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Available now until November 8th, Valve’s free Second Annual Scream Fortress update treats gamers to a monster-sized grab bag of Halloween content including the new Mann Manor map, randomly dropped Haunted Halloween Gifts, four new ‘scarechievements’ and Team Fortress’ first boss monster, Horseless Headless Horsemann… …

Available now until November 8th, Valve’s free Second Annual Scream Fortress update treats gamers to a monster-sized grab bag of Halloween content including the new Mann Manor map, randomly dropped Haunted Halloween Gifts, four new ‘scarechievements’ and Team Fortress’ first boss monster, Horseless Headless Horsemann… …

Futuresource Consulting projections indicate smartphone growth, microtransactions will fuel explosive growth over next four years.

For gamers interested in the gaming landscape in the year 2014, the past couple of weeks have been productive. Last week, market research firm Screen Digest predicted streaming game services would slowly ramp up to become a $400 million industry by 2014. By that same year, Futuresource Consulting believes the mobile gaming market will have reached $10 billion, the firm said this week.

The iPhone gaming landscape looks fertile.

According to Futuresource’s report, Apple’s App Store will continue to be a major player driving growth in the mobile gaming sector. In 2010, the firm expects App Store sales to hit $1.7 billion in global revenue, a figure it says accounts for 30 percent of the total market. As for the remainder, Futuresource found that 60 percent of games were downloaded through “network operator stores,” while the remaining 10 percent came from other app stores, such as the Android market.

“There is no doubt that paid-for apps games are leading the gaming charge,” Futuresource mobile analyst Patrik Pfandler said. “Our forecasts show apps-based gaming will account for more than 95 percent of total mobile gaming revenues by 2014–that’s despite the glut of free apps games out there.”

Pfandler went on to note that apps gaming will continue to grow on the back of in-game payments as part of a free-to-play, microtransaction-based business model. “In the longer run, we’re going to see ad-funded apps games start to gain more traction as well,” he said.

One other driving factor for mobile game growth is the increased adoption of smartphones. According to Futuresource, smartphone ownership is expected to grow by 50 percent this year, topping 270 million units worldwide.

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Xbox 360 maker joins Nintendo in the doghouse of environmental organization’s assessment of electronics makers’ eco-friendliness.

Green may be the signature color of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, but the hardware manufacturer is drawing criticism for less-than-green business practices. In the latest Guide to Greener Electronics from environmentalist organization Greenpeace, Microsoft saw its approval ratings from the group slide, putting it within striking distance of Nintendo for the least green electronics maker in the guide. The Wii maker has held a viselike grip on the quarterly report’s bottom spot since it was first added to the list in November of 2007.

Possibly the worst review scores Nintendo and Microsoft get all year.

In Greenpeace’s latest Guide to Greener Electronics, Microsoft scored a 1.9 out of 10, down from the 3.3 rating it received in May’s report. That puts it just a fraction ahead of Nintendo’s 1.8 rating. The group said Microsoft had actually scored a 2.9 but was penalized a point for backing out of a commitment to ending its use of hazardous chemicals like vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants in its products by the end of the year.

However, Microsoft did win some points with Greenpeace for a variety of activities, earning three “partially good” assessments in the report’s 15 different categories, including chemical management, reporting its carbon footprint, and drawing nearly a quarter of its electricity used from renewable sources. Nintendo scored only a single “partially good” assessment, in the area of chemical management.

The full report is downloadable directly from Greenpeace’s website.

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Two decades after the movie of the same name inflicted a collective migraine on moviegoers the world over, a Days of Thunder tie-in is heading exclusively to Xbox Live Arcade.

Days of Thunder: Arcade is being developed by Medal of Honor 2: Heroes studio Piranha Games.

The game will include support for 12-player online racing, a variety of different game modes and Michael Rooker will return to voice the character of Rowdy Burns. No Cruise though – he’s washing his hair.

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Market research firm Ipsos says Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 motion controller will top PlayStation Move due to uniqueness, believability.

Both analysts and Microsoft are under the impression that the Xbox 360’s new motion-sensing peripheral, Kinect, will be a hit this holiday season. For Microsoft, its confidence in the system selling some 3 million units before the end of year is almost expected, considering a New York Post report indicating the software giant plans to spend $500 million on marketing Kinect.

Research points to Kinect as being the “big winner” this holiday.

Industry research firms are getting behind Kinect as well. This week, global market research firm Ipsos proclaimed Kinect the “big game winner” in the US during the holiday season, after a poll measuring market potential for Microsoft’s system and Sony’s own new motion controller, Move.

Ipsos’ call is based on its assessment of market success, which is measured by purchase intent, price/value, uniqueness, and believability. According to its findings, Kinect boasts a market success score of 130 out of 200, while the PlayStation Move earned a 110.

The Xbox 360 add-on gained the majority of its ground in the uniqueness and believability metrics. Out of a five-point scale, Kinect scored a 3.6 in uniqueness (compared to 3.0 for the Move). Believability, which measures whether a consumer believes the device will actually work, stood at 44 percent for Kinect, compared to just 29 percent for the Move.

“Given a new usage experience, one might expect some level of skepticism among respondents for Kinect,” the firm said in a statement. “Surprisingly, though, Kinect excels on both uniqueness and believability versus other tech products in the Vantis database. PS Move is rather weak on both dimensions.”

Ipsos also found that Microsoft can exploit its advantage by keeping its marketing campaign focused on the idea of “no controller required” for Kinect. The firm found that when Microsoft promotes other features of Kinect, the system’s “buzz power” drops from the top 20 percentile to “below average.”

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Prototype for Microsoft’s shortly shipping, motion-sensing system did not come cheap; hardware now profitable at $150 each.

The Kinect goes on sale next Thursday, and the hype machine backing its launch is firing on all cylinders. Following last week’s appearance on Oprah, the Xbox 360’s motion-sensing system is now the subject of an in-depth article in the New York Times.

The first Kinect unit reportedly cost a whopping $30,000.

Besides lauding the device’s ability to allow players to control games without controllers, the piece also reveals some startling facts about Kinect. The camera-based system’s first prototype cost some $30,000 to build–200 times the retail price of the unit sold on its own. However, Microsoft claims that unlike the Xbox 360, the Kinect hardware will be profitable from day one at a retail price of $150 each.

The Times also reported that at its zenith, the Kinect program–then called Project Natal–had nearly 1,000 workers toiling away on it. Though officially unconfirmed, it is suspected that the device employs motion-sensing technology from 3DV systems, an Israeli startup Microsoft bought outright last year.

The Kinect debuts in stores on November 4. It can be bought solo or as part of a $300 bundle with the 4GB Xbox 360 or part of a $400 bundle with the 250GB model of the console, both of which also contain the game Kinect Adventures. It will have 12 games available at launch, including Kinect Sports, Kinectimals, Fighters Uncaged, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, and Sonic Free Riders. Five more games will be available by the end of November, with titles across numerous genres planned in the coming months.

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Rumored $50 price drop for Sony’s UMD-less portable becomes a reality, with retailers now listing handheld at lower price point.

This week, Sony announced that it was cutting the price of the PSP Go, at a press event in Tokyo covered by Reuters. Now, US retailers are listing the UMD-free handheld’s price as just $200, a $50 drop from its previous, and initial, cost.

The PSP Go: Now just $200.

The new price point makes the PSP Go just $30 more expensive than the PSP-3000, which does play UMD-based games. Launched in October 2009, the portable has also been discounted in Japan, where the price went from ¥26,800 ($328) to ¥16,800 ($206) as of Tuesday. The drop comes just two weeks after it was first rumored by a retailer leak from a US Armed Forces supply depot.

After being unveiled with great fanfare–and a colossal leak–at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the PSP Go has not been the runaway hit Sony hoped it would be. Though US sales figures for the handheld have never been released by the NPD Group, Japanese retail-tracking firm Media Create breaks out sales of the handheld each week. In almost every instance, the portable finishes dead last on the hardware chart, selling just 1,590 units in the island nation during the week of October 11-17, compared to 37,127 PSP-3000s.

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BioShock 2 developer 2K Games has gone back on its decision not to release the Protector Trials and Minerva’s Den DLC packs for PC, and is currently working to bring all content to the platform.

The studio explained the change of heart in a post on its forums. “When we announced that Protector Trials and Minerva’s Den would not be coming out for the PC due to technical and timing issues, we received a lot of feedback (much of it understandably expressing disappointment and anger) about our decision.”

“Over the past two weeks, we’ve decided to go back and finish the PC patch and Protector Trials. Currently, we are patching the final bugs in these two pieces of content and then will submit everything to certification.

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Publisher says fan outcry following cancellation of Protector Trials, Minerva’s Den, patch for Windows edition caused studio to change stance.

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