Despite cable TV host and 2008 presidential hopeful Stephen Colbert being refused admission into the South Carolina Democratic primary election, Austin-based publisher Gamecock Media Group has announced its official endorsement of Colbert--and invited the candidate to reestablish his campaign headquarters in Texas after Colbert was turned away from his own home state.

Colbert has officially withdrawn his candidacy following the setback, but Gamecock has refused to acknowledge the withdrawal. "We came to the conclusion that Stephen Colbert has shown strong leadership and best represents the interests of the videogame playing community," said Gamecock CEO Mike Wilson. "Politicians have long demonized videogames for short term gain. This has, of course, been hilarious to watch. But Stephen Colbert will definitely be funnier than anything Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney can come up with."

Wilson also pointed to Colbert's interview with The Sims creator Will Wright, and defeat of a virtual version of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at Wii Sports as further evidence of Colbert's video game advocacy.

Don't expect to see Colbert respond to today's announcement on... Read more

Update: Speaking with 1up, NPD representative David Riley has confirmed that the firm will be reducing the sale figures it provides to the public, and expressed surprise at the uproar surrounding the news.

"I had no idea this would be so ill-received," said Riley. "Honestly, I know this sounds ignorant but I really was taken aback when I started hearing/reading about this. It was unexpected."

As for why the firm decided on this course of action, Riley was adamant that it is not because of pressure from console makers. "There was no push back [from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony]," he explained. "However, it's been a year [since we started publicly releasing the data], so we decided to pull this monthly feed and leave it up to the [manufacturer] as to whether or not they wanted that sales information released to media."

Original Story: Beginning this month, the sale-tracking NPD Group will, at least temporarily, become more selective with the numbers it releases to the public, claims Newsweek correspondent N'Gai Croal.

According to Croal, the marketing research firm will no longer supply the media and general public with monthly figures of hardware sales, and will only list the five best-selling games of the month instead of the usual ten. Updates on hardware sales and the ten best-selling games will instead be released quarterly and annually.

However, console manufacturers will obviously still receive the monthly... Read more

EA has confirmed to Shacknews that it is shutting down EA Chicago as part of the reorganization plan stemming from its loss of $195 million last quarter. The studio employs roughly 150 people at that location, many of which will be reassigned to other teams across the country.

Members of EA Chicago were responsible for the Fight Night series, as well as the Def Jam fighting franchise, the most recent entry of which, Def Jam: Icon (PS3, X360), was met with lukewarm reviews. The studio was known to be working on an untitled fighting game featuring Marvel Comic characters, which was planned for release in 2008.

When asked about the future of EA Chicago-handled properties, EA told Shacknews it is not yet ready to discuss its plans for those titles. A statement made by corporate communications VP Jeff Brown to Gamasutra indicates that EA Canada--the branch that handles the majority of the company's soccer, hockey, and basketball games--was tasked with the Fight Night franchise last year.

At the time of the studio's 2006 inauguration, Shacknews editor Chris Remo spoke with EA Chicago general manager Kudo Tsunoda. Tsunoda noted the studio's ambitions to become a premiere fighting game and next-gen developer. "In the long... Read more

Majesco today announced the formation of Majesco Studios, a division that will henceforth handle internal development for the publisher. The company previously relied upon third party developers to create most of the games it published, such as Double Fine's Psychonauts (PC, PS2, Xbox) and Office Create's Cooking Mama series.

Former Sega senior VP of development Bill Petro will act as the Majesco Studios' VP of internal development, with the new studio said to "specifically focus on products and properties that resonate with the casual gamer."

Titles aimed at the casual gamer, such as Cooking Mama on DS and Wii, have proved to be among Majesco's most popular recent releases. The DS edition sold over 500,000 units in Q3 2007, with the sales of DS software accounting for 66% of the company's Q3 revenue.

"Creative and technical talent is at the heart of all great games and enduring intellectual properties," stated Majesco executive Gui Karyo. "Majesco Studios provides a means for us to leverage our resources and add the best players to our team for both the projects that we develop internally and the majority for which we utilize third party development."

Santa Monica-headquartered game publisher Activision reported its second quarter fiscal year 2008 results today, posting all-time high Q2 revenues of $317.7 million. A 69% year-over-year increase, the record-high revenues led to profits of $700,000 during the three months ending September 30, compared to a $24.3 million net loss during the same period last year.

Though they launched after the end of the second quarter, Neversoft, Vicarious Visions, and Budcat's versions of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, X360) brought in $100 million during their first seven days at retail for the biggest product launch in Activision history. The strong second quarter sales, combined with Guitar Hero III's launch and tomorrow's release of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC, PS3, X360) led Activision to increase its fiscal year 2008 sales estimates to... Read more

One of the few Shacknews-endorsed charities, Child's Play, started its annual drive today, beginning the organization's fifth year of providing hospitals with toys and money donated by gamers.

"Give to Child's Play or I will punch you in the face and then you will be in a hospital and you won't have any video games to play because not enough people donated," stated Shacknews editor-in-chief Chris Remo, adding, "Jerk."

The program began in 2003 when Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, creators of the popular video game webcomic Penny Arcade, challenged the video game community to prove that video game players can make a positive difference in the lives of hospitalized children.

The duo encouraged readers to give whatever they could and stressed that every dollar helps. In addition to monetary donations, Holkins and Krahulik coordinated with the Seattle Children's Hospital to create an Amazon.com wish list of needed materials, which ranged from video game consoles to coloring books.

Response was so strong that the charity expanded to include multiple ... Read more

Update: As part of its reorganization plan, EA told Shacknews that it is closing Fight Night and Def Jam series developer EA Chicago.

Original Story: Redwood City-based megapublisher EA reported its second quarter fiscal year 2008 results today, revealing a net loss of $195 million for the quarter ending September 30. During the same period last year, the company posted profits of $22 million.

The announcement also contained details of a reorganization plan, approved just three days ago by EA's board of directors. EA estimates the plan will save the company $25 million to $30 million, but unfortunately involves both branch closures and downsizing.

Within the next 24 months, the company will be "closing certain facilities," with a specific mention of EA's facility in Chertsey, England, and "relocating and/or eliminating certain job positions."

The quarter's loss brings the company's year-to-date losses to $328 million. The company's revenues for the quarter were down 18% to $640 million.

Despite the heavy losses, EA has raised its sales expectations by $150 million for the entire fiscal year to a range of $3.35 billion to $3.65 billion. The company expects its strong holiday lineup of sports titles and EA-published games like Flagship's Hellgate: London, Harmonix's Rock Band, and Crytek's Crysis to bring in massive revenue.

The motion filed by Epic Games in attempt to dismiss Silicon Knight's lawsuit against the company has been denied, reports GameDaily BIZ. Barring an out-of-court settlement between the two companies, the case will now process to trial, though no date has been set.

"Epic had asked for the entire case to be dismissed. Judge Dever denied this request, which is not unusual," explained Epic VP Mark Rein. "Often these requests are denied. It is important to note that this was not a decision on the merits of Silicon Knights' claims. We are confident that the evidence will show Silicon Knights breached its license with Epic Games and violated our copyrights and trade secrets."

Dever's decision comes after Silicon Knights filed a rebuttal against Epic's motion to dismiss. "Epic’'s Motion to dismiss should be denied in its entirety, Epic should be ordered to answer the Complaint, and this case should proceed to discovery and trial," it read.

Charges filed against Epic in the lawsuit, which centers around Silicon Knights' experience with Epic's Unreal Engine 3 while developing Too Human (X360), include Fraud, Negligent Misrepresentation, and Breach of Contract. Epic maintains that all of the issues Silicon Knights encountered while using its technology are covered under the Unreal Engine 3 License Agreement.

Houston, TX based Pi Studios sends along word that they are looking to hire for all positions. A list of openings can be found here.

In separate announcements, both ailing publisher Atari Inc. and Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media have secured significant bundles of cash to continue operations. New York-based Atari, owned by Paris-headquartered Infogrames, received $10 million credit from Infogrames shareholder BlueBay High Yield Investments, and Providence Equity Partners bought $300 million worth of Maryland-based ZeniMax's preferred stock.

But the $10 million won't come close to solving Atari's problems, whose parent company recently announced plans for a major restructuring after Atari filed a delayed fiscal year 2007 report detailing a $69.7 million loss. The announcement from Atari described the $10 million credit as "a first step in securing financing to build inventory for the 2007 calendar holiday season and for day-to-day working capital needs," though it added that "additional financing is being sought."

ZeniMax, on the other hand, has a much brighter outlook, with the $300 million planned to "fund future growth, increase game development and publishing, facilitate acquisitions, and finance massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)," according to the announcement.

Last year, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA, announced it would from 2006 onward consider video games of equal importance to both film and television. In prior years, BAFTA had hosted fairly minor video game awards of some form, alongside their flagship British Academy Film Awards and British Academy Television Awards. As stated in the auspicious announcement, this would make the British Academy Video Games Awards "the most independent and valued awards in this arena."

It was an encouraging move from one of the most well-known recognizers of the world's art, lending legitimacy to the artistic merits of video games, merits long-deserved by an industry filled with terrifically imaginative world-builders and artisans of the highest degree.

This makes it all the more disappointing that in only their second year of supposed platform parity, the Video Games Awards have become a joke.

Things looked up after the 2006 awards, as the increased significance they gave the game industry's works with a televised... Read more

With the opening of its latest store in Jackson, CA, mega-retailer GameStop now serves gamers the latest in new and pre-owned goods from 5,000 locations worldwide.

Amador county supervisor Theodore Novelli and GameStop VP John Deegan were on hand for the balloon-decorated ribbon cutting ceremony, as were several other excited onlookers (all pictured left).

"With more customers being attracted to the video game category, they will increasingly find a GameStop convenient to them," noted GameStop COO Dan DeMatteo. "This landmark store opening underscores the strength of our business model and represents a spectacular effort on behalf of our 44,000 employees worldwide."

The core of the GameStop business model is centered around soliciting trade-ins from customers and providing them with in-store credit or cash, which encourages them to spend more money in-store, and then reselling the used ... Read more

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosted the British Academy Video Games Awards 2007 today, and Nintendo's Wii pack-in compilation Wii Sports came home with the most metal, taking six of the ceremony's 15 awards.

The title was actually nominated for seven awards, losing only the Best Game honor to 2K Boston/2K Australia's underwater shooter BioShock (PC, X360). Although several unreleased titles had somehow made the list of nominees, none of these games came away with an award.

Both Clover Studio's artsy adventure title Okami (PS2) and SCE Santa Monica's brutal mythical action title God of War II (PS2) earned two awards each. Look below for the full list of winners or check out the dubious list of nominees.

• Action and Adventure - Crackdown (Realtime Worlds, Microsoft, X360)
• Artistic Achievement - Okami (Clover Studio, Capcom, PS2)
• Best Game - BioShock (2K Boston/2K Australia, 2K Games, PC, X360)
• Casual - Wii Sports (Nintendo, Wii)
• Gameplay - Wii Sports (Nintendo, Wii)
• Innovation - Wii Sports (Nintendo, Wii)
• Multiplayer - Wii Sports (Nintendo, Wii)
• Original Score - Okami (Clover Studio, Capcom, PS2)
• Sports - Okami Wii Sports (Nintendo, Wii)
• Strategy and Simulation - Wii Sports (Nintendo, Wii)
• Story and Character - God of War II (SCE Santa Monica, SCE, PS2)
• Technical Achievement - God of War II (SCE Santa Monica, SCE, PS2)
• Use of Audio - Crackdown (Realtime Worlds, Microsoft, X360)
• BAFTA Ones to Watch Award (Independent Dev) - Ragnarawk (Voodoo Boogy)
• The PC World Gamers Award (Public Voting Online) - Football Manager 2007 (Sports Interactive, Sega, PC)

Mega-publisher Electronic Arts has joined the ever-increasing list of notable industry figures that are hoping for a one console future. By having one standardized platform, proponents of the plan argue that it would ease development concerns and reduce the consumer confusion that comes from having multiple consoles in the market.

"We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," EA executive Gerhard Florin (pictured left) told BBC. "We're platform agnostic and we definitely don't want to have one platform which is a walled garden."

Florin's belief is becoming a common one amongst developers. "Honestly, we'd rather spend time making the games than worrying about the hardware," Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack said during this year's Game Developers Conference. "And if everyone had the same hardware and when you made a game you knew you got 100% penetration because anyone who plays this game had to buy this hardware platform just like a DVD or whatever standard media format's going to be. I think that would ultimately be much better for gamers."

Renowned game designer John Romero made a similar ... Read more

The recently EA-acquired RPG developer BioWare has been named one of 2008's "10 Best Companies to Work For" by Canadian news outlet the Financial Post. The Post picks the 10 best companies from its list of 100 top employers every year, and this is the first time Mass Effect (X360) developer BioWare has made it into the top 10.

"We are truly honored to be named a Top 10 Canadian employer," said BioWare CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka in a prepared statement. "At BioWare, we have always valued our people, and one of our core values is to provide an environment that offers quality in the workplace and promotes creativity. This is why BioWare has attracted employees who come from all over the world."

The remainder of the list is unavailable online, so it's unknown which Canadian peers BioWare shares the honor with. For the 2007 list, Vivendi-owned Sierra subsidiary Radical Entertainment of Vancouver was the only game company to make the top 10.

Austin-based bad-boy publisher Gamecock has announced its intentions to open a new office in the U.K. The publisher of Auran's online battler Fury (PC) and Renegade Kid's upcoming Dementium the Ward (NDS), Gamecock plans to open its second office by the end of the year, Gamecock CEO Mike Wilson told Next-Gen.

"It's mostly about us trying to give our developers the best deal we can across the PAL territories too," Wilson said. "When doing a co-publishing deal, it's really hard to do that."

The new studio will make Gamecock an international publisher, and give its stable of developers an outlet in European territories. Auran's Fury and Renegade Kid's Dementium, the first two titles from the publisher, both debut in North America this month

Shares of Electronic Arts were trading at $61.50 at 1:02 p.m. EDT today, a two-year high for the company. As of 2:32 p.m. EDT the stock is at $61.35, a 4.53% increase since yesterday's closing price, most likely due to the company's recent acquisition of both BioWare and Pandemic game studios from Elevation Partners.

The announcement of the acquisition came near the end of trading yesterday and had little effect on the stock's price. Despite EA paying an unquestionably large sum for both studios, $860 million, the company's investors seem to have spoken, giving the ever-growing mega-publisher their blessing in adding both BioWare and Pandemic to its stable.

The purchase price is apparently a record sum as far as video game acquisitions go, surpassing Microsoft's former record purchase of U.K.-based developer Rare for $375 million. In a conference call proceeding the announcement, EA CFO Warren Jensen said he expects the acquisition to nearly pay for itself by 2010, earning the company an estimated $600 million.

Update: In a conference call on the buyout, EA CFO Warren Jensen gave more details of the acquisition, including the total cost of the deal for the publisher: $860 million. "We've looked at a lot of companies and have had our eye on these studios for several years," Jensen said. "This is a powerful combination of creative talent and portfolio strength."

As motivations for the acquisition, Jensen listed the need to fill gaps in EA's portfolio of games--specifically with BioWare's RPGs and Pandemic's open-world titles--as well as EA's interest to further support MMO development with BioWare's upcoming massively multiplayer project. And of course, EA expects to make gobs of money from the purchase.

"In fiscal 2009 and 2010, we expect the BioWare and Pandemic properties to deliver revenue in excess of $300 million annually," he said.

EA CEO and former Elevation Partners CEO John Riccitiello addressed his involvement in the deal, conceding that the acquisition... Read more

Speaking on the current climate of independent game development during his IndieGamesCon keynote address this year, accomplished industry veteran Alex Seropian (pictured left), who helped found Bungie and created Halo before leaving the studio to form Wideload Games, expressed his belief that now is the best time to be involved in the field and that the best business model for indie devs is akin to prostitution.

"I've been making games for about 16 years now...I would say that right now is absolutely the greatest time, ever, for being a game developer and making a game because of all the opportunities out there," he revealed. "There's this crazy upside right now. Everybody wants games, everybody wants new games. Our market is growing."

Digital distribution services such as GarageGames' web-based InstantAction platform, which Wideload just announced its first game for, and Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade play a key role in Seropian's optimistic stance. "You can sell games to a customer without a retail store," he noted. "That is a huge shift in the market. Ten years ago this was an idea...but I think Xbox Live Arcade has done such a great service to developers...just the fact that they've proven you can make money without retail in the games business is such a huge change.

"The potential for how successful a video game property can be is enormous," Seropian continued. Using the continuing success of The Sims as an example, he explained that technical and graphical prowess aren't nearly as important as having a good concept behind the game.

While Seropian and his company do not have an aversion to working with publishers--"We don't mind sucking at the teat of the publisher," he jested, "but we just want to have other food sources too. We don't want to starve... Read more

Shiny Entertainment and The Collective, subsidiaries of independent developer conglomerate Foundation 9 Entertainment, have merged into a single development studio in Irvine, California, F9E announced today. Both studios previously maintained offices in Southern California.

F9E claims that the move will result in no layoffs. The new, as yet unnamed, studio will be headed up by existing Shiny studio head Michael "Saxs" Persson. It is not known whether the existing names "The Collective" and "Shiny Entertainment"--the latter being a brand with particularly strong history in the gaming world--will be retained in any way. "We really haven't decided anything in that area," said Foundation 9's Nicole Tanner to Shacknews today.

Currently, the studios are already working out of the same location, though they are acting essentially separately for the time being. "Obviously the two studios still have projects they're finishing up, but once those are complete they'll be fully integrated," explained Tanner.

Shiny Entertainment, founded by former company president David Perry, is best known for platformer series Earthworm Jim and shooter MDK, as... Read more