VIDEO GAMES: 3DS continues to succeed in Japan!

Well after a rocky start, I think it's safe to say that the 3DS is going to have a long and successful life. The system recently sold more than 5 million units in Japan and broke the record for quickest console ever to reach that number. The best part is that this is the number of units that have been sold to actual consumers, not the number of units that retailers ordered. There has no doubt been hiccups along the way but the 3DS is looking as strong as ever. If the titles keep coming and they release a "3DS Lite" with a second analog stick built in, I think the life-cycle of this handheld can be quite lengthy. What do you think about the 3DS? Waiting for a new model? Happy with your current one? Are you a Vita lover?

VIDEO GAMES: Vita sales fail to stay strong.

Well the week one sales of the Vita were pretty good. I don't think they were as strong as Sony had hoped for, but they also weren't a terrifying call to concern like the early sales for the 3DS were. Unfortunately those numbers from the initial push were not only unable to stay steady, they absolutely plummeted. In its first two days in stores, the Vita sold a respectable number of over 321,000 units; not as strong as the PSP but still good. However, in its second week the system has only sold 72,479 according to Gameinformer. That's not good at all, especially considering that the system is less than a month old. I'm sure most of the hardcore fans in Japan were the ones who already purchased the device and it's likely that sales will stay stronger for a longer period of time in Europe and here in the US, but it definitely looks like the Vita won't overachieve.

VIDEO GAMES: Believe the hype!

Star Wars: The Old Republic is incredible. It is the closest I have ever felt to actually being in the Star Wars universe and its emphasis on story makes it all the more enjoyable than a traditional level grind in most MMO's. Clearly I'm not the only person who has become obsessed with SWTOR as the games official website just released some pretty mind-boggling stats from the first week of gameplay.

 - Over 60 million in game hours have been played! That's the equivalent of watching all six Star Wars movies over 4 million times.
 - Over 850,000 Sith Warriors and over 810,000 Jedi Knights created! Now the important thing to remember is that is only Warriors and Knights, there are still six other classes in the game that people have been creating!!!
 - Over 260 million quests completed.
 - Over 44 million PvP battles.
 - Over 9 million space combat missions completed.
 - Over 3 BILLION npc's killed!

These numbers are absolutely incredible for a first week, even for an MMO designed to attract as many players as possible. I think the greatest thing about this hype for SWTOR is that it's not oversold. Within the next couple of days I'll write up my "Early Review" of the game and, spoiler alert, I can't get enough of it! So if you haven't already, come join us in a galaxy far, far away!

VIDEO GAMES: Haters gunna hate!

It seems that everyone is only allowed to fall into one of two camps regarding the Modern Warfare franchise at this point. Either you're a ridiculous fanboy who has terrible taste in games and is too stupid to realize how much the MW games suck, or you're a critical, snobby, pretentious douchebag who hates Modern Warfare for the sole reason that it is the most successful video game franchise in history. Well regardless of which type of douche you are, you can't deny that the games are damn successful. How successful? Well in 16 days since its release, Modern Warfare 3 passed the $1 billion sales mark. Holy s**t! It took Avatar, the most successful movie in the history of ever, 17 days to reach that number. That is such an absurdly insane amount of money! So regardless of how you feel about MW3, it's certainly a perfect example of how to do good business!

VIDEO GAMES: That's a lot of dead dragons.

After only two days on shelves, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sold over 3.5 million copies! This number is insane considering it doesn't even take into account digital sales which are also enormous. This week Skyrim has been the best selling game on Steam easily beating out Modern Warfare 3 and other top titles for the number one spot. I'm so happy that this game is doing well. Not just because I've been obsessing over it for the past 6 months, or because having spent much of my time playing it over the past week I can attest to how brilliant it is, but because it's nice to see a game get such high praise when it isn't a mass appeal game like WoW. Not to say anything against WoW, but Skyrim is a game that I think some people could have a hard time getting on board with at first sight. There's no online multiplayer, the story is anything but linear and the game could literally take hundreds of hours to complete. While some may see this as a major deterrent it sounds like plenty of people are excited with the concept of creating your own experience in a game. No two people will play this game the same way and to me that's the coolest thing about it. Skyrim has also been one of the most searched topics on Google over the past couple of weeks and I'm sure that trend will continue as we all jump to the internet to learn a new recipe, find out how to defeat a dungeon boss or simply watch Youtube videos of flying mammoths and horses which are awesome. So if you haven't gone out and bought Skyrim yet....go do it now.

VIDEO GAMES: The bar has been set.

In its first week in retail Battlefield 3 has sold 3.5 million units! Sound like a lot? Well it is. The recently popular Gears of War 3 sold 3 million in its first week but was quickly outdone by Fifa 12 which sold 3.2 million in one week. Let's keep in mind, however, that Gears 3 was only available on Xbox so in my opinion it's still the most popular game of the year. Where does this leave Call of Duty? Well current estimates put first week sales at the 12 million mark...so yea it's really not even close. Did you buy BF3 this week? Will you buy CoD a week from today? Could you not care less?

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