As a trivia aficionado, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find the best places to enjoy my competitive trivia-playing passion. From playing quizzo at the local bars, to buying any number of board games that purport to feature finely-crafted trivia, my friends have become accustomed to my passion for playing (and generally winning) trivia games of all sorts. Buzz! Hollywood Trivia for the PS2 offers a novel way to indulge my trivia addiction. With questions themed around Hollywood and the movies, almost anyone can play. Everyone loves movies; everyone has seen movies. This game skips right over the arcane trivia of European History and Geography and gets right into subjects about which everyone has knowledge. And if you don’t know the answer, you can always guess!

As for game play, the game comes with a set of 4 game controllers designed specifically to serve the purposes of the game and allow it to live up to it’s “Buzz!” name. The game is set up like a TV-based game show instead of the boring and flat board-game type trivia game. Players choose a contestant and buzz-in sound to represent them (I’m partial to the belch); all of the possible contestants are silly and make for ridiculous between-round animated antics. Questions are either text, picture, or film-clip based, and run the range of Hollywood movies–from the classics to recent releases. The game even makes use of your eye toy (if you have one attached) to increase the silliness of play and encourage your friends to work on their impersonations.

All-in-all, I give this game a 9 out of 10. It makes for a lot of fun evenings competing with friends over movie knowledge. (And what gamer doesn’t enjoy competing, even on a knowledge-based plane.) Too bad Microsoft, in it’s infinite wisdom, has only chosen to venture into the trivia market with Scene It? (a game notable only for two things–it’s colossal failure and the derivative nature of it’s entire existence). Although, I suspect the adolescent Xbot audience could find little use for a game that makes you want to actually interact with real life friends and create social connections. Buzz! Hollywood Trivia is obviously a great game choice for any individual possessing friends, family, or anything other than a Halo-based reality.

Another outstanding month for Playstation fans as it has been revealed once again that the Playstation 3 is outselling the competition, despite massive shortages of the 80 GB PS3 in the United States. A few months ago, it was revealed that the 80 GB sales of the PS3 vastly exceeded the 40 GB version. Despite this, Sony made a tactical move that would potentially put them at a temporary lull for the next few months as they discontinue the 80 GB MotorStorm pack and would only be selling the 40 GB without PS2 backwards compatability.

Luckily for Sony fans, the wait will be worth it as the 80 GB will make a return on June 12th when the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle releases. However, given the massive shortages of the 80 GB PS3 inbetween this timeframe, we have seen less sales than what is usually expected of the very strong Playstation 3 brand. Dare we say it, the PS3′s closest competitor (the Xbox 360) has actually managed to sell quite close to the PS3 over the past few months, though the PS3 has outsold the 360 in terms of year-to-date sales. At SDF, we expect the PS3 to remain relatively close to the 360 until June, where sales of the 80 GB PS3 will skyrocket from pent up demand. From there, the Playstation 3 will not look back. Here are the May NPD numbers:

Current Generation Sales:
PlayStation 3 187.1K
Xbox 360 188.0K

Please keep in mind when analyzing these figures that the Playstation 3 is supply constrained with no 80 GB PS3s on shelves. Further, the Xbox 360 has no supply constraint issues, but many of those Xbox 360s sold are actually owners of the Xbox 360, they are simply buying an Xbox 360 for a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth..etc) time due to RROD failures. Clearly, the PS3 has sold to more first time customers than the Xbox 360 has in April. It should also be noted that the Xbox 360 is significantly less expensive than the Playstation 3. The entry price for the Xbox 360 is only $279, while it’s $400 for the superior Playstation 3 console. The Playstation 3 is clearly on top in terms of next-generation console sales worldwide.

Last Generation Sales:
PlayStation 2 124.4K (127,000,000)
Wii 714.2K (24,500,000)

Moving on to last generation console sales, we clearly see that the Playstation 2 continues to dominate. It has sold an estimated 127 million in its lifetime, meanwhile the Wii has only managed to sell 24.5 million, baredly edging it over the other last generation consoles such as the GameCube and original Xbox. Wii still has a lot of catching up to do before Sony Defense Force can start becoming worried of it ever overtaking the Playstation 2 in terms of the last generation hardware race.

Just got a phone call from SDF’s London correspondent:

Ghostbusters
Siren
Motorstorm Pacific Rift
HOME
PSN Stuff
LBP
MySingstar Online
PS Eye
Killzone 2
Mirror’s Edge
Resistance 2
Socom Confrontation
HAZE
Go Messenger/Skype
Play TV
Eye Toy Pom Pom Party
Eye Toy Heroes
Secret Agent Clank
Play TV PSP
Photo Application
Movement
Singstar Summer Party
Super StarDust HD Team
Kung Fu Panda (for 360 fans looking to jump ship)

Sony is releasing the Gun Metal PS3 (bundled with the limited edition of MGS4) in the U.S. More details will be revealed soon.

From April onward is looking pretty huge for the gaming industry. For PS3 you have titles such as Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto 4 (definitive edition), the new PSN store, etc. The PS2 recently had a huge release with Buzz! Hollywood (win prizes and play the mini-game here). For Nintendo Wii you have Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii for your grandmother and baby sister. And for the 360 you have some interesting titles as well.

The August game sales NPDs are out and things are looking very good in the Sony Camp. The Playstation Brand tops the charts yet again with 484,000 units sold and 4 hit titles in the top 10 games sold. The sales breakdown is as follows:

Hardware Unit Sales
PlayStation Family 484 K
Wii 403.6 K
Nintendo DS 383.3K
Xbox 360 276.7K

Top 10 Games
360 MADDEN NFL 08 896.6K
PS2 MADDEN NFL 08 643.6K
360 BIOSHOCK 490.9K
PS3 MADDEN NFL 08 336.2K
WII PLAY W/ REMOTE 256.8K
WII METROID PRIME 3: CORRUPTION 218.1K
WII MARIO STRIKERS: CHARGED 147.4K
PS2 GUITAR HERO 2 W/GUITAR 145.4K
WII MARIO PARTY 8 138.3K
PS2 GUITAR HERO ENCORE: ROCKS THE 80S 127.1K

Source

More charts:

Source

The Sony Family showed very strong July sales with a total of 595,000 pieces of hardware sold. In comparison only 170,000 Xbox 360s were sold and the Sony platform even managed to outsell the much hyped Nintendo Wii which only reached a total of 425,000 sold. Here is the complete breakdown of U.S. game sales in July:

PlayStation Platforms 595k
Wii 425 k
Nintendo DS 405 k
Xbox 360 170k
Game Boy Advance 87k

Looks like the gaming world still belongs to Sony.

SPOnG: Maybe one of the problems for Sony is that Wii has been such a phenomenon in terms of sales that there is perhaps a tendency for people to compare PS3 sales unfavourably with Wii.

Jamie Macdonald: Could I just point something out – that PlayStation 2 is still outselling Wii in all the major markets. End of story.

Source: Spong

Looks like Wii won’t even be able to catch PS2.  Get ready for another Sony dominated generation.

In2Games to unveil motion-sensing peripherals for PS2 games at the Leipzig Gaming Convention

The first six titles will be available at retail in time for Christmas for £29.99.

The games – which include Realplay Tennis, Realplay Pool, Realplay Golf, Realplay Racing, Realplay Bowling and Realplay Puzzlesphere – are made for use with wireless controllers that emulate tennis rackets, pool cues, golf clubs and steering wheels, amongst others.

The motion-sensing technology used in the peripherals is called Freedom. It is currently still in development, having recently attracted £7.6 million in venture capital funding.

In2Games will be hoping to tap into the huge popularity of existing wireless gaming controllers such as that of Nintendo’s Wii.

Source: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/28074/Wii-style-controller-to-hit-PS2

From Jaffe’s Blog

We have a 3 game console/handheld exclusive deal with Sony and hope to have our first original game out sometime in 2008. In the meantime, we’ll be putting out a port of TWISTED METAL: HEAD ON this Xmas season. The port- going from PSP to PS2- is pretty cool for a port because:

- It has the original HEAD ON title but it’s now running at 60fps and has resed up textures as well as some gameplay tweaks.
- It has 5-7 levels from the never released TWISTED METAL BLACK: PART II.
- It has a documentary on the history of the series.

As soon as I can reveal more about our new titles, I will share all. Maybe in the next 8-12 months, I would imagine, but who knows.

Again, we are working with Sony and that just feels great. We met with some other interested parties but at the end of the day, Sony is our home, our family, and we’re really thrilled and honored they wanted to work with us and continue the relationship we’ve spent almost 15 years cultivating. So in many ways, it’s like very little has changed, other than the pay cut ☺.

Source: David Jaffe’s Blog

Should be interesting to see what his new company comes up with.