An official statement from Sony reads, “improved performance within the game business and Vaio PCs as a result of better than anticipated reductions in both operating expenses and manufacturing cost.” The results are pretty good when taking into account the fact that Sony lost more than 1 billion dollars during fiscal 2008.

The huge loss spurred the company to make some significant cuts in personnel and streamline the structure of its divisions. When it comes to the games division, Sony put out the new PlayStation 3 Slim, a hardware version of its home console that uses less energy and has a smaller profile.

Since the new device was launched in August 2009, sales of the PS3 have jumped significantly, helped by a string of high profile videogame launches like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Heavy Rain or God of War 3. The overall aim is to get the games and services division to turn a profit before March 2011.

The PlayStation 3 is set to get two significant upgrades during 2011: a motion tracking controller and the ability to play 3D videogames. The PlayStation Move is set to arrive at some point during the fall and will compete directly with Microsoft’s Project Natal, while the 3D abilities will be delivered via firmware updates throughout the year.

“There’s a generation of people who grew up with a set of games like Centipede that are favorites,” says Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. “They look almost like casual, fun games today, (but) at the time they were high-end, edgy games. Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market and bringing that to a very broad audience.”

Bach expects a wide range of gamers to be attracted by the content offered via the Xbox LIVE Game Room. “Even the people who would call themselves ‘hardcore gamers’ are going to think that it’s fun in a retro way,” he stated.

Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 indicated that he expected the Xbox LIVE Game Room to be a key piece of “the biggest year in Xbox history” puzzle. 2010 is synonymous for Xbox with the 10th year anniversary since the release of the console.

But it won’t just be Xbox gamers that will be able to enjoy the Game Room. The content offered to the Xbox LIVE community through Game Room will also be made available for free download to PC users. “If someone on my friends list has played in my arcade, their name will be hanging next to my machine and I’ll get notified of that on all of my devices,” stated Frank Pape, senior director of business and product development for Xbox. “It’s just this constant one-upmanship and also being able to customize my own arcade and show off the machines just like they were, with lights and fancy sounds.”

“Our research indicates that there’s strong consumer demand for dedicated media players and Zune HD offers visible differentiation in this market,” noted Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret LLC. “Microsoft is also offering some compelling software and services with the Zune ecosystem that will help Zune HD stand out from other offerings.”

Microsoft has been little shy of packing powerful technology into the Zune HD in its race to make the Zune product line catch up with that of Apple’s. Customers that will choose to go for Zune HD will be getting a device that falls in line of the company’s general natural user interface strategy, equipped with an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) multitouch screen, and powered by the NVIDIA Tegra HD processor. The Zune software advancements bring to the table the new Quickplay menu. Designed as a signature menu for Zune, Quickplay is set up to integrate seamlessly with the device’s new NUI, Microsoft promised.

In addition to Quickplay, Zune HD also features a web browser, and enhanced music and video playback options. Zune HD also allows users to go beyond the music stored on the device, via HD Radio capabilities, or the plain vanilla FM tuners. And high definition does not stop with radio for Zune HD. The latest iteration of digital media player devices from Microsoft support play back of 720p HD video files to an HDTV via the new Zune HD AV dock accessory.

Packed into Zune HD are new casual games, as well as additional details extending the functionality of the device by offering end users a calculator and even an MSN Weather app. By the end of 2009, extra content will come to Zune HD, including Twitter for Zune and Facebook for Zune applications, but also 3-D games: “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition,” “Vans Sk8: Pool Service” and “Audiosurf (TM) Tilt.”

Major retailers across the US will sell a black 16GB version of Zune HD for $219.99, with the platinum 32GB variant costing $289.99. Still, Microsoft informed that users would also be able to purchase red, green and blue devices for both 16GB and 32GB capacities from Zune Originals.

One such innovative idea has just been announced, as the company is saying that NBA 2K10, its fully-licensed basketball simulator, is being brought to China and the larger South East Asian market via a partnership with Tencent Holdings. And as if this wasn’t enough, the game is also being offered online.

Ben Feder, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Take Two, declared that “I’m pleased to announce our first strategic move in what is now the fastest growing online game market in the world. Given the universal appeal of sports, specifically NBA basketball, we believe that our partnership with Tencent to make NBA 2K Online is the perfect entry point for Take Two into this market. NBA 2K has revolutionized the basketball gaming genre and we are confident that its best-in-breed pedigree can be fully leveraged in China with the support of our valued partners at Tencent and the NBA.”

The move makes sense because the Chinese have an almost unhealthy obsession with basketball. More than 1 billion people have watched the NBA Finals and sales of branded items are rising quickly, even if some of them might not be original.

So, an NBA-licensed videogame that allows players to take control of all the teams in the league and also former legends makes quite a lot of sense. The fact that the NBA 2K10 Chinese edition will be offered online means that it will be easily accessible to players and even rises the possibility that the core style will be offered free to play with microtransactions providing the bulk of revenue.

The gaming industry has quite a few figure heads in terms of video game characters, which have pushed the whole genre forward through the adventures that they have been on. One such famous character is Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, which made history during the early years of gaming.

Sadly, in recent years, things haven’t been so good for the blue hedgehog, as Sega’s resident Sonic Team hasn’t made the best titles for it. But, fortunately for the speedy animal, the developers collaborated with Dimps and delivered Sonic Rush, one of the first Sonic titles for Nintendo’s hugely successful DS handheld platform.

The game was released on November 15, in North America, while the PAL region received it on November 18, and Japanese fans got a taste of Sonic on November 23, all in 2005. Even though the blue hedgehog wasn’t popular those days, the top-notch gameplay and graphics of the title made it a best-seller and prompted some big critical acclaim from reviewers.

Here are some of its general features:
– Sonic pairs up with a new female lead. Play as either Sonic the Hedgehog or Blaze the Cat;
– Parallel universes collide. The storylines and outcomes differ, keeping you in suspense for double the fun;
– Your fate is ‘touch ‘n go,’ with Bosses charging you from all directions and now on two screens;
– Long steep dives across both top and bottom screens, super high jumps, huge loops, and more;
– 2D and 3D action;
– Touch-screen technology.

While the levels in the game are classic sidescrollers and displayed in a 2D manner, the sprites of bosses and the main characters are rendered in 3D, thus creating a 2.5D effect. As such, the story centers around Sonic and Blaze, who are chasing after Doctor Eggman, who stole the Sol Emeralds from Blaze.

UNLOCKABLES

Play as Blaze
Defeat the first Boss.

Sound test
Successfully complete the game to unlock all sound tracks except for tracks 110 to 127. Successfully complete the Extra zone to unlock the final set of tracks.

Here’s a video of the game:

Click here to view the embedded video.

“This release is incremental to XNA Game Studio 3.0 and contains many new features, including avatars, Xbox LIVE Party support, and video as well as enhancements to existing features. For the full list of improvements in this release, see the “What’s New in XNA Game Studio 3.1” section of the documentation once you have installed the product,” revealed Rob Cameron, Microsoft industry evangelist.

With the delivery of XNA Game Studio 3.1, Microsoft now enables developers to enrich their games with animated Avatars, for both gamers and game characters. In addition, titles built with XNA Game Studio 3.1 will allow up to eight gamers to participate in group voice chat independent of the actual title that each user is playing. This is possible with the introduction of Xbox LIVE Party Support.

At the same time, the latest version of XNA Game Studio enables developers to expand the content available in their creations with the inclusion of videos. Microsoft also touted enhancements to the Audio API, the Content Pipeline and XACT3.

“If you are not sure what XNA is, XNA Game Studio enables hobbyists, academics, and independent game developers to easily create video games for Windows, Xbox 360, and the Zune digital media player by using optimized cross-platform gaming libraries based on the .NET Framework in the C# programming language,” Cameron added.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is available for download here.

But the platform is still very stubborn and keeps on going, with the help of organizations such as the PC Gaming Alliance and with companies that are still devoted to their early roots on the old platform, like Blizzard, Electronic Arts or Bethesda.

Besides the weekly PC sales charts we present to you, based on both retails and digital sales, the NPD ground has now decided to unveil the overall best-selling titles for the PC in the month of March. Aside from the regular titles such as Blizzard’s Word of Warcraft and its subsequent expansions or EA’s monopoly on casual gaming with Sims and Spore, other games are also present, most notable being Creative Assembly’s Empire: Total War, which comes in at number one.

Further down the chart, Relic’s Dawn of War II is still showing good sales, as it was only overtaken by WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion and the special Sims 2 Double Deluxe edition. At number 10 we see that detective titles are quite popular, as Mystery Case Files: Return To Ravenhearst is located at that position, managing to overtake games such as Red Alert 3, Fallout 3 or Call of Duty World at War.

Here are the top 20 best-selling PC games of March, as charted by the NPD group:

1. Empire: Total War
2. Wrath of the Lich King
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
4. Dawn Of War II
5. WoW: Battle Chest
6. World Of Warcraft
7. The Sims 2 Apartment Life
8. Spore
9. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
10. Mystery Case Files: Return To Ravenhearst
11. Red Alert 3
12. Starcraft: Battle Chest
13. Fallout 3
14. Civilization IV
15. Empire: Total War Collector’s Edition
16. The Sims 2 Pets
17. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning
18. The Sims 2 University
19. Call Of Duty: World At War
20. Diablo Battle Chest

All in all, some interesting results, which still prove that PC gaming is doing great and that publishers and developers should still bring their titles to this platform.

“If you’re running the Windows 7 Beta and hadn’t already noticed, we are introducing 3 new Windows Games for Windows 7: Internet Backgammon, Internet Spades, and Internet Checker,” revealed Brandon LeBlanc, Windows Communications Manager on the Windows Client Communications Team. “These games were well liked in Windows XP. Due to the amount of requests we received, we are bringing them back! The new versions of these games have been completely redesigned and improved over their old-school predecessors.”

All the new gaming content in Windows 7 will be centralized through the Games Explorer, a feature that has evolved in comparison to what was made available in Windows Vista. Games Explorer will track statistics both for the client-based variants of the games, as well as for those played over the Internet.

“With each game, you can: play online against human opponents (up to 4 players at the same time with Internet Spades). Select from 3 skill levels to be matched with similarly skilled players from all around the world. If your opponent drops out, a computer opponent takes over to finish the game. Choose from cool different backgrounds and piece/card designs,” LeBlanc added.

Company official in 2009 as it plans to issue three new NFS’yi announced. The first NFS: Shift the name will be removed and will target the more serious racers. PSP, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 will be ready for the Shift except NFS: Nitro, EA’in Montreal studio will be prepared and only the Wii and DS will be released for.

EA, Nitro’nun will have a unique visual discrimination claims. Need For Speed 2009′un the last game: World Online will carry the name and will be developed only for PC. As can be understood from the name of the game will offer online racing facilities, and especially to target the Asian market.

Keith Munro EA authority within one year of the 3 different NFS game is about to remove the “This is so the game is not about selling effort, goals have different game tastes of different players will interest audiences of different games to create the appropriate” as it had not.

“Gamefest is Microsoft’s premier conference on game development, and so it should revolve around game developers. We sought out feedback from developers who attended Gamefest 2008 and we found that, given development schedules and ship dates, the conference would be more impactful if held earlier in the calendar year rather than right before the busy holiday season. We are taking that feedback seriously and adjusting the timing of Gamefest to better accommodate developers’ schedules and offer the best experience possible,” Kathleen Sanders, XNA community manager, explained.

Held in July 2008, the Gamefest 2008 event was focused on the evolution of Microsoft’s graphics technology and the upcoming DirectX 11. The successor of DirectX 10 will be made available not only for Windows 7, the next iteration of the Windows client, but also for its precursor, Windows Vista. Of course, just as it was the case with DirectX 10, Windows XP continues to be left out when it comes down to the next stage in the development of DirectX.

“Rather than say ‘SURPRISE! GAMEFEST IS TODAY!’ we opted to plan to hold the next Gamefest in the first quarter of 2010. In the meantime, we are committed to keeping developers for Microsoft platforms on the edge of technology innovation, and we will be exploring opportunities to provide updates through Live Meetings, Web seminars, and of course, through XNA Creators Club Online.While we haven’t officially locked on a date, you can expect Gamefest to be held in the earlier part of 2010,” Sanders concluded.