Darksiders Devs Tout Sales, Patch

Darksiders developers Vigil Games has stated on its community blog that the action adventure title has sold 500,000 copies following its release in early January, which would indicate a major success for the original IP against stiff competition in the form of Platinum Games' Bayonetta, which released the same week. However, the article cited in Vigil's post uses independent "sales-tracking" site VGChartz as its source for the 500K number, which calls those estimates into question. There's no mention on Vigil's community blog about parent company THQ's internal sales tracking for the title. NPD's retail sales data for January will release later this month.

In other Darksiders news, Vigil also released a patch last week for the Xbox 360 version of the game to fix the significant screen tearing found in that version of the title. The Digital Foundry blog at Eurogamer ran an analysis comparing the game's performance before and after the title update was released. Via Eurogamer:

It's extremely rare that patches actually increase the performance level of a game. Cutting down screen-tear to an appreciable degree without impacting frame-rate involves some pretty substantial optimisations to the engine, so it was with some level of intrigue that Darksiders performance was put through the Digital Foundry frame analysis tools in both original and patched conditions.The result? Well, screen-tear is indeed dramatically reduced... the launch version of the game has 43.5 per cent torn frames. The new version is considerably improved, taking that number down to 21.6 per cent.

The Digital Foundry article includes a comparison video we urge you to check out as well. On a less scientific note, TeamXbox did detect a noticeable improvement in picture quality post-update, though there was a significant decrease in framerate (which The Digital Foundry also detected). This change seems perfectly acceptable, however, as the gameplay did not appear to be compromised. Darksiders received a 9.0 from TeamXbox in its review earlier this month.

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Kristen Stewart Says Robert Pattinson Is ‘Quite Bold’ In ‘Remember Me’THQ Announces Darksiders, Red Faction Sequels

THQ Announces Darksiders, Red Faction Sequels

THQ held their quarterly earningscall earlier today, revealing several in development projects scheduled for release over the next 18 months, as well as revealing layoffs and restructuring at two of its struggling studios. Juiced developers Juice and MX vs. ATV devs Rainbow have been restructured and renamed with the intent to focus them on digitally distributed titles, resulting in substantial layoffs.

Meanwhile THQ stated that Darksiders, their sleeper release from earlier this year, has shipped 1.2 million units to retail in the 4 weeks since it hit shelves. They also announced in development sequels to last year's Red Faction: Guerilla and their previous hit Saint's Row II for fiscal year 2011 (prior to April 2011) and 2012 respectively. Long in development shooter Homefront is also due some time this year.

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Modern Warfare 2 Gets Welcome Fixes

The latest glitch to plague Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer matches has apparently been addressed. A post to the Infinity Ward forums earlier today by Robert Bowling, creative strategist for the game, indicated that the "Infinite Care Package" exploit has been fixed by a title update that players will apparently receive the next time they start up the game.

Bowling's post also indicated other issues that the title update will address. Here's the full list:• Care Package, Emergency Airdrop, and Sentry Gun marker grenades sprint speed normalized.
• Fix for "infinite care package" exploit.
• Sentry Guns: Improved placement detection, preventing cases of Sentry Guns inside.
• Model 1887: Bling using Akimbo and FMJ combination now has same range and damage as non-Bling Model 1887s.
• Fixes to prevent various XP hacks (including the prevention of negative XP).Once again, thousands of MW2 will rejoice and return to somewhat normal matchplay—as they did after the "Javelin" glitch was patched in December—though you know the exploiters won't rest until they find a new weakness to give them an advantage. Apparently, some gamers are too insecure to just play a game with their actual skill levels and have to muck it up for everyone else.



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Skate 3 Downtown Dev. Diary #1

SKATE 3 features an all-new co-op mode where teammates can complete challenges together while advancing each other’s careers. From rewarding epic bails and fails with a beefed up Hall of Meat mode to honing your craft with the all-new skate.School, players of all skill levels have multiple ways to “kill it” in the game. The franchise also continues to raise the bar for user created content with the "skate.Create" feature suite, an innovative toolset that empowers gamers to truly express their skate style by creating their own graphics, videos, and skate parks.

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Kristen Stewart Says Robert Pattinson Is ‘Quite Bold’ In ‘Remember Me’Despicable Me Announced

Despicable Me Announced

D3Publisher (D3P), a publisher and developer of interactive entertainment software, together with its parent D3, Inc., today announced a worldwide publishing agreement with Universal Partnerships & Licensing for video games based on Universal Pictures and Chris Meledandri's Illumination Entertainment's inaugural 3-D CGI feature, Despicable Me, the studio's first from Meledandri (Ice Age, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, Horton Hears a Who!), who produces through his Universal-based family-entertainment company.

The film follows Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), one of the world's greatest super-villains, as he uses his arsenal of shrink rays, freeze rays and a small army of minions to pull off the biggest heist in the history of the world. The video games are scheduled to release on console and handheld systems in July 2010 to coincide with the nationwide release of the movie on July 9, 2010.

"Despicable Me has all the right ingredients for a successful game," said Bill Anker, vice president of business development and licensing, D3P. "The film's unique cast of characters and playful, mischievous action will translate exceptionally well into the interactive space. We look forward to working closely with the Universal team to deliver an authentic and compelling gameplay experience for fans of the film as well as gamers of all ages."

"Working with D3Publisher, we look forward to creating a fun-filled game loaded with humor, clever puzzles, in-game rule breaking and surprises," said Bill Kispert, vice president, Digital Platforms, Universal Partnerships & Licensing. "Players can explore the slightly wicked side of themselves as they carry out hilarious capers on a comical quest for world domination."

In Despicable Me: The Game, players will experience the inventiveness of being a despicable genius as they become Gru, the film's criminal mastermind, planning heists and plotting attacks on Gru's archnemesis, Vector, as they work their way to villainous greatness. Despicable Me: The Game offers a unique blend of action and puzzle solving that combines the fun of commanding an army of loyal-but-manic minions and using an arsenal of wacky gadgets, weapons and vehicles to entertain players of all ages.

About Despicable Me (The Movie)

In a happy suburban neighborhood surrounded by white picket fences with flowering rose bushes, sits a black house with a dead lawn. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, hidden deep beneath this home is a vast secret hideout. Surrounded by an army of tireless, little yellow minions, we discover Gru (Steve Carell), planning the biggest heist in the history of the world. He is going to steal the moon (Yes, the moon!) in Universal's new 3-D CGI feature, Despicable Me.

Gru delights in all things wicked. Armed with his arsenal of shrink rays, freeze rays and battle-ready vehicles for land and air, he vanquishes all who stand in his way. Until the day he encounters the immense will of three little orphaned girls who look at him and see something that no one else has ever seen: a potential Dad.

One of the world's greatest super-villains has just met his greatest challenge: three little girls named Margo, Edith and Agnes. www.despicable.me

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Alpha Protocol A Man Alone Trailer

Developed by award-winning development studio Obsidian Entertainment, makers of smash hits including Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II The Sith Lords™ and Neverwinter Nights 2™, Alpha Protocol is slated for an early 2009 release for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Windows-based PCs.

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Xbox Live This Week Secret Weapons over MLB (22410)

There's a larger than usual crop of new Xbox Live Arcade releases this week, as Greed Corp. for 800 MS Points ($10.00 USD), Fret Nice for 1200 MS Points ($15.00 USD) and Lazy Raiders for 800 MS Points ($10.00 USD) all hit the Marketplace today. We should have reviews up for each of these titles in the coming days. Meanwhile, I'm sure most of you are much more excited for the new Borderlands DLC The Secret Armory of General Knoxfor 800 MS Points ($10.00 USD), which released on Tuesday (after a weird snafu that let it go live but prevented anyone from downloading it). From our Secret Armory of General Knox preview:

Speaking of decent guns, Gibson let us in on another aspect of General Knoxx that's extremely enticing: The expansion will bring a new class of weapons to our inventories. These "pearlescent" guns are going to be the best you can get, and when I asked how much better they were going to be, considering I felt that some of the "orange" arms were actually pretty disappointing, he told us they new guns would be "much better than orange." We weren't shown any, so we'll have to take his word for it for now. However, we were shown a new "super chest" that you can find; this is supposedly a Crimson Lance supply chest with a double layer of shelves for a bigger selection.

Before the Gearbox guys packed up, they took me to the room where General Knoxx is located. No spoilers to be given here, but I will tell you to go there only when you (and your co-op team) are good and ready, because he's a Level 64 behemoth who'll bring the pain. Hopefully, he lives up to the old saying: "The bigger they are, the harder they fall...and the bigger their loot drop is."

Sweet. Ninja.

This week also sees the release of a demo for 2K Sport's baseball revival MLB 2K10. From our hands-on with the MLB 2K10 demo earlier this week:

Another cool aspect is the feedback you get on the pitcher's composure. If your pitcher gets rattled by allowing a bunch of hits and runs, you'll not only get a display of the pitcher's lowered confidence, but if it gets really bad, you'll feel his accelerated heartbeat through the controller's rumble function, and when you try to aim a pitch on the edges of the strike zone in that condition, you might find that the cursor stutters and shimmies all around the spot, to show how erratic his throw might be. You can help him out a little by calling for a mound visit, which can be directed to help the pitcher's stamina or composure, though, like actual MLB rules, you only get one visit to the mound per inning unless you substitute.

That'll teach him to crowd the plate.

Finally, Games on Demand gets a little dirty this week with the release of the off-road racer Pure for $19.99 USD. From our Pure review:

It's often said that "God is in the details," which happens to be the perfect mantra for Pure's visual package. Notice how the rider's clothing textiles sway properly in relation to the amount of wind resistance imparted upon them. Or how mud can and will be added to just about any part of the rider or his/her ATV. Proper suspension animations and wheels/tires which actually look correct at-speed are other little touches that Blackrock has flat-out nailed in Pure.

Sweet. Jumps.

And that about does it for this week. We'll have another update next week as Microsoft begins their Block Party promotion with Toy Soldiers

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