Biz

If you follow Big Download around (and if you do we will consider putting a restraining order on you) you know that we like to post up the big sales deals that the GoGamer.com brings us during their still misnamed 48 Hours sale. Today is no different as a ton of PC game titles are on the list with sale prices that will last until 3 am Eastern time Tuesday.

This week, the deals include recent PC games like Borderlands for $36.90, The Sims 3 for $32.90 and Tropico 3 for $27.90. Older games are cut to the bone such as Bionic Commando for $17.90 and the first Halo PC port for $12.90.

It's one of the most revered sci-fi movies of all time, and at one point developer Gearbox Software thought hard about making it into a game. The 1982 classic Blade Runner still holds up well and has been the subject of game adaptations before, most notably a 1997 released action-adventure game from the now defunct Westwood Studios.

On the Official Xbox Magazine web site, Gearbox's head man Randy Pitchford states that at one time Gearbox had pursued getting the Blade Runner game license rights, saying, "We chased it down and we could of had it." However, they decided to abandon their plans for the game after looking at the costs. Pitchford states, " . . . the way we wanted to do it, we wanted to spend 25-million dollars. And when you do the math on that, we weren't going to make it back." That's likely true, although we have to wonder what kind of game design would require such a high budget.

One of the most critical voices of the game industry, particularly of how games handle violent content, is closing its doors. The non-profit National Institute On Media and The Family has announced that due to lack of funding it will officially shut down by the end of the year.

Formed in the mid-1990s by psychologist Dr. David Walsh, the group was best known for its Video Game Report Card which it issued every year with backing from US lawmakers. The report card always gave failing grades to games which had lots of violent or adult content, even games that had gotten rave reviews from game critics. According to WCOO's web site, Dr Walsh stated that despite his group's shut down he feels that it had a positive effect on keeping certain games away from children. He states, "The fact that the retailers will no longer sell video games, adult video games to little kids, is something we take a great deal of pride in."

It's just over a week until Black Friday 2009 hits and tons of retailers are cutting prices to the bone for the biggest sales day of the year. If you happen to find yourself at a GameStop store on that day you will be able to get a few PC game bargains. The biggest one has to be for the just released Left 4 Dead 2. Valve's zombie shooter sequel will be on sale during Black Friday for just $29.99. That's a massive $20 price cut on a game that was just released this week.

The entire GameStop Black Friday PC game sales list, as provided by bfads.net, is as follows. Keep in mind that GameStop's stores open at 6 am on that day and the sales are for just two days only.

Guild Wars Trilogy - $24.99
Left 4 Dead 2 PC - $29.99
World of Warcraft - $4.99
World of Warcraft Battle Chest - $19.99
The Sims 3 World Adventures - $29.99

The largest game retailer in the US, GameStop, reported its latest financial results today and they are mostly on the higher side. For its third fiscal quarter that ended on October 31, the retailer had $1.83 billion in revenues, up from $1.70 billion from the same period a year ago. Profits were $52.2 million, up from $46.7 million from the same period a year ago.

Of course those numbers don't include game sales from this month where some of the biggest releases of the year like Dragon Age Origins, Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 will surely increase sales even more at the retailer. Indeed GameStop states in its press release, " . . . we expect a solid fourth quarter in sales and earnings." We would think so, too.

Last May, a study by the Jon Peddie Research group predicted that the PC gaming hardware market would suffer a 7 percent drop in 2009 due in part to the effects of the current worldwide economic recession. Now the same group is announcing that new research shows the market will actually grow this year to $21.26 billion, up 5.6 percent from 2008.

The reversal is due to what the study shows is a "higher than anticipated consumer demand for Enthusiast, Performance, and Mainstream hardware." In addition, the study claims that 2010 will see a massive surge in this category to $27.617 billion, up 30 percent from this year's predicted numbers.

Most people think of Stardock mainly as a game developer of titles like Galactic Civilizations II and the upcoming Elemental but the truth is that the company has its hands full in several areas including third party publishing of games, developing non-gaming Windows applications like Object Desktop and the Impulse PC game download service. Today Stardock issued its 2009 customer report which gives an overview of what the company has done in the past 12 months.

The report is brutally honest with the fact that the launch of Stardock's big 2009 game, Demigod (developed by Gas Powered Games) did not go as well as anticipated due to multiplayer networking issues. The report does say that despite the launch issues, Demigod "continues to sell thousands of copies weekly."

The report goes over a number of the company's other issues such as future updates to their Impulse service (which include adding pre-loading of games), how weekend sales reductions have reduced the overall cost of PC games to consumers and lots more.

Recently one of the biggest Australian-based game developers, Transmission Games, shut its doors completely even after releasing two major game titles in 2009. Now comes word that another dev studio from Down Under is facing layoffs as well. IndustryGamers reports that Krome Studios has admitted to "an undisclosed number of employees" being given their walking papers.

Krome Studios also just had a major game released for publisher LucasArts, Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes. However that wasn't enough for the company to avoid a restructuring that caused Krome to lay off some workers. All is not lost, though. Krome's CEO Robert Walsh.states the team is "actively pursuing several business opportunities which, if secured, will enable Krome to reemploy some of the staff given notice."

Like it or not, Spike TV's annual telecast of the Video Game Awards is the highest profile award ceremony that the games industry has. Today the cable TV network revealed the nominees for the 2009 edition of the awards with the winners, as voted by the fans on the show's official web site, to be named as part of their live ceremony on Saturday, December 12.

The "Best PC Game" category has four choices this year; EA's people sim sequel The Sims 3, BioWare's RPG Dragon Age: Origins, Valve's zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 and . . . Popcap's casual tower defense game Plants vs Zombies which we think is a good if somewhat out of the box choice. Left 4 Dead 2 is also one of the nominees for Game of the Year along with other games released for the PC like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Modern Warfare 2. Assassin's Creed 2 was also nominated in that category but won't be released for the PC until 2010. You can check out all the nominees in the various categories and vote for your picks now (and by the way, we were scratching our heads about Borderlands being put into the "Best RPG" category, too).

You might think that big temporary price cuts on games via download services could hurt revenues when they go back up to their regular prices. However, Valve has some evidence that the reverse is actually true and that temporary price cuts on games could serve to actually improve revenues in the long run.

Gamasutra reports that during a speech at the Montreal International Game Summit, Valve's director of business development Jason Holtman stated that, "in a connected market, you can shift prices up and down, and people don't care." As evidence he cited the quick two hour sale they held last month for the multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 via Steam, which got its price cut down to just $2.49. Sales went way up during those brief time periods, they also stayed at higher levels after it was over.

Furthermore, retail sales for games are unaffected with the digital download prices. Holtman states that there was a price cut on Steam for Left 4 Dead back in February and, "retail [sales] were unaffected."

Rumors that the upcoming Command and Conquer 4 game might actually be the last in the series seem to be unfounded. However the next game in the RTS franchise might not be released in stores. Gamasutra reports they have obtained an internal memo from Electronic Arts stating they have hired Jon Van Caneghem to lead the C&C team with "a new digital model that is going to re-ignite the fan base for this franchise."

That likely means that EA is looking to create either a downloadable game that isn't sold in stores or perhaps a free-to-play model that's similar to their work on Battlefield Heroes. Jon Van Caneghem is best known for creating the Might and Magic RPG franchise. He was also the co-founder of the MMO developer Trion World Network but left under somewhat mysterious circumstances earlier this year.

Electronic Arts' current restructuring, announced during their financial results last week, is going to cause the shutdown of Pandemic Studios. Gamasutra reports they have gotten a hold of an internal EA memo with the details. Under their plan, the founders of Pandemic (Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman and Greg Borrud) will leave EA with 200 other Pandemic team members. The remainder of the Pandemic team will be moving to EA's Los Angeles studios. The Pandemic brand name will apparently continue and new games based on previous Pandemic franchises are in the works.

Pandemic, centered in Santa Monica, California, was formed in 1998 and started out as a PC only game developer, working on games like Dark Reign II and Battlezone II for Activision. In 2000 they opened an office in Australia. Over the years they created a ton of titles including Mercenaries and its sequel, Full Spectrum Warrior, the first two Star Wars Battlefront games and more. In 2005 Pandemic merged with BioWare to form one big independent game developer. In 2007 BioWare-Pandemic was bought by EA for over $600 million. Pandemic's last game as a separate studio will be The Saboteur due for release on December 8.

MMO game developer Funcom continues to have financial problems as shown in their latest economic press release today. The company announced that it had a loss of $9.6 million for the quarter that ended on September 30 compared to a profit of $3.3 million last year. Revenues were down to just $5.7 million for the quarter which is a nearly 69 percent decrease from the same period a year ago.

Nearly two months ago, Funcom cut their work force by 20 percent and announced a delay in the release of their next major MMO project The Secret World. Today they announced that their first free-to-play casual MMO, Pets Vs Monsters, would go into beta testing in December with an official launch in 2010. They also stated that their first major commercial expansion for Age of Conan would launch in the first half of 2010.

Small game publisher Southpeak Interactive seems to be doing well. It's latest financial numbers for the quarter that ended on September 30 showed that revenues were $16.7 million compared to $8.3 million for the same period a year ago. The company recorded a net profit of $1.3 million compared to a loss of, oddly enough, $1.3 million for the same period a year ago.

Southpeak's big PC game for the time period of its last quarter was Section 8, the last game from the now former line-up from publisher Gamecock that Southpeak acquired last year. At the moment the only upcoming PC game that's been announced from the publisher is the third person action title Edge of Twilight.