Guitar Hero III Surpasses $1B in Sales

While it’s no secret that Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise has seen some pretty stiff competition from MTV’s Rock Band series, that doesn’t mean the game’s still not a heavy hitter for Activision. During a speech at CES in Las Vegas on Friday, Activision’s CEO Mike Griffith said that, over the holiday shopping season, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock became the first game in history to ever hit more than $1 billion in sales. According to sales data, the Guitar Hero franchise as a whole passed the $1B mark in January of last year, just 26 months after the series had first launched.

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Harmonix’ Rigopolous: “Rock Band 3 breaking the annual cycle”

Doritos: Dash of Destruction - A Bonafide Hit

Microsoft is touting the latest advergame on Xbox Live Arcade as one of its biggest yet. Apparently the game has done so well that it is getting some love from one of Microsoft’s top executives who is speaking at CES this week in.

“Doritos: Dash of Destruction has been the most downloaded game in the second half of December with just under 1 million downloads,” said Mark Kroese, General Manager of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Advertising Business Group, during his Game Power Conference Session presentation at CES.

Our own Kyle Orland, who is at the show this week, caught up with Kroese shortly after his presentation to ask him why he thought the game did so well, beyond being a freebie. He pointed out that Dash of Destruction was much better than other free games they’ve offered, like the Yaris advergame: “it’s actually a good game!”

And if you’re wondering why it doesn’t show up in any of Major Nelson’s list of Top Xbox Live Arcade titles in 2008, the answer is simple: it’s free.

Dash of Destruction is a free arcade racing advergame developed by Ninja Bee for Xbox Live Arcade to promote one of the world’s most popular snack foods. The game was released on December 17, 2008 for free and was based on a concept created by gamer Mike Borland, who won the Unlock Xbox competition sponsored by Doritos. His game concept was brought to life by Ninja Bee and released on Xbox Live Arcade.

While fans ate the game up (pun intended), critics derided it for having the most easily unlockable achievements.. ever. Most of them could be unlocked within less than twenty minutes of play. Easy or not, the game apparently garnered the attention of the Xbox Live community. The game also went out of its way to be cheesy, encouraging players to “get their Gamerscore on” or go on a “Gamerscore Rampage.” Personally there’s nothing wrong with being cheesy when promoting a nacho cheese flavored snack food..

Kyle Orland, live from CES, contributed to the report.

PSP Firmware Hits 3.90

Remember back when the PSP was really only capable of playing games and watching UMD movies? Well, those days have long since passed, as Sony’’s trendy little handheld has slowly evolved into a veritable Swiss Army knife of gadgetry. PSP owners can surf the Web, listen to Internet radio, catch their favorite podcasts, watch television, and as of today, make phone calls to friends.

That’’s right. In the wee hours of the morning today, Sony set the latest firmware update, version 3.90, out into the wild. With the new update, the PSP is now capable of making Voice over IP (VoIP) calls via the popular Skype program. Announced at this year’’s CES, the PSP Skype will allow players to make free calls over the Internet to other Skype users anywhere in the world, while also having the ability to make calls to traditional landline and mobile phones using credits purchased from the Skype Web site. Skype also gives PSP owners the ability to send and receive voicemail to over 200 million Skype users worldwide. The downside of the new service? Due to memory and processor requirements, it’’s only available to those of you who own the more recent slimmer model (PSP 2000 series). However, those of you with the older model PSPs aren”t being left out in the cold.

The new firmware also adds an icon for Sony’’s own Go!Messenger service, which is set to go live sometime in February. This service will be available to all PSP owners, regardless of which model of the device they have, and will offer theability to send and receive video and voice chat, as well as numerous other features that will be available at the end of February. The new Go!Messenger icon not only serves as a placeholder for the pending service, but also allows users to obtain more information about the feature from a dedicated Web site, accessed via clicking on the icon. Sony promises more information about the release of Go!Messenger will be announced soon.