Mario Cart 8 Sells 1.2 Million First Weekend

 

 In a huge weekend much needed by Nintendo and its (ex)failing console  the Wii-U, Mario Cart 8 has exploded over the weekend selling over 1.2 million copies over the first weekend alone. Additionally, the game has shot the sales of Nintendo's Wii-U console to over 666% , a huge increase is sales. Mario Cart 8 has been giving stellar reviews with some of the biggest names calling the game the highly coveted "Masterpiece".

 The Wii-U started out with less than ideal sales numbers and hasn't recovered very much since its launch. Now, with big game sites and reviewers calling the game "the first true next gen Wii-U game, the Wii-U is set up for a great E3 where Nintendo has recently stated is going to be where they announce more next-gen titles for the Wii-U. With 14 Nintendo Wii-U games rated above 85+ on Metacritic , there is no doubt that Nintendo is publishing great, polished games for the Wii-U and with the announcements at E3 plus the huge sales of Mario Cart 8 ...... looks like the Nintendo Wii-U can actually climb out of the slump its been in and start competing with the other next-gen consoles as it should.

Microsoft Still Feeling The preasure To Sell Xbox

 Microsoft again found itself on the defense about selling off its gaming division in the face of worried investors. Don't believe me? Just Google it yourself and you will be rather surprised about how much speculation there really is and the amount of valid concern. Some of the most painful articles in regards to Microsoft's Xbox1 ( gaming division ) comes strait from the big dog Forbes in an article titled " The Three Ways Forward For Microsoft And The Xbox One " and I can assure you that all three options described therein are not at all what Microsoft wants to face.
 For a long time now Microsoft big wigs (investors) who hold major stock and bond holdings in the corporation have been pushing Microsoft to simply sell off its unprofitable gaming division and focus more on software in which the company was founded to do. It seems as though those very investors became rather uncomfortable with the poor performance of Windows 8 not to mention the gaming division losing millions and millions of dollars to boot.
 News just recently got worse for Microsoft after Sony proudly announced that the PS4 has sold 8 million consoles (not shipped) to consumers , while Microsoft refusing to publish actual sales of the Xbox1. Come to find out Microsoft had "shipped" 5 million consoles ton stores with no telling how many of those were actually sold to consumers like Sony's numbers. Now, in the Forbs article about "three ways forward" one of those proposed "ways" have already been implemented that being to cut the Kinect nobody ever wanted. The second option is so horrible even seasoned Xbox fans will get week in the knees when they read the proposed solution which is ....... cut the disk drive. Ouch. Now its down to the very last option which is non other than to cut the price just to somewhat compete with the runaway success of Playstation 4.
 In my opinion Microsoft can implement all the options they see fit to no avail. Its simply too late now that PS4 and Sony's master publicity stroke has mesmerized the masses. While Microsoft was busy announcing the Xbox1 and assaulting their fans with always online-DRM, forced Kinect and countless other unwanted policies akin to bullying..... Sony was telling and giving the gaming community what they wanted. Is the Xbox1 going to go away in the immediate future? Of course not. Sooner or later though Microsoft is going to run out of money to keep flushing down the toilet.

Video Game Market To Reach $111 Billion By 2015

 Well it looks like alot of us has been making investments in the wrong fields. After looking over some numbers in regards to the future of video gaming I was blown away by the amount of money generated by the video game industry. After studying some stock market trends going back to 2013 and ending in 2015 some truly amazing figures surfaced.
 We all know that mobile games are fast becoming the new way to game but did you realize that mobile games are the fastest-growing segment of the market, with revenue set to double between 2013 and 2015 from $13.2 billion to $22 billion?

Graph : Video Game Market Revenue, 2012-2015

1. Segment                                      2012          2013          2014          2015
2. Video Game Console               37,400      44,288        49,375       55,049
3. Handheld Video Games           17,755      18,065        15,079       12,399
4. Mobile Games                           9,280       13,208        17,146       22,009
5. PC Games                                14,437       17,722        20,015       21,601
6. Total Video Game Market       78,872       93,282      101,615     111,057  

Source : Gartner (October 2013)

In other words besides the temporary reduction in game console hardware sales during 2013 growth will resume again in 2014 with the sales of next generation gaming hardware from $15.9 billion to $22.7 billion in 2015. In other words ..... gaming is going to do great going into 2015 and investments in these fields should seriously be studied.
   

Is Far Cry Every Year A Good Idea?

 I'm a huge fan of the Far Cry series and have spent countless hours playing FC2/3 and had lots of fun doing so. With the surprise hit and performance of Far Cry 3 the powers that be have now decided that its in their best interest to release a new FC game every single year. This would be great news for fans of the series, however, for those in the know its a really bad idea. You see, the time taken to develop FC1, FC2 and Far Cry 3 was paced in the spans of years which polished and truly great games need to succeed. In other words, any great game requires more than one year to develop. Now that Far Cry has been sold out as a yearly release the quality will be seen to drastically drop until the series ends in shame with islands filled with pirates and bad guys in Robocop uniforms shooting space weapons at your character.
 We have seen this happen time and time again in many series which end up being rushed to meet release dates with the end results of 6 hour campaigns that are not only short but bland and broken. How Ubisoft figures it can produce a huge open world with tons of non linear gameplay in a year is totally beyond me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Far Cry 4 will be bad..... I'm just saying that it will start getting bad and fast with yearly, rushed releases.
 One of the few problems I found while playing and verily beating Far Cry 3 was the complete lack of re-playability once the game was finished. The game was fun while it lasted but after I finished the game I never popped the game in my PS3 ever again which is a shame considering I still play FC2 every once in awhile. Now Ubisoft is openly stating that they are focusing more on the multiplayer aspects of far Cry 4 as to expand its re-playability. This is the wrong strategic move to make on their part as the Far Cry experience has always been its huge open world and single player campaign.
 So just as most video game series who release yearly are doomed to failure in the end so is Far Cry unless they stick to the proven formula which has made the series the huge hit it has been and fans have come to love. Without these things that have defined Far Cry over the years the franchise shall simply get lost and mixed up with the countless other yearly franchises which only make money on the fact they bank on the true fans high hopes that this time it will be different.