Seeds, the independent studio formed from the remnants of Okami and Viewtiful Joe series developer Clover Studio after Capcom shut it down, will be known as Platinum Games as of October 1. The name change comes about as a result of Seeds' merger with ODD, a Japanese company about which little is known.

Though Seeds has yet to unveil its first title, the studio has drawn much attention due to what Shacknews editor-in-chief Chris Remo describes as a "preposterously talented staff." Among the company's all-star game development staff are Resident Evil creator and God Hand director Shinji Mikami, Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe creator Hideki Kamiya, and Shadow of the Colossus veteran Yuta Kimura.

"We are the Seeds that caused the vibrant flowers Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Steel Battalion, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami to come into bloom," the company announced when it was formed this past February. "Now, with a renewed spirit, we want to once again challenge the world of entertainment. But to do this, we need many, many more seeds... Would you like to make some 'preposterously amazing' games with us?"

Nintendo corporate communications director Beth Llewelyn confirmed her long-rumored departure from the Redmond-headquartered game giant today in an e-mail sent to the media. Her announcement follows the confirmation by senior marketing VP George Harrison of his forthcoming departure from the company in the transition of its sales and marketing team to the Bay Area and New York.

"I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Nintendo and working with all of you. I've helped launched many products over the years, but I think what we've done in the last few years has been the most exciting," Llewelyn said in the e-mail. "It is an amazing time in the industry right now and there is so much more to come from Nintendo."

The last day of Llewelyn's nearly 12-year tenure with Nintendo will be Friday, she said in message. Llewelyn chose not to relocate with the company because of her family, which she hopes to spend more time with upon her resignation.

With both Harrison confirming his departure at the end of December and Llewelyn leaving in two days, only marketing VP Perrin Kaplan has yet to announce her leave of the company prior to the Seattle exodus. Like the other two execs, the opening for Kaplan's position has been posted on Nintendo's career site for several months, legitimizing rumors of her departure.

With trading closed for the day on Wall Street, shares of Microsoft buoyed by today's launch of Halo 3 were up to $29.56, a 1.651% increase over yesterday's closing price. The increase doesn't quite match the grav lift of greenbacks Microsoft received from the game's predecessor Halo 2, which gave the company a 1.673% increase at the end of its November 9, 2004 launch day.

The increase can't be attributed solely to Halo 3 hype though, as talks of Microsoft investing heavily in social networking megasite Facebook have spurred investors as well.

Oddly enough, rival game giant Nintendo actually stole most of the attention of the stock market world today, closing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a 3.1% increase on Microsoft's own Halo 3 launch day. For the record, shares of PlayStation 3 provider Sony closed today on the New York Stock Exchange after a 1.373% decrease.

Despite its absence at last week's Tokyo Game Show, this week Nintendo became the second most valuable active stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Reuters reports. With a market cap of $72.8 billion, the company is second only to Toyota's $208 billion market value.

A technicality could be responsible for Nintendo's high placement as well, as trading of the potentially more valuable Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group was suspended this week in preparation for a planned split of the stock. Regardless, Nintendo recently reclaimed its long-absent top spot in the console race, with worldwide Wii sales of 9 million consoles.

In comparison, Microsoft's second-place Xbox 360 sold 8.9 million units worldwide as of July, with a one year head start on Nintendo's console. Nintendo's stock has quadrupled over the past two years following the wildfire sales of the DS and Wii, the Reuters story reports.

Launched earlier this year, Nintendo of Korea has taken its first action against piracy of games in the country, The Korea Times reports. The Korean branch of Nintendo announced today it has filed suit against an unidentified number of users who shared Nintendo software with P2P programs or on websites, on the basis of copyright infringement.

Nintendo went through the Supreme Prosecutors' Office in Seoul to file the case, the first time the company has sought legal recourse for piracy in South Korea. "The legal action was taken against only some sites and users this time but we will take further measures if such a violation continues to take place," a Nintendo rep told The Korea Times.

The Seoul-based branch of Nintendo would not reveal the specifics of the case or how many people or sites were involved. Nintendo has gone after counterfeiters in Taiwan and China for selling hard copies of pirated games, but not for sharing games using P2P software or other websites.

Corporate communications director David Karraker left Sony earlier this month, and today the company announced his replacement. Former Sega marketing VP Scott Steinberg will begin in the newly created position of product marketing VP for SCEA on October 1.

Though the role has a different title, Steinberg will report directly to marketing chief Peter Dille, as Karraker did, and will handle "all hardware, software and channel marketing for PlayStation in North America."

"Scott has an ideal blend of experience in digital entertainment and content delivery as well as a proven track record for strategic innovation... Read more

UK gaming site Pro-G has speculated that Sony may reveal a rumble-supporting Sixaxis at this year's Tokyo Game Show, which begins Thursday. A Sony "insider" has reportedly told the site that the PlayStation 3's latest software development kit includes rumble support.

The recent timing of the new SDK rollout--supposedly sent to devs last Thursday--could mean Sony is prepping for an announcement. Sony announced its intentions to work with former legal adversary and rumble technology developer Immersion earlier this year after reaching a financial agreement with the company.

In light of this, the eventual inclusion of rumble support should be no surprise, and a TGS announcement would be as likely as any--though it would seem to make more sense once Sony actually has a game to go along with the technology. As with the PS3 price shuffle, press and analysts speculated Sony would pull the rumble card at E3 soon after the Immersion deal, but Sony has yet to reveal a date for the inclusion of last-last-gen technology in its current-gen console.

Industry watchers NPD gave Shacknews the North American game industry stats for August today, highlighted by $8.02 billion in overall year-to-date sales--a 43.0% increase over last year's period from January through August. Home console sales saw the most drastic increase during the past month, with a 152.1% year-over-year increase in August from sales of $302 million, bringing year-to-date home console sales 108.0% higher than in 2006.

Nintendo's recently crowned champion of worldwide sales unsurprisingly took the top spot for North American home console sales, as the Wii sold 403,600 units in August. Microsoft's Xbox 360 came in second with 276,700 units sold, followed by Sony's last-gen PlayStation 2 with 202,000, and capped off by the PlayStation 3's 130,600.

Regarding handheld sales, portable game hardware revenues for August were $83 million, up just 5.5% year-over-year. Though year-to-date sales of portables are still well ahead of 2006 at $832 million, a 20.5% increase. Nintendo sold 383,300 DS consoles in North America in August, more than twice the 151,200 PSPs sold.

Confirming rumors earlier this summer, Nintendo of America's senior VP of marketing George Harrison will leave the company at the end of December, according to Reuters. His departure will follow Nintendo's relocation of sales and marketing staff from its Redmond offices to San Francisco and New York.

"I have confirmed to all employees that I will be leaving at the end of December and not making the move to California," Harrison told Reuters.

Harrison began working for Nintendo in 1992, and would not reveal his future plans to Reuters. Speculation has been rampant among industry insiders as to who is going to take Harrison's position, and competition for the job is said to be high, given Nintendo's recent success.

Along with numerous other employees, marketing VP Perrin Kaplan and PR director Beth Llewelyn have also been rumored as leaving Nintendo once the company makes the move, though this has yet to be confirmed. Job postings on Nintendo's career site reveal openings for both Kaplan's and Llewelyn's positions in Nintendo's future Bay Area office.

In an interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata posted by Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi on his website, the Nintendo president revealed a sequel to the popular Wii Sports pack-in title was not in the works.

"We're not closing our doors to the possibility of a sequel, but it's definitely not coming out soon," Iwata said. The interview is part of 11 conversations Itoi had with Iwata six months ago after dinner with the president.

In the interview, Iwata and Itoi kept saying Nintendo wasn't the type of company to "do the easy," presumably meaning it wouldn't take the simple path. But Iwata says Nintendo really only has the ability to do this because of the remarkable success of the Wii--which has reportedly become the top-selling console worldwide, placing the company back in its pre-PlayStation position of power.

"But realistically, I think we can say 'we won't do the easy'... Read more

Kyoto-based game giant Nintendo has reclaimed the top spot in sales of home consoles worldwide, according to a report today from the Financial Times. The story's numbers place the Wii's 9 million units sold slightly ahead of Microsoft's now-second-place Xbox 360 at 8.9 million sold.

The Financial Times combined sales data from industry monitors NPD, Enterbrain, and GfK for sales in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, respectively. The data runs through August in Japan and July in the U.S. and Europe.

Nintendo hasn't held the top console sales spot since the era of the Super NES, before Sony's PlayStation consoles began their dominance. Nintendo's own numbers through June actually give the Wii sales a larger figure than the Financial Times report, placing it at 9.27 million consoles sold, though these numbers reflected sales to retailers.

With Wii sales high since launch--tripling that of the competition in Japan alone last month--the announcement was sure to come before long. Shacknews attempted to contact both Mario and Luigi on the story, but the pair were unavailable for comment.

Shares of Capcom's stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange reached a five-year highpoint today, according to Bloomberg. The Osaka-based game company's shares hit 2,855 yen and have been riding high in anticipation of mega-busting Wii software sales.

Analyst Jay Defibaugh told Bloomberg he expects Capcom's first Wii title, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, to exceed the company's predicted shipments of 620,000 units by March 31. Upcoming Wii games from Capcom include the Nintendo Zapper-supporting rail-shooter Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, coming in November, and the preposterously named adventuring title Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, also coming this fall.

Check out the Shack previews on both Umbrella Chronicles and Zack & Wiki for more on these titles.

Japanese sales of the Wii in August were three times that of the PlayStation 3, according to research firm Enterbrain. Unsurprisingly, the Wii also sold nearly 22 times the number of the Xbox 360 consoles in the country.

The 245,653 Wii consoles moved during the month were actually the least amount of Wii consoles sold since launch, a nearly 40% drop in sales from July's 396,752 units sold. Though both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sales dropped off during August as well, by 11% and 37%, respectively.

The number brings year-to-date sales of the Wii in Japan to 2,417,410 units, with the PS3 at 677,082 and Xbox 360 at 151,823.

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Edward Woo told Bloomberg Thursday he expects to see another PlayStation 3 price drop after the 60GB model has been phased out.

Bloomberg spoke with Woo after confirming with Sony that the 60GB PS3 SKU would no longer be sold in the U.S. after the current inventory runs out. This makes manifest the remarks of SCEE president David Reeves shortly after the U.S. PS3 price rearrangement.

Sony would not comment on the price drop, but told Bloomberg that supply of the 60GB PS3 SKUs would probably last through October.

A price cut after the 60GB phase-out would seem likely, otherwise Sony's only price-point would be at $599. Though like the last "price cut" that finalized the phase-out of the 20GB model, the move isn't likely to bring the base price of any SKU below $499.

The PS3's first price drops took place at the beginning of the month, with the 60GB SKU dropping to $499, and a new 80GB SKU with a copy of Motorstorm totaling $599.

Nintendo's Wii has reached the million sales mark in the UK faster than any other console post-launch, Nintendo announced today. Figures from Chart Track revealed the Wii sold a million units in 38 weeks, 11 weeks faster than the former record-holder, Sony's PlayStation 2.

"The non-stop demand for Wii even in the traditionally slow sales periods for video games in the UK is clearly behind this record breaking achievement," said Nintendo UK manager David Yarnton in an included statement.

Last week, the Wii and Nintendo DS took 68% and 86% of console and handheld sales in the UK, respectively, according to Chart Track. As of June, worldwide sales numbers for Wii and DS were 9.27 million and 47.27 million, respectively.

With nearly $1 billion in sales recorded for the month of July, the year-to-date progress of the North American gaming industry is up some 43% over July 2006 numbers, with NPD's Anita Frazier now putting the yearly estimate of total industry sales at $16-18 billion.

Nintendo has emerged as the clear leader in hardware sales this year, with 425,000 and 405,000 sales of its Wii and DS consoles recorded in July, respectively. Sony's PlayStation 2 pushed 222,000 units, while the PSP recorded 214,000 sales. Microsoft edged out Sony with 170,000 Xbox 360 units sold to the PS3's 159,000. Nintendo's die-hard Gameboy Advance followed up the pack with 87,000 units.

Shack community member Chazums charted the numbers in a series of graphs, showing the yearly current-gen hardware sales broken... Read more

Sony announced a smattering of entertainment enhancements for both PlayStation 3 and PSP at the Leipzig Games Convention today, though all the products apply to European territories only. PlayTV, a TV tuner and personal video recorder for PS3, and a PSP video download service will both launch in early 2008.

Europeans in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain will be able to use the PlayTV's dual TV tuners to watch high definition programming while recording separate programming at the same time. The TiVo-like accessory will give the option to record whole seasons in 1080p, and shows can be transferred to PSPs as well. PSP owners with Wi-Fi access can also use their handhelds to schedule recordings, watch TV, and stream recorded programs to their portables.

"PS3 already provides High Definition gaming, Blu-ray Disc... Read more

The long-standing belief that the PlayStation 3's Cell processor is a developer's nightmare when compared to the working with the Xbox 360 has been challenged by Yann Le Tensorer, co-founder of Ubisoft TiWak.

"It's wrong to say it's harder to code on the PlayStation 3. It's just something that needs to be learnt," said Le Tensorer to GamesIndustry. Le Tensorer is the co-creator of the YETI engine used in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (PC, X360) and the upcoming Beowulf (PC, PS3, X360, PSP).

"It's not harder to develop on the PS3 than it is on the 360, it's just a different console," he added. "Developers might say it's harder because it just takes time to understand the technology. We're still early in the lifecycle."

At this year's QuakeCon, id's resident gangsta John Carmack acknowledged that his company's new engine id Tech 5 may potentially evolve into a more robust form on the PlayStation 3 than on the Xbox 360. However... Read more

It's been nearly two years since the Xbox 360 launch and almost a year since the release of the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3, but many gamers haven't been showing these consoles much attention. A recent report from Nielsen found gamers used their previous generation PlayStation 2 console 42% of the time during the month of June.

With the largest install base of any current or last-gen system, PS2s have every reason to be the most-played console based on accessibility alone. Even the trailing console of last generation, Nintendo's GameCube, garnered more of gamers' time--5.8%--in June than both the Wii's 4.0% or last-place PS3's 1.5%. The second-most-played console, the last-gen Xbox, only captured 17% of gamers' time, while the Xbox 360 took third place with 8.0%.

The ongoing popularity of the seven-year-old PS2 is certainly helped by abundant software releases, with 2007 seeing 80-something... Read more

A survey by Frank N. Magid Associates found 30% of 149 Xbox 360 owners did not know Xbox Live Arcade existed. Of the remaining 70% who were aware of XBLA, 42% had downloaded trial games using the service and 28% had purchased titles.

A rough estimate places the margin of error for the sample at about 10%, fairly high relative to most reputable studies. The surveyors actually polled 1800 U.S. households, with 149 confirming their ownership of an Xbox 360.

Despite the high margin of error, the data correlates with another survey detailing console owners' cluelessness about their gaming system's capabilities. According to the report, 70% of homes with movie-playback-capable consoles did not realize their gaming systems had this functionality.

This reminds me of a conversation I overheard in a large retail outlet before the Xbox 360 launch. A customer said she owned an Xbox, and excitedly detailed her plans to purchase an Xbox 360. Later, she asked a retail associate if the 360 would actually have any enhanced capabilities over the original Xbox, or even play different games.