Game Intelligence for Tuesday, June 3rd

Today: Ninja Gaiden 2 director quits, PS3 hungrier than a fridge, online sales about to beat retail, weak dollar throttles US Wii Fit sales, PS3 40GB backward compatibility coming.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Director Quits

It seems the ever excitable Tomonobu Itagaki has resigned from Japanese publisher/developer Tecmo, and let's just say the parting appears not to have been very sweet (and plenty sorrowful). Itagaki's PR team was first off the ropes, swinging with news Itagaki had filed a complaint in the Tokyo District Court against Tecmo president Yoshimi Yasuda for "such unlawful acts as unreasonable and disingenuous statements made towards me." Damages claimed? 148 million yen or around $1.42 million USD. What, Yasuda couldn't handle the camera either?

PS3 Hungier Than a Fridge?

According to a study conducted by the Australian consumer group Choice, video game consoles like the Playstation 3 consume five times more energy than a medium sized refrigerator. Cost to power the latter? $50 a year. Cost to power your PS3 even if it's not in use but turned on? Try $250 a year. Yikes.

Online Sales About to Beat Retail?

So said Valve's president Gabe Newell at a conference in Bellevue, Washington, claiming that while the company's traditional retail sales were below 10%, online growth was stratospherically higher at close to 200%. "There have been a bunch of stories written recently, both by the gaming press and the industry business press that PC gaming is dead," said Newell. "There's a perception problem. A lot of the stories written recently aren't what's actually happening."

Perhaps, but these kinds of claims and intimations wrapped in vague percentiles are so much sound and fury until someone independently gets their hands around comprehensive online sales and subscription numbers. And I don't think we'd be hearing luminaries like Peter Molyneux decrying the demise of traditional PC gaming if there wasn't something more than just an online switcheroo going on.

Weak Dollar Throttles U.S. Wii Fit Sales

Trouble finding a copy of Wii Fit lately? Could it be because Nintendo shipped a trifling 500,000 copies to North America and saved its main stash -- some 2 million units -- for higher-paying Euro-gamers? A single USD is currently worth roughly two-third of one EUR.

PS3 40GB Backward Compatibility Coming?

Landing courtesy a free firmware flash for your 40GB PS3 this October, reports German games site InPlayStation.de after speaking to a German Sony importer. Sony hinted in February that it might offer downloadable PS2 games through its PlayStation Network, a feature that would dovetail perfectly with the long overdue compatibility update.

The original German link. The Google translated version.

Re-Play

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