WoW Launches in Latin America

MARCH 26, 2008 • Blizzard Entertainment reveals that it’s preparing a Latin American launch of World of Warcraft during the first half of 2008. The game will be localized with all in-game speech re-recorded in Spanish, then Portuguese. Blizzard is also assembling a Spanish-language .....

WiiWare Launches in Japan

MARCH 25, 2008 • WiiWare launches in Japan with nine titles priced between Â¥500 and Â¥1,500. The service features original games designed for digital download. The U.S. roll-out is scheduled for May. Impact: WiiWare is Nintendo’s version of Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation St.....

Miss Bimbo Scrutinized

MARCH 25, 2008 • A London-based casual online game for teen girls, Miss Bimbo, comes under intense scrutiny in the U.K. and world press. The game launched in February and already has more than 200,000 British players who guide the life of a virtual teen girl. Players must keep track of hunger, thirst and happiness rating.....

Alan Bowman & Microsoft Asia

MARCH 20, 2008 • Last February the DFC Dossier took a closer look at how the Xbox 360 was doing in Latin America. Another part of Microsoft’s aggressive worldwide platform strategy is launching in major Asian markets outside of Japan, so we were just as curious about how the platform was progressing in Asia. Although Microsoft’s challenges in establishing itself in the Japanese market have been well reported, there has been far less coverage of the launches in South Korea, Hong Kong.....

Music Downloads Grow

MARCH 17, 2008 • Proponents of digital download sales of video games will take heart in a recent NPD Group report that downloads account for 33% of all music sales. The research firm estimates that the number of online music buyers grew from 28 million in 2007 to 36 million in 2008. .....

PlayFirst Builds on Diner Dash

MARCH 12, 2008 • PlayFirst is a venture-funded company launched in 2004 as an online casual game publisher with $5 million in initial funding. At the time the casual game market was led by the large portal sites that specialized in aggregating games from many different small developers. There were some big hits such.....

Majesco Loves Wii

MARCH 11, 2008 • While most major game publishers have found success on Nintendo’s hot platforms elusive, Majesco Ent. has had no problems leveraging the success of the Wii and DS. For the first fiscal quarter ending Jan. 31, the publisher reported net revenue grew 75% to $32.8 million, and net.....