Welcome to “Carbonated News,” the column where I get you up-to-date on the latest gaming news. I’m not very good at keeping up with the news, so for October, I decided to try something new: I got a bunch of people from other countries to tell me what the news is. Let’s hope that the news they gave me is worth reading.
- FIFA 10 broke a sales record in the UK, as soccer fans bought more copies of it than any other game this month. As my British source says, “the football game outsould Professour Laytonne.” Unfortunately, my source didn’t say which sales record the game broke. If it turns out that the record category is just “sales of a FIFA game,” I’m going to be disappointed.
- Nintendo is already claiming that New Super Mario Bros. Wii will top the charts both this year and the next. At least, Shigeru Miyamoto said as much in an interview recently. As my Japanese source says, “FIFA 10 is going down. With it’s incredibly stupid title, graphics that are identical to the DS version, and lack of online play, there’s no way this game will suck. Keep an eye out for this game and its myriad of underwater levels when it comes out on November 15th.”
- My French source says that Xbox Live has released the demo version of Dragon Ball: Raging Fist in Europe. Just like every other new DBZ game in the past ten years, it has new, fancier graphics and characters who haven’t appeared in other DBZ games, including Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta. My source further says that a black-colored Wii is being released in Europe, where “people are a lot more cool about that sort of thing.”
- My source from Brazil went over sales records from the past few years and noted that “all successful games nowadays rely on successes previously in the series.” He predicts a dystopian future in which no one will make new licenses, and all we will have are sequels and remakes. So, basically, it’ll be just like the movie industry, but with videogames.
- Speaking of dystopias, my US correspondent was recently fired, so he was too upset to give me a report on the new God of War compilation for the PS3. Instead, he sent me a long e-mail in which he complained that we’re in a horrible world where companies only care about making money and have no problems with mistreating customers and employees. It is a sorry state we’re in when companies think of their employees as human resources, and not as actual human beings. I think he might be a little bitter about being fired.
- My source from the most exclusive of all countries—Disneyland—says that the dream of seeing Duck Tales 3 could become a reality. One of Disney’s current videogame producers is interested in the idea and plans on pitching the game to the company as soon as he’s finished with his current Mickey Mouse-based Wii game. Of course, he doubts that Disney will agree to fund the project, but it’s still a possibility.
Well, that’s all the news my sources came up with this month, by jingo. I guess October was sort of a mixed bag for the videogame world.