and Gran Turismo: Prologue for PS3. Either way though, it’s looking to be a very good week for both Sony and Microsoft. And yes, I’m sure every single person who bought the game is a minor with psychotic tendencies.

Via MCV

With Gran Turismo 5 Prologue now in gamers’ hands, Sony and Polyphony Digital have their sights set on really taking the online aspect of Gran Turismo to a whole new level. While online play was an important step forward, we’ve been playing Forza online for years. So what’s so different about their plan for Gran Turismo? How does social networking for car enthusiasts sound?

“Our goal is to become another medium for car companies, like magazines and TVs,” Taku Imasaki, the US senior producer for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, told Reuters. “We’re the perfect game for that and ideally we could become the MySpace or Facebook for auto enthusiasts.”

I know a few friends who would love something like that, but I’m not sure how a social network could sustain itself on a single game system. If that was expanded to work on PCs, then they might be onto something, but it’ll really come down to execution and hoping that people aren’t suffering from social networking fatigue.

via GameDaily

Def Leppard’s Guitar Hero III outing and the obligatory weekly dose of Rock Band tracks (now finally with a full album!), there’s a ton of great new content now available on the PlayStation Store. The biggest release is certainly the Variety Map Pack ($10) for Call of Duty 4 which naturally includes four new multiplayer maps.

A new PS one Classic was also released today with R-Types ($6), ending that particular drought. (Even though you and I both know we probably won’t see another Classic for weeks.) There’s also the Biolith Rebellion 2 expansion set for The Eye of Judgment, whichs adds more than 100 new creatures, spells and abilities, so that sounds like a must-buy for fans of The Eye.

There’s also plenty of videos, demos of both echochrome and Iron Man, a map pack for Army of Two, downloadable songs for Karaoke Revolution, and more. So hit the break and check out everything now available for download.

Read the full article

You would think that, with no updates to the PlayStation Store for PC other than a cosmetic update to match the PS3’s update, this week would be a fairly significant. But you’d be wrong.

All there is this week is basically a message that says, “You should envy PlayStation 3 owners,” in the form of two new videos of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

That’s it. That’s all. Maybe next week will be a little better.

• * GT5 Prologue Friendly Fires Video
• * GT5 Prologue Beyond the Apex Trailer

It’s been two weeks now since there’s been a real update to the PlayStation Store, so much of what’s been released today is catching up for missing out on the past few weeks – Rock Band songs, videos, and a UEFA Euro 2008 demo.

Of course, the big news is that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has been released. I’ve spent some time today playing it, and I think it’ll be a fine holdover for diehard Gran Turismo fans.

The new Warhawk Broken Mirror pack is also now available for $8, as well as a bundle with both the Broken Mirror and Omega Dawn DLC packs.

Hit the break for the full list of content. Read the full article

Finally. It seemed like this day would never come, but you can finally head to the PlayStation Store and – right now – download Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for $40. As of this moment, PSN seems to be handling the load well enough; the download is going fairly quickly for me considering it’s 1.9GB. If it manages to hold up for the rest of the day, I think that’d be a pretty big knock on Xbox Live for it struggling when a major download is released. It’s a win-win for Sony fanboys.

Earlier this week, two developers from Polyphony Digital participated in a chat with members of the PlayStation forums. While they didn’t go into much detail on any of the subjects thanks to time restraints, they did reveal hit upon a lot of key points – like the omission of all movies from the PSN version of the game. They can all be downloaded from the PlayStation Store, though, with the exception of “Beyond the Apex” which is the one difference between the Blu-ray and PSN versions of the game in terms of content.

You can check out the full transcript of the chat here.

In case you didn’t happen to notice yesterday, new firmware is now available for the PlayStation 3 which allows you to access the brand-spanking new PlayStation Store. I can say from firsthand experience that the new Store is much, much nicer than the previous iteration. (Although it would’ve been difficult to take a step backward from that mess.) There are broken images here and there, and the mainpage is simply taunting you as it says Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is coming soon, but overall I think you’ll all agree that it’s a much better shopping experience.

For whatever reason, Sony decided to release two juicy pieces of DLC out of the bag yesterday instead of waiting for the usual Thursday update. First is the free Lair “Dragons and Control” pack, which includes the much-needed analog stick control update, rumble support, and two new dragons. The other piece of DLC is an add-on to Super Stardust HD. It costs $4.99, but take my word on this one: it is absolutely positively worth it. Stardust was a really good game already, but with this new add-on content I have no problem saying that it’s significantly better than Geometry Wars. I never thought I’d say that about anything other than Geometry Wars 2. The add-on will give you several new game modes and a retro soundtrack that you should definitely check out.

Check back tomorrow for what should be a monster update for content on the PlayStation Store.

The Chinese gaming market is huge, so it’s only natural that game companies should want to take advantage of that. With development costs getting larger and larger, companies want to find ways to compensate for that by releasing to larger audiences. And, according to Polyphony Digital head Kazunori Yamauchi, that might just be the case with Gran Turismo.

Yamauchi claims that Gran Turismo 5 has cost 50 times as much as it took to develop the original Gran Turismo for PC. “A model required 180 days,” Yamauchi told German site derStandard (and translated by Develop). “For comparison: For a car in GT2 needed only one day.”

Gran Turismo has been long thought of as a brand you’d only see on a PlayStation platform, but that might just change. Yamauchi said, “It is very, very improbable that GT will comes out on another consoles.

“But perhaps it comes to the PC. Particularly [for] the Chinese market.”

If piracy is so rampant on PCs and in China, it seems like Polyphony would be walking into a world of trouble. But, if handled properly, this could help to dramatically increase the horizons of a series that already sells insanely well elsewhere in the world.

via Game|Life

With the PlayStation Store’s redesign set to launch later this week, you can expect to see the PlayStation Network go offline for around 13 hours tomorrow. The downtime is currently scheduled to begin at 8AM PST and last until 11PM PST, but with these sorts of things who knows if it’ll last a few hours extra or less. However, the only thing expected to actually be down is the PlayStation Store itself, so you should still be able to play online and access your friends list.

Once the new Store is ready to open, you’ll need to first download the new firmware update that will be made available later this week. When you’re in, you’ll be able to download the Metal Gear Online beta (provided you have a key), as well as Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. The firmware update will also bring DTS-HD Master Audio, so there’s plenty to be looking forward to this week for PlayStation 3 owners.

via PS3 Fanboy

Another week is upon us, and while we are all sitting around marking the days off our calenders for GTA IV, some other games are being released next week and they deserve to be mentioned just as much as any car-jacking, hooker humping, free for all video game on the market.

I have broken the lists down by Console, Handheld and PC. If any of these release dates change it is not my fault - blame the publisher not the messenger. This list also does not take into account any new DLC for the week,  just retail releases.

Nintendo DS: Cory in the House, High School Musical 2: Work It Out, MLB 2K8 Fantasy All Stars, Rhondo of Swords, Teenage Zombies

Nintendo Wii: Dream Pinball 3D, Emergency Mayhem, Okami, Summer Sports: Paradise Island

PC: Dancing with the Stars, Europa Universalis: Rome, Final Fantasy XI: Vana’Diel Collection 2008, Jack Keane and The Dokktor’s Island, Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis, The Sims 2: Double Deluxe, The Sims 2: Kitchen & Bath Design Stuff,
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Turok

PS2: Nothing

PS3: Gran Turismo 5: Prologue

PSP: Nada

Xbox 360: Zilch

As a proponent of digital distribution, I love what Sony has done in terms of pushing large, retail-style games out through the PlayStation Store. Xbox Live Arcade is a great service, but with a cap on size limits, there’s no chance that you’re ever going to see something like Warhawk available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. PSN, on the other hand, has a multitude of full size games that go well beyond the scope of old school ports and small indie games like Everyday Shooter.

This movement begs the question: are discs and physical media doomed as a format for deliver games? Steam has become the definitive place to purchase games for many PC gamers (myself included), so what’s to stop consoles from following the trend? Michael Donahoe explored this possibility and took a look at how the three respective platform holders are handling digital distribution.

Downloadable games are really clicking this generation. It’s easy to see why, too — it’s the lazy way to play. Hell, all you have to do is hop online, push a button, and boom, you’re minutes away from getting your game on. Right now, all three of the major consoles are vying for your virtual bucks. Each one offers easy-to-play classics and smaller titles designed to quickly kill time. Of course, not all of these attractive appetizers will fill your gaming belly like a meaty retail game. Or at least that’s the case now, though Sony might be changing the way the menu is written with upcoming main-course titles like Gran Turismo 5: Prologue and SOCOM: Confrontation.

The full article can be read at 1UP.

image via Coding Horror

Yes, once again there’s going to be nothing new in the way of downloadable content for PlayStation 3 owners this week. The store remains open but frozen as the renovations are completed. But next Thursday should make for one hell of an update, with all the catching up to do plus Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and hopefully plenty more.

In the meantime, I’d once again signal you to focus on the barrage of awesomeness that the PS3 is receiving this month, which will be topped off with Grand Theft Auto IV at the end of the month. Suddenly a lack of DLC doesn’t seem so bad, does it?

Or if the anticipation of all that is too great, go pick up March of the Penguins on Blu-ray. It looks great, and it’s simply fascinating.

If you’ve followed the Gran Turismo series in any more depth than simply playing the games, you’ve no doubt heard Kazunori Yamauchi’s name mentioned. He’s the series’ creator and rarely will you read something about him that doesn’t mention his obsession with perfection – nothing is ever good enough, which is why his games are frequently delayed (‘sup, Gran Turismo PSP?) and things like vehicle damage have taken so long to be included.

He’s embedded in car culture and his obsession means you’ll be getting a super-polished, ultra-realistic game, even if it did take a long time to finally get into your hands. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue isn’t meant to be a tease for what’s to come, but it is, as Yamauchi describes it, “[I]t’s not really a teaser of things to come. This is the best we can provide at this point in time. It’s just that we don’t consider it up to par, in terms of volume and things like that, to be called a full game by itself - by our standards, not by other people’s standards. That’s one thing we want to make clear for people.”

In an interview with Eurogamer, Yamauchi also once again admitted that he tends to create games in a vacuum, not paying attention to what the competition (e.g. Forza Motorsport) is doing.

“We don’t reference any other games when we’re making Gran Turismo - it’s purely based on what we want to achieve as a game.

“Actually, I have difficulty playing other games for over five minutes. A lot of the low-level quality just stands out so much in other games that I can’t stand them!”

That seems rather harsh, but what do you really expect from a perfectionist?

For those of you who already have your hands on GT5 Prologue, what do you think of it?

If you’ve heard the rumors that the PlayStation Store would become region locked following its redesign, you needn’t worry – Sony has promised this isn’t the case. Currently, if you sign up for a PlayStation Network account and aren’t entirely honest about your current location, you’ll find yourself able to access a foreign PlayStation Store, thereby granting you access to great things like Gran Turismo 5 Prologue earlier than you otherwise would. Not that I’m endorsing going out and doing it right now, or anything. Definitely not at all.

Naturally, the suspicious was that this new PlayStation Store update would patch up this loophole, but that’s not the case. According to Eurogamer, SCEA has stated that “no changes to the store will be made as part of this revamp relating to region locking.”

I’m actually surprised Sony hasn’t patched this yet – not that I’m complaining. Hit the thumbnails below to see some new screenshots of the redesigned PlayStation Store.

Speaking in an interview, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi has stated that Gran Turismo 4 for the PSP will most likely not be released this year or finished for that matter.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Yamauchi stated:

“We had been developing the PSP version, but the problem was that the PS3 version took much more time and effort than we had first imagined. So that’s been delayed - I don’t think we’ll be able to make the end of this year for the PSP version, but we are working on it.”

He also elaborated on the PSP version being influenced by the online aspect of the PS3:

“Once we experienced PS3 online and went through all of that, we came to the conclusion that PSP should not be a standalone product - it should be linked in to the world of Gran Turismo, linked with the PlayStation 3.”

The Gran Turismo series has shipped over 48 million units worldwide since the first version appeared on the original PlayStation and the recently released GT5: Prologue not only entered the chart over in the UK at number one but within a week became the fastest-selling PS3 title. Plus, thanks to the GT series, Yamauchi was invited by Nissan to help design the multifunction display for the GT-R, which is so bloody gorgeous it makes me swear like a sailor every time I look at it.

You can read the full interview with Kazunori Yamauchi by clicking through the link below.

Source: Eurogamer

Mr. Gran Turismo, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi, said vehicle damage was coming “very, very soon” and at least I just assumed he meant it would be coming with the full version of Gran Turismo 5 next year. Turns out it’ll be even sooner than that – Gran Turismo 5 Prologue isn’t even out worldwide yet, and there’s a “major update” planned for later this year that will add, among other things, vehicle damage.

In an interview with CVG, Yamauchi said the update will also enhance Prologue’s online modes and will add “community building features,” whatever those might be.

Those sound like some nice additions, but it really furthers the theory that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue really is an incomplete game. Assuming those additions are free, though, GT5 Prologue should be a fine holdover for the real GT5.

Normally I’d be writing about the new demos/games/videos/downloadable content that’ve been released on the PlayStation Store today, but as per part of the ongoing store upgrade, there won’t be any new content added either today or next Thursday.

Look on the bright side: this is a rocking month to be a PlayStation 3 owner. Aside from the new PlayStation Store, there’s also Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, DualShock 3, Warhawk’s second expansion and the 1.3 patch, the Metal Gear Online beta… it’s a flurry of awesomeness on PS3.