Late Night Consoling

Tracking firm NPD indicates that overall game industry sales are up 21% compared to first-half results last year. While sales of the three major consoles are down 6% from last year and PC game retail sales are down 10.5%, sales of console games are up 6%. Gran Turismo 4 and Pokemon Emerald are the current bestsellers, with games like Twilight Princess, Kingdom Hearts II, and Madden 06 looking to drive sales towards the end of the year. Most notably adding to the overall gain is the increase in portable hardware sales of 181% due to the introduction of new devices like the DS and the PSP, as well as continued success of the GBA. In a related report, insiders suggest use of the percent sign on gaming site Shacknews has risen uncontrollably in the last 24 hours.

Nintendo announced that their fiscal first-quarter profits dropped 78.5% to $33M from last year's first-quarter profits of $155M, with total revenue dropping only 14% to $628.5M. A third-party analyst from Japanese firm Nomura Securities was unconcerned, citing the industry's unpredictable nature and Nintendo's forthcoming games lineup--consisting most notably of The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. Nintendo itself put its year-long profit forecast at 3.1% over last year's. Gamasutra points out that while Nintendo is suffering from reduced profits, neither Sony nor Microsoft's Xbox division are currently making any profit.

The latest major gaming awards show, G4's third annual G-Phoria, was taped yesterday (though it won't be aired until August 9th) and according to reports it merely provides more of the same celebrity-infested party-hype-mania attitude that has plagued every widely televised gaming awards show in recent years. There were games on display, though GameSpot's coverage suggests that the overall focus was on Hollywood much more than on developers.

The awards themselves were fairly typical for this sort of thing; Halo 2 led the pack with seven wins (including a mind-blowingly inappropriate Best Vocal Performance for David Cross as a marine) followed by God of War with four. San Andreas was surprisingly under-represented, considering its vaunted status in pop culture, picking up only one award for Best Licensed Soundtrack. Hot Coffee-induced apprehension, perhaps?

Sega took the opportunity to display games at G-Phoria to showcase two of their upcoming Xbox 360 games: Full Auto and Condemned: Criminal Origins. Notably, the games were running on the recently-delivered Xbox 360 Beta kits rather than Alpha systems, whose screenshots had previously produced lackluster reactions from gamers. 1UP describes the games as looking visually similar to the versions on display at E3, but with some additional framerate problems. As one would reasonably expect considering the Beta kits are different hardware, the developers will have to optimize the games to take advantage of the system's additional power.

Following last year's Tales of Symphonia (GCN) and the upcoming Tales of Legendia (PS2), not to mention a considerable list of recent Tales titles released only in Japan so far, Namco is developing yet another installment in the well-populated Tales series of RPGs. This one will be entitled Tales of the Abyss; no other details are currently available, though the game will apparently be officially revealed soon.

Multiple sources have pegged the newest edition of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance for a Japanese release of September 13. The Game Boy Micro is intended to appeal to style-savvy consumers who do not wish to accentuate their dorkiness while playing portable video games in public. It is assumedly also marketed towards consumers who are compelled to purchase very very small electronic devices.

Design Interact talks with Microsoft interface design manager Russ Glaser about the process of designing the Xbox 360's visual interface.