Chart-Track have said that sales of the Xbox 360 went up 35-40 percent over the weekend following the European price cuts. However Chart Track said its too early to read into this figure at the moment and that the real litmus test would be over the next three to four weeks.
Majesco reported its fiscal first-quarter (to January 31) results today, with net revenue up to $18.7 million compared to $14.5 million in the same period last year. The company had the success of the Cooking Mama franchise to thank, with the company citing “strong performance” from the titles, including the latest Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends for the DS.
Net income was also up, and in the black this time round at $2.7 million, compared to a net loss in the same period of 2007 of $900,000.
Console game sales comprised 22 percent of the quarter’s total revenues, with the vast majority of those being for the Wii platform. Handheld platform sales made up 77 percent, virtually all of which was from the DS. The figures show the company is leaning even more heavily toward producing games for Nintendo platforms, as last year’s breakdown showed 10 percent coming from consoles, and 63 percent from handhelds.
In the first fiscal quarter of 2008, 99 percent of the company’s sales were domestic, and the remaining 1 percent were international. Last year, by comparison, saw 86 percent of revenue coming from domestic sales, and 14 percent from overseas. The company stated that the tiny percentage of overseas sales was due partly to the fact that several international releases have been put back to the second quarter.
Majesco also reported a higher gross profit margin of 40.2 percent, compared to last year’s 31.1 percent. This is due to two factors, the company believes: the first, higher margins on Wii games, and the second being poor sales last year of Dance Dance Revolution games, which the company is no longer producing.
The company also laid down its slate for the coming year and beyond. Between February and April, Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship for the PlayStation Portable, and Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest, Pet Pals: Animal Doctor, Nanostray 2, and Toy Shop for the DS, and Wild Earth: African Safari for the Wii will be coming.
For the rest of the company’s fiscal 2008–ending November 30–gamers can expect to see the following titles on store shelves: Cake Mania 2, Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Clue Bender Society, and Babysitting Mania for the DS. For the Wii, Cooking Mama: World Kitchen, Blast Works: Build, Trade and Destroy, and Wonderworld Amusement Park.
After that, over the holiday period and the company’s first quarter 2009, Our House on the Wii and DS will be coming, Cake Mania will reach the Wii, and Major Minor’s Majestic Ranch will also be hitting the world, created by the PaRappa the Rapper team.
Majesco kept its 2008 outlook steady, reconfirming it is expecting full-year net revenue to be between $53 and $58 million. It also believes that international sales will rise again, and be between 10 and 20 percent of the total net revenue by the end of the financial period.
Though Emergency Mayhem was originally unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo nearly four years ago for the PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox, its future was cast in doubt when original developer Acclaim filed for bankruptcy. But just as Made Man and Juiced eventually saw the light of day with some outside help, Emergency Mayhem has been resurrected for the Wii thanks to Codemasters and Warner Bros.
In Crisis City, all hell has broken loose: Phone booths have been wired with explosives, monkeys are on the loose, long-haired hippies have swallowed nails, dogs and cats are living together, and even more craziness. As a member of one of the emergency agencies–fire, medical, or police–it’s up to you to restore as much order as you can as fast as possible in a free-form, minigame-filled romp that feels very much like Crazy Taxi meets WarioWare.
You’d better get going; you’ve got a city to save.
After selecting from one of the emergency agencies in career mode, you’re dropped off in one of the four precincts of Crisis City with the goal of reducing the mayhem in the streets. You’ve got an open world to explore in any way you choose, but make sure not to dillydally about too much, because your time is limited. Once you start, a countdown clock begins to run, and the only way to keep the game going is to find and complete missions with the help of a revolving arrow that appears at the top of the screen when a mission is nearby.
Once you find a mission, which appears as a colored cone of light, you need simply park inside it to begin. Missions come in a variety of types, and each is customized to your agency. For example, simple “drive from point A to point B”-type missions may be for patient deliveries when you’re in an ambulance, but once you’re behind the wheel of a police cruiser you may find yourself delivering donuts to your famished fellow officers. Sometimes these missions are timed, and other times you may be delivering sensitive materials, which will force you to pay extra attention so as not to hit anything–it all depends on the circumstances behind each of your requests, which are delivered by the cheerful-yet-snarky dispatcher through the speakers on your TV or your Wii Remote.
Many of your missions, however, are minigames that depend, again, on your agency. Police recruits, for example, may have to disarm explosives by untangling their wires and snipping them in the correct order, help citizens in need by inflating their punctured car tires, or fight deranged monkeys in the supermarket by shooting them with bananas. Each of these minigames uses the various features of the Wii Remote, from IR pointing to waggling, and each typically lasts around 15 seconds. Other minigames we played included putting out dumpster fires, using a magnet to remove swallowed nails, ramming thieves off the road with a cruiser, and using a trampoline to rescue jumpers from a burning building.
Crisis City’s boys in blue had better be up to the task.
Each precinct in career mode is a completely self-contained world, but you also have the option of playing a more exploration-driven version throughout all of Crisis City. In this mode, the time limit has been eliminated, and the roadblocks that prevent inter-precinct travel have been removed, so you’ll have access to missions all over the gameworld. If you want to jump straight into the minigames, there’s also a party mode that gets you right into them. You can play through them alone for your best times, simultaneously with a friend in a head-to-head match, or with up to four players on a single Wii Remote in a fast-paced hotseat game.
Look for Emergency Mayhem to hit the stores next month. For the final word on this bizarre open-world emergency driving game, check back later for our review.
-If Its Games
The first PDC Darts hit the PC and PlayStation 2 in late 2006, and although it had a budget look and feel, it wasn’t a terrible game by any means. With the Wii and its motion-sensitive controller arriving not long after, it was clear that there was potential for the game to make the jump to Nintendo’s console, and now it has. The result is PDC World Championship Darts 2008, in which you use the Wii Remote to throw darts with some of the world’s best players. While that alone may prove to be a draw for fans of the sport, the control scheme has been poorly implemented and feels particularly imprecise when you use it as suggested. Considering also the dreadful overall presentation, poor graphics, and uninspired multiplayer, this game is a definite missed opportunity.
Thanks to an official endorsement from the Professional Darts Corporation, one of the sport’s two main international federations, the game boasts a roster of some of the most well-known darts players in the world, including Phil “The Power” Taylor, Raymond “The Man” van Barneveld, and Colin “Jaws” Lloyd. A total of 16 PDC players are in the game, and you also have the option to create your own custom players from scratch.
PDC 2008 offers 16 professional darts players, including Raymond van Barneveld.
Modes on offer include single exhibition matches, tournaments, career, and multiplayer party games. In career mode, you travel the world to compete in seven tournaments: World Championship, UK Open, US Open, German Darts Championship, World Grand Prix, World Matchplay, and Las Vegas Classic. One to four players can participate in 14 different party games; in addition to the usual game of darts, you can choose to play special games, such as around-the-clock, 21, and cricket.
The Wii Remote should have been an excellent controller for a darts game, but PDC completely fails to realize this potential. When using the remote, you take a shot by pointing at the screen, locking on to the target area of the board by pressing the A button, and then making a dart-throwing motion by thrusting your hand forward, releasing the button as the power gauge passes into the optimum zone.
It’s almost impossible to make accurate throws on a regular basis because the controls aren’t responsive, so your success will depend far more on luck than skill. It’s difficult enough to feel comfortable with the mechanics on amateur settings, but when you advance to professional and master difficulties, the power gauge is removed entirely, forcing you to rely solely on intuition and feel.
The only alternative is to play with the Nunchuk’s analog stick, which is much the same as the standard controls in the PS2 version. In this method you aim with the remote and use the stick to control the power of your throws. While it’s not an experience unique to the Wii, the analog stick is more accurate and responsive than the Wii Remote alone and offers a greater degree of control. It’s still a bit awkward at times, but it’s certainly the easier option.
The graphics in PDC 2008 are nothing short of dreadful, with little improvement over what we saw in the PlayStation 2 version two years ago. Textures and menu pictures are highly compressed, player models look plastic and expressionless (and remain perfectly motionless up to the moment they throw a dart), and some of the hair is positively laughable. Taylor seems to have a butchered Lego haircut, whereas Lloyd’s famous spiked hairdo has been turned into a row of razor-sharp hedges. There aren’t even any alternative clothing options, so if you choose an exhibition match using two of the same player (Taylor vs. Taylor for example), it can be confusing.
In terms of audio, the menu screens are accompanied by generic rock music, but during gameplay, the only noise comes from the thwack of the darts as they hit the board. It’s strange that the pub environments have no ambient detail. There are no casual spectators or even any staff walking around, and the player animations are exactly the same whether they’re playing in a major tournament or in the aforementioned empty pub. Thankfully, the commentary from Sid Waddell offers some comedy value, though it does quickly become repetitive and many of his colloquialisms will undoubtedly be lost on international players or those unfamiliar with the sport.
With or without the Nunchuk, the controls are pretty frustrating.
The game has a few things going for it, such as the various multiplayer games, which make for a nice break from traditional matches and add to the limited replay value. While the game does at least calculate the scores, it certainly doesn’t help you understand the rules of the more complex modes. Multiplayer games such as cricket are explained in massive blocks of text hidden in the menu system, but you won’t get any hints about possible or recommended checkout shots in standard games, let alone what you should be aiming for next in the party games. If you’re into the sorts of darts games featured, then the lack of hints might not be too much of a problem, but omissions such as this combined with the atrocious presentation do nothing to appeal to new players.
With shoddy controls, poor presentation, and an unfinished feel, PDC World Championship Darts 2008 is a poor sequel and a definite downturn for the series. All things considered, it’s impossible to recommend this game to even the most ardent fans of the sport longing to play it on the Wii. You would almost certainly have more fun–and spend less money–by buying a real board.
There’s something rather charming about the low-fi nature of FlatOut: Head On. With its Dukes of Hazzard-style vehicles and single-minded hunger for destruction, it definitely has a gritty charm–like Burnout on a budget, if you will. But what FlatOut lacks in refinement, it makes up for with a twisted sense of humour, an assortment of game modes, and some frankly outrageous stunts. FlatOut fans will definitely get a feeling of d
Sony’s MLB series has been top dog for several years running now, and that hasn’t changed in 2008. MLB 08: The Show doesn’t have much in the way of new content, but it improves upon last year’s game in almost every department, and it’s the baseball game to get if you’re a PlayStation 3 owner looking to play America’s Pastime.
Its play on the field is where MLB 08 shines the most. Everything–the pitching, hitting, fielding, animations, and atmosphere–is sublime. Hitting is similar to what it was last year. You can guess pitch type and location, and are rewarded with a red indicator just before the ball is delivered if you guess correctly. There are two swing types: power and contact. Initially you may find yourself swinging at every pitch with a power swing, but you’ll quickly find that picking the proper swing for each situation is paramount to your success as a hitter. What MLB 08 really gets right about hitting is the timing; there’s just enough time between when the ball is released and when it gets to the plate to determine what kind of pitch it is and if it’s a ball or a strike. This might sound insignificant, but it’s something very few baseball games get right. From frozen ropes to ground-rule doubles to seeing-eye grounders, there’s an incredible variety of hits, and what’s more, they all come off the bat naturally, which is yet again an area in which other baseball games have difficulty.
Pitching’s button-pressing mechanics feel a bit dated, but they get the job done.
Pitching eschews the trend of using the right analog stick and sticks with four button presses. The first button press is to select your pitch, then there’s one to start the meter, one to set power, and one to determine effectiveness. Your catcher will call for a location based on the hitter’s strengths and weaknesses, so you’ll often find yourself taking a little something off of a pitch to make sure you hit your spot. You’ll still make some mistakes, and your placement will suffer for it, but you’re not punished overly harshly for making one little mistake. This method might not feel quite as natural as using the right analog stick, but it’s effective and accurate, and that’s what matters most.
One thing that tends to get overlooked in baseball games, by both the people who develop them and the people who play them, is fielding. That’s not the case with MLB 08. Fielding just feels right. Players move at the proper speed, the fielding animations are incredible, and the controls are tight. Anyone who has watched Omar Vizquel turn a double play in real life knows how elegant and effortless he makes it look. Now you too can do the same, and it’s a blast. That’s right: Fielding is fun here.
Most of the changes made in MLB 08 are minor but go a long way toward making the game play better. One area that has seen some improvement, but not quite enough, is Road to the Show. In Road to the Show mode, you create a player at any position and try to lead him from the minors to (hopefully) the Hall of Fame. Whether you’re a pitcher or a hitter, you’re given a goal by your manager before each at-bat, and you’re awarded points for achieving that goal. A hitter might need to drive in a run, get on base, or simply take a strike. A pitcher might need to secure a strikeout, induce a ground ball, or get ahead in the count. Thanks to new and more forgiving goals, you’re more likely to earn points, which is a good thing because applying said points nets a minimal amount of improvement to your attributes.
Road to the Show has several strengths. For starters, you play only when your player is at-bat, pitching, or directly involved in a play. This makes games go by much faster than they would if you were playing every pitch of a nine-inning game. It’s also nice to be in control of one player from the first pitch to the last pitch of his career. The player editor is extremely robust and there are hundreds of announcer-voiced names to choose from, so you really feel a connection with your onscreen persona; you’ll be thrilled when he does well, and you’ll get frustrated and start to press when he’s mired in a slump.
That said, Road to the Show falters in a few areas that make it significantly less enjoyable than it could be. The biggest issue is that it can take a very long time to work your way from the minors to the bigs. We created a second baseman and signed with the Cubs because they were weak at the position. After a mediocre spring training, we were sent down to be a bench player in AA. After about a month of tearing up the league, we took over the starting role, and that’s when the mode got frustrating. A few weeks later, the player we had supplanted was called up to AAA, even though we had fulfilled all of the objectives, such as hitting for a certain average, not striking out, and improving specific attributes during the evaluation period. Undaunted, we plugged along and found ourselves among the league leaders in every major statistical category, but time and time again we were told we weren’t ready.
After 100+ games, we were hitting .417, led the league in hitting, hits, doubles, and triples, and were in the top five in home runs, steals, and runs batted in. We had also fulfilled every objective in the previous three evaluations, and the players above us were hitting about .240. The organization recognized that we had the skills and were in the midst of a great season, but we were told to stick it out in AAA. We asked for a trade and were rebuffed. Checking our scouting report, we found that what it was saying was based purely on our attributes and not our production, given that it chastised us for being poor with the stick even though we were leading the league in hitting with a batting average over .400. Furthermore, it said that we were a poor fielder even though we had made one error in our entire career. Eventually, frustrated at having played every at-bat in more than 130 games (including spring training), we simulated the rest of the season and got called up on the last day because of an injury, but we didn’t get an at-bat. Going into the next spring, we declined our option because we were making only $30,000 a year and wanted some more cash. We went back to camp with the Cubbies, and after simulating spring training, we found ourselves back in AA. Yes, this is a somewhat plausible situation in real life, but people play video games to escape from the everyday grind, not to experience more of it. You may have an entirely different experience with Road to the Show (pitchers seem to have an easier go of it), but ours left a lot to be desired.
If stats like these can’t get you out of AA, what will?
There are a few other ways in which Road to the Show could stand to be improved. Although the games in this mode take less time than a normal game, they still take too long. This is partially due to the excessive load times before and after each game, but it’s mostly because of the time you waste standing on the basepaths watching and waiting for the hitters behind you to make contact. It’s achingly boring to get on base as the lead-off man and then stand there for another 20-30 pitches with nothing to do. It’s realistic, but it’s terribly uninteresting. Fielding (which is fine in the traditional mode of play, but was problematic in Road to the Show last year) has been improved, and you can now see the ball easily and earn some points for positive plays, but it’s still far from perfect. The artificial intelligence hardly ever throws anybody out, so running to cover second on a steal attempt is pointless. There are also too many ground balls. In the 100+ games we played, we handled exactly five pop-ups and one line drive. Lastly, your play in the field doesn’t really seem to matter. You can go the extra mile and make a diving catch, or you can let the ball trickle through, but it never comes back to help or hinder your career.
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MLB 2K8
Major League Baseball returns for the ‘08 season.
Major League Baseball 2K
MLB 2K7 returns for the latest season, offering improved player models and animations, as well as new gameplay features and of course updated rosters.
The BIGS
The BIGS is an arcade style baseball game with power-ups and special effects, as well as online with up to four players.
MLB 08: The Show (PS2)
The show is back for the ‘08 season, and it includes an elaborate career system and a bevy of new features.
MLB 07: The Show (PS2)
MLB: The Show returns to bat for the 2007 season.
Score: 8.5
MLB 06: The Show (PS2)
MLB 06: The Show reports to camp with the new Game Time Decisions feature, bringing more depth to Franchise and Season Modes by providing scenarios in which users will need to take full control of their team and decide which players to place in the line up at critical times. Additionally, the new 40-Man Roster feature offers the ability to take full control of a team’s roster and manage all 40 players for each and every game.
Score: 9.0
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