Wii hardware sales jumped 60 per cent last week – as the black version of the console helped stimulate fresh interest in time for Christmas. The Black Wii, which launched a fortnight ago on Friday, November 6th, helped the console become the best performing home system of the week, according …

Modern Warfare 2. Not a bad little launch, hey? Thanks to unprecedented retail activity – responsible for a large chunk of the initial sales – Call of Duty is already on course to gross over a billion dollars worldwide in this calendar year alone. Yet only now can we start …

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers will arrive on UK shelves on February 5th, 2010. The Square Enix game is the latest instalment in the Nintendo-exclusive branch of the long-running RPG series. It is the first retail entry to be specifically developed for Wii, as opposed to March’s DS …

The latest in the five million-selling Mama franchise hits store shelves this week. Christopher Dring meets 505 Games’ Tim Woodley to discover what’s next for Mama… What would you say has been the secret to Mama’s global success?The appeal of Mama is in its simplicity. The simplicity of the concept, …

The British Video Association has lifted the lid on a significant new TV advertising campaign designed to highlight the growing high definition Blu-ray format this Christmas. The push is being run on behalf of Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal pictures, Walt Disney and Warner. It’s part of a 1m …

This week’s UK software sales have skyrocketed 198 per cent to 103.1 million. It is comfortably the highest weekly figure of the year and isn’t far off 2008’s Christmas week, when 112.8 million went through UK games retailer’s tills. Unit sales also leapt up, rising 123 per cent to 3,422,625 …

Leading publishers and retailers have called Q1 2010 the most congested first quarter the industry has ever seen. The line-up, which includes BioShock 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction and Final Fantasy XIII, is reminiscent of a strong Christmas release slate – and could lead to smaller games being ignored during this …

A retail campaign entitled ‘We know fit….we know fun’ will be launched today in selected outlets, with a full roll-out planned for the spring. Staff have been trained in the art of Wii Fit games. But getting Nintendo on board has been a long slog for the Colorado-based company, which …

The Hut has denied claims that it is breaking the street date for Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II. Accusations arose from an eBay ad that states the online retailer is dispatching the game today. The ad also claims if consumers order by 2pm today, it will be delivered tomorrow. However, a …

What would you say is the single biggest issue surrounding digital distribution that the games industry has to address? Digital distribution has a number of hills to climb, ranging from technical to behavioural and legal. All are significant so I’m not sure whether one is bigger than another. Forecasting the …