Headline RePLAY – 6.29.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: A status update on the Microsoft vs. Sony console war, a third of gamers prefer digital and why Castlevania: Lords of Shadow DLC sucked.

Are you curious on the status of the Microsoft vs. Sony console war? As this console generation draws to a close, an infographic shows that it’s a close fight: the Xbox 360 is winning—barely, by 4 million units sold worldwide.

The chart made by Console Fanboyism reports that the 360 sold over 66 million units vs. the PS3’s 62 million. The sales figures are then divided by a six-year period, region, games sold, and other data like controller preference.

It concludes that Microsoft will have the edge entering the next generation of consoles due to advancements it made with the Kinect.

Ultimately, seeing how Nintendo’s Wii fared alongside the 360 and PS3 would’ve been far more telling than just a direct comparison of the two.

|Source: Destructoid

More than one-third of video game consumers who bought games in the past three months rather purchase a game digitally than a physical copy, a study by the NPD Group found; a 10 percent increase from last year.

“Gamers are growing more comfortable in acquiring content online, as we saw the preference for digital increase ten percentage points from last year,” observed NPD analyst Liam Callahan. “The proliferation of free games on mobile devices has reduced the barrier of entry for online gaming to zero, fueling an increase in acquisition.”  

The Online Gaming 2012 report data was collected over a three week period and included nearly 8,500 respondents. The report noted that 40% of those surveyed acquired at least one game in both physical and digital formats.

|Source: IGN

The Castlevania: Lords of Shadow team were victims of their own success, says producer David Cox, explaining why despite the game’s success its only two pieces of DLC were both poorly reviewed and sold.

“The problem was that the game’s success caught everyone by surprise,” David Cox told Gameranx, specifically talking about Lords of Shadow DLC “Reverie” and “Resurrection.” “It caught senior management by surprise and they want us to do DLC. We never planned to do DLC, so we ended up doing DLC after the fact and in hindsight that was a mistake. It was rushed. We had to rush it to the market.”

Cox says if he and his team can go back and redo DLC it would have to be planned from the “get go” and be a side story that “enriches the original story” versus a continuation.  

“When you have success there’s pressure on you to bring something else to market very quickly,” he explained. “And I think it was wrong of us to do that.”

As far as the upcoming Lords of Shadow 2 is concerned, Cox refuses to comment. But if there was to be DLC for the sequel, “It should add to the experience, not take away from it,” said Cox.  

|Source: Gameranx