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With all of the hoopla surrounding Mario Kart Wii hitting this weekend, and Grand Theft Auto IV hitting next week, lets not forget that there are still plenty of things to get excited about later in the year. Like SOCOM Confrontation. Can't. Wait.
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Jonesing for your first taste of Gears of War 2 gameplay footage? Fortunately you don't have too long to wait.
Gametrailers TV just secured themselves the first in-game footage from the game. The bad news? It won't be airing until May 9 at 1 a.m. The good news? The footage, which features Marcus Fenix, includes a special introduction by bunny-loving Epic game designer Cliff Bleszinski.
top 10
Only a Game has a fun post on the 'top 10 video game emotions' - emotions that people recognize as both present while they're playing, and enhancements of gameplay:
Based on the 1,040 responses to the DGD2 survey, I have ranked the top 10 emotions with their average score out of 5 to get a rough-and-ready estimate of the popularity of various emotions. This isn't a strict scientific measure, as such, but the highest scoring emotions are those for which the majority of people not only recognised having that emotion while playing games, but recognised it enhanced their enjoyment.
Top Ten Videogame Emotions [Only a Game]
independent gaming
clips
Two Ninja Gaiden II videos in one month? First they gift us on the Day of the Ninja with a new gameplay trailer, and now Team Ninja is back with even more gameplay video. I have to agree with Luke here. We get it. The screens prove it's bloody, and the clips prove it is fast. Other than that the media blitz isn't really showing us anything new. We know it is coming, we're prepared to purchase it for our playing pleasure. Unless you want to reveal some new gameplay twist or a massive boss, no more gameplay clips. We're full.
The folks at 1Up get a first look at Silent Hill 5 and man does it look great. From what I can see in the clips of the game shown throughout this piece, it's everything you are going to want from Silent Hill on a next gen platform. The scenes of Silent Hill changing to evil Silent Hill are delivered as promised, in real time while you are actually playing the game and draws directly from the method used in the Silent Hill movie. While it may have had it's faults, the film version did have a lot of interesting ways of treating the environment which translates quite nicely into the video game format. It's also nice to see that they are going back to the elements that made SH 2 the best in the series and steering away from the sometimes clunky mechanics of SH 4. If you are a Silent Hill fan, you're going to love this clip. What are you waiting for? Press play!
nielsen gameplay metrics
Sony's Playstation 2 accounted for 42 percent of video game console usage during June far outstripping the Xbox, which had the second highest usage at 17 percent, according to Nielsen's latest GamePlay Metrics.
Rounding up the list of consoles was the Playstation 3 with just 1.5 percent of usage and the Wii with four percent.
Metrics found that 68.1 million people used a video game console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. On the days they played, Xbox 360 users logged an average of 2.2 sessions, with an average session length of 61 minutes. In contrast, PlayStation 3 users' logged an average of 1.9 sessions, with an average session length of 83 minutes, on the days they played.
Metrics also found that game play patterns shift seasonally. For instance in April, Wii's peak usage hour was 5PM, and now, during Summer Break, Wii usage peaks at 8 PM. Finally, Metrics reports that Wii households are upscale, with annual income more likely to be more than $100,000 income.
Hit the jump for a sexy numbers chart and the study's methodologies.
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Good lord this looks amazing. I CANT WAIT... and I'm not even a really big MGS fan.
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