MARCH 31, 2009 • After resisting a reduction in PlayStation 2 pricing for years, Sony Computer Entertainment announced it was lowering the retail price from $129 to $99 in North America, and from €129 to €99 in Europe. Impact: The PlayStation 2 remains the most played .....

MARCH 30, 2009 • At a recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) conference, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) made a number of recommendations regarding retail video game packaging. The first recommendation was for disclosure of what kind digital rights management (DRM) is included, and how invasive that DRM will be. The other.....

MARCH 29, 2009 • This month DFC Intelligence released two comprehensive surveys of high-end PC gamers. The surveys were conducted in February 2009 using the panel of over 1.2 million GameShadow users. One survey was conducted of Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) users and another survey was conducted of First-Person Shooter (FPS) users. The exciting thing about these surveys was it provided valuable insight into not just demographics, but also the actual hardware systems and other so.....

MARCH 29, 2009 • Start-up companies trying to compete in the console game market have routinely met with failure. Even well-established companies like Philips, Apple and Matsushita have not been able to crack the market. It took years of planning and investment for Sony and Microsoft to launch successful .....

MARCH 24, 2009 • The latest OnLive video game streaming technology made a media splash at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco  In development for the last seven years by the same Steve Perlman who was behind WebTV, OnLive uses a MicroConsole set-top .....

MARCH 23, 2009 • Enterbrain’s Famitsu magazine published the results of a reader survey that illustrated how much more mobile Japanese gamers are. Only 15.1% did not own a Nintendo DS, and 15.5% lacked a PSP. When it came to consoles, the PS3 was most favored with 41.6% of respondents saying they did not o.....

MARCH 20, 2009 • DFC Intelligence continues its regular series of profiles on game development hot spots around the world with this month’s look at the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. The region has a strong history in game development including such storied studios as MicroProse and Interacti.....

MARCH 19, 2009 • MMOs come and go, but EVE Online has soldiered on year after year building its player base to 260,000 worldwide. World of Warcraft’s arrival blew away expectation of what constitutes a successful MMO. CCP is also novel in that it hails from tiny Iceland, championed digital distribution very early on, and has global aspirations for itself beyond the niche EVE Online has already carved out. Much has changed in the world of MMOs in the last 10 years since CCP began wo.....