Nintendo Wii

It's been a good year for Ubisoft, who enjoyed good sales numbers for the first quarter of 2008. Jacked up with previous multiplatform releases such as Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360, PS3, PC), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC), and Rayman Raving Rabbids, Ubisoft managed to garner a healthy 26 growth to 169 million Euros (around US 265 million).

Ubisoft's Games for Everyone brand has also played a major role in its success. The brand includes titles such as Petz, Imagine, and the My Coach series of games. My Weight Loss Coach, for one, got off to a promising start according to its latest press wire.

For the second quarter of fiscal year 2008-2009, gamers can expect the following releases:

• Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (PC, PS3 and Xbox 360)
• Soul Calibur 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)
• More casual games for the Nintendo platforms Wii and DS

How about Splinter Cell: Conviction (Windows, Xbox 360), you ask? It's confirmed to be pushed back to a fiscal 2009-2010 release, quite a few paces behind the previously announced fourth quarter of 2008-2009. Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot explained the reason for the setback:

Splinter Cell is a very important franchise for Ubisoft and we have high anticipation for this game. It is a major product and we want it to be able to catch all the gameplay opportunities it is offering to us today. There are lots of opportunities that we want to take and so that is why we can give [them] a little bit more time to make sure it can become a huge product

As long as it means that the game will turn out to be good, then it's better to just grin and bear with the delay. More updates to come.

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GamePolitics brings word of even more potential game legislation today. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) introduced a bill to the US Senate yesterday that would, to quote the bill,

...prohibit the distribution or sale of video games that do not have age-based content rating labels [and] prohibit the sale or rental of video games with adult content ratings to minors...

The text of the legislation isn't out yet, however, so the details are still somewhat sketchy. That said, the bill currently has no sponsors and has been referred to the Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

If you will remember, a couple of days back another important piece of videogame legislation was signed in New York. One of the law's mandates was that "games sold at retail disclose the ratings obtained from the gaming industry's voluntary rating system." Such a law could provide a legal precedent for part of the legislation mentioned above.

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Alex St. John, the CEO of online video game company WildTangent (Sea Life Safari, Blasterball 2 and 3), has predicted at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle that consoles will be "extinct" by 2020.

He said that "the PS3, the Wii and the X-box are the last generation of consoles that you either see or that anybody regards as successful in the market."

Before you start bashing him for his observation, it might be good to know why he feels this way. He pointed out that the shareholders of both Microsoft and Sony will no longer be amicable to the huge investments made when creating proprietary video game consoles. He added that people will want to be play video games in other places aside from the living room.

He then proceeded to comment on why big game console makers will face big challenges in transitioning to a market where people want to purchase, create and play games online:

Everything they know how to do is wrong. They start in a well. They think that brand matters. They think that their marketing expertise matters. They think that a pile of art work and a box matters. They have got a bunch of people paid huge salaries with years of expertise who would never dream of firing themselves because they have got the wrong domain expertise. And so Disney, for example, would never have funded the $200 million project to build Club Penguin, but boy they paid $700 million like little b to buy it after it hit the market. ...

So the weird thing is that the expertise and the skill set to create these games -- they are not really rocket science to make -- it is just an entirely new mentality. The big budgets and the money and all the stuff these companies have that are entrenched are not an advantage, they are an encumbrance.

As for the Wii's success, St. John pointed out that the only reason it met with success is the fact that it had a different controller. A trend, he pointed out, that is similar to what happened in Arcades. He then proceeded to say that the console business is "starting to behave like that dead arcade business."

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A number of details regarding Wii Music was revealed at this year's E3. Apparently, this sudden influx of information set the rumor mill going. Some rumors have been circulating that the game will be released in Japan on October 16.

Well, that rumor has just been debunked, kinda.

In a conversation with website videogaming247, Nintendo has commented on this launch date, saying it is "purely rumor and speculation." Ok, so at the moment it is purely rumor and speculation, but they didn't outright deny the fact that it may come out on the rumored date.

Oh well, It seems like Nintendo still isn't ready to come out with a launch date for Wii Music yet so we'll just have to wait a bit.

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Related Links:

• E3 2008: Wii Music playing in time for holidays: new screenshots, details
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