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Among the comprehensive list of numbers in Ubisoft's first half fiscal 2009-10 report, measuring performance in April through September 2009, one figure stands out: the French company's reported €52,027,000 in not-profit. That's right, Ubisoft's profits are down by more than €70 million (over $100 million) from the same period last year to rest firmly in the red.

From a profitable first half of fiscal 2008-09 of roughly €24 million to just over €52 million in losses in the first half of fiscal 2009-10, Ubisoft's profits have experienced a year-over-year change of -316.53 percent. However, CEO Yves Guillemot remains steadfast that projected sales figures for Assassin's Creed 2 and Avatar will ease Ubisoft's financial woes. This is, after all, the most important Q4 in the company's history.

EA's John Riccitiello has got some 'splainin to do. Investors are bound to be frustrated with the video game publisher, which recently reported a net loss of $391 million, spurring a layoffs that affected more than a thousand employees. EA's decision to not be evil has seemingly backfired, with the company forced to focus on "core slate" games that can be iterated over and over again.

The CEO is also blaming poor sales of the publisher's Wii titles. "I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated," Riccitiello told investors during a conference call this week. "And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share. We are building the products that I think the most highly rated on the platform and at this point in time, generating the most revenue of any third-party platform."

Certainly, no one can say EA hasn't been trying. Dead Space Extraction was praised by most critics, but managed a mere 9,000 units in first-month sales. "I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with first party in this case to sort of help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they are going out," Riccitiello suggested, seeminlgy urging Nintendo to offer better support to third-parties that have been languishing on the Wii platform. Certainly, Nintendo can afford to share the wealth.

[Via gi.biz]

Source – Electronic Arts Q2 2010 Earnings Conference Call [PDF]

Forget that Jack White finds it "depressing" that kids are learning about music through rhythm games -- there's gold in them thar virtual hills! Next week's Rock Band DLC adds a pack of songs from The White Stripes, with tracks off of three different albums.

We've also added this little guy to Rock Band Weekly: . He indicates tracks that are considered "family-friendly" enough for Lego Rock Band. Such marked songs will be available in LRB's music store, as well as appearing in the regular Rock Band music store. [Thanks to our friend Dustin Burg for the Lego head!]

Check out the update after the break, along with what Rock Band Unplugged players can expect for DLC next week.

If you haven't heard, the PlayStation Wii is so successful, it pretty much prints money. Wait, Sony didn't make the Wii? Then how did the market analysts of DFC Intelligence come to the conclusion that "Sony was saved by the success of the Wii?"

According to DFC, the Wii's mainstream appeal forced Microsoft into a successful, but not entirely dominant position. "The main danger Sony faced was that the Xbox 360 would become embedded as the system of choice. Instead consumers flocked to the Nintendo Wii. The Xbox 360 had solid sales, but they have not been enough to give Microsoft anywhere near a breakout market position," the report explains.

Should enthusiasm for the Wii wane this holiday season, the recent price drop, coupled with with impending release of God of War III, finally positions the PS3 as a viable choice for mainstream consumers, the report notes. EEDAR's Jesse Divnich agrees, pointing out that Sony can finally utilize its leverage from the previous generation. "People who purchase a PS2 are more likely to purchase a PS3 in the future. Consumers, believe it or not, are pretty loyal."

Three years after the launch of the PS3, Blu-ray is also finally becoming a marketable feature for mainstream consumers, the report argues. "This holiday season Blu-ray movies are finally getting a major focus at retail ... Blu-ray clearly now becomes a strong selling point for the PlayStation 3." Undoubtedly, SCEA will create an ad that focuses on this aspect of the system that "only does everything."

While DFC's report comes off as incredibly bullish, it's understandable to see why there's some doubt over Sony's ability to capitalize on the moment. Let's not forget, this is a company that managed to fall from first to last place in the course of a year. "The cards are in Sony's favor and now is the time to make the most of them ... Now is the time for Sony to shine ... or else."

[Via CVG]

Source - Is it Time for the PlayStation 3 to Shine?
Source - How the venerable PlayStation 2 made it to 9 years old

We've seen ads promoting the Wii's heretofore unconfirmed new $199 price point from Target and Toys R Us -- however, Engadget recently got its hands on the crown jewel of retailer news leakage: A purported internal Best Buy memo which confirms the discount will go into effect this coming Sunday, September 27. The memo requests that blue-shirted employees keep the cut under wraps until Nintendo formally announces the new price this coming Friday. You guys are doing a great job of that so far.

We'll keep an ear to the ground this Friday for an announcement from the Big N.

Update: Kotaku is reporting that SCEA has directly referenced the new $199 price point for Wii during a presentation to Best Buy employees in Kansas City, Missouri. Can we please put a fork in this one?

The new motion controllers for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are likely to make big appearances at this year's Tokyo Game Show. While both Microsoft and Sony are attempting to take away some of Nintendo's mindshare with its new controllers, Square Enix head Yoichi Wada believes neither company will be truly successful. "Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine. Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small," Wada told the Financial Times.

Wada also believes that the three platforms will start looking more like each other by the year 2011, when he believes Nintendo will release the fabled successor of the Wii. The system will add features found on the PS3/360, and may also introduce a brand new controller. It'll certainly be interesting to see what moves consumers when an HD Nintendo system exists concurrently with motion-enabled Microsoft and Sony systems.

It turns out the word "damn" isn't the only thing missing from Metroid Prime Trilogy. This YouTube video (after the break) demonstrates a few minor, but nice, graphical effects that seem to have been excised from the Wii release of the first Metroid Prime -- specifically, the ripple effect when Samus moves around in water, and the Ice Beam's freezing condensation, which used to gather around the gun when charging Ice Beam shots.

At first we thought the effects might have been a casualty of the process of cramming three games onto one disc, but this video shows that the Japanese version of Prime on Wii, which had a Wii disc all to itself, also lacks the freezing effect (skip to the last thirty seconds to see). So what happened? It could merely be a glitch, or the result of a hasty port. It's certainly nothing to get too upset or burn your Trilogy disc over. Just kind of ... odd.

Nintendo just announced that you'll finally be able to get a new color for your Wii ... mote. Black. This holiday season the company will be making a black Wiimote bundle available with the Wiimote and Wii MotionPlus, including a black Wii jacket, which is very slimming. However, you'll have to buy your black Nunchuk as a standalone, also available Holiday 2009.

According to the presser, "The Black bundle is the first new color for the Wii Remote and Wii MotionPlus," so let's hope this means a rainbow of colors coming down the pipeline next year. Right now this has nothing to go with, especially since the Wii won't be available in black over here, only in Japan. No mention of new console colors, nor of the blue Wiimote, seen recently at the World Hobby Fair. Will this be a case of having to chase down colors and accessories in different regions?

Nintendo is also bringing new DSi colors to North America, in the form of pink and white, available starting September 13. So we'll now have black, blue, white, and pink DSi ... why no funky colors like Japan? They get all the cool stuff.

Following its quarterly financial report, Nintendo released an investor Q&A with president Satoru Iwata. It has yet to be released in English, but Andriasang translated a few key excerpts. Most notably, Iwata's continued denial of any plans for a Wii price drop. "At present, we're not thinking of doing anything with the price," he said. Not that he'd announce it beforehand. Iwata didn't mention it, but we suspect the black Wii will reinvigorate sales in Japan, even at the original price.

Iwata also admitted that last holiday's Wii lineup, specifically Wii Music and Animal Crossing: City Folk, didn't have the long-term sales Nintendo expects from its big titles. He has high hopes for this year's big three games: Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. In fact, he expects all three of these to break ten million sold by March 2010, the end of Nintendo's fiscal year.

When playing Saints Row or Red Faction, did you ever wish you could smash up buildings or conduct drive-by shootings with a porn star while waggling a Wiimote? Even if you answered "no" to that question, developer Volition says it may one day be possible. During the Red Faction: Guerrilla launch event in New York City last night (held at the red planet-themed tourist trap/night club known as Mars 2112), we asked senior associate producer Jeff Carroll if the THQ-owned studio ever considered making Wii versions of their popular franchises.

"Though [THQ] may do Wii versions of [our games] in the future, Volition won't be doing them -- at least for the next year or so," Carroll said.

"We actually talked about whether we were going to become a partial Wii developer," he explained. "Then we talked it over with THQ and they had enough studios that were going to be Wii-specific. But we really wanted to focus on the technological advances [in console development], especially for Red Faction Guerrilla."

When asked if these Wii titles were in the works, he replied that he didn't know but that they were "within the realm of possibility."

The real question is: Will Gary Busey be involved? For insanity's sake, we hope so.

SCEA marketing whiz Peter Dille has pitched the company's new game plan, and Wii's the bait, according to a recent interview with Gamasutra. Opting for more concession speech than victory declaration, Dille offers a "hats off" to Nintendo and its Wii for "doing something that hasn't been done" by expanding and diversifying the demographic of game console owners. Dille proposes that if this new class of gamers gets "hooked," then PS3 is in position to fulfill the next logical acquisition in their newfound "gaming habit."

Dille suggests that the prospect of a "high-definition gaming experience" might drive a Wii family to invest in a PS3 as their living room "centerpiece," but doesn't specifically suggest why Sony's console might be favored over the other high-def game platform currently on the market. Still, Dille clearly understands the strength of the PlayStation brand, established by the ridiculously pervasive PS2 (which is still pervading in certain markets) and, likely, rightfully assumes that a significant chunk of Wii converts were once PS2 owners. Do you see the plan coming together now? "So we think that over time all those folks will migrate back to the PlayStation 3 -- when I say 'back,' that takes the view that they were PS2 gamers, went to the Wii, and then would come back."

It's a big week for Nintendo fans. First of all, the first 6 downloadable goodies on the US DSi Shop are available, and we've got 1 new WiiWare and Virtual Console title to consider. So let's not waste any time and get right down to the nitty-gritty. What will you be downloading this week?

A $99 PS2 may not sound groundbreaking to the hardcore gamer, but it certainly opens a lot of doors to the casual gaming market. Sony's last-gen console keeps on chugging, and it looks as though Sony is positioning the PS2 as its main competitor against Nintendo's almighty Wii. SCEA's John Koller spoke to GameDaily Biz about the new price, admitting that the Wii and PS2 will have "similar customers."

"Yes, we do think the $99 price point could steal some share [from Wii]," Koller said. "From a technological standpoint, the Wii is much closer to the PS2 than it is to the next-gen consoles. It's obviously not an HD box and the software development is on a par with where PS2 development is, so that's a much more realistic and similar demographic."

Although the Wii and PS2 are similar technologically, Nintendo has delivered a system that really caters to the mainstream casual masses. Without motion control and appropriate software support, a lower price point may not be able to steer people away from Nintendo's system. "Nintendo has done a fantastic job of capturing young and female [demographics]," Koller admits, and that's something Sony will have to work on if they'll want to keep the PS2 relevant in a Wii world.

Little Mac is definitely back, and he brought Doc Louis with him. He's also hauling a heck of a lot more pixels this time around, and we're happy to report that Punch-Out!! is indeed still fun to play. The Nintendo booth (the largest and lone major gaming publisher on the show floor) was showing off Punch-Out!! on a few stations, although sadly without the Balance Board functionality that's coming to the game.

It did show off four of the thirteen total fighters, including Glass Joe, Von Kaiser, King Hippo, and the newcomer, Disco Kid. He looks like what you'd get if you crossed Mike Tyson with Ric Flair, and pulled him through a Disney movie animation wringer. He likes to primp, check himself out in a mirror, and pose for the crowd. Little Mac learned the lesson about the dangers of vanity long ago, so there's no such worry. Head after the break and start training, Punch-Out!! comes out on the Wii this May.