Brain Hood

U.S. retail video game hardware, software and accessories fell 10 percent last month, U.S. $ 995 million (1.18 billion dollars) over the same month last year.

The second consecutive month of decline in industry sales was due primarily to a list of mediocre game releases.

NPD Group market research, said in its monthly report yesterday that sales of video game hardware fell 9 percent to U.S. $ 366.6 million. These include portable game systems and game consoles like the Wii.

Software sales, the games themselves, fell 12 percent to U.S. $ 469.5 million. When including PC games, total sales of software fell 10 percent to U.S. $ 508.9million.

Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co., planned June sales disappoint, although he said several titles for hardcore gamers did worse than expected.

These include Duke Nukem Forever by Take-Two Interactive Software and Red Faction: Armageddon by THQ. Both the negative reviews hurt, he said.

Sales of game accessories, meanwhile, fell 11 percent to U.S. $ 158.9 million.

Month two best-selling game was LA Noire, which is also published by Take-Two, Sony and Duke Nukem Infamous seconds.

MWEB discusses an effort to boost online games offered by your Internet service.

MWEB has been stirring things in the local Internet market in the last year. They were the first to bring affordable broadband service cuts back in March 2010, and recently (November 2010), they made a stand at the high costs of local transit in South Africa rather be free and open peering agreements.

Despite protests that have sprung up around this feature has now got MWEB offers open and peering between most major carriers, including Internet Solutions, MTN and Vodacom Business. Only Telkom Saix network has yet to yield to pressure peering MWEB.

The peering war of November 2010 was a time of uncertainty for gamers, with MWEB customers wondering how their latencies would be affected.

Now that peering agreements have been struck between three of the four major network providers, the MWEB ISP gaming division looks to be turning their sights to bolstering their service appeal for the gaming community; likely an attempt to convert this important segment of the market to their Internet service.

MWEB has recently advertised a position for an ‘Online Gaming Manager’ giving us a hint as to their plans. Some key elements of the job speak of a new ‘MWEB gaming strategy and the implementation thereof,’ ‘content implementation for MWEB gaming sites (web and mobile),’ and mention of ‘gaming products and services.’

Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP, discussed how MWEB will be expanding into the online gaming space.

“We’ve definitely identified online gaming as a key part of our strategy going forward, with a focus on MMOG [(massive multiplayer online gaming)] rather than casual gaming.  And now that we have a much bigger portion of the end-to-end access layer under our own control, we’re in a better position to manage and support the customer experience,” said Hershaw.

The end-to-end access layer speaks of the equipment used to transmit data traffic. With this section of a network under their control, MWEB can reduce third party costs and interferences.

Hershaw discussed some of the steps that MWEB has taken to bolster their online gaming service offering.

“The launch of affordable Uncapped ADSL has and will continue to play a significant role,” said Hershaw. This is indeed true, as an uncapped connection opens up a world of fixed cost opportunities for both PC and console gamers.

“The fact that [MWEB now has] a 2-node IPC network [(Cape Town and Johannesburg)] has also helped tremendously in terms of reducing latency (the closer the aggregation points are to the customer the better),” explained Hershaw. Previously, Cape Town based MWEB users would have to make a data round-trip to Johannesburg and back. The implementation of an IPC node in Cape Town has improved the latency for Cape Town users.

“We are hosting (exclusively) COD Black Ops in our CT and JHB data centres, and we plan to add even more titles in the very near future. We have just deployed our own Steam servers in CT and JHB,” said Hershaw.

The addition of Steam content mirrors to the MWEB network is great news for those using MWEB ISP, as this means that Steam data content will be served from a local source, reducing download and response times. It will also reduce the costs incurred by MWEB for traffic utilised on international undersea cables, hopefully reducing service costs to the end-user in the long run.

When asked about the possibility for gamer specific products which may feature services such as prioritised gaming traffic, Hershaw said: “I think that if we can continue to bring popular titles onto our own network – hosted locally – then we won’t need to look at traffic prioritisation and gamer specific products. Our standard uncapped ADSL products will give our customers a great experience – that’s what we want to achieve.”

Speaking of plans to overhaul the current MWEB Gamezone portal Hershaw said: “We have plans in place to overhaul the site. Not only in terms of gaming specific content but also the levels of engagement we have with our customers and that they have amongst themselves.”

“Gambling is a social experience and the site can’t escape that. It is not necessarily a big bang approach, but gradually in the coming months we will begin the introduction of new functions & services” Hershaw said.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
The fourth Red Faction. You are Darius Mason, grand-son of Alec Mason Red Faction: Guerrilla. Darius unconsciously triggers a threat to the planet Mars and the people must live in hiding. Now he must save humanity by defeating an attack by aliens, cult members.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT IT?
The Magnet Gun enables you to rip out parts of the wall and bring it down on top of people. It allows you to fling your enemies into the air. The Singularity Cannon lets you open up black holes, ripping stuff into them, and then blowing it back out. Real time and unscripted, everything breaks differently each time.

AND YOU CAN ALSO REPAIR ANYTHING YOU’VE DESTROYED?
The weapons you’re going to use will destroy stuff, but you can repair it. You can do that how you like. You can even use it defensively to keep rebuilding the walls so your enemies cannot get to you. Red Faction: Armageddon offers you opportunities in combat that you’re not going to see in many other games.

SO EACH PERSON WILL PLAY DIFFERENTLY?
When you use weapons that allow you to blow things apart, split in two buildings, ripping off chunks and put things in the piece, the symphony of all sounds a little different because of how they use these tools and which ones they are concentrated.