It's getting close to christmas, and the games are coming out of the woodwork - it's a shame that the publishers can't keep up this sort of release schedule all year - then perhaps there wouldn't be a sales slump mid year and a great clamouring for limited funds over christmas.

Anyway moving on, the big titles this week are Worms 3D, The Simpsons Hit & Run and an unexpected title from David Braben (he of Elite fame), Dog's Life for the PS2.

Dog's Life is certainly a game I am looking forward to playing, and I'll give The Simpson's a run around just to see what it's like.

GBA
Sim City 2000, Sonic Pinball Party, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon

GC
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Bionicle, Bratz Party Night, Celebrity Deathmatch, F-Zero GX, SSX 3, The Simpsons Hit & Run, Urban Freestyle Soccer, Worms 3D

PC
Bionicle, Celebrity Deathmatch, Fame Academy, Ford Racing Evolution, Ghost Master Collector's Edition, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, March! Off World Recon, Massive Assault, Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, Railroad Tycoon 3, Silent Hill 3, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, The Sims Makin' Magic, Urban Freestyle Soccer, Vietcong Fist Alpha, Warcraft III Battlechest, Worms 3D

PS1
Blockids, Celebrity Deathmatch, Gekioh, Turnabout

PS2
Bratz Party Night, Celebrity Deathmatch, Dog's Life, Fame Academy, Ford Racing Evolution, Gadget Racers, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup, My Street, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, SSX 3, The Simpsons Hit & Run, Time Crisis 3, Urban Freestyle Soccer, Worms 3D

Xbox
Celebrity Deathmatch, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Dead or Alive Online, Ford Racing Evolution, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, Next Generation Tennis 2003, Outlaw Volleyball, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, SSX 3, The Simpsons Hit & Run, Urban Freestyle Soccer, Worms 3D

(article by Media Create)

Total sales for the TOP 100 this week amounts to some 675,000 units. The software market has turned into positive growth in 4 weeks thanks to many releases such as "Naruto: Narutimate Hero" (approx. 136,000 units) and "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" (about 79,000 units). However, the market is still in the midst of a slow season, the weekly average remained to be low at 79.23%.

There were 20 new releases made it into the rankings this week. The share of new releases is quite high at 58.09% this week due to the solid line-ups. Though individual titles posted relatively small number of sales, a sheer number of new releases have boosted the market performance this week.

(posted in the Star Wars Galaxies forums on 28/10/2003)

I read Thunderhearts post about reduced customer support with interest, and whilst I respect the need to protect people from wildfires (having lived in a city that was regular threatened with engulfment on an almost yearly basis I know the feeling) I am still confused as to why - especially in this day and age - customer support for an online game has to be run from a central location.

It can't be to save money, can it? Surely not. After all, you have (1) premises rental (2) facilities rental (3) light (4) power (5) heat (6) amenities (7) equipment (8)support staff - and that's all before you hire your first CSR. I figure (and I did - I put forward a formalised quote to provide 24x7x365 support for another MMO game recently - by having a centralised support office I *increased* my base costs by something like 20% per employee, as well as having a huge initial capital layout with no hope of a return on that investment except by reducing support staff to save money - which is counterproductive) that I can provide the same level of support to *any* MMO game in existence for less money than it currently costs.

For example, I can provide the same level of forum moderation as currently enjoyed on playstation.com for 5 times less than Sony are currently paying - I know how much it would cost me to provide the same level of support for one year, and I know how much Sony are currently paying.

So really what I don't get is why there's a reduced amount of customer support because of a forest fire - aren't all the people providing support to your online game working online? Surely they're not providing online support from a central office. I bet they work 9-5, monday to friday as well?

I'd really like to understand where the economic or business sense is in running support for an online game the same way you would for an offline game.

It's not hard to run a large game community purely online - I've personally dealt with much larger contiguous communities of much more vocal people in my time, and never EVER from a central office.

I work voluntarily now supporting more than 200,000 people online *concurrently in the same interaction space* (ie not spread over several servers/world - every single one of the 200,000 people can speak to any other one of the people) with 50 other people - and I've only ever met 20 of them at one time or another. It works, and it works well. the growth - documented by an external, unaffiliated site - has been literally exponential in the last 12 to 18 months.

And I've designed and run game service providers - you know, those places you go play CS and Quake 3 and have organised competitions adn websites and prizes for money - 150,000 paying customers supported by 8 people working from home, so well that the vast majority hung around and kept using the service even after the support contract ended and we all stopped providing the support.

It's not hard, it's very cheap - and it makes a mockery of the service you're providing at the moment.

As a professional community manager I am absolutely gobsmacked by the total and utter disregard and outright contempt that is displayed by most of the customer support staff in this game when speaking to and dealing with paying customers, both in-game and through the unconnected other support channels, and how little communication there actually is between the people working on developing the game and supporting the players, and the actual people who pay a monthly fee to access the service.

Customer support is quite frankly a joke in SWG. It *can* be fixed - but there needs to be a will, and there needs to be some effort put in to it by SONY, not by the SWG dev team, not by the SWG support team - but by the company that owns the IP - there needs to be a will to provide customer support - otherwise there will be no desire on the part of the customer support management to actually provide even a basic level of support.

What we see with the cut'n'paste responses is an attempt to "improve customer support" by improving numbers of "tickets responded to" rather than by increasing numbers of "tickets resovled". It's also indicative of a support system in serious crisis, with too few people interested in devoting the time and effort to solving problems, finally resorting to desperate attempts to whitewash over the cracks - the recent total wipe of all outstanding tickets proves this quite conclusively.

I see no improvement in the situation - if anything I see a gradual degradation of customer support across the board with this game. It really does make me question the commercial sense of the people running the game - if you alienate your players, you alienate your customer base - which is your monthly forecast income.

Digital Jesters have let another 6 brand new screenshots from their upcoming game TrackMania slip out into the wild. The screenshots show off some new track items not seen in the recently released demo, including a complete loop and half-pipe style banked curve.

The game is due for release on November 28^th.

With Christmas round the corner (no really it is, check your calender) the usual rush to release as many games as possible has begun. This in turn means a different best seller practically every week from now till the jolly fat man in the red suit visits.

One of the major battle has been won already as FIFA 2004 has replaced Pro Evolution Soccer 3 at the top of this weeks UK top ten. (Once again borrowed shamelessly from Games Press!)

Sony have today announce that the Eye-toy has reached one million sales in Europe. Unfortunately this does mean that at any one time there could be one million europeans waving their arms wildly in front of the tv.

Not sure what the Eye-Toy is? or just want to read more? then head on over to the eye-toy website

We've been sent the text of an interview with Naoki Eguchi, European Operations Manager at Bandai Europe by Bandai's PR agency, and so have posted it in full for your reading pleasure.

After the furore surrounding BMX XXX, or to give it it's full, original titile Dave Mrra BMX XXX, the spat between Dave and the developers of the game Acclaim, seems to have been settled amicably.

The original dispute centered around the linking of Dave Mirra's name with the porn industry n the title and contents of the game.

For the full (and short) press release, hit the link... (read more...)

Updated throughout the day.

Reviews

More screenshots are available for the upcoming releases Star Wars: Knights Of the Old Republic on PC and Jedi Academy on Xbox. Both games have already been released on the opposite machine and are selling well so expect them to hit the top 10 charts again when they are rereleased

Head on over to Lucasarts website you should!