[News] Goodbye Guitar Hero, Hello More CoD

Sadly yesterday, Activision Blizzard announced that they were letting go around 500 employees from the business. Along with this news, the axe fell on recently unpopular franchises Guitar Hero, DJ Hero and Tony Hawk.

Guitar Hero sales have been in decline since Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. Very poor sales of Guitar Hero 5 were blamed on it's diverse track listing, which led to the last Guitar Hero game purely having rock inspired tracks. It's more rock-orientated music did little to improve sales however.

DJ Hero, a great idea, but one that never truly hit the sales heights that ActiBlizz wanted. Again the second one failed to generate the big numbers.

The problem with these two franchises is that they share the same genre, and for a while now Music-based peripheral games just haven't sold well. Harmonix recently parted ways with MTV Games as sales of Rock Band weren't good enough. In fact since then MTV Games has closed its doors to focus on new, non-gaming projects.

Since EA released Skate, the Tony Hawk games have struggled to regain its skateboard gaming crown. Tony Hawk's Ride with its plastic skateboard failed to sell. ActiBlizz gave the plastic board one more shot with Tony Hawk's Shred only to find that did worse.

Although it all sounds very doom and gloom, it may not be the end for these once loved titles. None of them will get new games in 2010, but may appear again in the future depending on the market.

Amongst all this bad news, ActiBlizz announced a new studio:

"We're pleased to announce our new wholly-owned development studio, Beachhead, which will lead the creation of our all-new digital platform for the Call of Duty franchise,"

Which means...

"Beachhead will create a best-in-class online community, exclusive content and a suite of services for our Call of Duty fans to supercharge the online gaming experience like never before. The platform will support in-game integration and bring online experiences and console play together for the first time."

Interesting stuff. Something like Halo's Waypoint on Xbox Live perhaps?

Can't help but feel they are starting to drain the Call of Duty franchise dry. They are determined to get Modern Warfare 3 out this year, and have at least one spin-off title in the works too.

Be careful Activision, remember quality over quantity!

Thanks to MCV for the information. For the full story head over to this page right here!

[News] IGN Game Changer

IGN UK launched a contest just before Christmas called 'Game Changer'

Think of it as the X Factor, but for budding videogame presenters and writers, without Simon Cowell...and actually being fun to take part in.

I entered both parts of the contest. As you can imagine, I wasn't the only one. Looking at the YouTube page for the presenter side of the contest was worrying. My 3 videos were up against some seriously strong competition.

Only 12 people from each section were to progress through to the next round, and although I had everything crossed...it just wasn't to be.

Ofcourse I'm disappointed, gutted even, but it hasn't disheartened me. I'll continue to create videos for Blast Process and who knows, maybe I'll get to do some free freelance stuff for other videogame websites. For now I'll press on with what I'm doing (only hopefully on a more regular basis!).

For those interested in what my videos were about, I've gone and link them over on an article on Blast Process, which can be found at this link. Hope you enjoy.

[Retro] Unearthing Treasures of the Past

Quite a number of years ago I used to rent a house from my cousin. I moved out after about a year, but was allowed to leave some of my stuff there for the time being.

I'd been meaning to arrange to get the rest of the stuff back for quite some time, but for one reason or another a date was never set and so my lost items continued to live in boxes in the old house.

Today however, I've collected said boxes and they have all been unpacked.

Not very exciting stuff your probably thinking...and you'd be right up to now. When I opened one of the boxes I came across 3 long-lost consoles:

A Dreamcast, complete with 2 standard pads and a fancy green imported one
A Gamecube, in purple, with controller
And a Nintendo 64, with a blue controller

Excellent stuff! Although my games for all these systems seem to have disappeared over time, with only a handful still in my possession.

I've got all my current generation consoles all setup ready to play and I would be lying if I said I hadn't considered getting those 3 plugged in too. Sadly, I just don't have the space to make this possible...but one day my dream of having a room just for gaming will come true and I'll have them all setup ready to switch on!

Now that I have them back I'm going to start keeping an eye open for games to get for them. Like I said, I don't have many games for any of them. Space is going to continue to be an issue for the time being...but I'll pounce on any games I feel I need to get again!

In the mean time, I think it's time I played a little bit of Chu Chu Rocket...

[News] Happy New Year!

And so, here we are...the start of a brand new year!

2010 was an interesting year. Moving back home, stepping back up to management, the loss of a relative, the creation of Blast Process...these things and others all contributed to this.

I've got many hopes and dreams for 2011, and although I've had ideas and plans for previous years that have failed to appear I'm still somewhat confident I can make the most out of this one. I'm a more happy, confident person compared to years previous...so this will be the year of Dave!

One of the things I'm aiming to do this year is write more on here, Blast Process and wherever else I can get my words posted.

I was lucky enough to get a new digital camcorder for Christmas so I'm going to get some hints and tips off Mike and Tom so that I can film and edit my own videos.

To kick start the year I've popped a new post up on Blast Process detailing 5 games that I'm looking forward to this year. You can check it out here.

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

[News and Updates] Gamesday, Interviews and Sunshine

Today was my first day back in work after a sunny week-long trip to Gran Canaria.

It's been over 10 years since I last got on a plane and went on holiday, so it was awesome to fly again! The trip was organised as a surprise for my mum, arranged by my Dad, who were halfway through there holiday when me and my sister turned up.

Between shopping, drinking, eating, swimming and catching some rays I also managed to do a spot of gaming. I'd recently got hold of 2 big new titles, Dragon Quest: Sentinels of the Starry Sky on the Nintendo DS and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on the Sony PSP.

Both are games I'd definitely recommend, especially Kingdom Hearts. As much as I enjoyed Dragon Quest, I found myself more tempted to play Kingdom Hearts when I had a spare moment...although in hindsight, perhaps I'd have gotten to play more if I had chosen Dragon Quest... Why is this? Simply put, as amazing as the graphics are on KH (and they are the best I've seen on the PSP) and as great as the combat mechanics are, it all comes at a price...

Heavy Loading Times

Not only that, but you can only save your progress at Save Points (much like many RPGs) which I found aren't all that frequent. Dragon Quest on the other hand can be saved where-ever you like, although is recommended for a 'full save' to head for a Church in the game's many villages. With it's more simplistic graphics, much like all the other titles on the DS, it loads a whole lot quicker and less frequent.

On another slightly geeky note, I purchased the first 2 volumes of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. I was a big fan of the film, and of the downloadable game, and I had previously been recommended giving the books a read. I was fairly impressed! It goes to show (at least at far as I am, I need to pick up the final 3 volumes yet) how close Edgar Wright stuck to the books when creating the film.

It was a fantastic week, and I'm already missing the sun, sand, cold Warsteiners and the pool...

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The day before I jetted out, myself and Mike went to Gamesday at the Birmingham NEC, which I've covered over on Blast Process.

As always, it was great to see all the new upcoming models, and the perfect excuse to purchase a new unit for my new Warhammer army (the High Elves).

Like the past couple of years, and as you may read on my Gamesday round-up, both THQ and Bioware-Mythic were on hand to talk about the upcoming Warhammer-based videogames. It's becoming very apparent that creating games based on the 2 major Games Workshop brands (Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000) is very profitable. I remember back a few years when I got really excited at the prospect of the original Dawn of War and getting to play a Fire Warrior in first person.

Warhammer-based games aren't exactly new. Way before Dawn of War and Fire Warrior, you had titles such as Chaos Gate which instead of playing out in real-time it instead played out more like a tabletop game, choosing to be turn based. And who could forget Shadow of the Horned Rat on the Playstation and PC?!

Carrying on the Warhammer theme, while at the event, me and Mike managed to get to speak to Bioware-Mythic's Community Manager, Andy Belford. Not only that, but we even got to interview him on camera!

I respected people who interview folks on camera even before I had a shot at it myself, but now I've done one, I have even more respect for them!

You can check the video out in this article over on BlastProcess.com. For a general round-up of Gamesday, here's a link worth reading.