Crispy Gamer News

NPD sales data numbers for the month of Nov. 2008 are in, and to its competition’s chagrin, Nintendo continues to dominate the hardware sales chart. for the month of November, Nintendo managed to sell through 2.04 million units in North America, outpacing its own sales numbers from the same period a year ago (981K) by twofold. The Nintendo Ds also did pretty well during the month, moving 1.57 million units, up slightly from 1.53 million in Nov. 2007.

While Nintendo’s platforms continue to take the rest of the pack to the woodshed on a regular basis, there’s some good news for Microsoft and some even more bad news for Sony; the Xbox 360 sold 836K units in Nov., up slightly from 770K units a year ago beating out the PS3, PSP and PS2. The PS3 moved 378K units, but was down from 466K a year ago. The PSP moved 421K units, but was down from 567K in the same period a year ago, and the aging PS2 moved 206K units - down substantially from 496K units in Nov. 2007.  (more after the break)

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With no real killer app to move hardware in the month for Sept. (last year it was Halo 3 for the Xbox 360), it’s no shock that the NPD hardware numbers are down from last year’s. The game industry enjoyed total sales of $1.27 billion, down from $1.35 billion from a year ago. While the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii continued to kick ass and take names, the Xbox 360 enjoyed a 78 percent increase, mainly due to the dramatic price cut as Microsoft prepares to do battle with Nintendo and Sony.

The Wii sold 687k units, the DS 536.8K, and the Xbox 360 347.2K. Full list - including year to date unit numbers - after the break. One thing to note - the PSP is beating the Xbox 360 and is just a tick away from catching up with the Wii.:

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NPD has released software and hardware sales data for the month of August and, to be quite honest, there are no real shockers here. DS, Wii and PSP (in that order) continue to dominate the market while Xbox 360, PS3 and PS2 fight for the leftovers. The Nintendo DS was the best selling system for the month, selling 518,000 units, while the Wii managed to move $53,000, the PSP moved 253,000, the Xbox 360 sold 195,000 units, the PS3 followed closely with 185,000 and the PS2 sold 144,000.

Things were even tamer on the software front with Madden NFL 09 selling well across multiple platforms and dominating four of the top ten slots. Also doing well this month: Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Play, Guitar Hero: On Tour, Too Human and Soulcalibur IV. It should also be noted that while EA said earlier this week that Madden did 6 percent better over last year’s version , the truth is it did only 2 percent better. So they were a little bit off.. The full lists after the jump:

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It’s official: those of you that have been holding out on buying an Xbox 360 because of the price can now stop being so cheap. You can now buy the low-end model Xbox 360 Arcade for $199, the regular version for $299 and the top of the line Elite system for $399.

These low prices go into effect on September 5th, so don’t go bum rushing your local Gamestop just yet. Obviously this is part of Microsoft’s plans for the holiday shopping season and a way to take back some of the market share taken by Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PS3. After all, being number one or two is better than being the third man out.

These price cuts follow similar cuts in Japan on September 1.

Futuremark Games Studio announced that its first game, Shattered Horizon, will carry the NVIDIA: The Way It’s Meant To Be Played seal, which hypothetically means that it will be optimized for play on PCs powered by NVIDIA graphics hardware. Hypothetically, because this hardware and software optimization stuff tends to be more of a philosophy than a science. Of course, Futuremark is better know for its benchmarking software, so chances are its first game will work pretty well with NVIDIA and ATi’s hardware when it ships.

Shattered Horizon is a new game where players fight to survive in the aftermath of a catastrophic Moon mining accident that throws billions of tons of rocky debris into near-Earth space. In this multiplayer first-person shooter, teams of players get to experience realistic zero gravity combat surrounded by the broken remains of orbital infrastructure and the millions of asteroids now encircling the Earth. Sounds like fun for the whole family!

Mad Catz Interactive has inked a licensing deal with Capcom to create and sell branded controllers and accessories based on the Street Fighter IV, Bionic Commando and Resident Evil 5. This agreement gives Mad Catz gives rights to create these branded products in North America and Europe and the company promises a range of products for all current video game platforms and the PC.

What those products will consist of we don’t know but some guesses: controllers, faceplates, snap-on body kits and more for your favorite consoles.

Gone are the super powers and wacky gameplay elements of previous Far Cry games, so it might just be a good time to get excited about the next game, which is being developed by Ubisoft in-house. One of the ways to prepare is to get a little knowledge on what kind of machine you’ll need to run it. To that end, Ubisoft has released the minimum and recommended system requirements for Far Cry 2.

Minimum Requirements:
CPU: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better
Video card: NVIDIA 6800 or ATIX1650 or better, Shader Model 3 required, 256 Mb of graphic memory
Memory: 1 Go
Media reader: DVD-ROM

Recommended Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Family, AMD64 X2 5200+, AMD Phenom or better
Video card: NVIDIA 8600 GTS or better, ATIX1900 or better, 512 Mb of graphic memory
Memory: 2 Go
Sound: 5.1 sound card recommended
Media reader: DVD-ROM
Supported Video cards: NVIDIA 6800, NVIDIA 7000 series, 8000 series, 9000 series, 200 series. 8800M and 8700M supported for laptops. ATI X1650 – 1950 series , HD2000 series , HD3000 series , HD4000 series.

Far Cry 2 ships for the PC Fall 2008.