UK game industry holiday snapshot suggests weakening retail sales

by Jessica Conditt on Jan 11th 2012 3:00AM

Two major UK video-game retailers, HMV and Game, saw a drop in sales over Christmas, prompting HMV to reconsider its investment in games as a whole, The Telegraph reports. HMV's gaming market share fell 16 percent over the holidays, while sales in music and DVDs saw no change; games now account for 20 percent of HMV's sales. Chief Executive Simon Fox said HMV may focus only on AAA titles in the future.

Game's Christmas retail sales were down 15 percent, while year-on-year it lost 13 percent in sales, GamesIndustry.biz says. Online sales rose 4 percent, and sales for the year ending January 2012 dropped 12 percent, less than the UK gaming market's total loss of 13 percent. Game recently closed 39 stores and is expected to have 550 in the UK by 2013, GamesIndustry notes. CEO Ian Shepherd is banking on the Wii U and PS Vita to revitalize sales in 2012.

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Red Fly Studio layoffs result of canned Star Wars title, resume suggests

by Christopher Grant on Jul 20th 2011 10:55AM

After laying off 30 developers, Red Fly Studio CEO Dan Borth told GameSpot, "The reduction of staff was a response to a large high-profile project that was, to our surprise, reevaluated and then canceled." While the identity of that project wasn't known at the time, a resume uncovered by internet uncoverer Superannuation points to development of a "next-gen Star Wars title."

Patrick Doran's LinkedIn profile includes Red Fly Studio under "past" experiences, where the artist worked from April 2008 to this month, as both an artist and environment artist. In addition to work on games like Mushroom Men, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 for Wii, and Thor for both Wii and 3DS, Doran worked as an environment artist from January of this year through June on the aforementioned "next-gen Star Wars title."

With a list of shipped games exclusive to Nintendo's consoles, it's not clear what "next-gen" means in this case. The studio's first HD game for Xbox 360 and/or PlayStation 3 using the high-profile Star Wars license? We've reached out to both Red Fly Studio and LucasArts for comment on the project.

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[PS3, PSP] Sony Suggests Anonymous may be Responsible for PSN Breach

[PS3, PSP] Sony Suggests Anonymous may be Responsible for PSN Breach

While the prolonged downtime for the PlayStation Network due to a massive security breach is supposedly nearing an end, the implications of the cyber-attack are probably only beginning.

In a letter written by Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai to the subcommittee of the US House of Representatives inquiring into the situation, he states that "Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack," and "We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named 'Anonymous' with the words 'We are Legion.'"

Anonymous made news recently when it declared war on Sony for its lawsuit against hacker George Hotz, but the hacker organization later denied any involvement in the PlayStation Network attack saying, "We realise that targeting the PSN is not a good idea. We have therefore temporarily suspended our action, until a method is found that will not severely impact Sony customers," contradicting Hirai's accusations.

Hirai's letter also reiterated that credit card companies have not reported any fraudulent activity as a result of the attack. There is still no firm date for when PSN will be back up.

Written by: Mike Glubish

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