Second Story Gamer

Yep, it’s another GTA IV article.  On a little NeoGAF thread, there was a link to a TimesOnline article stating that Grand Theft Auto IV was made by over 1,000 people and cost about $100 million to make.  If these numbers are true, that would effectively make GTA IV the biggest budgeted game that has [...]

As we all know, Halo 3 had an enormously successful launch last September 25th and it topped most movie releases.  Who would have thought that just six months later analysts were predicting another game to top those huge sales figures?  That’s right folks, people are actually saying that another game may sell more copies than [...]

Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) has turn a $89 million profit for Q3.  This number brings the total profit for the nine month year so far to $614 million, definitively up from last years loss of $746 million at the same point.   It seems like EDD Head Robbie Bach’s promise of a profitable [...]

The hype around the impending release is at its peak and there have been plenty of news stories about GTA in the past few days (or hours).  Instead of making separate posts for each story, I’m going to summarize them all in one post.
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Rockstar is taking a much bigger approach to the marketing aspect [...]

Bungie’s second map pack for Halo 3 has three maps, Blackout, Ghost Town, and Avalanche, and it costs 800 MS Points.  It’s in direct competition with Call of Duty 4’s Variety Map Pack that came out just a few weeks ago.  Although it already starts out with a disadvantage because the Variety Map Pack comes [...]

There has been an announcement that Blockbuster will be putting video games on their “New Release Wall” that used to be a designated big movie hit area.  Blockbuster will be implementing this with the release of Grand Theft Auto IV and it looks like it will continue with the releases of other games.
This got me [...]

Nintendo has finally opened their eyes to what we all see around us.  Or rather what we don’t see: Nintendo Wiis on store shelves.  I haven’t seen a Wii at any store in about seven months.  So Nintendo is finally increasing production of their console to 25 million units in the next year, which is [...]

Microsoft and the Companions in Courage Foundation are working together to deliver Xbox 360 kiosks (the ones in stores) to Children’s Hospitals across America.  They will be loaded with select games (probably Xbox Family Classics or whatever their called) as well as some TV shows and movies.  And they even are giving those poor sick [...]

Sony has just revealed that they will be delaying the release of Home once again.  They will continue with the closed Home Beta through the summer and eventually release the Open Beta sometime this fall.  We have heard this story over and over the past few years and I’m sure PS3 owners are getting sick [...]

Sony has been in talks in recent weeks with major movie and television studios to work out an agreement to launch videos on the Playstation Store.  Sony’s previous venture into the online video download realm, Sony Connect, failed miserably and was shut down in March.  The service was in direct competition with Apple’s iTunes and [...]

There has been a new rumor as to what the downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV will be.  According to CVG’s GTA IV Collector Magazine, we will be downloading whole cities in Rockstar’s Xbox exclusive GTA IV content.  The magazine says:
Of course, to call games as vastly ambitious as Vice City or San Andreas [...]

Wow there have been a lot of huge game sales announcements lately.  First there was the announcement by EA that the Sims sold 100 million units and now this announcement by Activision and Infinity Ward that Call of Duty 4 has just broken the 9 million copy mark.  This is what I love; this game [...]

It’s that time of the month again: NPD time (also known as the brief period where the internet explodes from fanoboys declaring their console’s superiority through sales numbers from the previous month).  Let’s start out with the hardware numbers and then move to software.
Nintendo won once again by selling 721,000 Wiis and 698,000 DS’s.  The [...]

The Sims franchise, some of the most casual games you will ever play, have just broken 100 million copies.  That’s a one and eight zeros.  I can’t even begin to fathom how this game got so popular because I’ve never even played the game.  Well I guess having about 300 expansion packs really helps out [...]

Just in case the skyrocketing oil prices or all the news about the weakening dollar haven’t clued you in, the United States is most likely headed towards a recession.  You would think that during a recession most people are less likely to spend money on nonessential things like video games, and focus more on feeding [...]

Game Developer magazine has recently released their annual Game Developer Salary Survey.  Through their research, they found that the average American game developer made $73,600 in 2007.  That is a $264 increase from the previous year.  These results exclude the very low payed game testers and high payed studio execs.
This number is surprisingly high to [...]

Sorry for the wait between my first impressions and my full review.  Not only is this game quite long, but I also was pretty busy the past few weeks.  So my review is finally up after I finished the game last night.  I know this game is a few months old, but I only recently [...]

Japanese Gaming Magazine Famitzu’s publisher Hirokazu Hamamura has been doing some speculating recently. According to him, Nintendo will unveil their successor to the wildy popular DS Lite at E3 this year. The Google translated version of the page is hard to understand, but makes it seem like this is [...]

IGN reports that Lair developer Factor 5 is finally adding analogue controls into Lair. The controls are to be added via a patch that is scheduled to come out in Japan on the 17th. There is no news of when it will reach the rest of the world, but it is presumably going to [...]

Go ahead, stretch you neck out a little bit because I know you just did a double take. Whenever violence and video games are mentioned in the same sentence, there’s always a lawyer trying to make some money by saying that video games cause you to go crazy and commit [...]

The MTV Gaming Blog has just been given exclusive information by an “inside source” that Microsoft has been developing an answer to the Wiimote and that it is scheduled to release before the end of this year. The insider goes on to say that Microsoft assigned Rare to the job and that they have [...]

Inifinity Ward and Activision released the highly anticipated and much needed Variety Map Pack for the the highest sold game of 2007, Call of Duty 4. There are four maps in this pack that is available for 800 MS Points (about $10).  The PS3 version is scheduled to release in three to four weeks.
This [...]

Developer’s THQ, at THQ Gamer’s Day, have given Saints Row 2 a release date. They say the game is scheduled to release to both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 on August 26. I wonder who will actually buy this game, with more popular Grand Theft Auto IV coming out a couple [...]

Users around the country are reporting once again that they have been having major slowdown in their Xbox Live Service. It is assumed that this slowdown is caused by the flocks of users running to download the new Call of Duty 4 Map Pack. The [...]

As you may know from my first impressions of the game, I am playing Mass Effect. Even from playing a small chunk of the game, I realize its huge scale and the plethora of things to do and people to meet in the game. And this got me thinking, is the size of [...]

Peter Moore has just announced that the PC version of Madden 2009 has been canceled and the game will only be released on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, and PS2. He said that the reasoning will be because of “serious business challenges”. Yeah, like the fact that the game doesn’t sell [...]

New Line Cinema has recently announced that they will be producing a Gears of War film and it is slated for a release in Summer of 2010. The announcement was made by Gears of War film producer Wyck Godfrey who said: “We’ve got our script on and a director we’re about to attach. We’ll [...]