IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey demo downloaded 1 million times

505 Games and 1C Company are pretty delighted with the number of times that the demo their World War II themed air combat game, IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, has been downloaded. According to internal numbers, has been downloaded over 1 million times on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. A pretty impressive and suprising number considering that it is an air combat action simulation type game.

“One million demo downloads clearly showcases undeniable interest in IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey among gamers,” said Adam Kline, president of 505 Games U.S. “With the amount of attention paid to every detail of this title, from environments based on a hybrid of period maps and satellite data to our powerful tangible damage effects engine to audio recorded from vintage aircraft, we’re thrilled that so many players are eager to play this year’s most authentic World War II flight combat game.”

The full game will be released in North America on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 for Xbox 360 and PS3, and on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 on Nintendo DS and the PSP.

Digital Chocolate Dominates iPhone

Digital Chocolate, the mobile focused games company founded by 3DO founder Trip Hawkins, says that it is doing very well on the iPhone iPhone games in its Impulse Game Catalog have been downloaded more than 8,000,000 times according to the company’s internal tracking data. To celebrate that success the company is selling many of its games at a discount - $2.99 The popularity of three game releases, Crazy Penguin Catapult, Tower Bloxx, and Brick Breaker Revolution, proved to be popular enough to have helped put app download rank on the Apple App Store since January.

Digital Chocolate has a total of five games in the Apple App Store, garnering two percent of all downloads based on the most recent app downloads data. This data includes both premium and free versions of the game, naturally.

More details at www.digitalchocolate.com/iphone.

Acclaim Revamps Music Games Model with Rockfree

Ahh Acclaim. Back in the heyday of gaming, the name was synonymous with licensed titles based on comic, toy, and film franchises. Ironic that the name once associated with the Friday the 13th video game is once again making headlines on, well, Friday the 13th. These days, though, the Acclaim name and logo belong to Acclaim Games, and the company’s business model has shifted from console releases to free-to-play web based MMO titles. Now the company is looking to change up how gamers and artists look at the music game genre with the upcoming release of the web based game Rockfree, currently in beta at http://rockfree.acclaim.com/.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.