Apparently Hollywood wouldn't mind tossing Darksiders up on the silver screen, as Vigil's Joe Madureira confirmed to VG247 that THQ's already been contacted for projects outside of the video game realm. "We've gotten some interest from Hollywood, we've talked about doing a comic series," said Madureira. Obviously, a comic wouldn't be much of a stretch for the creative director, given his past experience with the medium.

"It's really a THQ thing, but I know they are definitely talking to people and I would be surprised if some of that stuff didn't happen," he added. While we can't really say whether the prospect of either is a good thing at this point -- we're still playing Darksiders for review -- we'll be sure to let you all know either way.

2009 looked fairly dire for the Japanese games industry. Now that we're on the other side of the year, we can assess the damage. Andriasang reports Enterbrain numbers claiming that, overall, the market shrank ¥543 billion, a reduction of 6.9% from 2008. Since we're in a Seinfeld-quoting mood today, we might posit that the Japanese game industry had been in the pool.

Hardware sales dropped 13.9%, with the DS unsurprisingly leading among consoles with 4,025,313 million units and the Xbox 360 even less surprisingly at the bottom, with 331,706 consoles sold. In software, the big winner (or smallest loser, we suppose, given the overall tone of the news) was Dragon Quest IX, which sold a whopping 4,100,968 copies -- slightly more than the total number of DS consoles sold in 2009! Final Fantasy XIII managed to make it onto the tail end of the top five with 1,698,256 copies. But if you weren't Square Enix or Nintendo (who had the other three spots on the top five software charts), 2009 was one to forget.

Seinfeld isn't just the greatest sitcom ever (don't try to argue with us, you're wrong), it's actually relevant in the games landscape. See, the classic coin-op Frogger was featured prominently in one of the last episodes of the show. In said episode, George Costanza scored a whopping 860,630 points -- a score many believed to be laughably high. Sure, it's a comedy show, so why not make the high score ridiculous?

Well, through a perfect combination of Mountain Dew and mozzarella -- and just the right amount of grease on the stick -- young Pat Laffaye bested that high score on January 1, 2010, getting his name on the Twin Galaxies high score board with an impressive 896,980 points using an original Frogger arcade cabinet.

We take our hat off to Laffaye ... and offer our condolences to the weeping ghost of George Costanza.

[Via Eurogamer and Examiner]

Continued →

Recently, some Steam users reported issues with recently purchased copies of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 -- issues said to be caused by missing serial numbers required for online play that weren't included with digitally distributed copies of the game. EA today confirmed to Joystiq via Twitter that the issue had been "quickly resolved," further adding that "all is well back in Steam land." We've followed up with EA to find out the nature of the issue and for more information on its resolution, but until we hear back, you go enjoy dropping war bears into online matches. That's what they're there for, after all.

If it weren't for the fact that the recent "Andrew Brown asks" is a featured piece on UK-based MCV, the answers to his questions repeatedly starting with "Whilst" would have likely tipped us off to the Britishness of the feature and all involved. Both Sony's Ray Maguire and Nintendo's David Yarnton employ the subordinating conjunction whilst responding to questions about everything from the future of digital distribution to what the industry will look like in 2019. Though the Sony and Nintendo execs were a bit more reserved in their predictions, Microsoft's Neil Thompson believes digital distribution will "explode in the next three years." All three gentlemen admitted that retail will still play a major role for (at very least) a few more years.

As for cloud computing, only Microsoft's Thompson seems to be on board. "I'm convinced cloud will play a central role in the games industry of the future ... our strategy is certainly to enable people to connect to their key entertainment content through innovative services that span across multiple devices." Our only worry is that, by the time all this future stuff arrives, we'll be too busy cruising around in our flying cars to care.

For a game based on, well, the end of everything, the fact that Darksiders won't be receiving any DLC isn't exactly a revelation. But it's true -- Vigil Games creative director and famed comic book illustrator behind the game's visual style, Joe Madureira, confirmed in an interview with Eurogamer that DLC and multiplayer weren't part of the developer's plan, nor does it intend to tackle them post-launch.

"We were a new team building new tech and a new IP. We had our work cut out for us," Madureira explained when asked about both, adding, "Vigil has a very strong all-or-nothing mentality, and if we're not confident we can pull it off, we're not doing it. So we focused on making the most kick-ass single-player game possible." Not to say that multiplayer was never a possibility -- it was just a short-lived one: "We realized early on that we wouldn't be able to pull off the scope of game we wanted to and have it be multiplayer," he said.

Of course, should the game do well, we'll no doubt be seeing the unthinkable: a sequel to the Apocalypse.

We don't blame you if you can't remember Near Death Studios, which today announced it will be closing its doors after nine years spent trying (and failing) to make money from its early generation MMO, Meridian 59. The now-ironically named developer was started in 2001 by two of the staffers responsible for the game -- Rob Ellis and Brian Green -- who cite (among other things) a loss of players to World of Warcraft as reasons for its poor performance.

Admitting that Near Death Studios has "been on life support" for several years (again, the irony is palpable), Green wrote on his blog that the "killing blow" came when the company lost its billing provider and was no longer able to process subscribers' credit card payments. Negotiations with another provider had been ongoing, Green said, but ultimately fell through, prompting the closure. We can't help but wonder if changing the company name might have helped "Near Death" earn more confidence from prospective financial partners.

[Via Gamasutra]

Across two of Nintendo's biggest markets, the US and Europe, the house that Mario built has managed to get a lot of its hardware and software into customers' hands, reporting huge sales milestones and a very prosperous December. In Europe, the DS is now the best-selling video game console of all time, surpassing the 40 million mark in the region. The Wii now tops 20 million, becoming the fastest-selling console in the region since its release three years ago. There's also some data on Nintendo's games to chew on, including Wii Sports Resort, which sold five million since releasing in July, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which just reached 2.5 million units sold.

As for the States, Nintendo's been raking in equally impressive amounts of cash here. In December, three million Wii consoles were purchased and the DS set "a new all-time calendar-year U.S. sales record for any console or hand-held system." You know, just like the company did last year. Also, New Super Mario Bros. Wii had quite the stellar showing in the U.S., achieving lifetime sales of four million units in the region.

In short: Nintendo is pretty much the same as always.

Source - Nintendo UK press release
Source - Nintendo of America press release

You'd hoped that after investing 60 hours of your life, you could hang up your sword and catch a breather until the next BioWare RPG, but, oh no, the Darkspawn did not simply disappear. Thankfully, today's announcement of Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, a retail expansion to IGN's & Spike's RPG of the Year Joystiq's "4th Best of 2009," has been accompanied by this video pep talk. After all, you have quite the task ahead of you.

Awakening will be released March 16 for $39.99 on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. A copy of the original Dragon Age: Origins is required to play.

Leadfoots looking to put the pedal to the metal in Bizarre Creations' upcoming racer, Blur, may just get their chance, as Germany's USK database has posted (machine translation) that a Xbox 360 multiplayer demo is in the works. The listing makes no mention of a PS3 demo, though we wouldn't suggest our PS3 brethren start taking long walks off short piers just yet. Odds are if a Xbox 360 demo makes its way onto Microsoft's console, a similar demo will also eventually end up on PS3, right?

Blur is currently geared up to race onto consoles sometime in 2010.

[Via VG247]

You've salivated over its pixelized undead for long enough, the day has finally come when you can play the retro, 8-bit version of Left 4 Dead that we first told you about in November. The free game is now branded Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead and is apparently the launching pad for a whole Pixel Force franchise forthcoming from creator Eric Ruth.

You can feast your fingers on the two-player co-op action right here.

[Via Blue's News]

So, okay, Army of Two: The 40th Day is kind of the definition of a multiplayer mode: "All co-op, all the time." But on top of the constant comradery of the core campaign, this sequel also features several traditional multiplayer modes inspired by other popular multiplayer games.

This latest trailer chronicles the classic struggle between the colors Red and Blue across the game's four muliplayer modes: Warzone, Co-op Deathmatch, Control, and Extraction. Sadly, it appears that the So You Think You Can Fist Bump competition didn't make the cut.

Sure, Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer mode has already sucked you in, but just imagine what would happen if you added an invigorating soundtrack to all those bullet-soaked moments? Well, guess what: The game's soundtrack composer, Hans Zimmer, recently indicated in a Facebook note that the "soundtrack album is in the works."

That's right -- soon you'll be able to take the orchestrated drama from the single-player campaign and import it into a looping death march beat. But hey, at least your folks will be glad you're listening to classical music, right?

EA Canada's Jason DeLong told Game Informer that he expects to see games become cheaper in the future, at least per initial investment. "I think that we're going to start to see -- maybe not in the next year, but in the near future -- games go down the route of smaller up-front experiences and lower prices at the beginning," DeLong said, "and then the ability to extend the game through episodic material or future feature material. I think that's a direction we're probably heading in."

So that doesn't mean that games will be cheaper, in the long run -- it means that DeLong sees the potential total price of a game spread between a disc or initial download and follow-up expansions. It's sort of like what EA and BioWare are already doing with Dragon Age: Origins -- except Dragon Age sells for $60 to start. DeLong added that keeping people playing in the current economy is "going to be an interesting creative problem for us to solve." So then, problem solved?

Above, you'll see a snippet of the box art for Metal Slug: Double X -- one X short of ESRB problems. While the box touts a PlayStation Network logo, the game will only be compatible with the classic PSP-1000 through 3000 series. Why? An Atlus representative tells Joystiq that the publisher has no plans to release a downloadable version on the PlayStation Store; though a digital copy of 2007's Metal Slug Anthology (published by SNK) is currently available.

Launching February 23 exclusively on UMD, the upcoming 2D shooter, which is an updated version of Metal Slug 7 for DS, will feature seven levels, 70 mission-based challenges and an ad-hoc two-player multiplayer mode. With a $20 price tag, Metal Slug: Double X sounds like a deal. Too bad PSP Go owners, once again, will be unable to cash in.