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Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey says Cold War-era shooter could generate $818 million; Sledgehammer pegged as Modern Warfare 3 developer; Tencent as COD Online partner in China.

For months, Call of Duty: Black Ops has been preordained as a best seller, with GameStop saying in October that it was
poised to break preorder records. Now analysts are beginning to weigh in on the game’s potential, with one professional prognosticator saying the game could nearly match sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Black Ops will be big…but not quite as big as Modern Warfare 2.

In a note sent out to analysts this morning, Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey said he believes that Black Ops could sell over 18 million units, generating $818 million. That’s less dollar-wise than the
$1 billion-plus generated by Modern Warfare 2 and 2 million units shy of the
20 million units the game had sold as of mid-June.

Hickey also had some predictions for two other Call of Duty products. He believes the first-person shooter confirmed for the latter half of 2011 yesterday will indeed be Modern Warfare 3. However, instead of
Infinity Ward developing the game, as it was as of May, Hickey believes that the project has been passed over to newly founded studio Sledgehammer Games. The Redwood City, California, shop had been billed as working on an action adventure spin-off of the Call of Duty series, but a job listing revealed in May that it was working on a first-person shooter.

The analyst also had some thoughts on Call of Duty Online, the massively multiplayer project being developed in Asia. He believes the game will launch next year and has the potential to generate $100 million during its first year alone.

He explained, “We’re beginning to favor [Chinese Internet portal] Tencent as the eventual operator of COD online in China considering their relative expertise running an item based sales model, game genre expertise (Crossfire operator), the successful regulatory navigating of genre specific concerns and the apparent callous attitude from Blizzard developers on working with Activision franchises, which we believe eliminates Call of Duty code development cooperating for Battle.net integration.”

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey says Cold War-era shooter could generate $818 million; Sledgehammer pegged as Modern Warfare 3 developer; Tencent as COD Online partner in China.

For months, Call of Duty: Black Ops has been preordained as a best seller, with GameStop saying in October that it was
poised to break preorder records. Now analysts are beginning to weigh in on the game’s potential, with one professional prognosticator saying the game could nearly match sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Black Ops will be big…but not quite as big as Modern Warfare 2.

In a note sent out to analysts this morning, Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey said he believes that Black Ops could sell over 18 million units, generating $818 million. That’s less dollar-wise than the
$1 billion-plus generated by Modern Warfare 2 and 2 million units shy of the
20 million units the game had sold as of mid-June.

Hickey also had some predictions for two other Call of Duty products. He believes the first-person shooter confirmed for the latter half of 2011 yesterday will indeed be Modern Warfare 3. However, instead of
Infinity Ward developing the game, as it was as of May, Hickey believes that the project has been passed over to newly founded studio Sledgehammer Games. The Redwood City, California, shop had been billed as working on an action adventure spin-off of the Call of Duty series, but a job listing revealed in May that it was working on a first-person shooter.

The analyst also had some thoughts on Call of Duty Online, the massively multiplayer project being developed in Asia. He believes the game will launch next year and has the potential to generate $100 million during its first year alone.

He explained, “We’re beginning to favor [Chinese Internet portal] Tencent as the eventual operator of COD online in China considering their relative expertise running an item based sales model, game genre expertise (Crossfire operator), the successful regulatory navigating of genre specific concerns and the apparent callous attitude from Blizzard developers on working with Activision franchises, which we believe eliminates Call of Duty code development cooperating for Battle.net integration.”

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

Second helping of Namco Bandai multiplayer monster hunting game tops a quarter million sold in first week; latest release of Winning Eleven, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Fable II also make top 10.

North American game retailers are being assaulted with high-profile new releases these days, and they’re not alone. According to research firm Media Create, new releases accounted for five of the 10 best-selling games in Japan for the week of October 25-31. The week before, debuts took up six spots on the charts.

It seems Japanese gamers have a sweet tooth for divinity.

The biggest release of the week was God Eater Burst, the second installment in Namco Bandai’s multiplayer action series for the PSP. The four-player monster hunting formula paid off for the publisher again. Just eight months after the original God Eater sold more than 295,000 in its debut week, Burst arrived to sales of 263,150 copies. Konami’s latest installment in the Winning Eleven series (Pro Evolution Soccer in North America) was a close second, as the PlayStation 3 edition of the multiplatform soccer sim sold 215,257.

Nintendo was well represented with releases both new and old. The previous week’s chart topper, Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii, led the charge with a third place finish, followed by DS role-playing games Pokemon Black and White and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn in fourth and fifth, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii in sixth. Wii Party, the latest of the console maker’s “evergreen” hits to take up long-term residence on the sales charts, finished in 10th place.

Microsoft also scored a rare top 10 finish for the week. Lionhead’s latest, Fable III, sold 20,025 copies at launch, good enough for the Xbox 360-exclusive action adventure game to secure eighth place.

The hardware race was reshuffled a bit this week, as sales were up almost across the board. Only the aged DS Lite saw its unit sales slip, while its successor, the DSi, more than doubled its numbers week-over-week. The DSi’s 32,2137 units sold was good enough for second place, as the PSP continued its strong run in Japan with another 38,874 sold. The Sony portable’s UMD-less cousin, the PSP Go, saw the largest sales spike for the week in terms of percentage, as it more than tripled the previous week’s sub-1,000 performance to finish with 3,031 units sold. While not exactly a chart topper, it was still good enough to get the system out of the sales chart cellar and ahead of both the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox 360.

JAPAN GAME SALES WEEK OF OCTOBER 25-31, 2010
Software:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Platform / Unit sales
1. God Eater Burst / Namco Bandai / PSP / 263,150
2. World Soccer Winning Eleven 2011 / Konami / PS3 / 215,257
3. Super Mario All-Stars / Nintendo / Wii / 119,485
4. Pokemon Black and White / The Pokemon Company / DS / 68,686
5. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn / Nintendo / DS / 46,516
6. Kirby’s Epic Yarn / Nintendo / Wii / 25,257
7. Solatorobo: Sore kara Coda e / Namco Bandai / DS / 21,915
8. Fable III / Microsoft / 360 / 20,025
9. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 / Namco Bandai / PS3 / 19,090
10. Wii Party / Nintendo / Wii / 17,337

Hardware:
PSP – 38,874
DSi LL – 32,137
PS3 – 28,255
DSi – 23,614
Wii – 12,710
DS Lite – 3,375
PSP Go – 3,031
Xbox 360 – 2,669
PS2 – 1,400

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

Second helping of Namco Bandai multiplayer monster hunting game tops a quarter million sold in first week; latest release of Winning Eleven, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Fable II also make top 10.

North American game retailers are being assaulted with high-profile new releases these days, and they’re not alone. According to research firm Media Create, new releases accounted for five of the 10 best-selling games in Japan for the week of October 25-31. The week before, debuts took up six spots on the charts.

It seems Japanese gamers have a sweet tooth for divinity.

The biggest release of the week was God Eater Burst, the second installment in Namco Bandai’s multiplayer action series for the PSP. The four-player monster hunting formula paid off for the publisher again. Just eight months after the original God Eater sold more than 295,000 in its debut week, Burst arrived to sales of 263,150 copies. Konami’s latest installment in the Winning Eleven series (Pro Evolution Soccer in North America) was a close second, as the PlayStation 3 edition of the multiplatform soccer sim sold 215,257.

Nintendo was well represented with releases both new and old. The previous week’s chart topper, Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii, led the charge with a third place finish, followed by DS role-playing games Pokemon Black and White and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn in fourth and fifth, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii in sixth. Wii Party, the latest of the console maker’s “evergreen” hits to take up long-term residence on the sales charts, finished in 10th place.

Microsoft also scored a rare top 10 finish for the week. Lionhead’s latest, Fable III, sold 20,025 copies at launch, good enough for the Xbox 360-exclusive action adventure game to secure eighth place.

The hardware race was reshuffled a bit this week, as sales were up almost across the board. Only the aged DS Lite saw its unit sales slip, while its successor, the DSi, more than doubled its numbers week-over-week. The DSi’s 32,2137 units sold was good enough for second place, as the PSP continued its strong run in Japan with another 38,874 sold. The Sony portable’s UMD-less cousin, the PSP Go, saw the largest sales spike for the week in terms of percentage, as it more than tripled the previous week’s sub-1,000 performance to finish with 3,031 units sold. While not exactly a chart topper, it was still good enough to get the system out of the sales chart cellar and ahead of both the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox 360.

JAPAN GAME SALES WEEK OF OCTOBER 25-31, 2010
Software:
Rank / Title / Publisher / Platform / Unit sales
1. God Eater Burst / Namco Bandai / PSP / 263,150
2. World Soccer Winning Eleven 2011 / Konami / PS3 / 215,257
3. Super Mario All-Stars / Nintendo / Wii / 119,485
4. Pokemon Black and White / The Pokemon Company / DS / 68,686
5. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn / Nintendo / DS / 46,516
6. Kirby’s Epic Yarn / Nintendo / Wii / 25,257
7. Solatorobo: Sore kara Coda e / Namco Bandai / DS / 21,915
8. Fable III / Microsoft / 360 / 20,025
9. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 / Namco Bandai / PS3 / 19,090
10. Wii Party / Nintendo / Wii / 17,337

Hardware:
PSP – 38,874
DSi LL – 32,137
PS3 – 28,255
DSi – 23,614
Wii – 12,710
DS Lite – 3,375
PSP Go – 3,031
Xbox 360 – 2,669
PS2 – 1,400

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Codemasters Guildford GM Adrian Bolton follows creative lead Stuart Black out the door as “techno-thriller” shooter pushed to early summer.

Codemasters generated a measure of excitement in May, when it announced that it had signed on Stuart Black, of Black fame, to create the destruction-heavy shooter Bodycount. However, much has changed since that initial announcement. In October, Black reportedly left Codemasters, and now the studio has apparently suffered another high-profile departure along with a delay for Bodycount.

Bodycount is racking up a few takedowns among Codemasters’ management.

Eurogamer reports today that Codemasters Guildford general manager Adrian Bolton has exited the company. In the same breath, Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens has told Eurogamer that Bodycount has been pushed beyond its scheduled spring 2011 release window to an early summer release. The game is expected to arrive on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

“[Bolton]’s left, but I don’t think the company centers around one person,” Cousens told Eurogamer. “If I left, I don’t think the company falls over. Someone will fill the void. I don’t see it as any threat to either the well-being of the product, the well-being of the studio or the well-being of the company. I don’t think it’s life threatening.”

“Companies are a team, and there is a team of people down there–70 or 80 people working on that game–and that game will come out and do just fine,” he continued.

Based on the same proprietary EGO engine as the Dirt racing games and Operation Flashpoint, Bodycount will be a “glossy techno-thriller.” According to Codemasters, the game will see players take the role of a commando who kills foes known only as “targets” for a shadowy organization called simply “the Network.” The game will also feature a heavy focus on destructible environments, as Black did.

Codemasters had not returned GameSpot’s request for comment as of press time. For more on the game, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.

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With the release of the 3DS imminent, you’d imagine the old DS model was staring down a bleak future. Not so, insists Nintendo.

CEO Satoru Iwata has told investors that Nintendo plans to localise previously Japan-only games as a way of keeping up a flow of new content for the handheld.

“If we should use too many of our development resources in order to maintain the Nintendo DS market, we would not be able to realise a sound launch for Nintendo 3DS,” he explained.

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GAME and gamestation will be selling Call of Duty: Black Ops for just £24.99 until 14th November.

The catch? You’ll have to buy another PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 chart title at the same time.

That’s not the only deal the two retailers – both owned by The GAME Group – have in store. At GAME, customers can buy Black Ops for half price when trading in selected titles. In gamestation, customers will get an extra £5 off the price when trading in any two games.

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Publisher shows $344 million improvement to bottom line as Despicable Me, Dead to Rights: Retribution bolster game sales.

Despicable Me may have been centered on an unlikable protagonist, but Namco Bandai is likely quite partial to the animated film. The company has released its financial results for the six months ended September 30, showing the game based on the film and released in conjunction with D3Publisher was Namco Bandai’s best-selling new release of the year.

The stars of Despicable Me train to challenge Tekken 6 for Namco supremacy.

Despicable Me has moved 390,000 copies for Namco Bandai to date, putting it just ahead of one of the publisher’s owned intellectual properties, Dead to Rights: Retribution. The revival of the cop-and-canine action franchise sold 350,000 copies in the US and Europe through September.

The publisher also saw a strong debut from Another Century’s Episode R, a Japanese PlayStation 3-exclusive mech combat game by From Software, makers of the Armored Core series. Last year’s Tekken 6 remains Namco Bandai’s best seller for the current campaign, though its sales for the year haven’t grown significantly from the 1.07 million the publisher reported in August.

Namco Bandai net sales for the first half of its fiscal year were ¥173.60 billion ($2.13 billion), up half a percent from the same period the previous year. The largest portion of the company’s sales came from its Toys and Hobby business segment, which brought in ¥72.22 billion ($888 million), edging out the Content division’s ¥71,45 billion ($879 million) in sales. (Content comprises Namco Bandai’s home gaming business, as well as its video and music operations.)

While the publisher’s two largest business segments were neck and neck in terms of sales, there was a greater disparity when it came to profitability. Fueled by sales of Masked Rider and Mobile Suit Gundam merchandise, the Toys and Hobby division posted an operating income of ¥7.07 billion ($87 million), whereas the gaming segment suffered an operating loss of ¥2.6 billion ($32 million).

Company-wide, Namco Bandai posted a net loss of ¥1.93 billion ($24 million). While still in the red, it represents a significant improvement over the first half of the previous year, when Namco Bandai suffered a net loss of ¥6.04 billion ($74 million).

For the full year, Namco Bandai expects ¥400 billion ($4.92 billion) in sales, up 5.7 percent year-over-year. The publisher also hopes to turn a modest profit of ¥1.8 billion ($22 million), a significant improvement on the ¥29.93 billion ($368 million) net loss it posted for the year ended March 31, 2010.

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Publisher sees April-Sept. revenues sink 25% to $836 million, as profit falls 36% to $21 million; DQ Monsters: Joker 2, Kane & Lynch 2 sell 1 million.

Square Enix provided investors and analysts fair warning of its rocky April-September quarter earlier this week, when it revised its revenue projections for the period downward by 10 percent. True enough, the Japanese publisher has now released its official financial report for the sixth-month period, and it reflects a steep decline from the same period a year ago.

Kane & Lynch know how to make a million.

For the first six months of its in-progress fiscal year, Square Enix reported sales of ¥68.05 billion ($836 million), down 25 percent from the same period a year ago and in line with its revised forecast. The publisher’s profit revision also accurately pegged its actual net income for the fiscal half-year, coming in at ¥1.72 billion ($21 million), a 36 percent year-over-year decrease.

As Square Enix said earlier this week, the cause for the earnings declines was anemic receptions of some of its new releases. Square Enix released a handful of high-profile titles during the period. Included among these were Front Mission Evolved, as well as Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

The publisher today noted that two of its new releases passed the million-unit milestone: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, which released in Japan in April, and August’s Kane & Lynch 2. All said, the home gaming segment pulled in revenues of ¥35.18 billion ($432 million), with operating income tallying ¥6.48 billion ($79.7 million).

The publisher expressed disappointment over its arcade business in Japan, which the publisher said “remained at unsatisfactory levels under the current difficult market conditions.” Net sales for its amusement business totaled ¥23.54 billion ($289 million) for the April-September period, as operating income came in at ¥1.98 billion ($24.3 million).

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According to Japanese social and gaming giant DeNA’s third quarter results.

Japanese social and mobile giant DeNA has reported its fiscal 2010 third quarter results, posting revenues of $336 million. The company, which acquired developer Ngmoco for $403 million last month, forecasted total revenues of $1.25 billion for the year.

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